"Stuck in the middle with you..."

So Im feeling very stuck in limbo at the moment. I'm very ready to say goodbye to this place, and this project, but I still have months to go. Its very much not fun any more, trying to drag up enthusiasm for all this stuff. I'v gotten fat living in Scotland, and I can't start exercising again till I get somewhere where its safe to go out after its gets dark at midday. I'v got lots of plans and Ideas of things I can do next but I can't start them till I finish up here. And the worse part of it is I really can't do anything to speed things up - my supervisor will drag this right up to the deadline even if I took a full draft to his office this morning. Urrgh frustrating!! Im even becoming jealous of Joni who at least gets to move out of this god forsaken spit of land we call Scotland in 10 days.

OMG we have to move house is 10 days and like nothing is packed!! panic!! We are busy trying to use up the various bits of food we have hanging around. I could be doing a lot of baking in the next week to use up all the flour and sugar. And I think Louise (who I am staying with after we move out of our flat) will be getting a parcel of all the little bits we don't manage to use.

As part of our doing-things-we-want-to-get-done-before-we-leave thing, Joni & I went to the Scottish Deer Center yesterday, which was surprisingly good fun. It had a lovely amateurish charm abut it, the paths were almost completely mud and the deer were mixed in together with really odd information signs, but you could get a big bag of food for £1 and the little ones all went mad for it. Sadly you wern't aloud to feed the reindeer because they are on a special diet (flying-pellets I reckon), but they were very ice to look at. AND we saw a red squirrel!!

They had quite a strange variety of animals, obviously slowly working on slowly expanding. They had Scottish wild cats (after seeing which I am convinced Tay is related). They had 2 wolves and a red fox which were being fed venison, which made me giggle. They also had the most amazing little sheep which are apparently the last truly wild type of sheep left in the world, and they live on the islands off the top of Scotland. Joni enjoyed feeding them.. 

All in all a lovely day, and fairly good value for money. It was expensive, but you were left with the feeling that no one was getting rich off that place, and all the money really was going into looking after the animals.

(P.S. All today's photos were provided by my awesome new phone. I'm quite enjoying that they are even better quality than the doggy old camera)  

A Confession

I think it is time for a confession. I started this blog so I could write honestly and openly about my life but I am sorry to say, my adoring public, that I have been lying to you all along. Well, lying through omission. Since the very start of this blog, all that time ago, I have been omitting one, very important, fact about my life. Its time I came clean.

The truth is I am not enjoying my PhD, so much so that I have decided not to complete it. phew, I'v said it. Feels better now.

In reality there is a long list of reasons why im not staying to finish my project (filled half a page of A4 when me & Joni wrote it down) but ultimately the most important reason is I am not very into this project. To complete a PhD you have to be really into your project. I mean it, really REALLY into your project. I am surrounded by people who love their work. All they talk about is work, all they do is work. They stay late at night, they go in at weekends, and they find it weird that I don't. At first I just thought they were a bunch of workaholics but I soon realised that actually, they had it right and I had it wrong. If Im not inspired enough by my project to do that level of work I will never write a good PhD. Not one I can be really proud of, and if I am going to write a book, I want to be proud of it.

Luckily, because I is awesome (stole that phrase from Joni, who stole it from some pop TV im sure) I can write up a masters and get an MPhil, so I get a whole new bit of paper that says I am clever and become even more unemployable! Woo hoo!

Its been a tough couple of months, and its about to get much tougher, but to cut a long story short, Joni will be home on the 10th November. Joni, Me and Tay will be bombing it down from the great North with all our stuff on the 10th November, ready to become another 2 of the 1 million unemployed 18 - 25 year olds in the UK. Technically I will still be writing up for another couple of months (5th Jan, scary!), and as such will be popping back up to St Andrews for a while, but mostly soon me and Joni will be English again!! Hurra!!

An update

Hello again, its been a long time. Time for an update on what Iv been up to aver the last few weeks.

So 2 weeks ago my Grany moved to Thailand. Yep, you read that right. My 85 year old Grandmother just moved to Thailand (with my Aunt etc, but still). Should prove to be one hell of an adventure. M&D and Jenny came up to take her to the air port, and to clear out her house so myself and Joni went along to pitch in. I'll be totally honest, in the run up to this I was seriously worried. Whenever my family gathers to do something important like this what normally happens is, well as my Dad so wonderfully put it "a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians."

But actually, it went rather well. It helped that there wasn't a huge amount to do and we had loads of time. It also helped that Dad and Granny went to the airport at Saturday lunch time, leaving the four of us to finish off (we were in the pub by 5pm). It all got very sad when they left, but I insist on keeping a smile on about these things. I'm just getting excited about my trip to visit her and the rest of the family (summer 2012 me thinks!!).

Post-packing Dad treated us to dinner and a night in a very nice hotel. It was lovely, the bedrooms were massive and it was all roaring fires and leather sofas. The food was amazing and I, for one, got just a little bit drunk on pre-dinner G&Ts. Lovely as it was, I have to say the staff were a little useless. The restaurant manager was fabulous - really very funny and helpful, but the bar girls were just a bit crap. I can suddenly see what my sister is in such high demand as a waitress, as she actually cares about good service. I had to wonder around the entire downstairs of the hotel to find a bar, and then the woman expected me to carry 4 drinks back across the hotel to the lounge area. Not impressed. Also, she was apparently very ungracious when Jenny went to point out she had made her "white wine and soda" with lemonade. Tut Tut Tut.

Overall a surprisingly enjoyable weekend.

P.S Just got an A-Mazing new phone! Looking forward to perhaps blogging on that soon, so I might start blogging more often.

A Wild Fife Adventure

Last weekend myself, Joni and Louise tried to go out to May island seal watching. However, when we got out to the little Fishing town of Anstruther (made famous by the once-greatest fish & chips in Britain.) we descovered the boat was cancelled. Last boat of the season too, very upset. But as it was 11am and we had brought packed lucnhes we didn't fancy just going back home. Instead, Joni took us on a wild adventure up the east coast!

We started in Crail. This is the view of the harbour. As you can see - gorgeous weather. Just made it even sadder we didn't make it out onto the boat. Next to this harbour we found a lovely little tea shop which made a fantastic cup of green tea, and sold little sea-side art at extortionate prices. We ate cake instead and went for a walk along the coast. As we walked around we found these amazing stone sculptures. 

And the man who was making them.

He was awesome. It only took about 10 mins to make this one. Im not sure I could have got the rocks to balance on each other in the same way if I had all day. They were great, and sat and watched him for ages before woundering further into Crail. Turns out Crail is full of little craft and art shops. And a great potter place. Decided I definitely have to take my mum there next time she is around. 

After Crail we headed further up the coast in search of somewhere to eat lunch. We stopped (after some hairy coastal road driving) at the beach in Kingsbarns. Here are Joni and Lou eating lunch. 

Lovely scenery. Still a beautiful day. 

After lunch (no snd in sandwiches, was very pleased) we headed off to try and find some wildlife and ended up stopping at Morton Loch. That was good fun too. We found this wonderful little statue, marking the point at which a Tsunami had reached in ancient times. 

We sat in bird hide for a while, watching the ducks. 

There wern't any exciting birds. But there was a rather cool visitors book. We had a right laugh reading it, and couldn't help but leave our own comments. 

 

And we found an awesome catapiller. He was well adventurous. 

Even Lou had to stop to take a picture... 

So all in all, a good day out in Fife. I feel like i have seen way more of the coast now. 

What followed we a very boring week at work, which was filled with the best weather we have had since we got here, which was nice. And a fairly disastrous attempt at a quick lunch on the beach by me and Joni on Friday. 2 words for you - Golf Tournament. I briefly forgot the golf was on (AGAIN) and got into town to find the place swarming with bloody golf tourists. Couldn't park, couldn't buy food, surrounded by idiots who can't drive. Ugh, it was a nightmare! If i never have to see another golf club in my life it will be too soon. Bloody golfers. 

Back to work tomorrow. I have a feeling this could be a big week for me.... 

Going North

So I failed to loose any weight, moving on....


This weekend we drove up north to visit my Granny, which as lovely. Fascinating woman. Hardly talks about the past but when she does she comes out with the most amazing stories. Told us this time about the time Granddad came home from work one day and told her he had quit his job totally out the blue. That was pretty much all we got, just a little titbit of an amazing history.

My Granny lives in New Deer, which is north of Aberdeen. I always feel its not very far away, because you just go through Dundee, passed Aberdeen and you are there. But in actual fact its over 100 miles! Thats further than Nottingham to York! Think of all the places you pass between Nottingham and York. And yet all the way from Dundee to Aberdeen you pass absolutely nothing. Nothing. I still find it fascinating just how much farm land there is in Scotland.

Becoming Bridget Jones, hopefully not...

I do not want to become Bridget Jones, but I think I want to try and use this blog as a little inspiration to help me be a better human being. So, I'm going to use it to update progress on my diet in the hope that if I know I have to tell people about it I will be less likely to eat that cake/spend that money. 

Before you panic and stop reading some good news - my scales have broken, hurra! So this won't be your typical "Lost 1 pound this week, bad times bla bla bla" diet updates (also who works in pounds still? Seriously, they were stupid at the time, they are even more stupid now that we have a better system). Instead it will mostly be things like "Salad for lunch today, yay!" and "Got stressed and ate chocolate, boo". In case of this week the news is more bad im afraid. I was being a guide at uni for some school groups three days this week, which meant free lunches (why else would i be doing it?). Add to that Louise's birthday cake and mini-party with a little too much alcohol and its been a really bad week. So it was bad Fiona this week, i think the diet will have to start again on Monday. 

On to more fun things - Strictly was back tonight! Woo! This means its nearly Christmas!! I enjoyed txting my mum the usual remarks as the show progressed. "Cat is going to fall out of that!" and "Why is he not dead yet!?!?". I feel I could be providing a running commentary on Strictly as the weeks go on, so it will be fun to see how my allances fall. Currently wishing Chavy McChavson would shut and go already (thats Chelsee Healey btw) but sadly with boobs like that I think she will be in it till the end. Im quite looking forward to finding out what Nancy is like, and that footballer (I may refer to him as Blondey for the rest of the time). I was devistated when I found out its three weeks till the show starts up properly. 3 Weeks?! 

OO Dinners nearly ready....

OMG Its been nearly a month since I last blogged!

So In that month I have done two things. Firstly I did my first year report and VIVA, and secondly I went home for a holiday.

The report... well we don't really want to talk about the report. Surface to say I didn't do my best work and I had better improve next time. But no big angry security guard frog-marched me off the premiss so it can't have been that bad. It wasn't great though, I'll be honest. Both my assessors we women, and one of them is heavily pregnant, how am I supposed to deal with that?

So I felt like a pretty much ran away to Nottingham to escape my failing work and pretend it wasn't happening. I think I managed this well.

Here I am drinking cocktails with Joni.

Here I am drinking with Ali...

Drinking with some more people (Mike, Chloe & Roger)...

Not drinking this time, but gossiping with the girls, which has smiler effects (Charlotte, Beth & Jack)

I did do other things on this trip other than drinking, lots of other things. We had lunch in my favourite lunch place in Nottingham (Tamatangas - Indian, if you are ever in Notts you must go there for lunch) and we went to the CCAN and to the Castle. The exhibition in the castle at the moment on street art is particularly good. 

We also spent at least two nights hanging out at Tims playing games and arguing politics and stuff. This is possibly one of my favourite things to do in the whole world. It reminds me of how much fun you can have with just good friends and good conversation. I do think at some point im going to have to remind Tim (the theatre arts graduate) that whilst slightly inebriated he tried to argue that arts should receive no funding from the government, and argument which kept me up later than any of the nights out in town! 

Special thanks go out this holiday to Chloe, who once again found the excuse, rallied the troops and organised a fantastic night out in town. I miss going out so much when i'm stuck in Scotland, and there is nothing like nearly getting thrown out of a bar for dancing on a table to make you feel wanted! Although saying that there was a brillient moment when we were deciding where to go next, shared by myself and Mike and the conversation went something like this... 

Everyone else - "Lets go cucamaras!" (the place in Notts for seriously cheap and nasty drinks)

Me to Mike - "Is it just me or dose 'really cheap drinks so you can get drunk quickly' just not sound like a good advert for a bar anymore?"

Mike - "nope, i hate cucamaras"

Me - "me too. Next time we are home me, you, Joni and Helen should go out together to The Pitcher (old church converted to cocktail bar) and Tilt (jazz club/cocktail bar)."

Mike - "That sounds great."

Me - "We are getting old."

Mike - "Yup."

Oh dear.

Anyway, so I had an amazing trip home. We managed to see just about everyone, including Jonis older brother and family which was great. I only lost my voice for half of it and have just about caught up on my sleep now. 

I came home feeling much better about the work, ready to throw myself into it, to conquer it all, save to world, cure cancer, get skinny, earn a million and even make time to house train the cat. Lets see how that goes shall we....