Beaches

Today. Okay, chronology is a little mixed up. I will return to where I began, but at least I can catch up. I feel out of writing this, even though I have been keeping a paper log, a ‘plog’ as one of my fellow students named it! It felt officially like my first day back here, even though I returned Saturday night. I got down to some work and organising, bank business for one, to check on my increasingly dwindling bank balance.

CD Loan has still not come through, nor has my new driving licence which I need to continue my application, so I beginning to worry about that. It’s something I could do without thinking about. There are so many other things I need to do, and because there are so many, or so it seems, I can’t concentrate on them. I need to sit down and do all the work I have to do for bloc, that I have neglected and feel very bad about as it does not affect just me. I need to some editing work for the college - that at least I have started. Then there is the coursework: script scenes (thankfully I now have Final Draft, brilliant, thanks Gareth); non fiction book chapters; industry analysis. For that I do have plenty of notes from Shire Publishing.

I’ve made a start on things today, a small start, and that helps. For the next two weeks I have the house almost to myself. The student part anyway. My two housemates are away for Easter, they have a holiday, we of course as we’ve been told in stringent terms do not.
I miss their company, but it is nice to have kitchen space. I can sit at the table with my laptop and be much warmer than in my room, and I can spread my small store of food (oh poor me) around in the fridge and the lump of ice that calls itself a freezer. And any mess is my own. Not that I have too many issues of course.

That’s the problem with kitchen-sharing. The sharing part. Having to share space and surfaces, and cleaning. Little things become big things if you’re not careful. Generally we get on, there’ve just been a few little snips, and mostly we haven’t said anything. I think we’ve been lucky that we all get on.

I was thinking about that as at this time of year, people start looking around for accommodation. I didn’t, thinking I knew better, I left finding somewhere to stay until the last minute and was very lucky. My sister was here until 2006, so I rang her landlady who fortunately still had a room spare, so that was sorted. Otherwise, at the time, I’m not sure I’d have known what to do. Made a trip down possibly, or rung lots of people after looking on the internet. There’s plenty up there, or at the Accommodation Office and in the union. It would probably have been wise to have started earlier.

Anyway. I’m incredibly good at wandering miles away from the point I began from. Monday. I confused myself for a few minutes whilst wandering down Church Street, convinced it was the 1st of April, and I’d left my banking too late. After a short panic, it sank in that it was still, just, March. Town was busy, busier than when I left, and everything seemed much more awake, more open, the season begins. The weather was beautiful, almost as nice as yesterday. Spring scents and sounds: grass cuttings; flowers; warm concrete. Lovely. I walked down to Castle beach after an intensive session in front of the laptop screen, and I was so happy to smell the sea again and walk on the sand. Perhaps I do belong here?