My Cultured Day Out

Living in the centre of Southampton without a car and without much of a reason to leave, I barely get out of the city.

So when I got the chance to go to Winchester for the day I jumped at it. It felt like I was a child on a school trip - a little bit bored by educative walking tours but just being excited to get out of the classroom.

With all its quaint streets, small tutor buildings and stunning Cathedral, Winchester makes for one very photo-genic city.

So this is my cultured day out in photos…

Winchester Cathedral in some lovely autumn sunshine.

 Somewhere in the middle of the busy high street there's a little door which leads into this beautiful, hidden church.

It was such an unexpected find, but with its big stained glass windows and wooden archways it was a good one

for a few pictures. Even one of the younger sister posing by the pews thrown in there too.

River Itchen running between the city's quaint and old buildings.

You can't go to Winchester and not see the very thing that makes it famous: King Arthur's

Round Table in The Great Hall.

With more of those stained glass windows and arches, it has a really medieval feel. You have expect some knights

to walk into the room and join you.

And saving the best to last; Winchester's ducks! They were easily the healthiest and happiest looking

ducks I've ever seen. And they were hilarious to watch, they would paddle upstream, then stop and let

themselves flow back down again just for fun. Amazing!

And So the End Begins...

I’m writing this at 10 o’clock at night. I’m wearing a onesie, I’m drinking a mug of tea and I’m very happily tucked up in bed for the night.

Being a student, other people my age are just getting ready to go out. For other people, 10 o’clock is the beginning of another typical night - complete with funny drunken conversations and spontaneous trips to McDonalds at two in the morning.

Yet here I am, in the onesie with the tea.

It’s sad really, and I realise that. But honestly, since turning 20 this weekend past, I have physically felt myself get older. It’s as if leaving the teenage years and hitting the brink of a new decade has suddenly thrown me into a new spiral of early nights and no social life.

Now I know that sounds massively dramatic. It’s not as if I’m nearing any form of retirement or signing up to the local bingo yet, but I’ve seriously felt sudden changes in myself since the weekend.

Like my back for example. I kid you not, I have had back pain over the last week. Back pain! I might as well get a zimmer and call it a day.

But with the sudden stiffing of joints, I worry that this aging process has actually been happening for a while now.

I’ve always loved a quiet night in, I think Countdown is actually pretty good and I’ve been considering the benefits of those tartan shopping trolleys grannies use. I seriously think they would be handy for bringing the Asda shop home! That’s bad, isn’t it?

The worst thing about 20 though, is that it’s half way to 40. That seems big. That’s half way to having a house and a mortgage and doing school runs in a Renault Scenic.

And so here in my pyjamas at this painfully early hour it’s as if I feel my youth slipping away. It really feels like a significant downward turn in my life. The beginning of the end.

But still, I’m tempted to just boil the kettle again, stick Countdown on and accept it.

Tech-No Nonsense

It’s always a crushing moment.

That time when you log into Facebook to no notifications. Or check your phone and have no messages after what seems like days since the last one.

And though I’d never claim to be addicted to either, it’s still a heart breaking blow when you realise you’ve been rejected by almost all the forms of media you possess.

But I’ve realised over the last week - when BBM broke down and the world temporarily ended for half the nation – that as a society we’re mad about technology. Stupidly obsessed.

Now don’t get me wrong, Facebook has its advantages when it comes to photo browsing and event inviting -and I’ve even started posting the occasional Tweet myself (a big move forward in the times for me) - but for the majority it’s all so much. Tweeting, posting, liking, tagging and Facebook ‘chatting’ have come to be etched into who we are.

It’s almost as tragic as when people spend hours dissecting each text or every technical action one person could possibly make. “He ‘poked’ me on Facebook, what does that mean?” Well congratulations, I clicked a button once too!

Our friendships, relationships and very personalities are now determined by what’s written in a status or hash tagged in 140 characters. It’s so shallow and meaningless! It’s ridiculous.

And when did we suddenly start needing all of this on our phones? It just takes the twitch of a thumb before you’re back in that social media world, floating around in cyber space.

There’s nothing more annoying than trying to have a conversation with a friend when their hand starts to wander towards their Blackberry and their eyes suddenly glaze over with that blue-ish haze of a screen. Don’t worry, I’ll just sit here and admire the real world while I wait!

I just love the value of real conversation and properly spending time with people. I love really laughing, not LOL. And I love real kisses, not ‘xxx’.

So, though @wilson_naomi is now on Twitter, and though I may even consider upgrading the LG brick I call a phone to a flashier model- I never want to be obsessed. I never want scrutinise every last message or Tweet the world my thoughts upon waking up in the morning.

I want the real world to just be real, and people to just be people!  

The Cement Garden

When I was in sixth form at school, I took English Literature. I always loved a good book and a good discussion about it afterwards, so it seemed like an ideal A Level for me. My teacher however, was the only difficulty.

He loved to inflict deep, psychological books onto us- the kind where small children turn crazy and kill their neighbours and normal men have affairs with their mother. So it’s not surprising that we found ourselves falling into a slight mental disintegration ourselves.

But something from his depressing reading list must have stuck with me, because now I find myself still being drawn to those psychological, soul-draining books. So I guess that’s what appealed to me when I read the blurb on Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden the book that definitely pushed me to the edge of insanity this summer.

The story follows the lives of four siblings after the death of their father and the following death of their mother a year later. Told from the perspective of the adolescent male of the house, Jack, the gloomy cloud that has become their lives sees him totally emasculated by his sisters- one of whom he has an obsessive sexual fascination for. And with their mother’s body encased in cement in the basement acting as a constant reminder of their troubles, the whole story seems pressed by an impending doom.

So yes, definitely no light hearted beach read.

And I’ll never forget where I was when I finished the book - out in the back garden of a lovely holiday home by the coast, soaking up the end of the summer rays- a beautifully relaxed place to read.

But when the ending of the book saw the cement around their mother crack, and a bit of incestuous action unfold between Jack and his sister, you can imagine I was far from relaxed. More like speechless; and utterly disturbed.

So, as I look out of the literal abyss The Cement Garden plummeted me into, I’m holding that English teacher responsible for the total hopeless void that has become my reading preference, and the general mental disintegration I’m bound to fall into as a result.