What A Day... All 48 hours of it

Ah, the end of the week- Friday. It seems hardly a few days since it was last the weekend. It’s getting empty here, in my flat- we’re losing people left, right and centre- everyone’s jetting off back home. Since I’m made of more solid stuff and also don’t have my railcard, I chose not to bother getting the train back- especially since it would take half of Saturday to get down to Plymouth and half of Sunday to return back to Portsmouth, it hardly seems worth the hassle. Don’t misunderstand me, however, I do miss home and would love to see everyone again more than anything but I think some people just get into the habit of going back and forth every week. I’d rather not make myself more homesick by showing myself briefly what I was missing.

Last night, was in a word: crazy. At the beginning of the evening I told myself that I would have a second night in, in a row and get some work done but as the evening progressed I quickly finished off the work and Dave nagged me into agreeing to go out briefly to a club called ‘tiger-tiger’ at the fancy, private-owned ‘gunwharf quays.’ As everyone regularly does here, he proceeded to drink as much vodka as possible before going out to make the night cheaper. Unfortunately, by the time everyone decided to go Dave hung back and eventually shrugged drunkenly that he just could not go. I was furious, but I was certain that after all this fuss I was going to go out and have fun. So a small group of us walked our way down to the club including MJ- a very pleasant girl who too had drunk a little too much vodka. I guided the team of us down, having only sunk two of my comparatively tame lager cans. We made our way into the club and bought the cheapest, quickest way to get drunk- double vodka and red-bull cocktails. I had a few, and still felt ok but realised how bad everyone else was when MJ- in mid-sentence, toppled, like a domino, backwards towards the floor as if in slow motion. About 20 minutes into the evening, MJ asked if I was going home and if she could come to, I knew what she really meant, agreed and we quickly walked out- no questions asked.

So that was my night out really, MJ and I sat up talking through most of the rest of it which I really enjoyed. Making sure she was feeling ok and handing out copious amounts of water was also one of the main priorities. The pure amount of caffeine in the vodka-redbull mix I’d drunk disallowed me the sleep I so desperately needed so at 7.30 I stood back up, out of bed not having an ounce of proper sleep and went on to get ready for my first lecture at 9.

Somehow I managed to force my body to the lecture hall for 9, and to my dismay only half the amount of students had actually turned up- but when the lecture began I was so glad I’d attended, because it was hilarious. This is how the lecturer introduced himself to us on the presentation:

“Steve Something, BaArch (Hons) RIBA CertEd HKAS PhD Doctrate Diploma Extrordinaire”

And he carried on to explain what each of the qualifications behind his name were and then put up a very busy slide, showing all the buildings he’d designed- pointing out gleefully that his was placed next to the HSBC main building in Hong-Kong designed by Sir Norman Foster. What I loved though, was the completely dead, blank looks that everybody gave each other, shrugging and shaking their heads. To this day, I have to say that this lecturer is probably one of the most smug people I have ever met, the relentless onslaught of personal backslaps was truly inspirational and I now aspire to be like this man. One of my favourite parts of the lecture was when he asked: How can we describe ‘the environment’? To which, someone behind me replied: ‘The Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed at a rate of a mile a day!’ I sat perplexed, so close to letting out a huge laugh. James, Karl and I looked at each other with the same look you might give to everyone else in the room after being told that someone was planning to defecate in the corner in the room for no apparent reason. The lecturer faltered, caught off balance by the bizarreness of the answer before continuing on, looking suspiciously around the room.

After the lecture, I went to my studio group to talk through what we were planning to do for the rest of the day. I said to Abbey, one of the girls in our group: ‘Did you hear that crazy answer about the rainforest? I thought I was going to cry laughing.’ ‘Oh, that was me,’ she replied. I stood, shocked for a minute, judging the mentality of this girl before my face flushed read and I apologised profusely. I couldn’t believe it... the one person I ask. Later, for some reason, Abbey and I were talking about one the crazier lecturers called Peter, and I said: ‘Have you seen on facebook, they actually have a group in dedication to him! Isn’t that crazy?’ To which she replied ‘Yeah, my boyfriend made it.’ Again, I couldn’t believe it- such stupid coincidence.

After the lecture and chatting to my tutor group, we all realised we could go home so promptly made our escape and slept for an hour or two before getting up in that sickly heat that you get when sleeping in anything other than pyjamas. Immediately I wished I hadn’t slept. After that, I was too tired to do anything else other than chill so I sat in bed and watched BBC iplayer videos (a godsend, by the way, to the TV license-less student), and then I decided to write this blog, so here it is. I think one of my tutor may be coming around to my flat in order to compare and gather history notes for a lecture they didn’t go to, but after that, I don’t think it’ll be a long time before I fall asleep. I have rowing tomorrow at 10. What joy!