yes, it sure has been a long, hard drive

I am Helen and I am a post-graduate student.

Ah, and what's your last name Helen?

Maddock. NO! wait! It's Findlay.

And there you have it. Married off. Someone's wife. That's me. Married with kittens at the age of almost 23.

A lot has been happening in the last few weeks and I wish I had been able to blog it properly, to take the time to note these remarkable occurences, as they truely are that. I have loved the last few weeks more than anything, and I have learnt the true meaning of adoration, celebrity and indeed exhaustion.

I have a few things to note today, so I can have them safe in words and not swimming in my head. I don't trust myself to remember all of this well. I do not intent to go into minute detail of the wedding, not just yet. I'm still drinking it all up and I really need to devote some time to lay it down properly when I am not feeling quite so bothersome (I have the cold).

The wedding was the most odd thing. I had imagined it for so long and when it came nothing was as I had imagined. I don't mean this like things went wrong or different to as planned. To explain, it is like when you are going to meet someone and you are told about them, for example, they are very outgoing and fun. And you make a wee image in your head of what they look like and imagine the scenario when you meet them, where you will be standing. And even if you know the location or even a photo of the individual, when you finally meet them they look different to your mind, you will be facing a different way, sitting on a different seat, not sitting at all. They will still be the same person, they will still be has described, you will still be in the same venue but it will be different. Obviously, nothing is ever exactly as imagined. This struck me on the day of the wedding. And it was in no way bad, not at all.

Another thing that happened when I got married which I did not anticipate was the nerves. Stuart got them too. Of all the people in the world, all the couples, we are the least likely to be in any way worried about getting married. And it was not worries of getting married but that it would all go right. I think it was just the scale of the event. I was fine all morning, setting up, getting hair and makeup done. My mum was jittery to the max, you could see it all over her the poor dear. I think we were playing off of eachother because once she has laced up my dress, which she was worried about, and had started taking some pictures, she started to calm down and I started to feel a little scared. It hit once we got out the hotel room and took the lift down but I didn't really notice it. When it stopped feeling like butterflies and started feeling like my insides were imploding was when the car door was shut on me and my dad. Suddenly it was over, the planning, the waiting, the anticipation. It was pure adrenaline. I have had problems dealing with this adrenaline stuff (cue eye rolling) vis-a-vis panic attacks in the past. The so called "fight or flight" mechanism being something I do not particularly relish. But this was in a league of its own. When the car pulled up at the wedding ceremony venue the photographer (a lovely man named Stan) wanted photos of me in the car. He asked me to smile and my whole lip was quivering, it felt like I couldn't smile. In the waiting room one guest decided not to show up so we were held up. I don't remember it all too well. Then we went up the aisle and we had to stop for pictures; as my dad commented - this was as popular as I was ever going to be. Thank goodness. I know when I stopped being nervous though. It was exactly the point when Stuart looked at me (he didn't as I came up the aisle). Everything was then calm.

After the wedding we went on honeymoon, which is a whole other story that can mostly be explained by the pictures (which were recovered, thanks husband-o-mine!). Then we returned to Glasgow only to have to do a 10k run. This was completed yesterday with expressway crossings, nose bleeds and bloody colds inlcuded for free. 1 hour 8 mins 34 secs.

Now I lie here on the couch with my legs up, lap top on my... lap, indeed and I'm just gathering up all the string. Presents, thankyous, aching legs, Bath waters, stationery, dry cleaning and the inability to breathe are keeping me occupied as I do the famous Mrbob move of saving up my illness until all the work is over.

I am soon to return to university as a postgraduate. I note the difference now. Before you were induced to university by being thrown in the union (a not so tasty spot) for a week before term, now it is an induction with "wine and nibbles" included. Before you had to borrow to support the £3000 odd a year fees for the opportunity to work your arse off all year round, now they are paying this for me, plus a tidy sum to live off of. Not bad at all. I guess hard work does pay off after all. I will also be returning to my job at the disability service. Last year I was working as a scribe. This year they asked my to be a mentor and a tutor. Thoroughly impressed it seems. I choose to call this a promotion, why not?

For the next three weeks (the last three weeks before I have no more holidays ever, apparently according to my supervisor) I plan to do nothing. If you know me you know nothing is never nothing so I mean I'm not doing anything I don't want to do. High priorites are reading (fiction, for book club), sleeping during the day with my cats, some household stuff, and lots of baths. I'm going to be a homemaker for three weeks, I feel my new title deserves that.

Yours,

Mrs Findlay.

Electioneering

So now that a general election has been announced for May 6, suddenly EVERYONE'S new passion is politics. It appears that if you are from England time has come for "change" i.e. the tories. ("change" - sound familiar? sound like another country that recently had a rather high profile election and a two party system?). If you are from Scotland then you basically have the choice between a failing (slightly) left of centre party with a leader resembling a very befuddled bull mastiff with poor political advisers (see right) or a failing (at westminster) left of centre party with a man as a leader who is completely deluded about state formation and has single-handedly managed to dupe the nation into thinking this whole nationalist thing is a good idea. You have these two choices only as to vote for the tories is effectivley to wear a swastika and admit (god forbid) your no working class hero after all. If your from Northern Ireland you probably don't give a shit what the tories are up to, unless you are Sylvia Hermon in which case your running for the door, and your like "libwhos?". If your from Wales your probably annoyed that blog writers have no idea what current affairs are in Wales right now.

To be honest its not the politicians, and the parties and the spin that bugs me, because lets face it, your always going to get that plus it gives you great ammunition for your political science class exams in May (they start May 7th for me), its all the idiots having their say. Yes, freedom of speach and everyone has their own opinion but people know nothing and think their measly experience on this planet somehow makes them know all. So you lived through the Thatcher years? You know, that doesn't mean you know anything about politics today, don't you? You know that probably means you didn't even know anything about politics in the 1980s either, don't you? You know you don't even realise how subjective you are being right now?!? Just because a piece of legislation effected you in a certain way doesn't mean it didn't effect other people in other ways. Sure if it benefitted you then your all smiles, but what if it didn't help hundreds of other people? And vise-versa. Please look at it with your blinkers off. Or at least if you are going to look at it with your blinkers on then admit so. I've been knee deep in this shit for the last five years and now your years of "life experience" render what I know obselete. Good job politics isn't the focus of my degree then.

I know I sound elitist, I know people should have opinions and that's ok, but why do some people just have to challenge everything you say just because they can? It's like the woman my mum knows and calls "elevenerife". (Don't get it? take away one from the number in that word). Some folk just love to hear their own voice. I went to university as a person who couldn't specify a topic where I could say "I know enough about that to have a real conversation and I probably know more about it that anyone I know". I thought that would change, and it did... but no-one wants to know. Ignorance is bliss.

The Last Four Months Before the Start of my Life

University. I've been there for half a decade now and it is crunch time. Final Year, Final Semester, Final Coursework, Final Exams, Final Final Final Final. The End. Then the start. I have applied for Teacher Training. I am applying for a Masters with a view to PhD. The plan was that I apply to both of these things and one way or another I get into a career and work on up from there. The prospect of teacher training was always appealling and the idea of being a postgraduate something beyond my ideas of what I could achieve. So that was the plan... one way or other, work hard and there you go.

Now though, I find out there are a total of TWENTY, yes only twenty spaces on the teacher training for history. In addition, the necessity of a first class degree in order to obtain funding makes postgrad not only the hard stretch it always was, but something that I may well be over my head in. I need an average mark of 70 or above and at least half my papers to be that level too. I have recently found out two things that turn the completley uninticingly scarce job market from a grown-up worry to an all too grim future for myself.

1) You cant dual-qualify yourself at Jordanhill for teacher training. So I have wasted 3 years studying bloody political science with a bunch of moronic socialists who go on amnesty international rallies, when I could have been doing all history. This in turn also makes me less employable should I, and it is very unlikely that I will, get into teacher training.

2) I got a mark of 60 for a politics essay. I got this under the tutor who I have only ever received first class marks from before. All logic is out the window and now it is time to FREAK.

But not too fast. I always freak. Then I panic. Then I spend the better part of a year overcoming panic attacks. Then I get back to normal and some shite happens. No more! I'm going to lie back and be cucumberesque, because I beleive I do worry my life away, and lets face it what is the worst that could happen? I don't get into teacher training, I don't get a first and therefore don't do a masters, and I have to face the harsh reality of joining the oversubscribed group of graduate jobseekers (yea, thanks universities for accepting any high school student who turned up enough to get a B and 2 Cs at higher) and work some job earning less that someone who works in tesco.

It's all shit if you look at it through shit tinted speccies. I don't have such eyewear, yet I'm pretty sure I was born with jobby coloured contacts in. My glass is not half full, and it is not half empty. It's split on the floor because I knocked over in a freak out and then no-one can drink 50% of a glass of water.

Ah well I think I'll just go freak out. And nurse my food-poisoned kitty cat.