Spring chicken

I've been a little silent lately- 2 big essays and a dissertation due within the space of 6 weeks proved taxing to say the least. It severely tested my relationship with Microsoft Word and we have had more than one domestic. On the plus side it made my cheeky excursions to my blog that little bit more special (I don't condone infidelity, but in this case it was highly necessary). I may have neglected my writing a little, however I have managed to fit in the occasional snippet of fun amongst the essay doom and, now my dissertation has been bound and submitted, I have the time to catch you up on my recent endeavours.

The sun is now shining at least every few days (close as we tend to get to spring in good old Blighty), the days are getting longer and the country has been in bloom. Although we are all approaching exams, excitement is already starting to bubble for a month's time when most of us will step out of the exam hall for the very last time!! I'm really sad about leaving uni for about a million and one reasons, but no more exams is something I can absolutely celebrate.

So, without further ado, here's what I've been up to over the last few weeks.

I may or may not have mentioned before that my house in Bristol is next door to the Clifton Lido. One of the more upmarket establishments in Bristol, for the lowly student scraping her pennies together the sound of gentle splashing from the pool and the clinking of wine glasses on a sunny day is a monumental tease. The window from my housemate's room looks directly onto it and the phrase 'so close yet so far away' could not be more apt. However, when my mother came to pick me for the Easter holidays, I persuaded her that she needed to 'refuel' before the drive home and dragged her fresh from the car to the Lido entrance.

I had expected a delicious meal, but what followed absolutely blew me away. I went for a wonderful baked hake creation with brown shrimp, scallops and herby yoghurty leeks, the flavours of which clubbed together and threw a party on my tongue worthy of a culinary Project X. Mum went for an amazing goats cheese ravioli type dish with really interesting curry flavours- curry and pasta does work, who knew?! Sorry for being vague; they've changed their menu since so I can't offer a full description, but if you get the chance (and the money) I do not doubt that the rest of their menu will be equally as exquisite.

The Easter holidays were a tad fleeting- only managed to stay home for about 10 days due to library needs. However I managed to take a little break from work for my grandparents' diamond wedding anniversary and a friend's 21st. Anyone who knows my family know that these big family do's involve a lot of a food and even more alcohol, so my 'little break' from work resulted in being steadily pissed for about 14 hours. Queue a hangover the size of Jupiter. It was a really lovely weekend of celebrations nonetheless and could only have been improved if my cousin Jojo had been there to celebrate with the rest of us- however she is currently living the dream in Peru so we can't dwell too much. Miss ya though Joj.

I managed to recover and in between dissertation writing I made a few little trips to Brighton with the mother, where the sun was beaming down on the knick-knacks of the North and South Lanes and we had an outrageous Mexican feast in La Choza, one of the North Laines' multitude of independent restaurants.

On a particularly beautiful day we stopped off at a house which had opened its gardens to the public during spring weekends. The house was incredible on its own (it had a moat. An actual moat), but the garden was the real showstopper, with its own little knick-knacks scattered amongst the greenery, allowing me to indulge my budding inner photographer and attempt to be all arty with my swanky camera.

I'm back in Bristol now for the final straits and am going to try to tick off as many things as I can on my Bristol bucket list. Despite exams bearing down on us all, none of us are the type to do 24 hour library stints so hopefully we can indulge in more evenings like the one below in the White Lion, lapping up the views of beautiful Bristol.

Spring has sprung and is cantering into summer, and we are more than ready to greet it with open arms and a nice, cold beverage.

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On the Road

'The purity of the road. The white line in the middle of the highway unrolled and hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove'

I'm beginning to think I have a weird affinity with roads. My all time favourite song is Tracy Chapman's Fast Car. One of my favourite novels is On The Road by Jack Kerouac. My Pinterest is full of pictures of carefree pals laughing away in cars as miles of road stretch ahead of them. When I think back to my childhood in America, I recall countless family road trips up to snowy Maine or through the redwood forests of Utah or the sun bleached desert of Death Valley, often listening to the same battered CD on repeat as the vastness of the country rolled out before us. As I was driving back to Bristol the other day to set up a more permanent home in the library in the shadow of my dissertation, with a soothing playlist on to calm road rage and watching the sky turn from a pinky-red to a deep indigo, I felt a wave of tranquillity fall on me.

In the age of instant gratification it's easy to see roads as ugly, stressful and dangerous stretches of tarmac, annoying necessities to reach your destination. The romance and excitement of the road which Kerouac and his gang understood all too well is now mostly lost. For me, roads indicate new beginnings, new journeys. When you hit the road, you'll always be going somewhere, and even if that somewhere is nowhere, even the simple act of driving is going somewhere. There is something about a stretch of road from a car windscreen that makes the sky look much bigger, endless, always promising something at the other end. The road in front gallops out before you, elongating and thinning to a point on the horizon where it meets the vastness of the sky and emphasises, without force or aggression, the size of the world you live in. Not in a daunting way; more in a way that takes the weight of everyday stresses from your shoulders and invites you to come, explore, be a part of the wonderful world you live in.

For awhile now I've dreamt of heading back across the pond with a friend or two, renting an old cadillac and driving the ol' Route 66 across America, kick starting with a few days in Boston and New York and revisiting where I grew up in Connecticut. It's definitely my inner book nerd coming through, but I can't help but fantasise about meeting a pair of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty characters and spending the days zooming across the country and nights in old smokey jazz bars or drinking beers under a supremely starry sky stretching over the Midwest prairies.

Ok so maybe this is all a bit romantic. You're more likely to come across a seedy motel than an old jazz bar on America's interstates these days. But the sentiment endures. There's something remarkably calming about the pulse of street lights as the miles pass silently under your wheels. I think roads offer a rare combination of freedom and security. They lead you towards some new adventure, towards different people, different places, different lives. And even when you leave the road for awhile, it'll always be there when you come back, ready to draw you to a new horizon.

'You going someplace? Or just going?'

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A faux-summer Sunday

Hurrah!! The sun is FINALLY showing signs of existing. There were a few ominous weeks where I feared it had deserted 2014 entirely. With the permanently drizzly days, ever-damp shoes and the residents of the Somerset levels having to consider developing gills, it was all looking decidedly bleak.

Oh ye of little faith. England saw an absolute beauty of a weekend. Waking on Sunday to blazing blue skies and a man casually strolling past my window in shorts, I concluded that only in a dream would this madness occur mid-March, however I was joyfully proven wrong. And what do British people do when sunshine graces our eternally damp pavements? Other than getting irrationally overexcited and telling every living creature within a 5 mile radius that the weather is 'just beautiful!'? Grab your pals and head for the BBQ, of course.

Luckily for us, not only did the boys' house have a proper BBQ (none of those flimsy BBQ-in-a-box type things for us, thank you very much), they also happened to have an inflatable hot tub sitting in their garden. Ka-ching. Dusting off our bikinis and sunglasses (literally- mine had a good 2 cm of winter-in-a-student-house build up), we stocked up on BBQ supplies and headed over to make the most of the rays.

The sun-drenched fun didn't end with the barbecue and hot tub, oh no. The boys had pulled their TV out onto their patio and completed what is officially known as the ideal setup. Cracking open some beers and slithering out of clothes and into the hot tub at record breaking speeds (as lovely as the sun is, it came as quite a shock and the post winter bikini body had very little warning), everyone chatted, laughed and munched on barbecued deliciousness while England and Wales battled it out in the Six Nations.

Shrugging off all our work/essay/dissertation woes, we lazed away the afternoon basking in the much-missed sun, accompanied by the slightly weird aroma of barbecue mingling with Radox anti-stress bubble bath. Remarkably pleasant actually.

As the sun slowly edged its way west and left us with a clear starry sky, we lapped up the final moments of our faux-summer afternoon with Toy Story 3 and a few extra bubbles in the hot tub. Perfect weather for a perfect day with perfect company.

Please stay with us for awhile, sun. We've missed you.

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