Where I Can See Sky

A deep and sincere apology is owed to you all. I haven't had time since the last entry to actually write this blog, a fact which has fatally and catastrophically undermined my expressed intention to write every day. Like an unreturned Snapchat or an unrequited poke, I am sure this newfound absence has come to dominate most of your lives, throwing your routines into disarray. But like the angels who visited the shepherds who watched flocks by night all seated on the ground (because it was Bethlehem, and no-one could afford the Wilko Round Patio Set), I say 'FEAR NOT' - I remain alive and writing. What have I been doing instead of revising like someone productive ,   I hear you ask? I was headed up to Cambridge a couple of days ago to see uni friends and collect books. Relatively recently I seem to have overcome my fear of entering Cambridge outside of term time: certainly a year ago I couldn't enter the city without at least a mild sense of existential dread and harrow

I initially planned to write this blog every other day rather than every day, and that might still happen, but for now it seems to have become a daily affair. Ellie asked if I actually did interesting things every single day, which offended me deeply, but I suppose you can tell if I've had a fairly boring day if I just copy and paste one of my history essays in here, or if I start raving about Honeymoon in Vegas . Yesterday was not a boring day because we were all getting together to celebrate me mam. I'm a slightly biased source, but after years of reflection I have decided that my mum is *objectively* one of the best mums in the world. She is certainly one of the kindest and most approachable: fingers and toes are not enough to count the number of people I know who have relied on my mum for help, or who have thought of her as a dear and close friend. She did a brilliant job with all of us growing up (right now she has just refused my help with the washing, which speaks for

It will not surprise anyone who knows me to learn that songs become stuck in my head often. Wikipedia tells me that this is a common experience, and that the pieces of music are known as 'earworms' (yuck), but I suspect that I get it more than most. There are certainly very few times in which there is not a song stuck in my head, or indeed unstuck coming out of my head through intelligent movements of my lips and tongue. At the moment that song is the theme tune to the 2004 game Sonic Heroes . For anyone who doesn't know, Sonic the Hedgehog  is unquestionably THE best video game series that has ever existed, and Sonic Heroes was one of the first Sonic games I ever played. Before that I played some of the classic side-scrolling games on my friend Zack's Sega console, which is not something you see very often these days! Sonic is a blue hedgehog that can run exceptionally quickly. In Year 6 I actually did a presentation to my class at school about Sonic the Hedgehog

I am finally back on home turf and, boy howdy, does my blog's audience seem to have come on in the meantime. In addition to my expanding American audience (a full 7 Yankee pageviews today, probably a record), new converts have swept in from the plains of the Iberian peninsula to the sun-beaten streets of India. So too I have had readers from a mystical land called 'Czechia', which apparently produces highly competent historians, has a sacred river called Alf and allows you to stay young forever, though I may be confusing it with some other locations. My second-largest audience today was from Ireland, a fact which is not easy to explain - perhaps it is my deep love for folk music that attracts these Gaelic souls, or my dazzling emerald wardrobe, or the fact that I know that the correct response to 'Top of the Morning to You' is 'And the Rest of the Day to Yourself' (not, as is commonly believed, 'feck off you papist bastard')? Speaking of folk music

Writing in the airport after a great day's exploring in Malta. Viva la vida by Coldplay is playing over the speakers and taking me back to when I was angsty and watched Hollyoaks. Still, it's a cracking tune, and there's a brilliant 4-part TTBB choral version online which is even better, by a group whose name I forget. The day started with breakfast on the roof - pancakes and buckets of tea on the sizzking roof. Yes, that should read sizzling, but I enjoyed the typo. It is much, much nicer than England here, a point I cannot emphasize enough, mainly because it will make any of my friends reading this deeply jealous. They can comfort themselves with the fact that I am returning back to the great enchanted isle of unimaginative cloud coverage and desparately optimistic weather forecasters. Speaking of which. I am thinking of actually putting this blog on my facebook wall regularly, or at least on twitter. So far I have only told a few friends about it, though I have recie

As occurs on all holidays of mine, I have developed a cold. Apparently this is something to do with coming down from the stresses of termtime, though I suspect it is yet another punishment for my unashamedly rabid bisexuality. I have a sunburnt nose as well now, which you'd think would exacerbate my self-pity, but truth be told it actually leaves me one step closer to being the lovable glowing reindeer that I've always wanted to be, so I can't complain. I was on the plane for a considerable period  yesterday night, which meant that I had enough time to come up with three whole jokes about Malta, as you can see: 1. What is the most popular food in Malta? Maltesers. 2. What is the most popular food in Malta? Malt Loaf. 3. What is the most popular food in Malta? Gammon. I hope to take these jokes on tour in the near future. Perhaps I will tie this in with my reindeer project; anyway, I know that the jokes will *sleigh* my audiences (!!). It is lavishly warm in Malta, a

I've wanted to write a blog for years. Lots of my friends keep diaries, something I've always shied away from, partly because they seem too introspective for someone as unashamedly performative as myself and partly because they take so long to write - and, as my friend James observed to me the other day, there's not much romanticism in typing up a diary! Blogs are different, but I've never bothered to actually set one up until now. Why the change of heart? 1) It's a Monday out of term, and I am both bored and anxious about my inability to relax constructively. 2) Several of my friends write excellent blogs, and I am obviously jealous of this. 3) Cynicism about writing is a bad thing. When I was doing research for my coursework (I am a nerd, and proud) I came across this quite encouraging passage from The Worst Journey in the World , a brilliant account of polar exploration coming ever closer to its 100th birthday and written by a man with the silliest name ev