Freshening up!

It's 3am in the morning when I'm writing this, it's finally quite enough. To give you a rough idea of my living conditions and basic quality of life ;my halls were once a 10 storey car park which now has a night club at the bottom of it and it opposite a homeless shelter. Despite all these tiny details, it is home and will be for the next year. For the first time in 10 days I finally feel relaxed enough to write something. I've just had my first full week of being a university fresher and can honestly say I have never met so many amazing, inspiring and insightful people in such a short space of time, it is insane! I have contracted 'freshers flu' (I basically feel like poo warmed up) by lack of sleep and lack of decent food (not to mentioned a steep increase in alchohol intake). University is a bizarre but brilliant place, I'll try and describe my first week as well as I can.

The journey down to Bournemouth was intended to take 3.5 hours but ended up being 5.3 hours as someone had pre-set the sat nav to avoid all main roads, taking us on the longest ,wettest, most pointless route imaginable. Once we arrived at my university halls  we cracked the car boot open, just as the heavens opened. Due to the downpour and possible downpour from my mothers eyes I shooed the parents as soon as I had everything in my room and had used their help enough. They left me £5 to get a proper full English breakfast before the starvation commenced.( I wouldn't dream of spending a fiver on one meal now!)  Once in my surprisingly spacious new room I began to unpack whilst setting up my iPod docks. It was so strange how conscious I was of what music I was playing due to first impressions, I think I spent more time sifting through 'shuffle' to find an appropriate unpacking and meeting song than I did actually unpacking! ridiculous! I went around knocking on my new flatmates doors (as daunting as anything!) and grabbed two of them and went to the shops.Eventually corridors filled as much the parents eyes. A question that soon became the most asked question ever of 'what're you studying' was our first topic of discussion ,if ever there is a pub quiz night, my flat would win, we have it all from biological sciences to computer animation. Everyone is so friendly,  we've already started planning weekly meals and film nights (we'll see how long our budget and film collections last).

On the first night 'I have never'(a drinking game) got us all suitably sloshed , finding out some hilarious stories along the way (one girl broke her boyfriends nose accidentally whilst having sex). Fully tipsy and ready to socialise we headed to what is now our regular, the Old Fire Station, which is literally an old fire station renovated into a pretty amazing club. The next two days consisted of drunken divulging in drinking games, eating absolute rubbish and being totally sleep deprived. By the third day we were all physically and mentally drained so headed to Lidl to stock up on some much needed fruit and veg!

The second night was 'Back2school' at the Old Fire Station but once we saw the que to get in we decided to go elsewhere. We found a club called Lava , £1 entry and all drinks (including the essential yagerbombs) were £1.20 ; heaven. I met a fellow scriptwriter in the smoking area after he'd banged his head on the wall, he claims this never happened but I blame the concussion. The club soon turned into a sauna and we craved  cold air so headed down to the beach.It was 2am on a monday night and was the first time that I had seen the beach since I had arrived, naturally I ran as fast as I could into the icy waters, luckily I couldn't feel it as I was conveniently numbed by this point.

The next day were spent nursing my hangover and feeding my hunger, we had a quite night out at the Acoustic Fayre and saw some brilliant live music at The Old Fire Station. A personal highlight was the last act called 'Stanners' who sang Jamie.T covers, but had been given free beer the entire evening resulting in him forgetting the majority of the lyrics and turning to the audience for guidance.

The days that followed were spent sunning overselves on the surprisingly scorching shores as the heat wave began. We were in heaven! Our clothes were full of sand and our bellys were full of Harry Ramsdens fish'n'chips! One of my favourite and most poignant time I had was actually spent alone. I went for a bike ride down the seafront which gave me the opportunity to actually soak up what was happening without feeling hungover or distracted in anyway. The sun was beating and my face was beaming, I felt so so happy and privileged to be living in such a beautiful place.

To continue the beach themed day nicely we went to the 'Beach Party' at the Old Fire Station, I'd love to go into excessive detail about it but the truth is, I can barely remember what happened after we got into the que. I do however distinctly remember the sheer ,excruciating agony of receiving glowstick juice(this is not an innuendo) to the eye ball! The strange thing is when I went to the toilet to extract the scream evoking liquid I bumped into my flatmate who was already rinsing her reddened eye after being put through the same hell moments earlier. Like ,well everything in this snap happy life this turned into a kodak moment.

I hope you enjoy our pained faces as much as we did the morning after!

The night ended with an hour conversation in a chippy about films. Something that has been a continual conversation focus since I met other scriptwriters. I ended up inviting four people back for a sleepover (bearing in mind I'd known them 3 days top) , it's strange how quickly bonds form in such an intense environment though! We took all the cushions off the chairs in my living room and made a bed the size of the floor. The night was spent giggling until we slept. The laughter continued into the next day as we were given a break with 'Comedy Nation' at the Old Fire Station, it was absolutely hilarious.

My idea of freshers was wreckless drinking, drunken regrets and lots of sick but I hadn't encountered any of these things (okay maybe my drinkign was a little wreckless) but we were so tame! We spent the first Friday shopping for our first Sunday roast and beach bbq. We each contributed £5 and managed to buy enough food (including stuffing and parsnips) for the roast and two bbqs that followed! Our Friday night was even more wild as we stayed in baking cakes with our Romanian flatmate who is possibly the nicest boy I have ever met! If that wasn't crazy enough to feed our adreneline cravings we topped the night off with 'Bridesmaids' which was surprisingly less chick flicky and more crude than I ever imagined!



After living off bread and butter for a week, these badboys were heavenly!

Saturday was spent walking to the campus, soaking up some sun then winding down with a beach bbq. My flatmates boyfriend provided the bbq and the insanely loud sound system and the night was just beautiful. After filling out stomachs with steak, burgers and sausages, playing a bit of frisbee,dancing round in the sand and singing some disney classics , we went home (when you get to the point of singing disney classics it's usually home time).

Once we'd changed out of our smokey and sandy clothes we went to our favourite bar, Inferno, where you can get a drink and play pretty much any board game you want, for diddly squit! The games were childish and the night was still young. So a few of us headed out in search of 'sound circus' , a heavy metal rock bar. After having yager bomb pitchers and far too much sambuca we couldn't believe our ears when they stopped the music in aid of an annual award ceremony! It was, and still is one of the most bizarre things I have ever witnessed. To start with the host, intentionally or not, resembled dracula an unholy amount and the recipients were crayolas! There was also an award for best pole dancer which was basically an excuse for the host to get far too excited. We were given party poppers to pull and really did feel like an odd, gothic, slightly incestual family.

After Saturday nights shinnanigans Sunday didn't start til about 3pm. With a Sunday Roast to cook by 5pm the pressure was on we only had 2/3 ovens working aswell! We had two hours to cook two chickens , carrots, potatoes,parsnips,stuffing and gravy not to mention homemade yorkshire puds! Three of us did most of the cooking, between two kitchens, just to remind you though,our kitchens have no windows and a vent that you can barely call an extractor fan, oh and we have to keep the kitchen doors shut to prevent setting of the fire alarm. All in all our kitchens were roasting more than the chickens!  40 minutes into the cooking, the fire alarm sounded. Turning off all of our cookers we ran down the stairs, leaving potatoes and carrots still on hot hobs our timing was thrown right out of the window! We joked that we caused the fire, until the joke died along with a part of me as I saw smoke coming out of my bedroom.

After 20 minutes of worrying, the building was given the all clear, except we could all still definitely see smoke coming out of my bedroom. Once we were allowed back in the building I paced it up the 7 flights of stairs to check on my room, it was fine. I looked out the window with such relief as I realised the vent from the extractor fans is placed just above my window. Drama over, we got back to our roast. 2 hours later than expected but still highly appreciated our first ever flat roast was ready! Having small kitchens the sweat the food out of you before you even tuck in forced us to eat our dinner on the floor of the living room.

We finished our beautiful beach weekend off with a film, five minutes into it however I was flat out, the week full of new faces and new places had taken its toll and I just couldn't keep my eyes open.

Freshers week was unbelivable, luckily that was just the first week and we had another whole week of freshers to go!!