Success

I have been hunting down this song for SO LONG and I just somehow stumbled across it. 
Hell. Yes. Let’s dance. Duke Dumont will forever remind me of this second year at university, he's everywhere at the moment.

It has been beautiful weather today in Newcastle. Glorious sunshine and smiles all round for everyone, I got so excited I even left the house without a coat (though ten minutes later deeply regretted it as the wintery chill was still there. Damn you and your summery vibes, sunshine!). Had a fairly productive day and whizzed around running errands and going to lectures etc. Had a meeting with my enterprise team because….

….the flyers arrived! Alll 500 of them! Don’t they look smart!? We’ve split them so that we have 100 each to disperse around the city and they’re beginning to pop up everywhere. How exciting! Only a week until our event… eek! I’ll be spamming everyone over the next few days with updates on the event and tickets - watch this space!

Also - ahh! They’ve just released the Outlook Festival 2012 highlights video and I’ve been scouring it for us but I don’t think we made the cut. Shucks.

Yummies

I was feeling a bit belugh this morning, but I actually ended up having a really nice day. After my lecture, and once I’d managed to drag Ol from his bed and make him shower, we headed into town and spent at least an hour in Fennick trying to chose me a new perfume and comparing it to my usual. I thought I liked the smell (and look, I'm far too easily persuaded by the bottles...!) of the new Ellie Saab one and sprayed it all over me but turns out it’s actually way too 'orange blossom-y' and has annoyed me for the rest of the day!
I also, finally, after many a month casually lingering around the Bobbi Brown stall, bought the Long Lasting Gel Eyeliner in Caviar Ink which I loooovvveeeeeeee. Naughty naughty as it’s so expensive but I don’t really care if I’m honest because it's so worth the money and it lasts for ages.

We stopped at Yo! Sushi for lunch and had some seriously spoiley food which was so yummy. Oli had tuna and this crazy spicy chilli soup thing, and I had a yakisoba and some edame beans which we washed down with this chocolate mousse-y dome which was literally incredible, seriously melt-in-your-mouth kinda stuff. Yumm.
We then grabbed some boring stuff like stationary and headed back to his halls to chill. I went to the studios for a bit but didnt really get any work done so all in all a pretty spenny and not very productive day but pfftttt…. 
I got back home to find that my housemate's boyfriend had bought her the most gorgeous yellow roses  and they were sat in all their glory in a vase on our kitchen table. Look at them! Magnificent.

Achievements

My first achievements, is that it’s mine and Oli’s two years two months today. Madness! We spent last night partying into the early hours with Oli’s brother Toby and his two friend’s who came up for a few days. Despite being very embarrassed about the video, we went to Tup Tup to The Playground as it was their last night, and absolutely smashed it. Here's a shot taken of Oli and Toby in the club:

I'm feeling a little worse for wear this morning… I stayed over at Oli’s but had no suitable clothes for my lectures today, so had to cobble together an outfit from Fran’s wardrobe (which was not ideal as she’s teeny weeny).

I had the nicest surprise when I got back to my house though, which cheered me up a lot, as I had some post... and it was a letter from my friend Lucia who lives in Spain! We used to write letters to each other all the time but haven’t for about three or four years so it was the most lovely thing to read all about her news. My second achievement is that it was one of my New Years resolutions to keep in touch with old friends and I’m doing alright I think! Bless her, I miss her she’s so lovely. I’ve just had a little facebook stalk of her - she’s so bloody beautiful these days! 

Finally, my last achievement is that I literally just got an email from UNSW saying that they have ‘allocated me a study place’ and that I need to logon to their site and begin my application process! I’m not 100% sure what this all means, I don’t know I’ve I’m one of the five students they’ve selected from Newcastle and just need to get my visas sorted and chose my modules and then everything’s done, or if I have to apply and then they confirm or decline it…. hmmm. Still, I have until the 1st April to get it all sorted but getting my visas is going to take a while to better get started now! “Click here to begin…”

Cesci's Burgers

Millie and I went over to Cesci’s house the evening for drinks and supper. She cooked the most amazing homemade burgers ever - they were delicious! (I'll try and nab the recipe from her and pop it on the end of this post soon.) 
We had lots of cuddles with their bunny (which is genuinely the cutest little thing ever) and stayed chatting for ages. Was so nice to catch up with her and her house and have supper cooked for us! Feeling very fat and happy.

Embarrassed...

We've had such a lovely chilled day. Millie and I wrapped up warm and went for a wander around Jesmond Dene again. She took me to the bridge by the waterfall - it's so beautiful, don’t understand why I’ve never been before! I reckon Oli will be able to take some amazing long-exposure photographs round there. There’s a lovely ruin of an old mill there too - Millie got very snap happy leaping around on the rocks to get a shot of me posing awkwardly on the bridge. It's quite a 'romantic' spot so we were dodging lots of couples but I can see us all coming up here for a paddle when the weather's a littler warmer. Jesmond Dene is amazing for its magical powers of transporting you to the countryside, when really you're still in the centre of a huge city.

I spent the rest of the day having a bit of a spring clean round the house and my room, it feels so much cleaner and fresher now. Plus my valentines lilles are opening out now which makes the room smell so nice. Haven’t got anything on tomorrow so I've done no work today, though I don’t have much to do at all so I'm not feeling too guilty! Oli’s gone to Pip’s house for the day so I have a bit of peace and quite all snugged up in my bed ahhhh. 

There is a reason for me hiding in my bed though... I'm desperately trying to avoid my housemates as they are tearing me to shreds about the recent promotional video that's been released for The Playground at Tup Tup on a Wednesday. About 1:30 into the video I feature very heavily giving the camera lots of drunken pouty dancing, and it is highly embarrassing. Also, the cherry on the cake is that I'm also the thumbnail still which everyone will see as they click play. Extra fun for me...! Despite this, the video is actually pretty good, but right now I just want the ground to swallow me up...

Haythem's 21st

It’s my friend Haythem’s 21st birthday today. He’s on my course and though he’s a total fruit loop I love him to bits and he just so happens to be insanely talented at the guitar. He uses a lot of harmonics and percussive techniques, quite like Andy McKee. He’s totally self taught and sponsored by Stonebridge Guitars who work in Canada and Europe (they made a customised guitar for him for free, just because he’s that damn good). He’s always playing around our department and I love listening to him, the video below is one of his covers, but he writes too. His song called ‘Smile On Through’ which he wrote in memory of a friend of his. Have a listen, it’s so beautiful.

James Joys

My friend Jamie who’s a PhD student at Newcastle University came and did a lecture for our electroacoustic module today. His work is so interesting, I love it. He describes himself with this: ‘Hertzflung throo th’ casual-moss at the wheeeeel aft a wee sprechtship wi’ tha wrought manwelt , a flash of dddrrrams, my schallemele and a hollow’d skin machine’ which is bizarre, but when you know him and his music, it makes total sense…!

He’s done a project called ‘Surrogate City’ which explores the idea of the city being taken away from us with grand yet wholly empty plans of regeneration and his album ‘Glyphic Bloom’ is an experiment into the concept of reclaiming the city in some way. He made field recordings at six sites round Newcastle and then mixed them, making them into tracks for the album.

You can find a wooden plaque at each of these sites with a spectrogram of the track and a QR code which links you to his website where you can download the music and read all about this work. He encourages people to mix and edit and incorporate the tracks into their own work and then to upload them. Each of the tracks also has a ‘Dub Fiction’ which he wrote about the site they were made from and brings together descriptions of the music and site together into a short story-type idea. There’s also a ‘Future Relic’ which is a satirical broadcast in the future describing what has happened to the area.

His concepts are so interesting and his graphics, photography and cinematography that he’s done for the project are beautiful. Get involved: http://www.surrogatecity.com

Valentine's Day

Ahhhhh Oli came up trumps today. He got me flowers AND chocolates! A bunch of white lillies and a single red rose - they look so lovely in my room. I’m so chuffed! The chocolates were like little mini desserts, the créme brûlée and strawberry trifle won hands down. Yum yum yummmmm. We were both kinda busy during the day with lectures and stuff but he took me to a Spanish Tapas restaurant for dinner down on the quayside.  The food was amazing and there was so so much of it, we were stuffed by the end.
After we took a walk along the quayside and popped into Chase to see a few friends before walking back up to his. The millennium bridge was lit up red and looked so pretty over the water. There were loads of couples around, it was hilarious but aside from the cringe-factor it was such a nice evening. Oli should feel proud of himself haha, I was a very spoilt girlfriend!

The Sub Sessions - NSR Live

My friend Chandler has his own show called The Sub Sessions on our student radio every Wednesday from 8 - 9pm. Lock in for some bass, house, electronic, garage, dub and trap music.

Dinner Party

I have done nothing today. Oli and I had great plans to get the metro to the coast and take some lovely long-exposure photographs, but we faffed about for too long all day and then it began to snow… so we called it off.
Last night we went over for dinner as a house to Quicky’s and the boys wined and dined us with some yummy food - pea and chorizo risotto to be precise. Was lovely to sit and drink and chat with everyone, we haven’t been to a dinner for ages. Also we always have the boys over so they owed us big time!
It got to about 11pm and then Georgia pulled her Wild Card and we were all forced to go out. (Basically the rules of the Wild Card are that everyone in the house has one per semester and you can pull it whenever you want and the whole house is forced to go out. You are only exempt if you have an exam/hand-in the next day or are severely ill. The forefit if you don’t go, is either getting your nipple pierced or pouring an entire pint of milk over yourself in the street…) I genuinely have no money at the moment so I was a little annoyed, though I made it out all the same and managed to get in without paying which was lucky! 

Woke up today feeling a bit fragile but made my 9am lecture all the same, and then spent the rest of the day sleeping in Oli’s bed whilst he went to the gym and faffed about. His bed is unbelievably snuggly it’s ridiculous.

It’s also Pancake Day today which had been amazing hangover food and I’m now snugged up in bed feeling fat and lazy. Yumm.

Exam Results

Holy craaappppppp I was so nervous this morning but now I’m feeling a hell of a lot better. I went to my tutorial to get my exam results and I got three 1:1s and three 2:1s which means my application to Sydney has been approved and will be sent off today! A HELLS YEAH!

So happy, I seriously didn’t expect that. I did so much better than I thought, I was super worried about some of the modules, but now I am a free woman and can celebrate a little bit.

Or not. Because my bank account is looking average to poor and means I probably wont be able to eat anything but other people’s leftovers until the 17th. Bravo, well done me, I have fabulous budgeting skills. AHHHHH….

Oli and I went out this evening and took some photographs with the snazzy camera he’s rented out from the photography department. He’s experimenting with long-exposure and was just testing out the camera by doing some classic traffic photographs. They do look pretty good though. It was freezing freezing though so we didn’t stay out very long and snuggled down in bed to watch lots of Dexter.

Just good music

So much good music in Newcastle at the moment. This night is going on tonight...

...and then the Audio Asylum line up for the weeks ahead is amazing too. Happy days.

Freezing and Frustrating

Today has been a bit frustrating and depressing. I was told the maintenance men (who come and fix our house when it’s broken) were coming at 9am to put struts under my collapsing shelf. I got up at 8.30am so that I could have some breakfast and let them in, but by 10am they still hadn’t arrived! So annoying. Also, there was a really high-pitched ringing sound which would couldn’t find out where it was coming from - torture. I left the house in a grump and walked in with Poppy to uni to one of my super-impossible lectures. After that went to the studios for a bit which sounds fun, but realistically it’s just locking yourself in a stuffy soundproof room for a few hours. On my way back I stopped off in the library and had to photocopy hundreds of pages from a book which you can’t take out (which cost me near enough £2) and finally battled through the sleet all the way home.
Ahhh it really has been so freezing today. There’s a little bit of sunshine but it’s weak and you can’t look up into the sky without icy hail biting at your face. It’s so depressing, I have a serious case of the winter blues right now. I’m just going to try and think of some lovely summery things though, here are some photos of Skiathos in Greece where I was in August, and a few from Outlook Festival too…. TAKE ME BACK.

Ella and Maisie playing tennis on the beach in Skiathos.

Maisie on the pool terrace

Camping on the road trip to Outlook 

Oli at Vromolimnos Taverna

Nova

This is a night called ‘Nova’ which my friend set up in Durham. He’s somehow managed to get Ben Pearce to come and do a set - which is amazing! Wish I could have been there but I got no dollar. Check out the video they've just made for it:

Whoops...

I woke up in a fluster today as I set my alarm at 8.30am when I have a 9am lecture!? WHAT WAS I DOING!? I’ve had too weeks off and I guess I’m just out of a routine. I got in the car without shoes or socks on and only half a Berocca as my breakfast. I made it to the lecture room just in time, only to be told that it had been cancelled because the lecturer was ill.
SO. ANGRY.
However I hunted down a course mate and we collapsed on the comfy sofas in Costa to set the worlds to right for an hour, so that was some sort of reconciliation. Still annoying though. Caramel lattes make everything better though.

I headed to Gibb afterwards to go and prise Ol out of bed, and when he headed off to the library to do some research and get some photography books out, I used his laptop to do a bit of work myself. The fire alarm went off and I took a peak out the window to see how many people were actually leaving the building. I saw two or three mosey out and decided it wasn’t worth going outside for. Stubborn as I am, 15 mins later the alarm was still going off and I was still inside and so I finally decided to take another look out the window… only to see a total of THREE fire engines and hundreds of people huddled behind a flock of firemen out there now.... oops.

Only then did I grab my shoes and coat and scuttle out the building, where on my way sheepishly out the door a very angry receptionist grabbed me and bollocked me for being so stupid. I explained it wasn’t my halls and I was just in someone’s room, and made up some crap excuse about not having heard the alarm as “I had headphones on”. She scowled and took down Oli’s room number and floor, and spat in my face saying that he’d get a disciplinary letter for my 'idiocy'. Sucks to be him!

Everyone outside found it pretty funny, however, and three minutes later the alarm stopped and we were all allowed back in. Silly woman. “YOU COULD HAVE BEEN BURNT ALIVE!” By some toast? I don’t think so….

Blow

How have I never seen this film before!? It’s my absolute new favourite.“May the wind always be at your back, and the sun always upon your face, and the wings of destiny to carry you aloft to dance with the stars”.

Also, I found this blog earlier, it covers all the best bits of music, lifestyle and fashion. LOVE.

”The Daily Motive is established in the summer of 2012 to fill a void in the Dutch music & lifestyle industry. With the mission to inspire other youngsters by sharing our love for music and other cool stuff we like.” 

Weekend

What on earth, how is it February already!? The 1st of the month totally passed me by…. didn’t have a clue.
Yesterday we woke up and made some breakfast at mine and then walked to the Hancock to meet everyone and begin the first of the Six Nations matches. For Oli’s house to decide who picks the rooms in what order for their house next year, they’ve pulled teams out of a hat. They got way too into the whole thing and made little wax sealed envelopes, though they are kinda cute!

There’s 8 of them so two teams are doubled up - Oli got England 2. The boys sank a total of 17 pints each at the pub and we stayed there for almost 6 hours…. I was exhausted by the end of it! Afterwards we headed back to Gibb and had a random inspiration to accompany Bea to a house party, though I chickened out last minute as my body was screaming at me to go to bed. They didn’t stay too long though and Oli was back by 2am.

Jake left this morning - was so nice to have him up here again, especially for Mungo's. He’ll be back in a month though for an interview so don’t have to wait too long before we can party again. He’s so fun to go out with, though we’ve all realised he had a strange habit of striking up a serious conversation in the middle of a club when the music is at about 10000db and you cant hear a thing. Bless ‘im.

Today Millie, Oli and I came back to mine and Sarah cooked us an amazing roast which we shared with two of her friends in Leazes, Ilinca and RJ. It honestly tasted amazing, I haven’t eaten properly for about two weeks. We’ve been watching the rugby this afternoon with tea and jaffacakes and are expecting the rest of the house to slowly arrive back in Newcastle some time this evening.

Millie and I are planning a movie marathon this evening and then a very long nights sleep. I badly need to recuperate so that I can get going with some work tomorrow.
Also, one last thing... I woke up this morning and it seems the whole of the world is talking about Beyoncé’s performance at half time last night so I had take a look. HOLY SHIT. And that bit when she’s doing Single Ladies as Destiny’s Child!? Ah man. Dat ass.

Mungo's Hi-Fi

We went to see Mungo's Hi-Fi tonight at World Headquarters. They're amazing reggae DJ's and they have a legendary MC called 'Soom T' who's this tiny little Glaswegian girl who has the most incredible energy in her vocals. It was such a good night, everyone was out and we partied hard until 6am where we shuffled back to Jesmond and collapsed in a heap in Phoebe’s and Sharples’ house. They had the full soundsystem in at WHQ and the sound was RIDICULOUS. Amazing fun to be with Millie and Harry and get the Outlook family back together for a little while and then party with Jake too who came up specially. 

Here are a few shots from Outlook Festival:

February