I should be writing about it. The really cool thing. But not here. I interviewed someone and now I have to turn it into an article for one of Oxford’s student publications, but you can draw a reasonable conclusion about how well I’m doing from the fact that I’m writing a blog post about how I should be writing an article.

I’m not really sure how this happened. I don’t even write for this publication. Well, I didn’t think that I did. I guess I must do. I got as far as downloading an application form before deciding that I didn’t stand a chance against any of the other people who would be applying, and that my time would be better spent doing work towards my course or watching hilarious videos of ketchup-dispensing robots. Mostly watching hilarious videos of ketchup-dispensing robots. But about 2 hours before the application deadline I ran out of hilarious videos of ketchup-dispensing robots to use as a means of avoiding doing work towards my course. So I applied. And I didn’t hear anything back. Not even a polite, “thanks for your application but OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS? HAHAHAHAHA!” Just nothing at all.

Nothing at all until about two weeks later, when I got an email from the editor with the subject line “Urgent interview” asking whether I knew anything about physics because he’d booked a phone interview later that week with Professor Jeff Forshaw. Or Professor Jeff Fo’ Sho’, to give his street name. I figured it was just a generic email that had been sent to all applicants because he needed to find an interviewer at short notice. And fair enough, I thought, but it would be polite to reply. So I did, briefly and taking care not to commit myself to anything, just asking whether he’d found someone and whether the interview was about the Higgs update earlier that day (the Higgs update was earlier that day) and he responded by copying me into an email to Jeff Forshaw explaining that I’d be in touch to confirm the time of the interview and I think it was at about that point that my internal monologue started screaming.

I got a lot of nice emails and texts from people telling me not to panic. I even got these from people that I hadn’t mentioned my heightened state of panic to, which says a lot about my ability to disguise my heightened state of panic. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t think that I should. In fact, I vehemently believed that I shouldn’t. I recognised that it would be a really good thing for me to do, but also that it would be cockish to take the assignment just on that basis when there were heaps of more capable and experienced students who could do a better job. I hadn’t interviewed anyone before. I hadn’t even written anything before. Not properly. It seemed a bit unwise to interview Professor Jeff Forshaw for my first assignment instead of, like, Big Keith that owns the local kebab van or something. I felt like I was being thrown in at the deep end. With sharks for armbands.

As it turned out, the interview went better than I expected it to, in that I didn’t burst into tears or vomit or say anything overtly racist. I was nervous and awkward and I severely misjudged the timing, but I guess that knowing how to structure and pace an interview properly is something that’s learnt. I’m not sure that it was fair on Forshaw that I had to learn it in his, but he was very forgiving. Actually, he was ace; he even offered to answer some questions that I ran out of time for by email, which was dead nice of him. And despite the fact that I was wholly inept, it was one of the coolest things that I’ve ever been given the opportunity to do. I got to listen to a frickin’ professor of theoretical physics – and not just a professor of theoretical physics, but someone that became a professor theoretical physics when he was still a foetus – talk at some length and with extraordinary clarity about stuff that I only had a very rudimentary understanding of, and there is something brilliantly inspiring about hearing someone speak with raw enthusiasm about the thing that they’ve chosen to dedicate their life to. In a Wigan accent.

How I felt by the end of the interview.

So, there you go. I did a thing. I stopped telling people how incapable of doing things I was for a few minutes and actually went ahead and did a thing. And I ended up really enjoying  it, although the nerves were disproportionately intense enough for that to probably count as some kind of masochism. And now I have to go back to writing about it properly, which so far has mostly involved mashing my keyboard with my fists and crying. Happy 2012!

Last year I was drunk when I tried to write a post-Christmas blog post so I only really had the capacity to recycle three jokes that I’d written 12 months before. This year I am not drunk because it is 8am.

Not very drunk.

I’m still at home. I was only supposed to be home for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but staying here instead of going back to student accommodation means that I don’t have to shower in cold water or live on pasta and toast and dust. I’ll probably go back today. I’ve run out of stuff to wear. I couldn’t carry any clothes when I travelled home for Christmas. Good thing my mum had me covered.

I am 21 years old.

Did you have a good Christmas? I had a good Christmas. It was quiet though. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but getting on with your family and not having any fights or arguments or throwing their terrible gifts in their stupid fucking faces is all well and good until you’re trying to write something entertaining about it on your blog a few days later. Saying that, there was a moment when I thought it was all going to kick off. My eldest brother, Iain, was watching a film and Doctor Who was on and my mum said, “didn’t Heather want to watch Doctor Who?” and Iain said, “I don’t know” and I said, “it’s okay, I can watch it on iPlayer.” So that was close.

Iain gave me a DVD. Sharktopus. Apparently he wanted to get Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus but HMV didn’t have it. Sharktopus was a joke present but my mum forgot to give me my main present from him and his girlfriend, so I thought he’d just got me Sharktopus. I was really happy with just getting Sharktopus. Rightly:

When I first watched that trailer about a year ago I thought, “this is ridiculous. Sharktopus would never be able to use its tentacles to walk on land like that” but a few weeks ago I saw this video and now I realise that actually the whole thing is entirely plausible and realistic that is what makes it a horror.

This year is the first year that I’ve had shit eyes, so I was given two glasses cases. One for each glass. One has Pac-Man on it and the other says “@AbrasiveShrub” in fluorescent green letters because I am a brand now. I also got a bag with Daffy Duck on it and two Disney hoodies and two novelty hats and some lego jewellery and a Spongebob SquarePants calendar and all sorts of other things that accurately reflect my wants and, by extension, the fact that I am having a mid-midlife crisis. They’re not supposed to be ironic statements or anything. If I wear a Disney jumper and a novelty hat and a lego bracelet then I am still a kid because I can’t be an adult because LOOK AT THE HAT YOU GUYS AN ADULT WOULD NOT WEAR THIS HAT.

An adult would not wear this hat.

I am wearing that hat.

I never know how to end these posts.

IN A BIT.

I am at home. Not my Oxford pseudo-home. My actual proper Swadlincote home. It’s 5am on Christmas Day and I think I fell asleep on the sofa some time around 12.30 and my dog just woke me up with his incessant barking and now nobody else is up and I can’t get back to sleep. He never barks like that unless there’s someone at the door. There wasn’t anyone at the door, but THERE ARE PRESENTS EVERYWHERE YOU GUYS SANTA MUST HAVE BEEN WHILE I WAS SLEEPING I AM SO EXCITED!

I haven’t finished wrapping presents yet. Also, when I say, “I haven’t finished wrapping presents yet” what I mean is, “I started trying to wrap presents at about 10.30pm and had managed to do four and cover my room in cellotape by 11.15pm and then I got my mum to do the rest for me because DIFFICULT and I still haven’t put gift tags on any of them and now I can’t remember which are for whom because THEY ARE DISGUISED BY WRAPPING PAPER WHAT A TERRIBLE INVENTION.” So Christmas will be a surprise for everyone this year. I hope my gran likes Skyrim.

This is very brief and I don’t have anything interesting to say. I’m mostly writing it because people keep complaining about how bad I am at keeping this thing updated. So here is an update. And now I am going to take my dog for a walk and then wait for my family to wake up and give them their presents and watch awful television and play with novelty gifts and eat too much and get drunk and probably break at least one ornament. Maybe before noon. Merry Christmas!

Christmas, exactly as it should be.

They say that the best way to attract and maintain a blog readership is to write nothing for 6 months at a time and treat your audience with contempt and flagrant disrespect.

You’ve put on weight.

Hey, it’s a good job that this blog has 7 other reliable authors writing on it or it wouldn’t have been updated at all since May! OH SNAP.

Lots has happened since my last post here. Some people got sick. Some people died. I didn’t write anything for a bit because I am a small, weak and emotionally fragile child that failed to cope with the basic concept of human mortality. But I am back now. You lucky people.

In my absence, I have aged. I am 21 now, in my final year of university, and I really need to get my shit together. A lot of my friends here are in the process of applying for postgraduate courses and I would quite like to but OH MY GOD SO EXPENSIVE. I have spent every single day since the beginning of my degree consumed by the guilt of paying so much to sit around looking pensive for 3 years, and I reckon that, as much as I might really want to do it, if I spent more loaned money on a master’s the contrition would make me explode. I think that I should probably just get a job. It doesn’t matter what job. Any job at all. If one of you has a fence that needs painting or something, I am definitely up for that. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide what it is that I want to do, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I am in no position to pick and choose. Everyone wants to write, and far too many are more qualified, experienced and academically able than I am for me to stand any chance of success. Even just at this one university there are shitheaps of people that want to do the same thing that I wanted to do and they’re all smarter than I am. And extending that across the rest of the country serves to demonstrate reason #493 that I will be perpetually unemployed.

Every so often I’m asked about what I want to do after I leave Oxford, and if I’m honest enough to mention that really my main aspiration is just to earn enough to buy food then I’m met with varying levels of derision depending on who I’m talking to and how unrealistically high their expectations of me are. But I think that a lot of what some might perceive as my lack of ambition stems from the fact that Oxford was something that I sort of fell into and even after 2 years I don’t think that I’ve ever really settled into the idea of being here. Having flat-out ignored every Aimhigher presentation given at my secondary school with the stubborn preconception that it was way too expensive and I was way too stupid, it wasn’t until I was 17 and one of the teachers at my new sixth form suggested, with a surprising lack of irony, that I apply to Oxbridge that I even considered trying for university. And even by the time I came to apply – even by the time I’d got an offer from Oxford – there was never any certainty that I’d go through with it because THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE POUNDS A YEAR YOU GUYS ARE YOU SERIOUS? There was never a point where I decided, “right, this is what I’m doing now and this is where it’s going to take me” because I’ve always felt like Oxford is this amazing little bubble of privilege where I get to spend 3 years living on loans and bursaries and pretending to be smarter and richer than I am before it bursts and everything goes back to being how it was before. Like I’ve been plucked out of nowhere and for no good reason and allowed to see a part of society that I barely even knew existed, but that I shouldn’t get too comfortable because it’s only for a short while. I imagine that, all being well, I will leave here next summer with an average grade from an above-average university and that will be the end of it all.

Anyway to cut a long story short I’ve decided to become a drug baron and force anyone that manages to find graduate-level employment to carry out menial tasks and refer to me as Kingpin Stevens.

Oh my God, I haven’t seen you in FOREVER! How’ve you been?!

RHETORICAL, SHUT UP.

I’ve been pretty great, since you were wondering. You know, I was worried that becoming a prize-winning writer would turn me into a self-obsessed asshole but I don’t think that it has. I think that I’ve handled it beautifully, but I guess I’m just like that, you know? I kind of expected that people might behave differently towards me, and they haven’t, but they’re probably just trying to be respectful of the fact that I’m still the same person, really. I’m still me, you guys! Actually my friends in particular have been great about it, trying to act like nothing’s changed and saying stuff like, “Heather, it’s not even a sunny day and anyway we’re in a cinema, why are you wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses?” and then I’m always like, “That’s cute, you guys, but shhh! You shouldn’t use my real name in public. I just want to be allowed to lead a normal life!” because despite everything I’m still really down-to-earth.

You know what I should be doing right now? I should be writing a blog post. But not this one. A science one. At the end of last term, before I became a prize-winning writer and realised that I’d never have to work again, I saw that my university’s student science magazine was recruiting. I emailed them detailing my expansive, chasmic lack of experience and asking whether there was anything that I might be able to do despite it, and now I am their “blog manager”. My only problem with that is that I don’t really like the term “blog manager”, because I think that claiming that I’m the “manager” of the blog is a bit wanky, so I’m thinking of changing it to something less conceited like “BLOG OVERLORD” or “KING OF BLOG”.

This week is the first week that I’m supposed to be writing a post, and so far I’ve mostly spent my time smashing things against my keyboard and screaming. There are a lot of reasons that I am finding it really difficult. One of them is a problem that I was aware of before I became THE BLOGINATOR, but that I’d kind of hoped would go away if I ignored it for long enough, much like EVERYONE THAT I HAVE EVER LOVED, THANKS TO YOU, INTERNET. When Matt first let me start blogging here, I sort of had this half-baked idea that I might want to practise writing something a bit sciencey. The vague tone of that last sentence is indicative of how confident I was about the idea, and any resolve that I might have had to start with completely evaporated after my third post here, when I gained a regular audience – a relatively small one, but one that consists pretty much entirely of people that are smarter than I am, far better at writing than I am, and that know a shitload more about science than I do. I gave up on the “writing something a bit sciencey” idea because it seemed far less intimidating to just dick around than it did to practise writing properly about subjects that a lot of you probably know more about, and could write more competently about, than me anyway. I don’t really know how I thought that the shit-scared-of-my-audience thing would somehow stop being an issue once I was writing on a blog read almost exclusively by students at the University of Oxford, but at least now I can say for sure that whatever reasoning my subconscious was using at the time was FUCKING APPALLING and that I should never be allowed to make decisions for myself ever again.

I think I assumed that if I managed to become involved in a student publication then I wouldn’t be able to chicken out, because if I did chicken out then I’d be screwing people over, and I hate screwing people over. So I sort of figured that my pathetic fear of disappointing people would force me to write, but it’s turned out to be almost crippling, because at the moment I’m so concerned about screwing up that I’m finding it really difficult to write anything. Logically, I know that my first post isn’t going to be a good post, and that I won’t get better unless I practise, but at least if I write a really bad post here then I just end up looking like a bit of a bell-end. If I write a really bad post on the student science blog then I might make other people look like bits of bell-ends, and I don’t really want to make other people look like bits of bell-ends.

My friends keep telling me that it’s a confidence thing and that I’d be surprised by the number of people that think they’re rubbish at what they do when really they’re not, and then they bitchslap me across the face and tell me to man the hell up because all of my friends are really misogynistic. But then I think, just because a whole heap of people think that they’re rubbish when they’re not doesn’t mean that I’m not actually right about being rubbish. I don’t tell my friends that though because they are better at arguing than me and also have really strong pimp hands. Plus, maybe they are right. Maybe it is a confidence thing, and I’d find it a lot easier to write if I spent less time telling myself how bad at writing I am and more time working at being less bad at writing.

PROBABLY NOT THOUGH.

Hey you guys! I won a prize for my last blog post! I am a prize-winning writer! Like Jay Kay Jamiroquai Rowling!

I won two £5 ice cream vouchers. It was the first prize for “best Oxford Lost blog post”. Probably also “only Oxford Lost blog post”. Also, technically the whole team won it, even though I wrote the blog post. I won it on their behalf. I will also consume £10′s worth of ice cream on their behalf.

I’ve never won anything before. Actually, that’s a lie. When I was 10 I won a chocolate Easter egg for giving the best class presentation about volcanoes. I even built a paper-mâché volcano to use as a prop. I think I might have been in a pair with Matt, but equally I might have made that up. It was either Matt or a boy called Saul who I used to be best friends with until I called him a girl and he flashed his willy at me. It was quite a strong counterargument. Apart from that, though, I’ve never won anything before, although my mum once won £25 in a local newspaper competition because in her entry she propositioned the editor. So I’m working my way up to that.

I guess that now I’m a prize-winning writer you’ll want to know more about my life and that, because not everyone knows what it’s like to be a prize-winning writer. I’m not in Oxford anymore. I’ve been not in Oxford anymore since March 11th. March 11th was the day before I became a prize-winning writer. It’s weird, looking back and seeing how different everything was. I go back to Oxford in about 2 weeks, and then I have exams that I haven’t worked hard enough for. I have worked pretty hard. The main reason that I haven’t written anything in the last month is that I haven’t really done anything worth writing about, like going outside, because I’ve been working for my exams. But I haven’t worked hard enough, because this is Oxford, and my tutors won’t think that I’ve worked hard enough until my brain has started bleeding out of my ears. More positively: I’ve managed to find a project! At the end of last year I wrote that I’d spent most of my first term failing to find a project. But I have totally gone and found a project. I’m doing a palaeontology project, partly as a fuck you to Richard Leakey, and partly because I really dig fossils.

God, I hope you all saw what I just did there, because that was really beautiful.

Hey, guess what I am!

Guess what I am!

YEAH!

Actually, I tell you what, I have done one thing of note since my last blog post. I went to London again for another Talkfest. I’m not going to write about Talkfest because at this stage I don’t think that Alice Bell or the Biochemical Society would want to be associated with this blog post, and also because Martin Robbins was on the panel and one of the first things that he said was “look past my penis”, so now if I tried to write about it I think I’d really struggle to look past the fact that Martin Robbins said “look past my penis”. Here is a link with a podcast and some other people’s blog posts about it instead.

I’m probably not going to write another post until after my exams, so on MONDAY 18TH AND 25TH APRIL at 9PM put your tellyboxes on to BBC4 because ADAM RUTHERFORD has a new TWO-PART SERIES called THE GENE CODE and it is proper ace and that. He doesn’t masturbate or eat sea urchin jizz in it like he did in his last series, but you should watch it anyway. Seriously, he does this magic trick with sparkly DNA floating out of his hands, you are going to love it.

It’s 5am. I don’t know how this keeps happening.

In my last blog post I said that I was going to go hitchhiking for charity with my friends Conor and Yasha, and since then I’ve been hitchhiking for charity with my friends Conor and Yasha, which is a pretty lucky coincidence I guess. We went with a Hitchhiker’s Guide theme, and at about 9pm on the day before we did it we decided that we should probably think about sorting out costumes or something. Conor and Yasha said that they’d picked up a cardboard box from a construction site that we could maybe make into a robot costume if I wanted to go as Marvin. I was sort of confused about why neither of those two wanted to dress up in the awesome robot costume that we were about to build, but I said yes anyway. I was pretty excited.

GONNA MAKE A ROBOT COSTUME! LIKE A BOSS!

IT IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME!

FUCKIN' LOVE ROBOTS!

:D:D:D:D

Oh.

The main issue with my Marvin costume was that it wasn’t going to fit in a car. I mean, there were a lot of issues with my Marvin costume. But the not fitting in a car thing was definitely the main one, so I tried to make a smaller robot torso. I also made some robot arms out of foil and paper. It was beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful in my life, apart from maybe the team picture that I made.

Unfortunately, I’d paid so much attention to the aesthetic design of my costume that I’d totally neglected practical details like the ability to withstand wind or rain or the cruel laughter of passers-by, and it fell apart before we’d even left Oxford. We tried to fix it on the coach to our AS YET UNKNOWN DESTINATION 100 MILES AWAY, which turned out to be POOLE, and it stayed together for roughly 30 seconds after we’d arrived.

In this picture Yasha is holding my foil-face together and I am telling Pac-Man that his costume is shit.

Marvin is currently at a recycling plant somewhere in Poole. I like Poole. Here is a nice picture that we took in Poole:

Yay! Poole!

We realised quite quickly that it was going to be really difficult for us to get a ride because before we’d dumped our robot costume we looked like a band of homeless children, and now we looked like a band of homeless children that didn’t even have a robot costume. We found a petrol station and decided to stand outside it to increase our chance of getting picked up because you hardly ever see homeless children without robot costumes standing outside petrol stations, and also because there would probably be some cars stopping there. We got a lot of apologetic looks and “good luck!”s as people drove straight past us, and then after about 15 minutes a car stopped and offered us our first lift! Well, the car didn’t offer. The driver offered. But the car didn’t object.

The driver’s name was Keith, and he told us that he had lived in Poole for all of his 54 years. From the minute we got into the car he told us a relentless stream of jokes. He said that he was on his way to the pub. I liked Keith.

Keith told us a joke about nuns bumming.

Keith is great!

We love Keith.

Then Keith asked if it was okay if he took us on a “5 or 10 minute detour” because he wanted “to show [us] something” and I sort of accidentally said yes.

UH-OH.

KEITH JUST TOLD US A JOKE ABOUT NUNS BUMMING! WHAT IF HE WANTS US ALL TO BUM? I’VE JUST TOLD HIM THAT IT’S OKAY FOR US ALL TO BUM!

It was okay though, because we’d remembered to send the event organisers our location, car model and registration number when we got in the vehicle. Team LOST would save us!

We hadn’t remembered to send the event organisers our location, car model and registration number when we got in the vehicle. Rookie error.

ROOKIE ERROR THAT COULD END IN BUMMING.

Luckily, Keith didn’t make us bum. He took us to an amazing viewpoint that overlooked all of Poole, and pointed out Sandbanks and Corfe Castle in the distance. He also asked whether we wanted to get some tea or coffee from a snack bar there but we declined because Conor still had his “STRANGER DANGER” face on. I think Keith noticed, because as we were pulling out he said, “I bet you were worried that I was taking you to star in a grubby porn movie or something for a minute there,” and I said that we’d actually expected that to happen and were a bit disappointed that it didn’t, and we all laughed, and lo, there was no bumming.

Mostly Homeless.

Keith dropped us off on the A348, about 15 minutes away from where we’d started, and as we got out of the car he asked whether we would adopt him if we won the lottery. I really liked Keith and decided that he wouldn’t take up much space, and that if I won the lottery I could just buy a really big shed or something to keep him in, so I said yes, but thinking about it now it probably won’t happen because I forgot to get his contact details. So if you know a guy called Keith that drives a car and lives somewhere in the south of England, let us know because that’s probably him.

We were still on that same stretch of road 2 hours after I’d agreed to adopt Keith, and during those 2 hours quite a lot of inexplicably angry people had shouted racial abuse at us, or told us to “get a fucking job” as they drove past. Someone pulled up with 2 spare seats in their car and said they could take us if I agreed to go in the boot, and they seemed really hurt and confused when we said no, but that was all we got. For 2 hours. There is no way that we could have gotten any fewer lift offers if we’d been wearing hockey masks, carrying blood-soaked chainsaws and naked from the waist-down.

And then a man called Graham picked us up in a pink limo bus with disco lights.

YASHA LOVES PINK LIMO BUSES WITH DISCO LIGHTS!

Even though we were in there for about 20 minutes, it’s really difficult to describe what it was like being inside a pink limo bus with disco lights. Here is a video that I found on YouTube of the pink limo bus with disco lights. IT IS ENTIRELY REPRESENTATIVE OF OUR EXPERIENCE IN THE PINK LIMO BUS WITH DISCO LIGHTS!

Graham dropped us off just outside of Ringwood, and we took his card because DCS Limos, based in Bournemouth and Poole, can guarantee that you will arrive at your destination in the ultimate of style and luxury! From there, we managed to get rides pretty easily, probably because after our ride in the pink limo bus with disco lights we were looking really smug, and smug homeless children without robot costumes are adorable! We got picked up by a couple driving to Reading, one of whom asked whether we’d gone with a Hitchhiker’s Guide theme (FUCKING YES, IN YOUR FACE PAC-MAN!) and said that her name was Lintilla, which was also the name of a character in the Hitchhiker’s Guide radio series, and that she had a book signed by Douglas Adams. Shamefully, I can’t remember the name of the guy that was driving. I can’t actually remember much beyond the pink limo bus with disco lights. Mostly because I was doing a 100 mile hitchhike on 45 minutes sleep and I started to crash. Also because my mind was consumed by the pink limo bus with disco lights. I do remember that we drove through the New Forest, which was beautiful, but that in my sleep-deprived state I got it mixed up with the National Forest and was really confused because I live in the National Forest and had no idea that my house was so close to Poole.

By the time we were dropped off in Reading it was dark, a bit rainy and really cold, and I was starting to think that the decision to not wear a coat in order to accommodate for my awesome robot costume was misjudged. One passer-by saw me shivering and offered us bus fare to get back to Oxford, and when I told her we were doing a charity hitchhike and weren’t allowed to pay for any transport she sponsored us for £10, which was very generous of her. As we were talking to her, we were offered a lift by a man on his way home from Sandhurst that was wearing cream trousers and a blazer and a bow tie, and we unquestioningly said yes because he was a man that was wearing cream trousers and a blazer and a bow tie. He took as far as Wallingford, where we got a lift from a young woman called Izzy who was exhaustingly enthusiastic and chatty and lovely, and whose front passenger seat was broken so every time she stopped I nearly went through her windscreen. I’m not sure where she dropped us off – somewhere near the Dorchester I think. Somewhere really close to Oxford. Flagging down a final lift seemed to take forever, probably because we knew how close we were, and also because by this stage even standing in the cold and the rain I was struggling to stay awake. When a car did eventually stop ahead of us, Conor and Yasha made me run to it with them, which was pretty inconsiderate because they both know that I’m a former cripple and also really really lazy.

Our last lift was with a guy that was in our year, but at Oxford Brookes, and he was nice enough to drive further than he’d planned on going so that we’d have a mile or so less to walk to get back to our student union and finish, which we did at about 8.30pm, 7 hours after we’d arrived in Poole. I don’t remember the half hour walk back to college afterwards, but I do remember waking up on my bed at about 10am on Sunday, fully clothed and with my light still on. I’ve had insomnia for the past 2 years, but if I’d known that all it took to get a decent night’s sleep was a 100 mile charity hitchhike and a ride on a pink limo bus with disco lights I’d probably have done it sooner.

For me, the hardest thing about what we did wasn’t the cold, or the rain, or our deeply upsetting separation from Marvin soon after we arrived in Poole. It was the transient nature of all of the interactions that we had. When we got out of Keith’s car, the first that we’d had a lift in, I turned to the guys and said, “we’ll never meet him again.” I almost instinctively try to make friends with everyone that I meet (much to their annoyance and detriment), so it was weird – difficult, even – to think that this relationship that we’d just initiated with a bloke that was kind enough to let us into his car, tell us jokes and offer to buy us tea was cut dead as soon as we got back onto the roadside. I don’t think that Conor or Yasha were anywhere near as affected by it as I was. They were probably more concerned about, like, not getting kidnapped or something. Boys are weird.

We’re still taking sponsorship (it didn’t close on March 10th like we’d initially thought), if you fancy donating a couple of quid. Thanks so much if you’ve donated already. We’ve raised £510, which I think is properly ace. It’ll make a massive difference to the charities that we’re supporting, and that I outlined in my previous, far less lengthy blog post.

Christ, It’s 6.51am. I should probably go and get my 45 minutes of sleep.

http://www.justgiving.com/Conor-Newman

HEY YOU GUYS!

I’m doing a thing. It’s on Saturday. I’m being sponsored for doing a thing on Saturday. “What thing are you being sponsored to do on Saturday?” I hear you ask. “It’s really rude to interrupt me with questions when I haven’t even finished writing,” you hear me answer, which is awkward, because you weren’t supposed to hear that. I don’t really know how that happened. We’re not even in the same room.

Hitchhiking. I’m hitchhiking, and I’m hitchhiking with my friends Conor and Yasha because they’re quite big and male and so will reduce the risk of me getting kidnapped, and also because I guess their personalities are tolerable, a little bit, maybe. But mostly just the first thing. We’re taking part in Oxford LOST, where a load of us are gonna get shoved into a coach, driven to an unknown location 100 miles away and then forced to find our way back without spending any money. By hitchhiking. Yasha showed me this:

SEA. WALES. IPSWICH.

There’s a pretty good chance that we could end up in the sea. There’s a smaller, but more frightening, chance that we could end up in Ipswich. You should sponsor us so that if we get kidnapped/drown/get dropped off in Ipswich, you’ll feel less guilty!

Our team is called Mostly Harmless because we are gigantanerds, and the money that we raise goes to charity. Initially, we thought that all of the money was going to Shelter, but it’s actually being split between 4 charities: Shelter, Helen & Douglas House, Pathway Workshop and Emerge Global. I’ve supported Shelter and Helen & Douglas House for a while now; Shelter does incredible work to provide support for the homeless and those in need of adequate housing or in risk of losing their homes, and Helen and Douglas House is a charity with two hospice houses in Oxford that provides care for children and young people with life-shortening conditions, as well as support for their families. Pathway Workshop and Emerge Global are two charities that I’ve only recently become aware of, and they’re amazing. Pathway Workshop basically provides training and then paid employment for adults that have disabilities, and Emerge Global helps young Sri Lankan women who have survived abuse to develop their confidence and self-sufficiency through jewellery design. I’ve linked to all of their websites so you can read more about them or find out how to get involved if you want to. Which you do. Sure you do.

We have until the end of term (March 10th) to get sponsorship, and so far we’ve raised £347, which I think is ridiculous – when Conor, Yasha and I first decided that we wanted to do this about 3 weeks ago, we weren’t even sure that we’d be able to raise the minimum £70 sponsorship each. We hit our first target of £210 within a week and almost all of that came through online donations. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I’m pretty stoked that you guys have been so generous. If you have sponsored us, then thanks so much. If you haven’t, do! Or, y’know, don’t. It’s okay. But even a couple of quid will make a difference, so if you can donate anything then that would be ace. Also, I made the team picture that’s on our JustGiving page, so if charity isn’t your thing and you don’t want to sponsor us, commission me to design professional graphics for your website!

I'm a fucking artist.

So, that’s how I’m spending my Saturday. I hope I’m only spending my Saturday doing that. We might never come back. We’ve never hitchhiked before, so I have no idea what our hitchhiking skills are like. Undeveloped, I guess. Last year one team raised £1500 and managed to get a lift in a light aircraft. I’ll be honest, we probably won’t be able to do either of these things. But I’m pretty excited. It should be fun. I hope it doesn’t rain. I bet it’ll rain. Everyone should double their sponsorship if it rains.

Did I give you guys the link?

I can’t remember whether I gave you guys the link or not.

I should probably give you guys the link.

Here it is:

http://www.justgiving.com/Conor-Newman

BYE! x

Hello! I wrote this for my college newsletter. Like everything that I create, it’s pretty terrible, but it was accidentally maimed by the editor during formatting so I’m posting it up here so that my friends who read it in print can see it in its full horror. My funnier, smarter friend Conor wrote a much better piece for it. You should read his blog.

Valentine’s Day, which was first conceived in 1967 as a national holiday celebrating the work of Irish singer Val Doonican according to this Wikipedia page that I just edited, can be pretty hard. For single people, it can act as a constant, glaring reminder of how sad, miserable and lonely their lives are. For people that aren’t single, it can act as a constant, glaring reminder of how sad, miserable and long their lives will be if the relationship works out and they have to go through the whole thing every year until they die. In an effort to make things easier, I’ve written some tips that I think will improve February 14th for everyone!

1. No more roses. Roses are covered in tiny dangerous knives! Nothing says “I have not thoroughly considered the potential ramifications of my gift” like a rose. If you’re into the whole plant thing, why not give your loved one a potato? Everyone loves potatoes, and if your valentine has the misery of their single friends on their conscience then they can donate it to one of them because potatoes are perfect for yet another lonely meal for one!

1. Either your valentine is too old for teddy bears clutching pink hearts that say “Be mine”, or you’re doing something illegal. I recommend taxidermy as an alternative. Not only will this demonstrate your commendable maturity, but this way, no matter how cold and devoid of feeling the eyes of your valentine might be whilst you’re trying to make conversation over dinner, they will always be warmer and more loving than those of the dead badger sitting on the mantelpiece beside you.

1. Sometimes, things go wrong, and you realise that it is important that your valentine knows about these things, but you don’t want to upset them on such a special day. So tell them in a poem! Who said that honesty and romance were mutually exclusive? Nobody! That question was rhetorical! Here is an example:
   Roses are red,
   Violets are blue,
   I slept with your sister.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

So how was it, then? You know. That thing. That thing where we all celebrated the birth of a fat beardy guy in a red suit. Christmas. Mine was nice. I probably ate too much. I definitely drank too much. What did you get? I got drunk and novelty socks. Also books. Lots and lots of books. I think that my family are starting to begrudgingly accept that I’m a massive nerd. I didn’t really own books before. Now I definitely own books. Many, many books. What do you call a group of books? A murder or something isn’t it? That’s usually the answer. A murder. I got a murder of books. Maybe even a massacre. So many goddamn books. Goddamn love books though, damn it. Damn. God damn.

Here are some jokes:

Who’s the most famous married woman in the USA?
Mrs. Sippii!

Why don’t ducks tell jokes while they’re flying?
Because they would quack up!

How do snails keep their shells shiny?
They use snail varnish!

HAHAHA.

I didn’t write those. They were in our Christmas crackers. They’re hilarious because of the exclamation marks that they put on the end of the punchlines. Look at how hilarious this sentence is! And this one! Not this one though. This one’s Australian AND hilarious?!

Here are a few of my old jokes that will tragically never make it into any Christmas crackers because they lack enthusiastic punctuation, and also do not in any way follow the format of Christmas cracker jokes:

I bought my infinite number of monkeys some typewriters for Christmas. They mostly just pulled the keys off and shat on them.

The tension on this bus is so thick I could cut it with the large, blood-soaked axe that I have in my hand.

Snow is like a newborn baby: wondrous and beautiful at first, but then the novelty wears off and you just want to maim it with a shovel and throw salt at it.

I imagine that you will have already read those on twitter because I imagine that you read everything that I post on twitter. I imagine that whilst I’m lying in the foetal position naked, crying and clutching my laptop to my chest.

I should probably go and interact with the family now. Or at least put some clothes on. If I don’t write again before 2011: Happy New Year!

If I do write again before 2011 then I hope you have a miserable New Year.