Game Over

My flatmate came bounding into my room last week, threw her blackberry at me and my unconscious boyfriend and screamed "Help!" at the top of her lungs. She recently started seeing a boy- if seeing is what you can really call it, they're careful not to put a label on it- and apparently she had taken the relationship(?) as far as it could go and needed me to help her push it towards the let’s-go-out-for-coffee-direction. Naturally it wasn’t going to be a challenge as conversations were based through texting.

It wasn’t because English wasn’t her first language that she needed my help, it was because they were playing 'games' with each other. He had definitely been winning so far and she had decided she needed to get the power back.

Why do we do this to each other? Two people that genuinely like one another have to submit to this complex mating ritual that causes frustration and, in this case, desperation. Having said all this, out of the two of this I am definitely the professional game player and she left me to "not just get the ball in your court, but get his actual balls in your court" whilst my boyfriend tried to explain she needed to counter-act what was probably going through his mind whenever they text each other. Sex, if you were wondering. 

The boy was dealt the perfect opportunity to quit the games and take her out for dinner but instead he decided to twist the conversation into a cheeky anecdote from his end. I'm not quite sure where it's gone from there but I do know that she is now very bored of a boy she once thought was cheeky in a charming way.

And a lesson to all men out there – Don’t bother, everyone knows it’s always going to be the woman that ends up with the power.

Morning Glory

Bambi came crashing into my room last night after a night out, jumped on my bed and yelled: "Rach! You're not RACH anymore!"
To a drunk person this statement obviously made sense but I had to wrap my head around the fact that as far as I was aware I was still me - same uni, same friends, same beliefs. But as she snuggled into my pillow, making it obvious she was planning on staying there for the rest of the night, she yawned and said "You're so tiiiiiiired all the time."
Annoyingly, I totally understood that one and answered with a mopey and apologetic "I know."
After working very hard over summer and only getting a holiday just a week or so ago I'm totally shattered, as they say, and catching up on months of sleep takes a long time for a pathetic person like myself who can hardly function if she doesn't get at least eight hours a night! The fact that this had been impacting on my studies I had fruitfully ignored, doing manic catch ups every few weeks but now that it's started affecting my social life Bambi was having none of it.
"You're tired! You didn't come out tonight! YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN OUT TONIGHT! You're not enjoying anything. You're not doing the things that you love. I miss you!"
Not the best thing to be told at 3am (needless to say she almost had me in tears, must have been over-tired) but we came up with a plan. A flawless plan -
a Routine.
Whilst most students shy away from the thought - or so I've been led to believe - that word was like the eleventh commandment shouted down from the clouds in a great god-like/mufasa-type voice that had the ability to save me from my shambles of a life! I've finally realised I need to start scheduling in important stuff (like sleep) and making time for important stuff (like friends) and just manning up and getting drunk (says Bambi).
Of course, I woke up this morning shattered and decided I could start all that tomorrow but got cattle-prodded out of bed by what I'm assuming was a still drunk flatmate and now I'm in the library doing all the little things I should have done over the past few weeks, including important stuff like work experience, but that can wait til post-blog.
I called the long-distance man on the walk to the library and told him I was routining, and nothing was going to screw this up and this was what I needed and gaaawd boy I'm so jealous you have a routine! To which I got a "Um, kid, my routine is that I don't have any free time..You're jealous of  that?"
I'm your woman, I can be jealous of anything I want to!


But I'm not being stupid about it, I know I need to ease myself in to this clever, sophisticated, structured way of life. Which is why Bambi and I are having a scheduled lunch break after an hour of being here.


Well, at least it's something, right?

Making or Breaking or Gaming

There are many milestones in a relationship – the first kiss, the first time you sleep together, the first date, the ‘six monthaversary’, the first time you get a bit kinky, meeting the parents, the day you split if off with the other people you were seeing… But without doubt, I would say, the biggest ‘make or break it’ moment is (if you can even afford it as a student) the first holiday.

Choosing the location is pretty difficult. You have to decide who’s side of the family you’re going to leech off first, if the destination suits you both. Pretty normal, right? Not so different from a family holiday. But then you get the packing: do we share bags? Why don’t we just take hand luggage? What do you mean take hand luggage I can’t get my five pairs of shoes into my hand luggage! Why the hell do you need five pairs of shoes?! HOW DARE YOU!

If you finally reach your destination unscathed there’s the big problem of what to do. On my first holiday with my first boyfriend it was obvious we hadn’t filled our days with enough to do, and after a year we didn’t have that much to say to each other, so we spent five days abroad sunbathing and playing angry birds; reading and playing angry birds; travelling and playing angry birds and not having a lot of sex and playing angry birds.

Another couple I know ended up in Edinburgh and bickering the whole time they were there: “At one point we were both sitting in that grassy bit in St Andrew’s square with our backs to each other! And it gets worse – I was in a full length dress after we abandoned dinner early because we were getting rowdy… and not in the way we used to.”

I, myself, recently went to Paris with my fiancée (guess we should have done the holiday test first, but luckily we were fine) and had a fantastic time. Needless to say there was drama – mostly because of my getting the Eurostar time wrong, or forgetting to secure beds for the night in London until the day before – but that was what made it so much fun! We could laugh about it all day and even after over a year we could still sit up all night talking. When I got stuck in immigration control and he was forced to get on a train he did the most romantic thing – ran off the Eurostar at the last minute yelling “Non!” at the security guards, running round them and running straight into me at the gate. Think we’re in the “winning” category.

He did start to play Angry Birds on the way back which I initially found very worrying but, then again, I had my nose in a book and at that moment neither of us were particularly interested in joining the train equivalent of the ‘mile-high club’. Especially after all the talking in gay Paree…