It is about time I wrote a new post, isn’t it?

Is it just me, or does time move through you in the city?  In the country, each day seems to be filled with an unlimited number of hours in which to do whatever you please.  Digging spuds, for example, or driving tractors.  I never really engaged in either of these activities, you understand, but thousands did.  My days were far more likely to be filled with blank paper, leaking pens, and episodes of Countdown.  I don’t think any of these things have really done me any harm, as I am now an expert at the Countdown Conundrum.  However, when I am in Belfast, I have little time for Countdown or blank sheets of paper.  My days are much more likely to be filled with social engagements, long conversations over junk food, or procrastination in its most basic form: sleeping.

This is the first time I’ve ever spent the weekend in Belfast.  I have been on my own for approximately one hour now, and my room is unnaturally tidy.  My calender of forgotten English is, for a change, displaying today’s date, although its “word of the day” is confusing me slightly, as it is clearly not one word, but two.  “Firm Asleep”, it announces.  “Fast asleep is never used.  Vale of Gloucestershire.”  Is it just me, or does that make impossibly little sense?  Not only does it not explain the phrase at all, but it also purports to be forgotten English, when it most certainly is not.  Or perhaps language in Ballymena is just underdeveloped.  Now, there’s a scary thought.  Perhaps that’s why I liked middle English so much.

I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, and I hope Ian and Nic will forgive me, but tomorrow evening, I am going to go to Bangor.  What’s more, I am doing to stay there until the next day.  Now, I know I’ve always been an enthusiastic member of the rest of the world’s petition against North Down in general, but the fact is that, since I’ve come to Uni, a startling majority of my friends seem to be from there.  I’m even starting to speak like them, so I am.  This is really a pity, as I do quite value my glottal stop; but, alas.  I am an English student, and must therefore take on the mantle of a crazy language prescriptivist.  So, from now on, I will be asking for “a boTTle of waTer”, rather than “a bo-il a’ wa-er”.  This should, at least, prevent Scott from correcting every second word I say.

This blog post is really quite random, being comprised entirely of whatever words are in my head at a given moment, without much of a subject or even a connecting theme.  Sorry about that, Mr W.  I know it’s not the kind of flowing prose you would expect from someone who trained at your own hand.  But NikNak, at least, should enjoy reading it, and Joanne will probably fall off her chair laughing at the fact that I’ve been bold enough to mention a teacher in my blog.  Of course, if things had gone to plan, she would be here right now and I wouldn’t be writing nonsense at all.  But things, as usual, didn’t go to plan, and now she is at home, typing up codes for an audit at her mother’s workplace.  Sigh.  At least I’ll see her tomorrow.  Perhaps I could just spend tonight doing my essay and being ahead of schedule  – but it wouldn’t be me, and it’s unlikely to happen.  No, I think I’ll be more likely to read a crappy novel and pass out from boredom.  Which, if you’ve got to this stage of this blog entry, you are probably about to do anyway.

Fin.