Distinctly Average

This post has actually come from a comment on a VlogBrothers YouTube video, by musicfreak101, a person I've never met, I'm more than likely never to even see a comment of theirs ever again, but that person has genuinely made me have a little think about where I want to be down the line. After University. In my first proper job. With a family.

The comment goes like this:

I would just like to say that that video made me tear up a bit, because I am yet to discover what it is to be an adult and that I did not realize that I want to grow up fast and, that one day I will not be able to relive some experiences like the tube thing that you were in with Henry, I will not be able to play in one of those until I myself have a kid. Thank you John for this video, because it has woken me up to reality.

I couldn't agree more. I've always wanted to be a Father, I've known that for years now, to use a cliché, I think it's my main purpose. I'm distinctly average at everything I do. I'm good with computers, but I still find new things to do. I'm good at gaming, but put me along side an experienced one, I'm useless. I'm good at French, but I know there are a million people better in my class than me at it. I've always had average grades, I've never particularly excelled at anything at all naturally. You get those people that are just naturally brilliant at something. Snefru7 is naturally brilliant at playing guitar, it's like he was born to do it. I haven't discovered what I'm a natural at, maybe I never will. French took a lot of work to get to the stage I'm at now, and even at University, with people around me at a similar level to me, some better, some worse, it's fact. I'm not particularly good at football, but I'm not completely inept at playing it. I could be distinctly average at being a father, I may never even get to experiencing what that is. But if I do, some day, succeed in becoming a father, then all those thoughts about being distinctly average will be forgotten. As long as I get a baby boy or a baby girl, I'll feel like the best person in the world. I could still remain distinctly average at being a Father, but I wouldn't care to notice.

It's wonderful how a few simple sentences in the comments section in one of the millions of videos on the Internet could have such an affect. What's even more brilliant is that that comment could have only been noticed by me. Musicfreak101 could well be the person that changed my outlook on life, and indeed changed my entire plan for the rest of my being. I've given myself numerous goals in my life time. Get good grades in my GCSEs - completed. Get into University - completed. The next is to survive University all the way through. After that, getting a job and staying who I am are all tasks that have to be done. I don't intend on ever changing. A fourth goal is to have a happy family. If I do that, then I will die a happy man.

Rhys Llwyd Bowen Jones. Distinctly average in every single way.

Too Much Awesome

After pretty much 3 months, I'm finally back to my blog. Why, I hear you ask. Well, sadly I've been without a regular access to the interwebs since day one of my University adventure (due to the silly network Nottingham uses for its Internet), and many an interesting incident has happened since then which shall be revealed in due course, but I think a summary of University in general is the first on my list.

The University of Nottingham is fucking incredible. No word of a lie, it's amazing. That's just my personal experience of it, I'm sure everyone else's Universities are also amazing, I'm not trying to make mine sound better, I'm just saying. My accommodation is brilliant, although kind of expensive (just under £4000, eesh), the people in my building are absolutely awesome and my course is almost perfect, as long as we skip over my Linguistics module, which I detest. It's unbelievable here. I'll give Freshers its own paragraph after this one because it was so good. I've genuinely enjoyed every minute of it, and though I did just say Freshers was brilliant, I think it's gotten better and better.

Freshers was superb. Absolutely superb. I didn't go out every day, I thought best not completely destroy my liver before the end of the first week, but I think 5 out of 7 nights is good going. My first impression to everyone else however, was not so good going. I made a complete arse of myself by being sick after a bit too much alcohol. (Sorry for that by the way CrazyDistortion, I know how much you don't like people saying stuff about drinking a bit much, but I felt I needed to put it in!) Brilliant. I was in bed as a result by around 10:30. Not great. Although, that did work to my advantage slightly. I was terrified that no one would like me in University, that not many people would like me, but the next day people were coming to talk to me about last night, and I made a name for myself there. Not a good one to be perfectly honest ("chunder kid" and "chunklet" were floating around...), but a name at least! Over the first bump, the rest of the week wasn't as sick filled, but it was incredibly fun. Actually thinking about it, a lot of it is now a blur. I've been saying how I enjoyed it, but when it comes to actually thinking about it, it's all very vague in my mind. In fact it's much like my sex life - non-existent. Lack of detail here, but I can guarantee it was amusing. Perhaps that's why I think it got better because I can actually remember things. Ho hum, onwards and upwards.

In amongst the seemingly uneventful Freshers, I had to sort out some extra modules to take alongside my course, French Studies. French gave me 80 credits out of the 120 I needed. If you followed my extensive series, if you will, of my choosing a University, you'll know that my second choice entailed a French course that came with Italian, which I've always wanted to do. When I found out I could do an Italian module, I was mega excited! I signed up straight away, no issues whatsoever, and that gave me 20 credits, so I needed 20 more and I'd be sorted. After that however, things became tricky. I had to sign up to another module by 4:00pm - it's was just after 3:30. I had to choose a module in 30 minutes, and sign up for it. I thought I'd be fine and be able to sign up in my course's reception, but no, it wasn't that easy. I opted for a history module, just because I'd done it before, and I couldn't find the Film Studies place. So, I had to run off from the Trent Building (French HQ, if you will), unlock my bike and hurl it down the hill towards history. Typically, I'd even forgotten my bloody watch, so I had no idea whilst on my bike what time it was.

Thankfully, it was downhill all the way, and I signed up for it with about 10 minutes to spare, but Christ it was a close one. I felt like I was in one of those films or tv programmes trying to go catch the love of your life at the airport before she leaves, Friends springs immediately to mind. However, what differs to that, is that History isn't the love of my life. I enjoyed it (past tense being the optimal form of the verb in that phrase) no doubt, but University History is different league. At A Level, it was simple-ish, the period we studied wasn't particularly long and we learnt about specific countries. In University, I'm studying the Early Modern Period, between 1450 and 1789. The mathematicians should know that that's almost a lot of years of history. Quite a lot, in fact. And, it really is the whole of Europe, even the places that don't exist anymore, like Prussia. What's weird about this period is that real historians don't know what the Early Modern Period is. I bought a book, a pretty monstrous one at that, and the introduction was around 100 pages long, debating what this period was. It's insane. I'm not taking that next year (if I pass this year) I can tell you that.

The following months were, truthfully, hard work, that could've been made much easier for myself, mostly with the lectures. For an 11 o'clock lecture, I'd set my alarm for 9:30 to have breakfast and get changed. However, I always pressed snooze on my alarm. And, I always pressed it one time too many. In doing so, I would have to leap out of bed into my jeans, grab a random t-shirt and hoodie, and leg it out of the door. It takes a good 20 minutes to get to most lectures, and then I have one dreaded lecture over at the furthest point from me on campus, which takes pretty much half an hour. My trusty bike hasn't let me down yet however, even though it did break one Friday afternoon on the way back from my last lecture, which was lucky, but it's stayed strong. I just hope it hasn't bloody frozen in the month I have to leave it at University.

That's pretty much all of the University I can fill you in on at the minute, it'd be far too long a blog if I continue. However I will finish on a slightly amusing story from a few months ago. Me, Simon (lives in the flat opposite), Paul and Sarah (both in my flat) set off to go to the Varsity Bar Crawl, which we thought would contain competitions between our University and its sister University (I'd call it a second cousin three times removed University, but as you were) Nottingham Trent. No such events took place, which irritated me very much, a drunken tug of war was on the cards in my mind, but I was left disappointed. Anyway, I digress. We could to the 2nd bar and all was going well, we were having a laugh and playing Eliminator in the pub (side note, we had a question where we had to name 8 comedy partnerships (Laurel and Hardy etc.) out of 16, with names to put you off like Lauren and Harry for example. You could only afford 5 wrong choices, me and Simon worked well and got 7 right with 4 mistakes, and then up pops Paul, important to note he's a massive Might Boosh fan, who on his first click, chooses...The Mighty...Whoosh. The Mighty fucking Whoosh?! We lost the game (and you did too, ha) and we carried on our night. This is where my story actually begins, that was a tangent I didn't mean to go on. The drinks were flowing, and suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, let's just say a....well-rounded girl waddled up to yours truly. I thought nothing of it, the bar was pretty packed. But, she was getting closer and closer, when eventually she started grinding on me. I shit you not. Inevitably, I was terrified, and looked at Simon mouthing "Can we go?! Now?!". Simon was very drunk, but he understood, so he grabbed Paul and Sarah and we legged it out to the next bar. Paul, however, had a very puzzled look on his face, he missed the incident. "What are we running for?!" he asked as we took a breath out of sight of the bar. Then, which remains my quote of the first few months, Simon burst out with this classic - "Rhys nearly got raped by Rick Waller - RUN!" I was in stitches, I physically couldn't run I was laughing so hard. By the way, if you don't know who he is, have a look at the link on his name and guess which one is good ol' Rick.

So there we have it. A first post in a very long while, and a rather successful one at that I think. I'll do my best to keep up to date with the blog next term, maybe once a week with a bit of luck!

Who'd've thought that, after all, something as simple as rock'n'roll would save us all?

There is reason behind my statement of a title. Simply, I want to talk about music. In particular, three aspects of music. The first of which is the ever-decreasing ability for the public, in the UK in particular to recognise good music when you see it.

I grew up in a world dominated by who gets the number 1 spot on the weekly chart, moving through the ages of cheesy teenage pop music in groups like S Club 7 and 911 to the currently, and stupidly, immensely popular dance music world. That's what truly annoys me with today's musical society, if you will. People get immensely influenced by others around them, leading to week in, week out records of monotonous beats, repetitive lyrics and scantily clad women/men. Why that became so popular is a different matter entirely, I won't go into that one. But, the public refuse to deter from this equation. For example, one of the greatest rock songs of the 21st century - Best Of You by Foo Fighters - got to number 4 in the charts, whereas more recently, one of the worst songs of the 21st century - The Club Is Alive by JLS - got to number 1. How does that work? How can people see past pure emotion, all the anger that goes into a song like Best Of You, the band members actually playing musical instruments and replace it with four boys who can't sing, have their voices synthesized to the extreme and have constantly on show six packs? It's ridiculous. Bands who actually play their music constantly get overlooked by talentless cretins. I'm praying for the day where I see a rock band get number 1 in the UK chart because, at the moment, it's basically impossible.

The second of my points for this post is how important music is in my life. I can honestly say that it's impossible for me to go a day without listening to at least an hours worth of music, be it a barrage of random selections chosen by my Spotify, a CD I've made of brilliant songs that I'll never get bored of, or simply one of my favourite albums. Depending on my mood, I vary my music taste. If I'm having a good day, anything can come on and make me feel good. When I'm angry, metal or hard rock is always the way forward. If I'm feeling a bit more emotional or down, Frank Turner is the man right at the top of the list, edging ahead of Brian Fallon from The Gaslight Anthem. I own all of Turner's albums to date and I don't intend to stop. His rip-roaring anthems, love songs and general rants about life are a joy, and bring me right back up when I'm having a bad day. In fact, it's a Frank Turner lyric that is bequeathed in my post title. Oh how I love music, it really has saved my life from the black hole that is boredom.

Finally, my third topic is my annoyance at how I never learned to play an instrument. I tried in my younger years. In my primary school days, maybe around year 3, I attempted to learn the most useless instrument in history - the recorder. How many band's have you seen in the past 10 years that use a recorder? Not many, or none that spring to mind quickly anyway. I attempted that for maybe a year, before promptly giving up. The next instrument was the piano, which lasted me longer than the recorder, but I distinctly recall my piano teacher being annoyed at me every lesson for not practising (or practicing?). I promptly gave that up too. The final instrument, and the most annoyed I am for quitting, is guitar. I stuck with this for a good 2 years - I never got into it. I think I just wanted to pick up a guitar and be able to strum amazingly to whatever I wanted to. No hard work at all, I just wanted to play it without the hassle of working through the stages of getting better. Oh how I wish I stuck with it, me being the 17 year old with a rock fan Dad and numerous friends who can play guitar quite brilliantly. I can see playing guitar being such a useful skill to have, if you get bored, you can get in the Internet, look up the tab for a song you love at the moment, and spend time learning the song. I'd love to do that. I constantly air guitar (or air ukulele to those who know me) to songs, never able to play the real thing. I'm gutted for that.

It seems YouTube is starting to be predominant in my blog, so I might as well continue the trend I've made with a song I discovered a matter of minutes ago, by Frank Turner, one of my favourite ever musicians.



Now do you see where my title came from? Yeah, this is good stuff.

Frank Turner and The Gaslight Anthem

As you may be aware, it's Reading and Leeds Festival weekend! My personal favourite festival, and of course I'm looking forward to tonight's (Sunday) headliners Blink-182 and the likes of Paramore and Weezer won't disappoint me either. However, I want to concentrate on two acts who played yesterday (Saturday), evidently the two acts that take up this posts title.

I'll start with Frank Turner. I have no idea how, but this man hasn't taken the world by storm yet. It's completely baffled me ever since I first discovered him how he hasn't got a billion fans across the world yet, he has such talent, such emotion and so proud of what he does that he deserves to be in the mainstream, tearing up the charts (to steal a lyric from one of his songs "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous") making riches for what he does. And yet, because he isn't quite as popular as he should be, that's probably what makes me adore him so much. I have talked about Turner before, but he really his one of my very few artists in my music collection that only a handful of people I know have heard of. He has four albums, I own them all (interesting fact, he and The Gaslight Anthem are the only two artists that I have their whole back catalogues (all four Turner albums, all three Gaslight albums)). All of his albums are completely different, with a unique sound to each of them. I love Frank Turner is what I'm trying to say. Even if you haven't heard of Turner before, I recommend you watch his Reading set, you will be converted into the realm of Frank Turner. You won't regret it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/festivals/readingandleeds/2010/artists/frankturner/

A final note on Turner, in his song "Photosynthesis", he has the perfect lyric to summarise me - I won't sit down. I won't shut up. But, most of all, I will not grow up. I'm getting that tattooed onto my back one day. I've decided, I'm going to lose weight and then when I'm respectable, I'll get that tattooed. I promise.

The second artist is, quite simply, one of my favourite bands of all time. My favourite is Green Day, but The Gaslights have shot up to second place in the band list, purely because, like Frank Turner, they've not hit the big time yet, they write all their own songs, not influenced by any big name labels or producers, they stick to what they know, and my God they do it brilliantly. It's not to say they don't have a huge following because they do, every single fan of theirs knows practically every word to every song they've ever written. The '59 Sound is, in my opinion even though I know of one who begs to differ, their best album, but their newest outing American Slang comes mighty close. Their rip roaring anthems of being young in New York City, admittedly, aren't ones I can empathise with. But it's the way they go about it. They tell stories and though none of their albums are concept albums, you can hear a slight narrative woven into the lyrics. Perfect example, in the title track of American Slang, there's a lyric that says you can dance with the queen if you need, and she will always keep your cards close to her heart, and later on there is a track called "The Queen Of Lower Chelsea" (oh yes, another reason to love The Gaslight Anthem for a Chelsea reference! (I am aware that it's referring to the area called Chelsea in NYC, but still!)), and the chorus is as follows: When you're working full-time and spending all of your nights, never dancing like you did, and the gravity hangs on all the selling points you had, should've stayed and been the Queen of Lower Chelsea. Now, you can't deny that they have put a hell of a lot of thought into every song, every lyric, every beat. If you haven't heard of these before either, I recommend you check their Reading set out too, because it's just as brilliant as Frank Turner's, if even better.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/festivals/readingandleeds/2010/artists/gaslightanthem/

These two are two of my favourite music acts. First is Green Day, second is The Gaslight Anthem, third is Biffy Clyro and fourth is Frank Turner. Simply brilliant. And, I'm happy to say, I've seen them both live, and am seeing them again before 2010 is out. Life, at the moment, is absolutely brilliant.

How many roads must a man walk down?

Apologies, Andrew, you used that blog title before, but seen as this is actually my 42nd post, I think I deserve to use that title!


As you may be aware, I've been panicking for ages about my A Level results. Absolutely ages. I've been bricking it for too long. Finally, about an hour ago, my wait was over. My results came through and, to steal a quote from a previous post, "a smile formed accross my scared face. Colour seeped back. I'd passed. I'd passed all of them." And more importantly, my place at The University of Nottingham has been confirmed! UCAS confirms it with this wonderful statement:

Congratulations! Your place at The University of Nottingham (N84) to study French Studies (R120) has been confirmed. 

 

I actually can't believe it. I'd been panicking for so long, I couldn't even imagine myself passing, let alone getting what I got (French, A. Drama, B. History, C.)! Amazing. Absolutely fucking amazing.

 

Short post, yes, but I'm just so happy at the moment. So fucking happy!

This is the day of destiny. This is...the Arockalypse!

Oh yes, Lordi in my post title. That's an achievment. Do you remember Lordi? Those epic people that one the Eurovision Song Contest a few years back for Finland? Yeah, they were awesome. Anyway, that's all I have to say on that matter, as for once, my title actually has some sort of relevance to what I want to talk to you all about, even though the title makes out that today is the day, but in fact it's 24 hours in the future.

Thursday, the 19th of August. Also known as, results day. Or, the day I die.

Hopefully, I won't die. But it's a very important day. For me, for nearly every person aged 17 or 18 all over the world. Tomorrow is the day many dreams of students going to their first choice University will be realised and, sadly, many dreams of students going to their first choice University will be smashed, to be utterly truthful. Now, I have a horrible feeling I will be in the latter group as I have a sinking feeling I screwed up my French exam in one way or another, be it completely failing at my verb conjugations or simply writing it all out in Welsh as opposed to, er, French. It may interest you to know that I started writing this yesterday, which was Tuesday, the 17th, and I continued it today, Wednesday, the 18th. Which means I'm even closer to my death day.

Why is it that results day is among the most stressful day in all of mankind? I mean, day one of World War One and Two must've been pretty scary. But I doubt it mounts to as much stress as A Level results day in every year since the first ever results day. It's petrifying. Interesting RBJ fact, I'm a shaker. I shake all the time, I have no idea why, I just do, it's impossible for me to not shake. Today however, my shakyness has increased tenfold. Everytime I finish a sentence to think about what the next sentence will be, I stare at my hands quivering with anxiousness. It's insane, I remember being nervous before my GCSE Results, which I told you all about in my awful first post, I won't link to it because you just shouldn't read it, but this is insane.

Tomorrow, be on the look out for my inevitably depressing blog in which I tell you that I didn't manage to get my A for French*, reveal what I got in Drama and History (my guess is a B and C, respectively...I hope) and that I did get to a University - Trefforest Industrial College for the History of Ironing. Sounds good.

So, wish me luck!

*To get into Nottingham, I need ABC with an A in French. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

A complaint.

This isn't going to be a very long one, and sadly this might offend some people, don't read if you get offended easily. It's a short query about Talent shows.

We all know the score. To do well in a talent show (let's just say a singing competition) you not only have to have a good enough singing voice, but you also have to have a pathetic sob story to go along with it. You know the one - "I lost my goldfish in a terrible toilet-flushing accident, so I'm competing today in memory of old Fishy." The public get influenced (see, there's my link to my musical blog!) by these sob stories, the judges get influenced by these sob stories which leads to, what I hate the most, not very good singers, getting far because they feel sorry for them. It's ridiculous.

The reason for my mini-rant of a blog is this one. While sitting in my living room, my Mother turned on one of the many America's Got Talent episodes she missed while she was on holiday. One of the contestants on this show was an opera singer. Fair play to her, she had a good voice, she wasn't amazing, she wasn't terrible. But, my little brother made a comment as simple as this - "Boring." Because, let's be honest, not that many 12 year olds take a massive interest in opera nowadays, and he was just stating he isn't a fan of her singing, because he couldn't sit there for 30 minutes or even an hour, just watching her sing in concert. He's one of the many youngsters in today's society that gets influenced by others around him, listening to the Jason Derulo/Ne-Yo/Chris Brown/Justin Bieber love children that are out these days. My Mother's retort to his one word statement about the opera singer? "But she had cancer!" That's exactly my point. Yes, she had cancer, but that doesn't mean that one suddenly has to like whatever she's doing. If someone went on this America's Got Talent program, killed cats on stage but because they had cancer, the public would vote for them. It's bizarre why the public think like that.

Potentially the most offensive post on my blog, but it really pissed me off. Sorry about that.

I'm a fire and I burn tonight

Oh yes, I used a Biffy Clyro lyric as a title, that has no relevance to what I want to talk about.

I just want to fill you all in on something, and I have a query that I'll ask at the end. As you may or may not be aware, my vlogging career has finally started (which doesn't mean I'll be leaving blogger!). If you don't know, there is a link right above this post, in the red bar, if you just click the one that says "YouTube" then you'll be beamed directly via UFO to my YouTube channel, where you'll see I have three vlogs, if you will.

Now, you may recognise the title of one of them - the Film Reviews one. Yes, I've, kind of, converted my hugely successful (ahem) film reviews blog to video form (which doesn't mean I'll be stopping those on blogger either!). I went away for the weekend, and when I returned, I had numerous e-mails from YouTube, mainly a discussion with CrazyDistortion about video editing, one about a comment I had on my Toy Story review and 2, yes, 2 comments on my Inception review, and finally one from someone called "everydayadventuring" (yes, they have no capitals in their YouTube name, an annoyance if ever there was one), I'll copy what they said to me:

"hi RuhBuhJuh1
I just watched your vlog, I really love it! How did you get so good at making them? Can you take a look at my vid and give me some pointers? Please subscribe if you enjoy it :D"

You can take that two ways. The optimist in me sees that as someone random has actually stumbled across my channel, watched my videos and enjoyed them. Or, the pessimist in me sees that this is just a bit of spam sent by YouTube to improve my moral as my Inception video had a meagre 39 views - and that's my highest. Personally, I see it as spam, but nevertheless, I shall believe that this message is in fact a real person and I shall make a video giving a few pointers from vlogger extraordinaire, RuhBuhJuh1. Yes, there is a 1 there because I fucked up signing up to YouTube under my new pseudonym. Don't take it seriously, I won't call myself RuhBuhJuh1 unless I want to prove a point of some sort. What the point will be, however, I have no idea. We'll see where the wind takes us. 


To end, I have a query. Undoubtedly, I will scour the googleness of the Internet in order to find my answer, but to make my post a bit lengthier, I'll ask you on here too. You know Typewriters (Interesting fact: Typewriter is the longest word you can type by only using the top line of letters on a QWERTY keyboard. Did you know that? Didn't think so.)? Can anyone tell me how they work? As far as I can tell, it's magic. You're there, typing away at this magical machinery, and your piece of paper gradually moves to the left as you type more and more words, until you feel necessary to hit it back and it shoots across the typewriter, makes a bing noise, and the whole writing a line of letters (or symbols, as Snefru happily (did you see what I did there?) calls them) starts again. So, let's say you have one letter left to fit on the page before you need to ping it back, meaning your piece of paper is almost as far to the communist side of the spectrum as it can go, but the last letter on that line you want to type is the letter "P." How does that work? I was under the illusion that there were 3 rows of stamps, if you will, that put the letters on the page. Surely the P would be too far away to be placed on the page? Is there some rule that by the time you turn the page into an extreme communist, you can only use words on the left side of the keyboard, like "sad" for example? There is no reason why I chose sad there, I just saw it as the first word I could use on the left side of the keyboard. Or, a solution I thought up while writing this paragraph, are there wires leading from each key to its corressponding stamp? That sounds quite logical. Answers on a postcard, if you please.


To be fair, that was a very YouTube dominated post. I might aswell make one more YouTube reference, watch this video from a person called hexachordal (there's that lack of capital letters again! Although, I like this guy, so I'll let it slide), a YouTube vlogger who makes weird and wonderful videos. This is my pick of the bunch.





The first 40 seconds is all you need to watch, really, but you may watch the rest. It's very bizarre humour, but he is highly amusing. Side note, watch the video "Explorers Four" and try and make some sense of it. I understand it now, but it took me hundreds of viewings to fully comprehend the complexity the video beholds.


Over and out.

The little things.

I don't plan on making this a particularly long post, but I think all my imaginary readers ought to know something that I only just realised a matter of minutes ago. The fact that the title of my entire blog is actually 100% correct.

Originally, I saw this entity on the Internet as simply another way to waste many hours staring at a light bulb, similar to what I do anyway, day in, day out. I do, obviously, get bored when I stare at said light bulb, and when I did get bored, I could make up some drivel that I'd had a sudden idea to write about in this blog I have. But, to tell you the truth, half the time I genuinely have no idea what I'm talking about. I ramble and ramble and ramble about anything and everything that comes into my head, literally no meaning behind the posts (apart from a select few, such as my xenophobia rant and, more recently, my World Cup one). I would just fill you all in on meaningless details of my life, how school's going, what I did in the last few months, that sort of thing. In short, I took this whole process of writing paragraph after paragraph for someone to read for granted.

However, I had a conversation with another homo-sapien very recently (their name shall remain confidential until said being allows me to say so) who wants to start writing a blog. This person claimed that they felt that they had nothing to write about whatsoever, leading me to the realisation that, simply, neither do I. And yet, somehow, I manage to squeeze varying lengths of ramblings out of what I thought was a mind devoid of any real creative imagination. The stories I wrote for school in English and Welsh were always a total disappointment, they had a poor ending, zero creativity when it comes to places, names etc. A particular memory of a story is one that I wrote set in the middle ages where my main character was a man named Sir Arjen, after Arjen Robben the former Chelsea player. The second of my characters, King Saloman is a current Chelsea player. It was only afterwards I realised of the repercussions of my King Saloman character. Do you see what I mean? I had to think of two characters, and neither of which were particularly original because of their football references. The fast and furious thoughts that have raced through my mind in the last 10 or so minutes have got my mind thinking.

I may or may not have told you that I have a novel planned. Actually, I don't think I did tell you. I'm thinking of writing a novel. There we go, I did tell you. I've tried to start writing this novel, I think I wrote about 2 pages before I forgot about it totally. I had 2 or 3 stories milling around in my brain, and when I wrote it, I didn't have any structure whatsoever. Evidently, I was under the impression that J.K. Rowling simply sneezed out all 7 Harry Potter books. I was totally wrong. Having read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows recently, I realised how much thought has to go into writing a novel. You have to think up every link between every character, how they met, what sort of relationship they have. You have to think up a solid setting, a place, real or imaginary, if it's imaginary then you've made your book writing life harder ten fold.

Don't you see, before this conversation (I'd like to point out that it was a very short conversation) I thought I couldn't write at all. I probably still can't, but the fact is, it's like I've had a new wave of creative ability. Just thinking about my novel when writing this paragraph, I already have a new storyline in my head that sounds to me far better than my previous attempts. It's these little things, like this blog, that make you appreciate living in a modern age where the Internet is your portkey, to use a Harry Potter phrase, to go wherever you want. This is such a cliché part of my blog, and I'm sorry for that, but it's weird. I suddenly feel as if I can write at a half decent level!

It's the little things in life.

I went completely off track with what I meant to talk about at the start. So I'll put it in here - I really do love my blog. It gets my creativity flowing, cliché again, but it really does. I've never written as much as I have in this blog in my life before. Add to the fact that a handful of people actually read it, it's a success in my eyes. Plus, something that the homo-sapien I can't name (I'll call them You-Know-Who from now on, to steal another Harry Potter phrase) said that You-Know-Who thought that if You-Know-Who had, I quote, "like, 12 people following, [they'd] feel good." For me, it's not about that. I love what I'm doing with this blog, I use it to vent my frustrations, to shout my happiness to the world. On a side note, this is by far the cheesiest thing I've ever written, but I don't care. This post has made me feel all happy.

I'll try and write a fair bit over the next few weeks, reader, as I have a lot of free time on my hands. You have been warned, an onslaught of posts is coming to a light bulb near you.

These are the things I could live with out. Especially after that piece of shite.

Did you see what I did there? The first half is part of a song that England used as their official World Cup song - Shout by James Corden and Dizzee Rascal, which to be fair, is a tune. However, I flipped it all on its head with the second part, meaning what is normally an influencial song for England leaving them feeling they could've won the World Cup, now means that they didn't as they were a "piece of shite." Well done RBJ, superb creative skills there.

You don't have to read this one, guys - it's about football.

The World Cup.

Let me just start off by saying that, as you've probably guessed, I'm a huge football fan. Let's not beat around the bush here. Football is such a huge part of my life, I always look forward to the next World Cup, or the next European Championship. Hell, as soon as the regular football season is finished, I'm looking forward to the next one, which, incidentally, unofficially starts on Saturday where Chelsea play Crystal Palace in a Friendly. But you couldn't care less about that. Now, however, I think I might cross off looking forward to the World Cup from my list. It was diabolical this summer. Absolutely diabolical. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

I'd just like to point out that I'm writing this at, to be exact, 2:36 AM on a Tuesday morning. Yes.

I was looking forward to the World Cup for weeks and weeks and weeks. I kept saying "WORLD CUP STARTS NEXT WEEK AAAHHHH", which is me on a normal day. I do shout things. Normally at people, but never in an angry way. Why, you may ask. Well, I personally have no idea. It's just me, shouting is one of my many past times, which regularly increases depending on the time of day, and the situation. But I digress. Yes, I was excited. The first match? I was out. Excellent. But I'd heard it really wasn't a great match at all. So that's not a great start. I seriously believe that I watched 3 matches for the full 90 minutes all the way through. No word of a lie, I could watch Chelsea for days on end, but this international tournament I just wasn't interested. Wimbledon was on at the same time, I found it far more interesting and entertaining to watch that rather than the World Cup.

The 3 matches I did watch all the way through were England's horrificly bad group matches, which they drew, drew and scraped a victory. Seriously, England were seriously terrible. They played 4 matches in the tournament. How many goals did they score? 3. That's a proper shocker. Rooney, second highest scorer in the Premiership, got 0. Lampard, the most prolific midfielder in Premiership history, got 0. England's goalscorers were Steven Gerrard (now, statistically, the worst England captain of all time. Just throwing that into the mix), Defoe and Upson. None of whom are renowned goalscorers. Capello, the England manager, genuinely doesn't have a clue how to manage an international team, for two reasons. 1) He can't speak the language. He basically has to get his translator to do every interview for him. And 2) He's a prize twat. He's an arrogant, self-obsessed (I think they're the same thing, but as you were) Italian shitfaced fuck who thinks he can just waltz into a normally half-decent International team and balls it all right up. He didn't have a clue. He chose the 11 supposed best players, and made them play a standard 4-4-2 formation. For those who have no idea what "a standard 4-4-2 formation" is, I'll draw a diagram below. With the England team that fucked up in the World Cup.

  Robert Green

Glen Johnson-----Ledley King-------John Terry-----Ashley Cole

Aaron Lennon----Frank Lampard---Steven Gerrard---James Milner

       Emile Heskey----------Wayne Rooney

That's how they lined up in the first game of the World Cup, as in they'd be in those positions across the pitch, with the occasional change where, say, Lampard would go further up the field to support Heskey and Rooney. But you couldn't give less of a shit, could you? Thought not. Anyway, they lined up like that. I'll point out the faults.

1) Robert Green. You must know who Robert Green is. Maybe this picture will refresh your memory.

Yeah, that Robert Green. He's normally a good goalkeeper, but he's no where near World Cup standard.

2) Ledley King. Why was he picked in the first place? This is a player who can't even train at all because he has such a fucked up knee. This is a player who can't even have a kick about in his garden with his 5 year old son because he has such a fucked up knee. I'm sure you can see how he was a fault. Incidentally, he got injured during the first half of the first match, and never played again.

3) Frank Lampard & Steven Gerrard. They can't play together. Simple as that. When you put these two in an England team, it's like putting chocolate on a pile of shit. They look the same, but it's just wrong. They're too similar in how they play. By putting those two in the centre of the pitch together, you're cancelling one of their abilities by making him stay back to help defend, because they're both attacking midfielders. Gerrard isn't even a midfielder anymore for Liverpool, he plays as a striker.

4) Emile fucking Heskey. He's the biggest joke ever to grace a World Cup stadium, seriously. He has 62 Caps for England. He's been playing for England a good 10 years or so. How many goals has he got? For a striker, you should bet it's good. Not quite. He's scored 7. 7 goals in 10 years of football? For a striker, he should be embarrassed. Peter Crouch, the 6 foot 7 inch monster of a striker, was only called up to the England squad two years ago, he has maybe 40 Caps, and he's scored more than 20 goals. How does that work out?

5) Fabio Capello. That really is all I have to day. He's a dickhead.

So there you have it. A comprehensive round up of why England were screwed from the beginning. They never had a chance, and everyone thought they could go on to win it. My fucking arse.

The World Cup was, all in all, utter shit. There was hardly any excitement whatsoever over the course of the tournament. Maybe two good games? By the end, I resorted to not watching any of it, and getting goal flashes from my football fanatic brother. Shocking. And, you'd expect the Final would be half decent. I didn't watch it, but my Dad told me it was an absolute disgrace. This tackle sums it up for me.

On request from CrazyDistortion:

Yeah. No joke. He didn't even get sent off for that.

Fuck you, FIFA, for ruining my World Cup experience.

Interesting fact for you: You'd expect my 3AM blog to be full of mistakes. Turns out, I had one spelling mistake. There we are, readers, trust RBJ to end this scathing blog on a high note!

You're off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.

All I have to say is that while I write this, Wizard of Oz is on the Telebox. That's all I have to say on the matter.

My avid readers may be aware that I've actually been blogging for almost two years now, and as I've mentioned on numerous occasions, exams are the main topic of my posts. I am sorry for such a mundane topic to be the focus of my writings, but my life simply isn't entertaining or action packed enough in order to fulfil your high expectations. Sadly though, I have three topics to wet your appetites today, one of which is the dreaded exams.

June 24th was the day I finished my exams, with the incredibly long French exam. And, in all fairness, it could've been a hell of a lot worse. Everyone in my class hated it, whereas I liked it. As a result, I'm insanely worried about what result I'll get when it comes to August 19th. My results have already been decided, whether I get into University or not has already been decided. Scariest thought I've ever had. Nothing I can do about it now though. I'm scared, readers. I'm scared. History, again, could've been much worse, and though the Britain paper was far nicer for me than the Germany paper, I don't think I did disastrously in either of them. I've already bored you with the Drama details in a previous blog, so I won't repeat myself.

The second of my topics, which leads nicely to the third, is the Summer Holidays. When I'd finished my exams, there was a slight lull while we waited for everyone to finish their exams, but as soon as it finished, I was expecting the flood gates to open leading to day after day after day of endless enjoyment - turns out it's not quite like that. Summer is simply a day of fun, and then maybe two or three days of sheer boredom. That's the honest truth, nothing happens! Which is rather frustrating, but it's what I can expect, living off scraps of money seen as finding a job is basically impossible these days. However, soon enough, Rhys Taylor, Ffion Rees, Ellen Morgan, Sarah West, Ieuan Matthews and I are buggering off to Spain for a week, which should be pretty epic.

Finally, due to my continuous imprisonment within the barren walls of my house, I have bounds of free time. I've tried to pass the time by playing on my Xbox, watching some television, watching the odd movie, but to no avail. Especially on school days, my boredom begins from around 2pm, and considering I arise from the land of nod at around 1pm, that really isn't brilliant. So, having become insanely excited having watched the latest Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows trailer (I'll post you a link at the end as it's totally brilliant. Anyone who hasn't seen it doesn't deserve an existence, in all honesty), I've decided to read Deathly Hallows once again. And I never realised how exceptionally well written the book is before. I know the book inside out, but now that I'm taking my time to read every paragraph in great detail, JK Rowling knows how to use a pen. So many things she says are essential to understanding the ending - SPOILER ALERT - for instance, just before "The Wedding", Harry and Ginny have a moment where they kiss even after Harry had finished their relationship at the end of Half-Blood Prince. Soon after, Ron starts shouting at Harry for "messing her about", which means Harry says something along the lines of "Look, it's not as if she wants us to get married or something!" Originally, I saw that as a simple passing comment, but now, you can see how much time and effort JKR put into writing this wondrous series of books. High appraisal to you, Joanne. Also, according to her Twitter, she hasn't updated it in a while as "pen and paper is [her] priority at the moment." Meaning, another Harry Potter epic? Or the rumoured children's series she's working on? I'm hoping the former, as she's now one of the great writers of my generation, I need another new book series to start reading from scratch.


Reading is such an important part of my life. I can't believe I went through a period of literally months without reading anything. What spurred me to do that? I have Deathly Hallows to read at the moment, and then I have a thriller to read called "The Charlemagne Pursuit", which sounds half decent. By the time I finish that, the seventh Artemis Fowl book should be out! Happy days.


God, I love reading.

Oh, I almost forgot, here's the Harry Potter trailer I'm obsessed with!

One thing.

Once again, this will be an insanely short post, but I just want to pose a question to you all.

Why the hell do you read my blogs? Currently, I hope the standard has risen past the juvenile posts of old, namely the first maybe 20 posts I ever wrote on here? The first post ever is utter drivel, my "That Cheat Gerrard" one just makes me sound pathetic. God, I hope I've changed passed those awful blog writing skills.

This blog was far too short, it was a waste of time, so I'll give you some YouTube stuff to intrigue you.







Finally, penis.

That's better.

N.B. Something went wrong with the YouTube videos, they're disproportionate to the blog. I tried to fix it, but to no avail.

Exampanicverse Update!

Hi.

Earlier, I basically freaked out to you lot. My dearest apologies, but I did have a panic attack, I felt like I was going to just break down. But, I calmed down, revised some more History and relaxed a bit in front of Junior Apprentice, Modern Family, Big Brother and Family Guy. Yes, I watch too much television, but you should know that by now. On a side note, Big Brother looks like it's going to be a belter this year, it's brilliant so far! Anyway, after my rest, I was about to go to bed, when as usual, my Dad plucks up a conversation about French with me, in particular L'Etranger (the book we're studying). We talked for maybe 15 minutes and it really made me feel so much better about the exam I have on the 24th of this month - French, surprisingly. Now, it's like I've suddenly realised that I can actually do French. I feel so much more confident about my essay, my listening and my translating. Dad's really are a wonderful thing. Except when you ask them to pick you up in the middle of the night in a dark and scary place, commonly known as Pontypridd. Damn you, Last Minute Martin! For future reference, anytime you see "LMM" in a blog, that's what it means. I phrase coined by Adam Hill.

History is still fucked, mind. But that's okay. Thus, I just wanted to update you all on the little relapse I had. So ends my shortest post to date. Be privileged, you only lost a few minutes your life!

Times They Are A-Changing

Well this is different. I don't know why I decided to change it all around, but it was time for a little spice. My old blog was boring, it was just plain blue and wasn't very nice to look at. This blog has some weird castle building in the top corner which I'll probably look into changing as it's just not me. Well wasn't that a kerfuffle. I won't bore you with the details, but it in short, it involved actually changing the administration of this whole blog. Though, on the plus side, all my Google accounts (Blogger, YouTube, AdSense) are on my Yahoo account. Hurrah for boring you all to death in the first paragraph.

Well, there we go. After 7 years at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen, it's all over. Every lesson, every hour of work is now rendered more or less meaningless, outside of History and French as I still have those exams to go, yes, but Mathematics, Science, English, Welsh, IT, RE, Sports, DT - all of which have now delved into the never ending black hole that is my mind, and will probably never be seen again, with the possible exception of Mathematics, as I will undoubtedly use my Maths skills when I get my dead end job of working in a factory what make pork pies, said the West Country Farmer. Hands up who read that last bit again with a West Country accent? None of you? Oh, okay, moving on. Yes, my school life is over, hardly any of which will be relevant to me in the future. But, without those seemingly irrelevant subjects, my University dream would never be realised, and as it stands, I'm 2 exams away from making it or not. Bloody hell, I never thought of it that way before.

You may recall, or you won't, that my last blog was a xenophobic rant that was pretty much entirely devoid of any great writing structure. Apologies for that, dear reader. Where this blog is going, I have no idea. We'll see what springs to mind.

Exam time has approached. And far too quickly for my liking. One of which has already been and gone (Drama) and I was surprised that it didn't go as bad as I thought it was going to go. The questions were simple enough, and in the third question - you're going to love this - we have to design a stage and set for an unseen text that we read in the allotted time (I don't know if that's the right word...oh, according to blogger spell checker it is! Well done, RBJ, four and a half gold stars for you) and I decided to use a Thrust stage (don't ask). A Thrust stage has a sort of big catwalk leading from the normal stage out into the middle of the audience. Sounds reasonable enough. Until I thought it would be brilliant to add a pond to the end of the stage. If you can't picture it, I actually drew a picture of it on paint, and here's the finished article:


















It made me laugh as soon as I'd drawn it, but because I'd thought up the whole symbolism behind this stage, I kept it in to make me more memorable for the examiner, though probably for the wrong reason. Namely, the aforementioned diagram.

History and French still to come. History I'm aiming for a C. I know everyone always says "Aim for the A*!" but to be honest, fuck you all. A C is what I want, it'll get me into Univeristy, as long as I get an A in French. That, on the other hand, I have to get it. Not aim for it, get it. I have absolutely no hope. I'm maybe 2 marks off it as of my AS results. Sounds promising. But looking back I don't think my oral exam went all that well. I stumbled a few times, and even though I kept talking, I realised just after I said it that I got some of my verbs wrong. God dammit. The French exam is out of 98, stupid WJEC making it awkward. I'm going to need probably 90 at least of those marks. Can I do it? No fucking way. Gah. Why did I set my bar too high? Why? For fuck's sake. But then, to get into my second choice, I need a B in History. So screw my aforementioned thought, I'm aiming for a B in History. If I don't get that, or I don't get an A in French, that's it. My life is basically ruined. All my friends will be off to University, and I'll be sat at home, doing fuck all with my life. I can claim I'm taking a gap year, but fuck it, I'm not getting in to University, I might aswell state the obvious.

Bloody hell that was a depressing paragraph. And I think I better leave it at that. I need to learn some more French vocabulary. God help me.

Bless his little cotton socks.

The television has been monopolised by the person with the worst tv taste in the house. I'm tired. I want to watch True Blood. I fucking can't. So I'll write another entry to my blog, number 30 if I recall. 30 entries of mindless drivel, that generally cover these subjects: exams, university, social life, television. I do try and mention some sport from time to time, but I know that no one gives 2 shits about sport, so that doesn't count. One of which has already been mentioned. Let's see if I can name the rest.

What's happened since my last post? It doesn't help that I don't remember when I posted last, but it was quite recently, I think. Ah yes, how could I forget. The bloody election. Last night I watched the events unfold until about 1:45, then I gave up as I had an exam in the morning, but I'll get to that later. The debates got less and less interesting as they went along, the first one was actually very interesting, the second one was apalling, and by the third one I was more concentrating on my pizza than the actual debate. Nevertheless, I did sort of watch them all, so I had a general idea of what was going on, if I could vote (which, unfortunately I can't - damn you parents for conceiving me on New Years fucking Eve!) but I had an idea, anyway. Clegg is a tool, with some good ideas, some bad. Brown is a solid trier, bless his little cotton socks. Cameron's a cunt. On a side note, I believe that's actually the first time I've used the word cunt in my blog. Did you know that? No you didn't, because this "you" doesn't exist as no one actually reads this blog. Anyway, it seems by that summary that Labour is my vote, but no, it was actually Plaid Cymru with some Lib Dem sympathies, thanks to Rhys Taylor. But Plaid was the way forward in my book.

As long, winding hours wound on last night, I just grew more and more frustrated, the epitome of my frustration vented in the form of the announcment of the result in a North Walean area whose name escapes me, but something tells me it's similar to Clwyd. Or Bracknell. One of the two. Yes, my frustrations. The unfortunate man who caused these actions was the bloke who read out the result in said place. He was clearly not a welsh speaking man, but he was evidently reading straight from a phonetically spelt script of the welsh bit. I couldn't help but think "Yes, you've tried, but you made an absolute fool of yourself in the process, so why did you bother in the first place?" The cherry on top of the cake of frustration? The fact the phonetical translation if you will was actually wrong. It seemed it spelled the welsh word "Felly" with only one "l", forgetting to pronounce the "ll" sound. Ridiculous.

Thus, my frustrations seeped away to a sudden bout of absolute hilarity, which can only be described as "The man with his fist up behind Gordon Brown". What a legend this man was. He ws quite literally stood behind the podium during the vote count announcment and during Gordon Brown's 5 minute acceptance speech after he held his seat in Kirkcaldy or somewhere. But, the cherry on top of this cake was his trimphant air punch after his party - the Land is Power party, what a bizarre name - received the absolutely whopping total of 54 votes. In comparison to Brown's 29,000, 54 is not "trimphant air punch" worthy, I say so politely. Nevertheless, as Andrew's told me already, an election would never be complete without a complete nutter. He has my full respect.

So, in the end, the cringeworthy tosser that is David Cameron came out with the most seats, but he was 20 short of the magical 326, so fuck you. And yet, the battle rages on for the Tories to get the Lib Dems in their government to get their 57 seats and therefore shoot passed the 326 mark. Please, Cleggy Weggy, don't turn into a cunt too.

I can't be arsed for anymore, I'm knackered and my eyelids are dropping slowly over my eyes. But, 2 hours of True Blood is a must, so I'll battle through the pain.

Hurrah, I didn't mention University or Exams! Victory for can't be botheredness!

A wild blog-o-saurus appeared!

I decided to do some writing. Don't ask me why, it was just a thought that came to me in a sudden flash of inspiration, though it will probably be about as good a "sudden flash of inspiration" as the man who built the Titanic, giving it a turning circle the size of the fucking moon. Or like the "sudden flash of inspiration" of that man with a slightly above average sized nose who decided to go on a camping holiday in Poland. You catch my drift, this post will more or less be a pile of fecal matter. Now for something slightly more boring.

Exams are fast approaching, dearest reader. I have 5 to speak of - French Llafar AS Level, French Llafar A Level, History, Drama and French. God help me, especially for the former quintet.* I have, I think, 6 weeks before my first writing exam (Drama on 9/6/2010), but only a trio of weeks until my llafar. Dear lord, I am royally screwed like a prisoner. Which intellectual thought up the idea of exams, really? They're the most frustrating, time-consuming, stress building pieces of paper ever created. And what makes things even more fun, this year is the first time these papers will be given out - we're being used as guinea pigs for WJEC, lovely. Chances are they'll realise they have no idea what they're doing, and return to the previous form of exam without anyone noticing. Except the Class of 2010, fuckwits. We will seek vengance upon thy souls.

In more cheerful, yet still exam related news, my history coursework has reached it's completion, though you delightful readers had no idea I had history coursework because I haven't vented my frustrations in months. Anyway, we had coursework to do. We had to write four thousand bloody words about whether the resistance groups in Nazi Germany had "any hope of dethroning Hitler" (is dethroning even a word? Google translate supplied a translation of disodli as "replaced". But clearly, knowing me, that's just not epic enough, so me and my very excitable brain created, possibly, a new word!). Four thousand words. That's a mountain to climb for a person like me who, in recent history, seemingly has only a 3 word vocabulary - Ledge, Twenty-Four (it's hyphenated - it's one word, smart arse!) and Shocker. Blimey, that was a blast from the past, that's going back to Year 10, I think. I didn't even manage to get to the four thousand mark, I stumbled at around the 3600 mark. Oh well, all that matters is that 14 pages later, I've finished.

That's just about all I can muster for this evening, I need some sleep. But Fringe comes first. Oh, and Bayern Munich are in the final of the Champions League, not that anyone cares of course.

P.S.

You may have noticed I wrote the number 4000 out twice in the coursework paragraph, and in letters as opposed to numbers. There is reason behind this madness, observe: Four thousand has 12 letters, not including the space. I wrote it out twice, meaning combined it has 24 letters. I watch 24. COINCIDENCE?!

*Yes, that was a joke.

One of the hardest decisions in my life has finally come to an end.

Well that was genuinely stressful. I actually can't believe it's all over in a matter of clicks. I'm not going to reveal my decision just yet (though my Facebook friends...everyone that's following me on here will already know what I've chosen), so I'll give you a bit of background information behind my conundrum.

I'd long decided that it would be between Nottingham and Warwick. Interestingly, in my epic blog about all my possibilities, Nottingham reigned supreme, and if I remember rightly, Warwick wasn't even on the list, which is rather bizarre considering it's suddenly jumped o the fore front of my choice list, regularly being referred to as my "Insurance" choice in conversations. And yet, over the past months, Nottingham has been doubted, and Warwick was gradually getting closer and closer to the top. So in order to contribute to my final decision and having already seen the stunning Nottingham campus, I ventured to Warwick to even the odds.

I should make the point that only one factor of them has a bearing - Italian or not. Warwick offers Italian, Nottingham doesn't. The French part is super similar.

The venture did absolutely nothing except confuse me even more as to where I want to go. The Nottingham campus is more picturesque, with the Warwick campus seemingly more city-like. I prefered the Nottingham French department as it seemed much more like a University building, and had much more character about it. The Warwick French department was much more modern, full of kind of boring, long corridors. I did prefer the Warwick Students' Union, but only fractionally. I couldn't tell the accommodation apart, but for the fact that the Nottingham accommodation is very slightly more expensive. This was getting as hard a decision as a fat person trying to choose between Burger King and Maccy Ds - BK has the better chips, Maccy's has the better burgers...actually, fuck that, BK wins every time but the price. Major issue there.

Jesus, what the hell was I supposed to do? They both are so incredibly similar, I genuinely couldn't make a decision. I had to go back to the Italian or not conundrum.

Pros of Italian:
Ability to learn a 4th language.
Improved chances of getting a major job in later years.

Cons of Italian:
A lot more work. A lot more.
A risk of starting a totally new language from scratch that I may not like anyway.

See what I mean? Pros and cons are the biggest piss-take in history. I'd done all my research into them and I couldn't tell them apart. Warwick even gained first place for a while. But then I remembered an absolutely crucial point that I hadn't even considered yet. It was so blatantly obvious, I completely missed it. It was hiding in plain sight.

Nottingham was where my heart was set on from the word go. Everything about it was perfect. The location. The nightlife. The course. The Students' Union. The accommodation. Everything was perfect. I realised that I only considered Warwick because of its name and status. Nottingham has a superb reputation for languages, it's the best University for research in the UK and is in the Top 10 of teaching standards year in year out. I was naive enough to think that a name would be better than what I truly wanted. I want to be fluent in French. That's it. No fancy flowering with Italian. French is my favourite language and has been since I started learning it (yes, even under the guidance of Miss Rees). French is better than Welsh, English, German, Italian, any language I've ever heard before. It gets annoying at times with all the grammatical rules that you have to follow, but after a while, you get used to it. Imagine how hard it must be for French people learning English with all the stupid little tiny things the language has, the different sentence structure, the 've at the end of should/would/could and all. It makes sense now. French will hopefully be the most important aspect of my life. I have a lifelong ambition to just fuck off to France for the rest of my life. Nottingham can help me do that.

Nottingham. Say hello to your new potential undergraduate. Scary, right?

God, this sentimental business doesn't look good, I better add something at the end.

Hayley Williams is hot.

Ahh, that's better.