The big warm yellow ball of joy

After weeks and weeks of sun dancing and moaning about the rubbish rainy summer, the big HOT yellow ball of joy has come to our happy town:

Look how happy we are!

Every day I've been making the comment "sack the flexi the sun is shining" and have had 2, yes 2, pub lunches sat in the sunshine:

Tis truly marvellous and makes me so so happy! Tomorrow is going to be hot too. And Saturday as well. How lucky are we!! Join me in our happy smiley sun dance! Come one come all!

Fresh meat

It's Freshers Week this week. All these little people have arrived who will have been born in ooh about 1993...yes folks you read that right, 1993. What were you doing in 1993? Me, I was about to head to art college to do my BTEC in Media Studies. Rock N roll :O) 

As is always the case it's been a classic week for bad fashion. And bad hair. Anyone remember the year of the mullet? I think that has to to be my fave. All these awful dodgy mullets that were captured for posterity on a uni card for 3 whole years, HA HA HA nice haircut mate! But I have to say it's made me all nostalgic, remembering my own first few days and so I thought I'd do a bit of sharing, for a wordy post rather than a piccie one. 

So it was 1995. My dad had packed up my whole life in the Renault 18 diesel, and off to London town we set. Arrival to this weird and wonderful place was definitely accompanied by total excitement and total fear. Would it all be ok? Would anyone talk to me? What if I hated it and wanted to come home? Safe to say that yes of course it was ok. And yes people talked to me. And I absolutely LOVED it and didn't really want to come home at all and it took me 9 weeks into the 12 week term before I decided that I could leave my new fabulous life for 2 days and grant my parents with an honorary visit. The first person I met has ended up being a friend for life (hopefully!) I was chief bridesmaid at her wedding and even though she still lives in London town and I live here and contact is erratic due to busy lives and children's bedtimes, I firmly believe we will be friends 4EVA or it will be a very tragic waste and something will be seriously up. 

I can't really remember the order that I met everyone in and I'm pretty sure that most of the first few folks I spoke to were the ones I spent the rest of the year avoiding. I truly had the bestest of times and met some of my bestest buddies and had the most amazing times first of all in student halls then in various houses and flats and people along the way. London was an amazing place to be a student (though extremely expensive - next blog post will say more about this). The pubs, the clubs, you can see any band, any film, any thing/animal/person, just you know, everything! And when you can get in with student discount and you don't really think about how much money you're spending it's truly fabby!

The other night we watched a new comedy show called "Fresh Meat" hence the blog post title about 6 students moving into a house and starting university and it was so funny and so cringeworthy all at the same time...we totally loved it! I think anyone who has been through that experience, or even worked at a university will be able to see familiar stories threaded throughout it all. 

Take today for example. One colleague had a fresher come up to her this morning and say, I feel really really really sick and I don't want to go to the town hall with everyone this morning what should I do...cue tumbleweed from my colleague! I reckon I would have told him to go home and sleep it off, then have a cuppa and then a bit of a calm. My boss told me that she saw a young guy sitting on a wall looking all forlorn and lost and she said she wanted to go over and give him a big hug...she didn't obviously but ah bless. And I had skateboard girl. Hugging her skateboard like some sort of comfy blankie she comes over to ask me a "technical question" - which notebook should I buy the blue one or the green one? Me: erm... Next question: have you seen The Matrix? Me: yep. Her: you know Neo? Me: erm... Her: well that's my tutor right but with longer hair...what's he called? Me: *considering how best to answer* erm...Sheesh! I think it's fab that they feel they can come and ask us such questions but I reckon they must think we know everything!! Don't get me wrong, we're pretty blimmin' brilliant, but wowsers! 

Bless the fresh meat. They do keep us amused...and in a job...

E-N-F-P

Today was a really interesting workday. These don't come along very often so when they do I always feel like I need to make some sort of record of them. It was a workshop essentially about change management and it was run by two external bods and it was totally fascinating! We did a very shortened version of the Myers-Briggs test when you pick where you lie on the chart and we had visuals to help us along the way, including one poor teddy bear who was tied up with all these other animals coming to get 'im...or had the teddy been a naughty teddy and that was why he was tied up...it truly was fascinating to hear people's perceptions of stuff. One of the most interesting things we had to do was sign our name with our familiar hand that we use all the time then switch to the unfamiliar to see what happened. This was mine:

I totally turned the J around! How weird is that? Thursday = good day. Let's see what Friday brings.

Onelongstreamofconscious

I've just finished reading a book by Richard Milward called Ten Storey Love Songs. He is a local author whose books are so incredibly local that I find it hard to understand how anyone outside of Middlesbrough can read them or even understand them. The places, the voices, the behaviour...it's all so Boro! But I checked a couple of reviews and people were absolutely RAVING about it. One guy said he reads it constantly - he finishes it and then starts all over again. Wow! I've never ever done that with a book before and am impressed that anyone can. The best and most wonderful thing about the book was that it was just one massive stream of conscious. There were full stops and commas but no paragraphs and no chapters and I was intrigued about how easy that would actually be to do.

So here goes, from the inside of Dizz's head on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm, sitting on a library reception watching the world go by:

Desk quiet squeaky chair sounds of chitchat chitchat chitchat. Self service yeah really transportation hahahaha heeheehee. Door round and round and round and round whumph whumph whoosh whumph doors sliding sliding sliding ohhhhhhpen closed. Quiet day drags BUSY people people everywhere who where what why which first last next whose. Grey carpet doors stuck leaves blowing doors stuck suck. Suits pass my eyes right left. In out wrong door go back come in go out. Odd bod never talks shifty eyes in gate out gate footsteps foot...step step step. Odd bod always talks loooooooong draaaaaaaawn out words yaaaaaawn in my head. Sitting squeaking gossip gossip [abrupt cut off from stream due to finishing shift]

So there you go. Get me to Faber and Faber, I'm going to be a multi millionaire author, I'm almost certain of it...

Weekends are for...part 2

...exploring new places

...not caring that it's lashing sideways with rain

...museums

...art

...pudding

...sharks

...Dizz <3 Wavey 4eva

Weekends are for...

...raft building

...crazy golf

...feeling like a 13 year old on my bike again

...cheerleading

...tennis

...rollerblading

...family <3

Muuuuuuum I'm booooooooorrrrrred

This is Kevin the Teenager. And this is his face when he's telling his mum he's borrrrrred. And this is how we feel at work every single day. We're going through one of our quiet phases at the moment whilst we wait for stuff to be sorted out and finalised. But it's so dull. I know I know, I should be grateful that I have a job, and I am, don't get me wrong. But I'd much prefer it if it was a job where I actually had jobs to do. Drudge drudge drudge. Boo hoo hoo.

Grim fascination (not so much) take 2

Yesterday was the day of the races. Turns out all that wondering about fascinators versus hats etc - pointless waste of time. I absolutely loved my hired hat as is evidence by my smiley smiley face:



And I totally loved glamming it up for the day!



We all had a really fabulous time! Happy 30th T! X