You know, there really are times when I wish I had either a laptop, or a really nice (and capable) mobile phone.
I'm currently writing the original of this post on a plain paper notepad while sat with my knees around my ears on the train back to university. But it's not so bad; I have a reserved seat and no-one has demanded I remove my overstuffed rucksack from the adjacent seat yet.
Whenever I do go home on the train I always make a determined effort to not look like a student.
I always fail
Because of the necessity to change trains I try and dress practically (train stations are cold places). This means a 35 litre rucksack, sensible flat boots or trainers, a fleece (usually emblazoned with my university name) and my long hooded coat. Add to this a permanent look of confusion and droopy, tired eyes. I don't think I could look more like a student if I tried - but yet so far I haven't been mugged or victimised while standing alone on a station platform. Maybe it's the aura I project of 'leave me the hell alone and don't even try it'!
Like anyone who's been away from home for a while, it's a very bizarre feeling to walk back into your family home after an absence of several months. It's the little things I miss from home, like the smell of the breadmaker first thing in the morning, and the dog diving headlong across my lap and landing with his head between my cleavage (just like a typical man). What I don't like to find when I return home is that my mother has started bagging up my clothes for the charity shop, and started storing some of her clothes in my room. It's nice to feel wanted.
Going home for mother's day was always going to get me
Brownie Points, but I was just as thankful for having a few days 'proper sleep', with no telephone calls at antisocial hours, no fire alarms, no noisy students and definitely no sleepwalking.
The sleepwalking thing is ironic really. I only started wandering when I first went to university, and it was usually when I had slept somewhere else, like after I had been home for a weekend, or when I first returned home for the holidays. I blamed it on a constant change of environment, and it really didn't happen all that often - once every four to six months.
I haven't been home in months, yet last week I went for FOUR moonlit strolls, and slept like a baby when I got home.
It's been a source of amusement that I've spent a lot of my time at home sleeping. I slept on both trains home, the car from the station to home, the car to the restaurant for Sunday lunch, the car back from lunch, and then the sofa all the way through
Harry Potter in the afternoon. In fact my father (the great Mr Jones) found my lassitude incredibly amusing. So amusing in fact that a quick twitch of the steering wheel in his hands caused my head to leave the head rest and smack with a resounding thud against the supporting strut to the side of my face. His hands conveniently twitched four times on the way home. I may have sulked while they laughed hysterically.
I always vowed when I started this blog that I would not write about family and friends, but I'm going to break that rule here and now.
As I've mentioned in comments on
Tom's blog, my mother is registered disabled and has to walk with a stick. Since I've been away so long I hadn't realised her condition had changed so much. After having treatment with the more common, and possibly cheaper drugs, the powers that be decided that she could try a much more expensive, so called 'wonder drug'. I don't even know where she's hidden the walking stick now, because she certainly doesn't need it at the moment. She even raced me up the stairs yesterday, as well as taking me for some much needed retail therapy.
And that you see is the advantage of being a skint female student, as well as daughter to a dedicated follower of fashion. My mother is the original fashionista, and she even boasts wearing hot-pants in the 1970s (had I not seen the photos I wouldn't have believed it myself - damn she had better legs than I do!)
She hadn't told Daddy Jones, but she'd been buying me clothes in the sales for weeks, as well as exercising her plastic for me when I actually got home.
In return for this I attempted to fix their company computer. I got most of it sorted, but the rest is beyond even me - and with the year-end approaching for their business I really don't want to be too daring.
This is where it gets interesting though. Despite spending money with my mother, I'm a definite daddy's girl. You see, despite being a very dozey, almost blonde tart sometimes, I'm a very firm
tomboy. I think my dad secretly wanted a boy, but he made the best of a bad job. This probably explains why I was sat in the kitchen last night with my father, watching University Challenge and drinking whiskey while my mother sat and watched Coronation Street in the living room.
Following my visit home a few things have come to light:
- I am no closer to deciding between a career in medicine or a career in the ambulance service, even though my mother has promised me a pink stethoscope for medical school.
- I can always go into the family business if I want to - my father has promised he would train me up.
There is a possibility of my father teaching me to ride a motorcycle this summer. (I'm letting him tell my mother - he's braver than I am)
After discussing why the iPod mini they bought me is dying (internal battery failing after 2 years of constant use), my father has promised me a new iPod (30Gb video) and speaker dock if I pass my masters degree.
Mr and Mrs Jones will support little Merys no matter what she decides to do (although they would prefer to introduce her to friends as Dr Merys Jones).
Final deadline to make my decision through UCAS - May 16 (I think)
Needless to say there was quite a lot of sniggering from the locals as I simply had to stop and take a picture!