As you know, if you have read my other
posts, I'm from the Wirral (lets just say Liverpool). Then I moved
down to the big city of London for university. The first time I moved
my life down to our fair capital was stress free, a breeze if you
will. This was mainly down to the fact that I was moving from my mums
house into a student accommodation building and so it was all
explained in a way I'm sure a two year old could of understood. I
lived with Unite if anyones interested and yes, before you ask I
would highly recommend them to anyone, even if the amount I was
paying for rent was a penny over extortionate. I lived in the one in
Tottenham Hale and had a jolly good time living there, the sunsets were particularly good as is demonstrated in my beautiful picture.
Anyway enough of that slightly related
tangent. This is a tale of stress, not one of a fun, stress free year
in the paradise that is Tottenham Hale (jokes). So, me and five of my
friends decided that we wanted to rent a house together, to continue our aforementioned fun filled time living in London. This turns
out to be way not as easy as it sounds.
Firstly, finding a six bedroom house in
London, preferably reasonably central, is near enough impossible on a
student budget. Secondly, our rich chinese friends, not racial profiling,
factual, had found quite possibly the most beautiful apartment ever.
Like, ever. It has a balcony that looks out over the millennium dome
(I refuse to acknowledge that is now the o2 arena, it will always be
the millennium dome to me no matter what everyone else says). I took
that picture from their balcony would you believe. Long story short
that apartment is the stuff that dreams are made of, if you dream of
very nice apartments that is. It was then clear that anywhere we found to
live would look like a pile of rubble in comparison to that place and
so we tirelessly continued our search for property perfection.
Then as if by magic we stumbled on what
can only be described as a miracle. Two three bed apartments in the
same building. On the Thames. With views of the shard and the
gherkin. I hope you are suitably impressed. And as if it were meant
to be the two were in our budget range. It was a miracle, divine
intervention if you will, it was meant to be. Or so it seemed. We
paid our little deposit thing to have them taken off the market and
then skipped back to Tottenham, well we got the tube back but you get
the gist. It was then that things started to get expensive,
complicated, stressful and did I mention expensive?
Everything started out well enough we
put our references through and sent over copies of our bank
statements and all that jazz and it all seemed not too shabby, apart
from the three hundred pound referencing and admin fee that we all
had to pay. Each. And from this point on more and more chaos ensued.
My references failed for like no reason at all meaning that I had to
pay an extra hundred pounds to have then done again, may I remind you
that I am a poor London student and so a hundred pound is like a
million to me right now!
Then before we knew it the estate
agents were threatening to pull the deal and leave us basically
homeless and about six hundred pound poorer... it took a hell of a
lot of complaining and threatening to take this higher up for them to
finally see that they should just let us move in to our beautiful new
apartment! So all in all the moral of the story is, if your looking
for a beautiful apartment on the Thames, don’t go with my estate
agent which, for legal reasons I probably shouldn't name... so lets
just call them carbon dioxide property management. (if you knew what
they were actually called then you would see what I did there, but
alas you do not.)
I stumbled upon a little
beauty salon around the corner from my house the other day whilst I
was looking for quite embarrassingly, a chip shop. This place does
shellac manicures for twenty pounds and so I thought why not? I had
heard really good things about shellac and how it doesn't chip, so I figured it was worth
a go.
I've been subscribed to
glossy box for over a year now and I always have mixed feelings about
whether to keep my subscription or to cancel it. This month was
another one of those months.
The Skinetica blemish
solution I am excited to try. I almost want my skin to go through a
bad patch so that I can test this out! I haven’t heard of the brand
before either and I'm always up for trying out a new brand. This
retails for £7 and says that you will see results in two to three
days, further testing to follow...
A few weeks after I moved
in to my new apartment I started my new university course. I could
finally officially say that I am a student at the London College of
Fashion! I am loving it! Literally loving it! I think that having the
university experience that I did last year (see this post if you
don’t know what I'm on about) has really made me appreciate how
good my new university is and how good my course is and how nice the
people are. The only problem is how bloody expensive the whole thing
is! I mean don’t get me wrong I get that its an investment for my
(hopeful) future career in the footwear industry but Jesus! I'm
already paying nine grand in fees per year and then on top of that I
have to fork out hundreds of pounds that I don’t have for tools.
But hey ho thats just how the cookie crumbles and I'm not complaining
one bit!
As you know, if you have read my other
posts, I'm from the Wirral (lets just say Liverpool). Then I moved
down to the big city of London for university. The first time I moved
my life down to our fair capital was stress free, a breeze if you
will. This was mainly down to the fact that I was moving from my mums
house into a student accommodation building and so it was all
explained in a way I'm sure a two year old could of understood. I
lived with Unite if anyones interested and yes, before you ask I
would highly recommend them to anyone, even if the amount I was
paying for rent was a penny over extortionate. I lived in the one in
Tottenham Hale and had a jolly good time living there, the sunsets were particularly good as is demonstrated in my beautiful picture.
Firstly, finding a six bedroom house in
London, preferably reasonably central, is near enough impossible on a
student budget. Secondly, our rich chinese friends, not racial profiling,
factual, had found quite possibly the most beautiful apartment ever.
Like, ever. It has a balcony that looks out over the millennium dome
(I refuse to acknowledge that is now the o2 arena, it will always be
the millennium dome to me no matter what everyone else says). I took
that picture from their balcony would you believe. Long story short
that apartment is the stuff that dreams are made of, if you dream of
very nice apartments that is. It was then clear that anywhere we found to
live would look like a pile of rubble in comparison to that place and
so we tirelessly continued our search for property perfection.
So I have decided that it is about time
I tried to get a bit fitter. Now, when I say a bit I mean I think its
about time I was at least as fit as a pensioner. (no joke, my nan is
fitter than me.) For the past year my fitness routine has been
walking from my flat on the ground floor to the tube station and then
from the tube station to my chosen destination. And thats it. I have
been blessed with a relatively speedy metabolism and the rather odd
ability to just forget to be hungry because my days are jam packed
with exciting things to do, I hope you sense the sarcasm here.
Because of the killer combination of these two things I have luckily
escaped what is commonly referred to as the 'freshman fifteen' (where
you put on at least a stone in your first year of university for
those not in the know).
For our sports day at school we would
have to run a 1500 meter race in which the sporty girls would always
win and I would always come somewhere in the bottom ten, an
achievement I'm rather proud of by the way. This was until I finally
twigged in year eight that if I walked the entire thing they would
let me stop after about the first third and would still give me the
point for my team. Result. This then cemented my unsportiness, if
thats even a word.
Let
me give you a bit of background on myself to put this little tale
into context... I am originally from the Wirral which, because no one
ever knows where it is except if your from the Wirral, is basically
just outside of Liverpool so practically everyone whose from the
Wirral tries to blag and say they're from Liverpool when they're
blatantly not because their wheelie bin is green and not the snazzy
purple that Liverpool get to have. Anyway, so I'm from the Wirral and
desperately wanted to go to London for university, it literally felt
like my lives goal to get to go to university in London. I was
absolutely desperate so much so that when every decent university
said a very polite 'no thank you' to me and then promptly closed
their doors I decided that I was so desperate to get down there that
I would go to any London university that would take me no matter how
bad it was. And do that I did.
Also,
I just want to dispel a myth here, an urban legend if you will, like
the loch ness monster or big foot. Before you go to university
everyone will be trying to reassure you about the whole making
friends thing saying that everyone is in the same boat and people
will come up to you and just start talking. Lies. Absolute lies. It
seems that at least on my course, at my university, everyone was told
that exact same lie and so precisely no one went over to people to
start a conversation. In fact before our first lecture we all just
stood there awkwardly like a bunch of very awkward lemons in absolute
dead silence. No joke, you could of heard a pin drop in that dingy
little corridor that we had to wait in while the class before us
finished. Awful. Absolutely awful. It wasn’t until we were put into
partner work that the cloud of silence was lifted and awkward get to
know you icebreaker like conversation ensued, incidentally I don’t
remember a single one of the fun facts I was told about the people in
my class but at least it broke the silence. Lesson number three; just
be a man and talk to someone, it can't be as painful as having to
wait for a half an hour for your lecture in dead silence because the
class ahead of you are late leaving, trust me.
