Blah blah blah

Well, it is that time of year again – the end. I’m actually surprised I’ve not been bombarded with Facebook notifications telling me how some friend I’ve seen once this year has tagged me in one of their annoying photos that sum up 2011. I’m touched that our brief encounter affected your 2011 so much, but please, don’t tag me in it. It musses up my Facebook.

ANYWAY, I digress.

I thought I’d do a lovely little summary of what I did (or didn’t do) in the past year.

2011 began with a lovely angry rant about how supermarkets had already begun to stock up on Easter-related goodies before 2011 had even begun. In said rant, I mentioned that I would give up Facebook for Lent. If I remember correctly, I spent most of the period building up to Lent convincing myself that I would give up Facebook successfully for Lent, despite my initial doubt towards to the whole idea:

 I, for one, will not be buying my Cadbury’s Creme Egg until the start of Lent, which is when I intend to give up Facebook. Let’s see how that goes.

I can now confirm that I did not give up Facebook for Lent. Though, I like to think that I use it less now (owing in part to all the ruddy changes Facebook keep making to it), however I fear others won’t agree.

January probably involved some lovely courseworks, courtesy of Uni, but I think we’re all forgetting the highlight of the month of January. January is, of course, the joyous month of my birth. It would be quite the understatement to say that I drank a lot. If I remember correctly (the shame), I fear it involved transferring wine (red, natch) into an empty beer bottle to keep me occupied on the walk into town, where a fish bowl of alcohol was consumed. I suspect a good time was had by all.

An entire fish bowl of alcohol. And it was all mine!

February saw the two-year anniversary of my online presence (plus, obviously, alcohol and drudgery), which I celebrated by publishing some blogs from the archive… I also went to see Hurts in February with Lowri and Tom. Alas, train times were not clement, and we had to leave the gig after only half an hour, in order to run (one of the two times I ran in 2011) down Oxford Road to just make it in time for the train. I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. Also In February, I went to see Russell Howard with the sister, which was ruddy hilarious. Need I say more? No.

By early March, there was speculation as to what I would be doing once I had graduated – would I be doing British Council in Spain, or would I be a lecteur in Rennes or would I be unemployed? Well, as luck would have it, everything sorted itself out, and I found out that I had been successful in my application to Rennes. Huzzah! It seems that March was the month of the infamous Hispanic Marketing text. I almost miss José now, and his sideburns and that same red jumper he would wear. Always. Y TU, ¿QUE TIENES?

As I didn’t do a blog in April, I have to try and recall what happened. Clearly, it wasn’t a lot. I went out and got incredibly drunk and popped my knee, which was an experience. Revision happened. Incessantly. So, naturally, despair happened also. Incessantly.

May was the time for the oral exams. And the normal exams. But mostly the mistake of the oral exams. As I did French and Spanish for my degree, along with Catalan in there, I had 3 orals. So, my stress levels were high, naturally. After finishing my French one, (I was the last person to do it in all the year!) I thought “Why not go for a drink to unwind?” One drink turned to 3 bottles. Needless to say that this did not bode well for my stress levels the next day – hungover and unable to revise for other exams. What a silly sausage I was.

ANYWAY, June saw the last of my exams, and saw my drunken self reach new levels never before reached by a Heeley. As my last exam was a morning exam, I brought a bottle of wine with me to celebrate and commence the drinking. Before noon. Shame of shames. By 4pm, I was staggering in to bed to lie down. This inevitably meant waking up at 7pm hungover and recommencing drinking all over again. This is not the lowest level to which I sunk in June. All I will say on the matter is 4 bottles of wine, tartiflette, the library, a cardboard-cut-out of the Bowland Lady and the worst hangover known to mankind. Ever. And, of course, there was the ultra-civilised Grad Ball, which, though a let-down, was a wonderous night with wonderous people. Even Zab made an appearance!

Don't we look dapper?

In July, I got to (finally) don my robes and graduate (like a boss). It was a little hectic as days go, but overall it was lovely, and culminated in a lovely evening spent at Bea’s with Fiona (and Bea, obviously). July also saw the last of 14 Dumbarton Road. Well, the last of Sarah, Josh and I living there. Good memories were made there (along with some interesting memories too). I’d best see them soon…

Throwing my mortarboard. Like a boss.

August saw riots hit England, and subsequently it saw Leona, Sarah and I doing a mini-tour of the places hit by the riots. It was all rather exciting, yet sad, as Sarah and I were to leave to Europe to do some teaching or something. That said, it was lovely to sort out lovely trips around to see people before I buggered off to Franceland. My buggering off to Franceland is something that also happened in August. After 5 horrific nights spent in the auberge de merde, I found somewhere to live and slept under a towel for my first night in my new flat.

I won’t bother summing up my time in France, as I didn’t really do a great deal this semester. However, I did:

• get to see Antoine and Julie again, which involved cider, crepes, galettes and a lovely visit to Saint Malo, not to mention the awkward moment when you’ve been promoted to “good friend” and subsequently, manly handshakes become cheek-kissing.

Look how blue the sea is! Look how yellow the sand is! joy!

• get to see Maire and touch Brest. A delicious strawberry and rhubarb tarte was enjoyed by all, and I got to go in a real old-fashioned phone box. In the back of beyond.
• get to see Mary and visit the infamous Rue Mouffetard

This rue caused lots of people lots of trauma. Darn you!

• visit Nantes and finally saw what all the fuss was about. Nantes is lovely!

Nantes is so proud of this crane, that they put it on the tourist information map!

• FINALLY get to travel on a Eurostar, two years exactly after my original scheduled journey!

Basically, overall, 2011 has been a good year – I’ve met some great people (you know who you are), and I’ve strengthened friendships with others. I’ve lived in 3 different places within a year, and managed to get myself a degree. My French is improving daily, and my levels of fatigue have reached new levels. I’ve studied and I’ve worked. 2011 was no 2010, but it was still ruddy good. Let’s hope that 2012 will be as good, eh? After all, it is meant to be our last!

Happy New Year and Bonne année to you all!

Oh, France. You’re always striking about something, but you have waaaaay more Bank Holidays than we do. Example: France, a secular country since the Revolution of 1789 (more or less), decides that the 1st of November, All Saints Day, is a Bank Holiday. You know All Saints Day, that pretty non-secular religious holiday. Any excuse, guys. I’m sure that every French person spent their Tuesday (a Bank Holiday Tuesday?!) praying at home for all those who have died. Sure. Just like they’ll spend this Friday seriously thinking about all those brave, valiant men who have died fighting to liberate France the umpteen times it has been occupied by their favourite Germanic neighbour. Meanwhile, in the world of stiff-upper lips etc, we’ll be soldiering on, simply having a minute’s silence at 11am (or maybe two, like the rogues we are). I suspect that more thought will go into our two minutes’ silence on Friday than will go into the whole day in France. Let alone Sunday. Not that I’m biased, you know. I will do some snooping around. Like a ninja spy. Maybe.

Well, I have good news and bad news… The good news is that I’m returning to WordPress! Alas, the bad news is that I am enraged, and I shall tell you pourquoi… I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard of the Westborough Baptist Church (or Westboro if you’re American and decided to not spell ‘borough‘ correctly), you know those lovely individuals who preach about how ‘God hates fags’ and how ‘God hates America’ etc etc. Yawn. Well, look what I found :

Click here to read possibly the most hateful thing you’ll read all year.

I’ll just give you a moment to recover from that assault on your mind…

Ready? Bon, je continue…

I figured that now would be a good time to rip-apart this utter tripe written by perhaps one of the most odious cunts in the world. (Apologies for the use of the c-word, but I felt he needed it.)

Let’s start at the very beginning, shall we?

First of all, Mr Drain, you have got the format of the letter COMPLETELY wrong. Every knows that the way to set out a letter in English is thus:

Name of sender

Address of sender

Date of writing

Dear Sir/Madam/Name/To whom it may concern,

Then you commence the bulk of the letter where the name of the person to whom you are addressing it ends. Christ. Retard.

Secondly, I am a person of the United Kingdom, and I can certainly confirm without a shadow of a doubt that I have NOT declared myself an enemy of the ‘Living God’. I’m pretty sure His name is just plain-old ‘God’ too.

Thirdly, as much as I admire your range of vocabulary, no-one, and I mean no-one, says ‘wretched’ any more. Unless they are in a period drama talking about ‘that wretched boy’. Get a more up-to-date thesaurus, please. For your own good. Actually, while we’re on the topic of vocabulary, I’d just like to point out that as the inventors of the language in which you typed you’re letter, WE’D spell “Westborough” properly. You know, ‘cos dem’s de rools. On the topic of ‘degenerates’, I refer you back to what I just said about vocabulary and period dramas.

Fourthly, and this is good’un. We have NEVER banned any of His prophets. I’m pretty sure that neither Matthew, Mark, Luke nor John made it to the UK, let alone Joseph Smith. I don’t recall the Bible mentioning anywhere about “And ‘lo, Matthew was denied entry to the UK, shortly after John was imprisoned for preaching the good word of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Fifthly, (I’m revising my ordinal numbers here, so thanks, guys) do you honestly think that by saying that the Great Fire of London (not the Great London fire – would you like me to refer to you guys as the Church Westboro Baptist? No. So get it right.) is proof that we’re all doomed to burning in hell for all eternity? I think not. This reminds me of when the press say that a particularly hot day is proof of global warming, as it hasn’t been this hot since 1892. Clearly it’s not evidence of global warming if it was that hot in 1892. Similarly, your example is equally ridiculous. You could argue that any bad thing that happens in the world is God’s way of ‘punishing’ us. That may well be the case, but, well, you know, he kinda doesn’t exist. Or at least he doesn’t exist in a way that means he can arbitrarily decide to kill us off. Oh, but wait, according to that 2000 year old book, it does. Well then, it MUST be true, mustn’t it? Get a grip.

Sixthly, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’? Sounds a bit snoozey to me. I highly doubt that it’s the second-most read book in the world. Have you not heard of Harry Potter, guys? Probably not, actually, because it’s actually good.

Seventhly, referring back to point number three, nobody says ‘wrought’ any more. GET A NEW THESAURUS.

Eighthly, as I criticised the opening of your letter, I will criticise the closing of your letter. I think when you’ve started a letter with ‘Dear’, it is only customary to end it with ‘Yours sincerely’, not just ‘Sincerely’. That is rude, and quite simply, just not cricket.

Oh, and one more point before I go, what kind of a surname is Drain? Was it inspired about where you get your ideas? Just a thought…

I’d like to point out that I’m not anti-christian, folks. I’m just fucking angry at dickheads like these.