An unpleasant journey.

There should be a separate carriage on trains for people who eat strong-smelling food and breathe very loudly. Oh and for those who cough without covering their mouths. Then I would not have to sit next to these people, trying not to breathe with my iPod turned up to full volume. I could still hear the guy breathing despite Stevie Wonder’s best efforts. Shudder.

A special song

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer’s day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting vincent’s eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hands

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you vincent
This world was never meant for one as
Beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget
Like the strangers that you’ve met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn on a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they’re not listening still
Perhaps they never will.

‘Vincent’ by Don McLean

Well, that was scary.

You know when you’re really tired, and you have a busy day ahead, and you’ve been lying in bed for hours but you just can’t switch off and go to sleep? Well, it’s 4 am and I’m still awake…

I’ve finished the Sharpe novel I was reading. I’ve thought a lot about my new haircut.  I’ve started worrying about what this week holds for me. I went temporarily blind. I tried humming a lullaby to myself.

‘Wait, what was that?’ I hear you cry, ‘You went temporarily blind?’. Why yes, concerned internets, I did. It freaked the hell out of me, which is why I am online again… I have just spent the last 15 minutes googling ‘temporary blindness in one eye at night’. Advice people; never google any symptom you might have, including sneezing or a sore knee. They always diagnose the big C.

I was finally beginning to doze off when I suddenly became aware that I could barely see out of my right eye. It was like I was wearing an opaque black contact lens. I covered it over, and I could see perfectly out of my left eye. I started panicking, as you do at 3.30 am and you are suddenly visually impaired without any alcohol in your bloodstream. Switching the bedroom light on, my vision sort of returned, but everything was still definitely darker through my right eye. It’s like when you’re wearing sunglasses that make you look tanned, and when you take them off you realise just how pale you actually are. My right eye seemed to be wearing a sun-monocle.

Turning the light off again, my freaky right eye blacked out again. Oh mama, that was scary. In fact, I did want to ring my Mamma, but wailing ‘I can’t seeeeeee!’ down the phone to my sleeping mother, causing worry and upset at stupid o’clock would not have been constructive at all. After rubbing my eye for a while, staring at my iris in the mirror for a good few minutes, and pretty much begging God and google  to not let this last very long nor be anything serious, the dark lens effect (Oh I do like the term ‘sun-monocle’…) faded into blotches and then disappeared. I can see! Hurrah!

I have decided to blame it on tiredness and stress. Body, this is not cool- send me a mouth ulcer or a coldsore next time. I’ll take you seriously, I promise. I do not ever want to experience loss of vision again.

Apart from the fact that I ENVY YOUR LIVES…

…here are a few of my initial thoughts on BAFTA 2010 red carpet fashion.

1. Does smiling hurt, Kristen Stewart? Why do you always look like your mum had to drag you out of bed and force you to wear these beautiful clothes? Note: I haven’t purposely chosen a ‘bad picture’. Her face was like this in every picture.

2. Carey Mulligan, you might just be my new favourite young actress. Keira K was fine (ok, I still love her), but you can actually smile and look fun and sweet whilst simultaneously being elegant and beautiful. The hemline does look a little like you couldn’t make up your mind, but that gorgeous shoulder exposure and the floral print more than make up for it. Loving the hair.

3. I covet your dress, Joely Richardson. But it would look ridiculous on me, because unlike you I am not a 5″10 blonde goddess. But yes. Stunning. PS. YOR MUM IS WELL FIT TOO.

4. Kate Winslet, you know how I love you. Why have you borrowed a dress from Madonna’s more reserved wardrobe? You are much better than this. I look forward to the Oscars, please return to your usual fabulosity.

Second viewing

I went to see ‘The Princess and the Frog’ again yesterday, and it was just as good as- if not better than- the first time I saw it.

And it was a small sweet popcorn this time.

Trash

Watching Jeremy Kyle in my pyjamas at 3 pm. Ah, the student life.

Brit Awards 2010

Florence, I think I love you.

Today is the day…

…that I went from this:

…to this:

I actually love it. Although I definitely need to do something about the colour, those weird light brown roots are no longer just roots- they’re most of my hair. I’ll be fixing that tonight.

I haven’t had an actual hairstyle since I was about 14, when I decided to let my hair grow long for the Leavers Ball when I would be 18. I’m now 21, and I actually wore my hair in an up-do for the ball.

I’ve been feeling like a change for a while now, and over the past week or so I decided the hair had to go. It’s lovely most of the time, but most days I just wear it tied up in a ponytail. And it takes forever to wash and dry, AND I shed hair like our old Keeshond dog. Attractive, not so much (the shedding, not the dog- he was gorgeous).

Yesterday I was kind of sad at the thought of chopping off my long hair- it was very beautiful at times, I’ll not be shy about that…

And it was also sometimes very fun, a rich source of entertainment, if you will…

But when I woke up this morning it looked like this:

Neither fun nor beautiful.

So I went into the hairdressers feeling more excited than sad, and came out feeling liberated, more youthful and (oddly enough) more feminine.

I have been bobbed.

Not derelict yet.

Although it may look like it, I haven’t given up on this site..I just haven’t had my camera with me for a while, nor have I had eyes willing to see the good in being here.

I have been thinking though, that I do like Leeds as a city. And it’s a very, very good university. It’s just not the place for me. I’m actually looking forward to coming back to Leeds for shopping and sightseeing, some day down the line.  I will enjoy it much more then.

I will come back to posting here soon, just as soon as I get my act together and start carrying my camera and looking through optimistic or at least interested eyes. Maybe this week will be it. Don’t give up on me!

The Princess and the Frog

I have just seen this film, and I thought it was lovely. Just lovely. And also very funny.

It’s a beautiful return to the old Disney hand-drawn animation, but it doesn’t seem dated. It’s still fresh and exciting, and the animation seems to have been taken to a new level- there are some truly stunning moments involving light and water, here in the form of fireflies and a swamp in the bayou.

It does fit in snugly with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in terms of exquisite artwork and a great story. The only thing it’s missing is a great big song that we’ll all go home humming, but the music- though not catchy- is really fun and vibrant. It’s nice that it’s so jazzy. The film is, after all, set in 1920′s New Orleans.

The baddie, a voodoo man, was classic Disney villain. Oh so charismatic and oh so very evil. He was fun to watch but I felt that he could definitely have done with a bit more screen time.

The critters (every Disney film has critters) were endearing and funny. My favourite was a Cajun firefly about whom I can say no more without giving things away. He does have one of my favourite lines in the film though, about chipping his tooth. I let out an embarrassingly loud laugh, and people looked at me.

It made a nice change for the leading man/frog to actually go on the adventure with his leading lady… Prince Philip (Sleeping Beauty) and Prince Eric (The Little Mermaid), for example, are a bit passive really- their only job is to look good and deliver the Happily Ever After at the end of the film, when the girl has struggled through a treacherous adventure all on her own (or with the help of only animals and/or fairies). Prince Naveen has some great lines, made funnier by his seemingly French accent (he is meant to be a European prince I think, although his name is Indian and the voice actor is Brazilian). When not a frog, he is most handsome, which is important in these films. Disney usually deliver gorgeous leading men but I can think of at least two occasions where they’ve got it ever so wrong- the Beast is much sexier when he’s a beast and Phoebus, of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is just unfortunate. It’s a bad beard.

I liked Tiana, the protagonist. She was strong, interesting and Anika Noni Rose, who voiced her, has a really really great voice. Yes, I liked Tiana very much. Although she probably fell in love a little too easily, but this is Disney after all. One waltz and you’re together forever.

I think this is one of those films I’m going to want to see again next week. Seriously, I ended up seeing ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ about 4 times, and ‘Up’ and ‘Stardust’ maybe 3 times. What can I say, I like popcorn.