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We're the Lakes, there is a story behind that and it will be revealed sooner or later but for now.. we're nice , a little crazy and lastminute.com .. with an exception of one .. but then even the "one" has moments

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Magic Tuesday

I believe that the world is all about balance, so when life piles on the suck, there’s usually something nice there to even things out a little bit. Yin and Yang, if you will, or if you won’t then: weeks and weekends, hot, stuffy weather and ice cream or sheer boredom and iPods. Life gives you the bad and there’s nothing you can do about it, but it usually gives you a spoonful of sugar to sweeten the deal (and rot your teeth), Mary Poppins style. Understand? Awesomeness, glad we’re on the same page now. This is why when we were cursed with a solid day of lectures and a 9am start, the day was made into Magic Tuesday to restore the balance of suckiness (yes this is a word now, deal with it). Sure, life could have given us a million pounds or no exams or an endless supply of shoes, but no, we got a magic day. You can’t eat it or wear it or spend it, but hey, it’s magic! In a way it’s cool, because some pretty wacky things have happened over the last couple of Tuesdays, and we’ll have the memories forever, or until we go senile and blind and can’t read the blog anymore. Oh, happy thoughts. Who would trade that in for an A* in Individual Differences? (Me.) Who would swap those precious memories for £500? (Me. I will. Hello, me over here. I’ll do it!) Who could bring themselves to surrender the magic for a pair of Marc Jacobs shoes? (Omg omg, pick me! HELLLOOO!!!! Ok, you’re not even listening are you, life-balancer person? If you are listening by any chance, I want the black ones with the snake heads on them. Size 8. Thanks a bunch. )


In all seriousness though, I probably wouldn’t trade these memories because they have been pretty fantastic. Case in point: yesterday was a Tuesday, the last Tuesday of term before revision, exams and general hell. More importantly, it was also the last Tuesday that the 3 year psychology students and the 4 year psychology students ever had a lecture together; i.e. the last Tuesday CG was ever going to be with us. Taking all these facts into account, we were expecting a miracle, and I’m pretty sure we got one. When I say ‘we’ I mean Emily and I, the believers. Kathleen doesn’t believe in anything but ham, and Amanda is too cynical, but for those of us who were actively looking for the Magic yesterday, we found it. On the way to the first lecture, CG (who you may recall from previous posts is very quiet, never seen wandering around campus and is apparently asocial) was standing slap bang outside the lecture centre chatting and laughing with some random guy. We don’t know who the random guy was, he’s not important, except to say that he definitely wasn’t a psychology student. Anyway, fast forward to the end of the lecture, and when we get downstairs, practically in the same place as the first time, CG was talking to another, different person in Greek (or Danish only if you’re Amanda!), his native language. Honestly, she makes the mind boggle sometimes! Seeing a person you don’t know talking to two other people you don’t know may not seem like much to you, and that’s fine, go and stand over by Kathleen and Amanda and talk about what noise the colour yellow would make if it was a sound. No, I’m not even joking. Sad, isn’t? See, I knew you’d want to stay with Emily and me and talk about this wonderful sight. Sure, we don’t know him and since we’re parting ways we never will. Alas, we staged our intervention too late in the day, but since our intervention was designed purely to make sure he wasn’t lonely, what we witnessed yesterday was...I don’t actually have the words to describe it, but it was amazing. Amanda thinks that we’re obsessed with him because he’s hot, and I’m not going to bother lying, it’s true. But at the same time, he is the most fascinating person I’ve ever come across, and I’m equally, if not more, obsessed with trying to figure out what the hell is going on in his head. How can one person be so solitary?

If you’ve read my Letter to CG in our other blog, you will know that he usually sits alone at the back, which is so sad that it kind of broke my heart. Maybe he genuinely likes being alone, but humans are inherently social creatures- we’re penguins, not polar bears- that I just fail to see how he could like it. But like they say, different strokes for different folks. However, last Tuesday morning he came into the morning lecture on time (a miracle in itself) and sat down 3 rows from the front next to Hair Guy (ask Kathleen about him, she’s the HG expert). Such is the magic of Tuesday. You don’t question it, you don’t argue with it, you just accept the awesomeness.

Slightly less awesome (read: awful!) but still pretty Tuesday-ish, a couple of weeks ago, while walking around Uxbridge with the Lakes, I was hijacked by a charity worker from CARE. Will Kofi please stand up and be named and shamed? The whole experience was pretty mortifying, as I spent about 20 minutes trying to get away from him while the other Lakes wandered off laughing. How does someone get asked to give £1 a week, say no, and ending up talking about face cream and going out for lunch? Such is my socially awkward life. Why does the ground never open up when you want it to? Stupid, sturdy infrastructure! After all that, of even going into the local T-Mobile shop and asking if I could change my number, he never even called. This is a good thing, trust me, but why waste my time, his time and more crucially his pen ink?

I’m sure there’s been loads more Tuesday magic, it is Magic Tuesday after all, and it would be kind of a misnomer if there wasn’t, but I’m constrained by a deadline and space (or as I like to call it, Emily). If I think of anything else crucial, I will be sure to edit, but for now, so long.


Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday,
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day,
Still gonna miss you...”- The Rolling Stones, 'Ruby Tuesday'



Love, Lalita xxx

Wednesday 9 March 2011

The two years itch a.k.a OTP

Where to begin, where to end. You'd think of things that you can't do in a million years because a) you're a chicken and b) it’s a stupid thing to do. I (Emily Lake) am the same sort of person. I DON'T do dares and I don't start things that I know I can’t finish. That may not be true though because since I have been a Lake, I have done things that I never thought I would and I never thought I should, like asking CG’s name in first year as a part of “task” given to me by Amanda. Turned out I was the bold one in our little gang (maybe that's a harsh word, what about clan??). You can’t let them down when they tell you "I am living my life through you". Although my words will never do this event the justice it deserves but Lalita insists that I write this "Tale of bravery" that generations will come to praise, after all I was the hero or the heroin of the affair. Please don’t be stupefied if this has got something to do with CG. He is a after all a very important part of our stories.


Both Lalita and I have been having these strange outbursts of feelings wanting to "help" CG. It may seem silly, but he has come so far since Lalita's letter to him. It's almost like he read it. He started coming to lectures on time, started wearing stuff other than greys and blacks and finally started giving up his "end of the world" seat in the lectures. But he still hadn’t commenced the socialising process. Don’t get me wrong he does sometimes giggle in lecture, not like a mad man of course that would be quite creepy. He does so when the lecturer tries to crack a joke. We would all be in a REM sleep otherwise.

Lalita says that she would never be able to say anything to him because well, he is CG, you can’t speak to him without all “our” conversations swarming your mind, then all you could do is go into hysterics or have a heart attack. Not me, not me. I am brave, I am light and I am one too strong to fight. No there was no fighting involved. Lalita put all her support and trust in me because well, if you know Kathleen and Amanda, you should know that they cannot compose themselves in the worst of situations. If they had to do what I did, well let’s not go there. But I can tell you that“you have to do it, but no pressure” was heard in abundance
As much as I want to explain the build-up of consequent events that lead to heart failures and just general anxiety leading to this episode, I can't because that would take me days to write and weeks for you to understand. You see Cg is like a road runner, the more you try to catch him, the quicker he gets away. It doesn’t add up, he is the last one to enter the door and the first one to leave it. Anyway if you have been wondering what OTP stand for, it means OTHER TUESDAY PLAN. There was initially a Tuesday plan which shouldn’t be discussed now. It wasn’t good

It was 9’0 clock lecture and I got late, conveniently. The Lakes were sitting quite back in the room but CG was sitting even more behind, I chose the seat closer to him. It didn’t help that Kathleen started showing me life sized replica of BOB the cross dresser. For the first time in life, I actually wanted to kill her. Two hours is a long time to have a drumming heart trying to pop out of your chest or your legs to tremble. Everything was going against OTP. We didn’t get any break, CG was packing up 5 minutes before lecture was finishing and I had so many bags that it would take me 5 minutes extra to pack up. It was the decision made in the spur of the moment, and planned for weeks. He got up and was about to leave, when I “manned” up and said “Hi” and knew instantly that the end was near. Surprisingly, he didn’t hear but I am not the one who learns from their mistakes so I said again “Hello” (CG’s real name should be here). He turned and said “hello” back. We talked, I apologised for things that weren’t really were supposed to be apologised about and he totally agreed with that. He seemed cool, very social although his voice didn’t go well with his face, aah a whole new conversation. My dialogues let’s just say were not up to the standards of Kathleen and Amanda because they laughed hysterically and mocked me for the rest of the day. Lalita, however was very happy and praised me for my good work. She says that now I can say hello to him more often because we are technically “friends”. I really want to write all about our conversation but that would be a breach of a “privacy”. Kathleen just wants me to ask him if he washes his hair. I will never do that.

It was a good day with a sad end when it dawned on us, once again that we’ll be separating soon. It wasn’t a good thought to realise. But  I know all will be okay as long as I have my lakes and all my legs, another story. God,we have so many.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. G.K Chesterton

"Well I will go down with this ship



And I won't put my hands up and surrender


There will be no white flag above my door


I'm in love and always will be " Dido - white flag (This one's for my lakes)

I hope all justice has been done to the story *sigh*

Much Love
Emily xxx



Thursday 3 March 2011

There CAN Be Miracles When You Believe

AKA an update on CG. I’ve always suspected that I may be a little bit psychic. Not Mystic Meg psychic; I don’t make any claims to be able to read the future or anything like that I and personally think if you meet a tall, dark stranger, you should probably start running in the other direction. (Sorry, Amanda, Kathleen and I visited Whitechapel yesterday, and I’m still feeling in the Jack the Ripper mood). Anyway, it’s just little things that happen to me, which I’m sure probably happen to everyone, but creep me out just the same. Like thinking of an advert ten seconds before it comes on TV or ringing my mother when she has the phone in her hand, ready to call me. Today I suggested to Emily that she should buy her mother a plant for mother’s day, and was then told that a plant was actually what she wanted. I promise I hadn’t been told anything about this beforehand. Just little things you can easily write off as coincidences, but they happen frequently enough to make me stop and think ‘Wow, it happened again, this is getting kind of spooky’. Whatever abilities I thought I had before though, they’ve either stepped way up, or we’ve just experienced the biggest 2 days of coincidence in (our) history.


If you read our blogs regularly (doubtful, but we can dream) you will see that on Sunday just gone, the 27th February, I wrote a post entitled ‘An Open Letter to CG’, which is located in our other blog ‘Letters from the Lakes’. It was a very detailed, and in retrospect quite spiteful, rant about a certain CG. I feel bad about it now (despite reassurances from a certain, rather more vicious Lake) but it had to come out, for my sanity’s sake. I had to let the world know about the frustration I was feeling inside before I exploded. So now it’s out there. I do realise that this is the internet, that anyone in the world can read what we post. Seeing as we’ve only had about 500 views in the last year however, it seems pretty unlikely that someone we don’t know (CG) would stumble across our tiny little blog, read a post and automatically know it was written about him. Seriously, what are the odds of that happening? A million to one? A billion? You tell me, I’m not a maths student. I’m barely a psychology student. So, keeping this in mind, what happened on Monday and Tuesday was pretty creepy.

In the letter I complained that he never came to the Tuesday morning lecture, so of course you can guess what happened on Tuesday. Yep, you got it in one! He came in on time! It was such a shock I thought I was seeing things, which would have been entirely possible, maybe even probable, as it was early and I was beyond tired. Whatever beyond tired is. In the post I also moaned that he never turned up to lectures on time, and then the very next day, Monday, he turned up on time. And again on Tuesday morning and afternoon! I honestly thought I was going to explode from excitement and happiness. He missed the last lecture, but that’s ok because everyone has to take baby steps towards a goal, even the wonderful Lakes. For example, Kathleen feels a sense of accomplishment when she thinks about ordering books to study. Go figure. Besides, it was so boring that even Emily and I skipped the last hour to do some spontaneous shopping in Oxford Street. Much more my scene! She even bought me some pink Guava tea light candles to help me through my candle phase. And, people, let me share with you the pièce de résistance, something that was so shocking it probably warrants its own mini post on the blog, but I’m too lazy for that. On Tuesday, when CG walked into the lecture room, the Lakes were already seated 3 rows from the back. CG usually always sits in the back row, alone, like a ghost. This particular lecture, however, he walked in, went to the back row, walked across and down the other side to our row, where he proceeded to take a seat 2 seats away from yours truly. If seeing him in the lecture was a shock, then I don’t even think I have words to adequately describe what I was feeling then. I think it’s safe to say that the rest of the lecture was a complete write-off, as I spent most of the two hours resisting the temptation to turn around and stare at him (not in a bad way!). I think it was a write-off for him too, because he didn’t actually make any notes, or even have paper out so he could fool himself into believing he was doing something (who would do a thing like that I wonder?). He arrived late to the lecture today, but that’s ok, because Emily now has bigger plans for him. I promise to keep you updated!

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” -Albert Einstein

Love, Lalita xxx

Tuesday 1 March 2011

Britain has amazing potatoes

Helloo,

We all know britian has amazing potatoes but we weren't born with that knowledge. When you are British you learn these things, no no, not thorugh parents or teachers or agricultural classes (if any one had any. Unlikely), you learn this through crisps packets, or to be more precise, you learn it through WALKERS crisps packets. Still I cant just write that and say it's a post. So I'll tell you a little story instead. Yes, it has a moral .

So, us LAKES are in our second year of university, i honestly do not know how we managed to get this far but here we are, anyway during the first year, probably around this time when exams were fast approaching we, the lakes sat in the library for "revising" . We sat there talking about why a pig should be called Albert and not Elvis , yes we do discuss the important matters in life. So as we're muttering away, we seem to recognise this girl that walks past, a familiar face from our lectures, she smiles and asks if she can sit with us, we agree but still talked away till our hearts content and ate crisps also to our hearts content. Hey dont judge us, it was lunch. Little did we know it wasn't only each other we were amusing, as the girl found our conversations shall we say, a little "special." Before leaving however she utter something along the lines off "I find it funny how British people manage to eat crisps and consider it lunch." I think she wasn't British

Now at first we didn't really think much of that, until today when Kathleen had a whole new revelation. We both sat in the lecture eating crisps, just watching other students enter the hall to sit down too, when suddenly she saw the girl and casually said "oh look, there's that girl we scared" ... which triggered a little flashback to when we met her in the library, and said "Oh yeah, she said crips can't be eaten for lunch." Now at this point, Kathleen had a moment, she held her crisp, gripping it firmly and shot her arm in the air, the heavens opened up and light came down and in that brief moment she managed to say "THE GREAT BRITISH POTATO"

Of course this didn't last very long as I burst into laughter the moment the words came out but I must say, to all the British people, we have amazing potatoes!

Amanda
xxx