TMFBI

= Too Much Facebook Information.


I had a catch up with an old friend from school yesterday and, needless to say, we started having a little gossip about what our mutual friends had been up to since we had departed ye old fancy establishment. Obviously, we had kept up with a few people so had no problem filling in the gaps with certain folk but when it came to pure nosiness we ended up talking about what we had seen on facebook. Isn't that a bit weird? That we can tell you about somebody's life completely from their posting on a social networking site?
Obviously it depends on the person's background/schooling/area of birth/whether they were organised enough to sort out internet in their home but the modest (and religious) folk tend to keep themselves to themselves a bit more and actually see their mates in person, or play computer games, but for plenty of people it is a tool to boast to what I'm sure they believe is the whole world. And when I say boast I mean jump up in the air waving their arms screaming "OVER HERE".
Now sure, if Gaddafi had had facebook or twitter in his last few days I would have been on that quicker than you can say "Good Riddance" but for everyone else who just isn't that interesting yet (key word being yet) I don't really understand what the point is. My friend eventually admitted blocking people off his news feed that he was still friendly with and still very much liked but found "pointless", "dull"" and "self-centred" on facebook.
Now, hey, we all have faults - I write a blog about my life (which he called "arsey", and I certainly can be) but it's not something I do every two hours of every day because I know people would rather claw their own eyeballs out than read about what I had for breakfast or how hammered I got last night or what my Halloween costume looks like two days in advance. Or at least, I hope they would.
Sure, I screamed the place down with shock when I was told a girl in my year had had a baby two weeks previously but when I was greeted with the chorus of: "How did you not know that? It's all over facebook!!" I responded with an answer along the lines of : 'we never spoke so I deleted her ages ago..' Obviously this was met with shock by some - does that mean my friend count is lower than the average? God forbid.
I'm as good a gossiper as the next but it's much juicier to find something out from the horse's mouth than from a URL.


And anyway, all of the above is exactly what Twitter was built for.

Are we there yet?

I am one of these unfortunate idiots in life that have an inane ability to over-think everything in the same way a scientist will try relentlessly to figure out the cure for cancer, or how the earth sort of 'happened' -the difference being that their thought patterns are wholly more acceptable and productive than my own. I can lie awake for hours letting my brain go at hundreds of miles an hour without even knowing the reason for my eyes popping out of my skull and the train of 'SHIIIIT', I'm just content being worried. And when I say content I mean I would happily swap brains with somebody else even if that included clawing the physical thing out of my skull myself.
My good friends laugh at what they call my inability to be happy, one said on the phone last night: "God, why are you so unhappy being happy? You don't need to moan about everything all the time you know! Just go with it!"
Well yes that's all very well for the rest of the world but I'm happy being unhappy with happiness in the small things because that means I don't have to think about the fact that - hey, I'm broke; I'm bored at university; I'm constantly exhausted; I'm considering buggering off to some forgotten land just to get my 'oomph' back.
Except, it's all very well to panic about how to cook a chicken, or where you're meant to be this evening, or does your tutor think you're hitting on him, but when I started panicking about my very happy relationship I was in desperate need of a severe kick up the arse (I was hoping there would be a chance it would go so far as to kick my brain into gear). 
But, to be fair to me, everything took a bit of a sudden turn recently into the 'serious' nature of life..and I hadn't particularly noticed, or had decided not to cotton on at the least, until it was a black-hole sized difference in the way he was talking rather than a bunch of little stars to admire at the time of passing on our little bubble of luuurve. But when the man turned round to me with a big grin on his face and said he had a huge urge to go riding on a tandem I started sweating instantaneously and I'm pretty sure the room was deprived of oxygen for a good few seconds before I said: "Tandem?! Are you nuts?!" Not only did it feel like I was being swallowed up by my future, I was being blinded by all the little cute things all at once - and let me tell you, there's a reason 'blind panic' holds such negative connotations. He didn't quite understand my reaction -luckily for him I couldn't figure out the nearest exit - but for me it was that image of us on a two person bicycle that made me realise just how far along we were in the couple time-scale. A tandem to me represents trust, dependency, sharing, equality - everything a (god-forbid) healthy relationship should be built upon. I just didn't know if I was ready to put it to the test. It felt so married couple-esque, so damned cute, so 'us'. For two people that had been flirting with the idea of a future together previously and had spent a lot of time together I'm not quite sure why it was this moment that it hit me, but there you go - I'm in the tandem stage of a relationship: we go shopping together, we're rational, we make plans, we think in terms of 'we' and we've already distinguished who the main breadwinner is (Oh come on, who do you think? I may be an idiot a lot of the time but I do know how to pick 'em!)
But after an hour long conversation at 2am last night - I woke him up and decided to panic directly at him for the first time - I've figured I really need to get a grip and enjoy it all. Supposedly happiness is good for the soul, which is a difficult thought for someone like me to entertain who was brought up to believe booze was good for the soul. I've since realised it is, in fact, the cure for the soul.
Anyway, a tandem also makes you think of summer love, being carefree, celebrating (or trying to recapture) youth and, most importantly, rolling around the hay - so I guess all is not lost.

"Students"

I hope a standard night for most of you students out there doesn't end in A&E, however, one of mine did recently - and I didn't even have the luxury of being hammered beforehand. I'd been working in the bar and my lot had shown up completely hammered and having a great time, casually rubbing in the fact that I was having to work (and still having the cheek to ask for free drinks) and then about 11:30 they all stumbled out to Liquid. That in itself should have been an indicator that they were far too drunk to be anywhere but bed. I eventually got home at a nice 2am on the phone to my boyo casually gossiping about work and get harassed in the hallway by a surprisingly sober Hettie who starts explaining a long winded story that ended with: "So yeah, Bambi's pretty much dead in bed, cracked her head of an iron bar!" Eh? So we walk into Bambi's room who's looking all innocent drooling on the pillow, like someone in a very happy drunken sleep - apart from the fact she wouldn't wake up. Now I'm very good at pretending not to panic but my head was just screaming "OH MY GOD SHE'S DEAD HOW AM I GOING TO FIND A REPLACEMENT FOR HER PARENTS SHITTT!!" My man tells me to get her awake no matter what and eventually she wakes up and starts speaking nonsense French - I kid you not. The only person I've met when horrifically concussed that attempts to explain the situation in another langugage. Muppet.
So we haul her ass out of bed into a taxi to the hospital, meanwhile bundling out our token 'Gap Yah' pal out of Hettie's bed who is also very drunk and falling over. I almost caught myself reaching for the gin during all this! So we get to the hospital, I'm outside treating myself to a well-deserved fag when GY and myself realise Hettie and Bambi have disappeared. I try running through to the treatment area whilst she distracts the receptionist which almost gets both of us chucked out the bloody hospital. So we sit and yell obscenities at the crone of a receptionist - probably a standard wednesday night for her!
Either way, drama's been averted right? Well sure, whilst Bambi's getting her head fixed two of our friends show up - one in a dressing gown and one in chinos and just a jacket. When asked how they got there the one in the dressing gown who can hardly see straight says: "I drove...HOLY SHIT I DROVE!" So I had one drunk in a treatment room, one in reception and two drink-driving. Was fucking brilliant.
The receptionist by this time won't let us out of her sight and when we eventually sneak our way through to the treatment rooms it's hardly a stealth mission what with B tripping over his dressing gown and R complaining about his stiff nips.
What's more R and GY were trying to reconcile a relationship, I won't go into details but how do you think those conversations go between two drunk people stuck in a hospital both having forgotten important items of clothing - the receptionist was tuning into her own personal soap!
Meanwhile Bambi's claiming it's 1992 and she's in a black box and she has no idea how old she is or even where she lives, and she's finding the whole thing hilarious. I could see the nurse's hand twitch towards the big knock-out drugs, and I wouldn't have blamed her.
Eventually 6 of us bundled into a three-door car and made our way home at 7am. Bambi's still concussed - an excuse she is finding works extremely well on her tutors. There's always a silver lining! Just so long as they all know next time it's their turn to look after me..

Wheel of Fortune

My whole "I'm not binge-drinking ever again" thing lasted approximately a month and a half - a valiant effort for a student, I'm sure you will agree! But my downfall was, as ever, The Medics. This time it was taken to a whole new level and I found myself doing a pub crawl in orange tights, an orange tank top, half a tin of orange body paint asphyxiating me and eyeliner whiskers claiming (loudly) that I was a fox. Naturally, nobody thought to tell me the tights were see through but by the time the third person had slapped my ass - and after a very ballsy man had bitten it - I'd gotten the gist. Needless to say I was far too hammered to care, although I did attempt to bite him back! Guess it was my own fault for mistaking the Gents for the Ladies.

The night was great and included me getting thrown out of my own place of work (the bar staff thought it was hilarious, the bouncers did not) and bumping into an old acquaintance from school and saying all the wrong things: "Are you still gay??" I also woke up this morning with a text from a medic who's tooth I may have chipped - now that's never going to be the start of a great love story, just need to now break the news that the chip was all in vain. Anyway, I chipped my own man's tooth in a much more interesting manner only a few weeks to go, got the tee shirt type thing!

It was definitely one of the more surreal nights; I saw the future of the NHS dressed as animals, celebrities and even bananas getting chased by a big gorilla. Now, I'd always worried that some of my friends were going to be doctors but I hadn't quite clicked that they're the intelligent ones - all I'm saying is, hold onto your penicillen. 

It's not the most surreal night I've had in the past week, though. On Saturday I went to a ball for charity and the theme was "Slim back into your wedding dress". Seeing 50 women on the dance floor doing the macarena had me in splits. The fact that I was there with the boy's family and they mentioned that they were all married by the time they were our age had me in tears.. However, I did have a fantastic night and they are a great laugh, but there were definite moments I was reaching for a paper bag. Apparently they were just pulling my leg, quite frankly they can keep my leg as long as I have time to hop away! It's all very well having romantic moments with your other half, or catching yourself day-dreaming about the future, but nobody else is allowed to know that you have any form of emotional depth at 18! It's a difficult concept to cope with - people knowing that you might be romantic, or loved up, or happy. As long as my mother never finds out I'll survive, she'd die if she thought I was ever planning on getting a ring on my finger, something about a 'lack of independence'. But when I mentioned to her that if she was married and had two big ol' incomes to play with she could have that holiday, or those shoes, or that party..There's definitely always one way to wing it with the women in my family!

With all the pressure in the air I'm surprised I'm not drinking right now..