Lately

 a burnt-out, sunken boat that was recovered from the river recently

 Rowntree park every afternoon. Sometimes I swear it feels like I live in a fairytale.

 Cream tea at Grey's Court. There is almost no better combination than raspberry jam and massive amounts of clotted cream to go with fresh scones.

 My attic garret "studio" these days.

 Halloween pumpkin carving. J is paying tribute here to Reflektor's on-stage costume. Later, we turned it into a bandit costume with the help of a red bandana around his mouth.

Guy Fawkes Day fireworks at the university.




My life has been simplified in so many ways. These are the things that make me happy right now.

Haribo Star Mix. I think Haribo is German, and their gummy candy has been a favourite of mine since I went to school in Austria for 3 months in 2008. But the Star Mix is the best because it has a little bit of everything: gummy bears, cola bottles, eggs, rings, and hearts.

Going to the pub early and getting home at a reasonable time. No more the 10, 11 p.m. o'clock start time. Because my friends here are oooooollldd (ok, the oldest is 38 and the youngest -excluding me- is 27) it means that they have real adult jobs to attend the next day. So we will typically meet at 8 (on the dot. Everyone is so punctual. I'm always late) and I'll be home by midnight. It's lovely. I love my 8-9 hours a night.

Cheese. So. Much. Cheap. Cheese. Cheddars, Stiltons, Wensleydales, goat cheese, sheep cheese. Even their low brand cheese is a 5 year mature cheddar. It just makes cooking so much tastier.

And speaking of cooking, I love it again. I love going to the shops and picking up fresh seasonal veg. Coming up with cheap and tasty combinations. My dad taught me to use up ingredients in the fridge, to not let stuff go to waste. You have to be that much more creative and innovative when you have a mostly bare fridge.

Working for myself. It means I set the hours, and only I am responsible for if the work gets done or not. This whole illustrating experience has been so enlightening that even if I don't get more work after this contract, I will have learned so much about myself. That I like my slow mornings. I like staying in my pjamas until after lunch. I like the work itself, very much.

Skype dates with friends from all over the world. There are some people with whom you can just pick up with as though no time has passed, and those people have become very precious to me. It has been a fantastic way to spend an evening with a glass of wine, and most surprisingly of all, I don't sign off feeling sad that I'm not with them. I sign off feeling exhilarated and happy and at peace.

My parents. I was so worried that living with them again would be difficult and messy, but it's been wonderful. I really quite like them, haha.

The sun. We haven't had a rainy day in ages. It's nippy, but it's also November. And the leaves and the park and the people...ugh. Beautiful, to the point where I'm slightly disgusted.

The anticipation of Christmas, and most exciting, Christmas music. I have had to give myself some stern talking-to's about playing it before December 1st. And Christmas means Dani comes here, and I have missed her extremely.

Sunday

Yesterday we slept in, had a light breakfast, and then drove an hour to the coast to Whitby Bay. There is an enormous old ruinous abbey sitting on the hill top, and apparently we'd been there as kids, but when you're 9 years old all the memories blend a bit, and it didn't look familiar. But it was a sunny day, crisp and windy, and it was so good to just run around these green lawns in between pillars and apses, under archways, over walls, feeling like a kid again.
The village of Whitby was just down the hill from the ruins, so we walked in and got more fish and chips, and played on the beach a bit. The "cold" here is so incredibly manageable. It is damp and often drizzly or overcast, but I've been having lots of conversations with my dad about "imprinting childhood weather"- he has this theory that the weather where you grow up stays with you for the rest of your life, and so feels strangely comfortable/the norm. So the damp, green, drizzle feels fine for me, my dad, and my brother. Whereas my mother spent her first 10 years in Calgary before moving to Vancouver, so for her it's a bit depressing- she misses the -15 and bright sunshine and snow. 

The house here: it is a terrace house, mid-Victorian, original stained glass in the front hall door (to my delight). Tall and narrow. Lots of doors leading to strangely placed rooms and closets and awkward skinny corridors. The ceilings are all so high, and lots of windows, and in one of the two attic bedrooms (one is my brothers, one will be my sisters) there is a huge skylight that you can open and peer out of onto the rooftops. In the back we have a dark, full of ivy and moss and paving-stones garden. Did you ever read The Magician's Nephew as a kid? It reminds me incredibly of Polly and Diggory's houses, and it makes me want to find the connecting attic passageway that runs the entire row of houses. And, of course, discover a magical world beyond that too, haha.

After we came back from the seaside, we had tea and relaxed for an hour or so before it was dark and Dad had to run off to the Minster. He was singing in the choir for last night's special Christmas service (he is very musical), and Mum had signed herself, Joel, and me up to help seat people, hand out coffee, chocolate, etc. Apparently it was a big deal, and the whole town was getting involved. It takes about 10 minutes to walk briskly from our house to the Minster, and, being who we are, we left late, and if you were late they were going to shut the doors and not let you in... so we ran. And showed up sweating, red-faced, and out-of-breath only to be told very firmly that they needed only 1, not 3, of us that night. So without a moments hesitation Joel and I shunted Mother forward, said bye, see you in two hours, and to her dismay turned to leave. And then she started tearing up, being upset, saying she wanted to do this as a family, etc., but there was nothing we could do, so we left. Both of us felt bad, but not too bad. After all, she hadn't asked us if we wanted to do this in the first place, and it wasn't as if we chose to leave- we were kicked out.
So Joel and I went to the pub down the road, had a couple of pints, and showed up for the service giggly and slightly tipsy. Mother had reserved seats for us in the very front, and we sang our Christmas carols with all the heart and gusto we could manage.
I don't know if it was the beer or being in the freezing cold huge stone Minster at night, or even just Christmas spirit, but it was a beautiful evening. It was dark, with mainly candles for light, and every seat was taken. It reminded me of being a kid and going to see Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral with my dad, listening to the boys' choir and picking out the cutest boys who looked my age. The sound of the voices at Yorkminster- while not children's voices- still filled the building and echoed magically, and the familiar phrases, tunes, and harmonies of all the old carols struck at that gong in the centre of my very being that resonates when in the presence of True Beauty. Everyone's cheeks were rosy, and my toes were frozen, but bundled in a winter coat, scarf, and touque you stayed warm enough. And the feeling of LIVING, not just watching something from the outside, or clinically and coldly analyzing the moment, was gone, and it was pure joy to be in the moment. I don't know about you, but that's incredibly rare for me.

Afterwards some couples from Dad's choir invited us over to their place for nibbles and mulled wine, and so Joel and I sat around getting more drunk, while the older ladies flirted with him and I alternated between rolling my eyes and smiling overenthusiastically at anyone who approached me. I guess you could say I wasn't on my best behaviour. There is something about going to my parent's parties that makes me feel like I'm 15 again and in a stroppy mood.

Holly Jolly

Airport again. It's a tradition now, I think you could call it. Already fraught with danger- an hour delay on the highway out to the airport resulted in me yelling and shouting obscenities while D, my driver, calmly told me to Shut the eff up because shouting at people would not make the traffic go faster. Nevertheless, it did result in her pulling onto the shoulder and pulling some sweet, illegal, chotskie-bro moves in order to move ahead. You go, Glen Coco.
London soon. I'm excited to see my dog.
I nearly broke this weekend. My shoulders are carrying so much tension that just touching them hurts. I wonder why I had forgotten about how much finals suck. It's not like it's new knowledge. It shouldn't be a surprise. But maybe because they were my last ones, it was hard to see the finish line. I kept on trying to pull the ol' sprinter trick and look beyond the finish line in order to push as fast as you can until the end, but my farther goal line was so blurry and anxiety-filled that I don't think it helped at all. It just made everything worse.
I don't know what is to become of me! She cried.
Oh, woe is me.
But then I just laugh because seriously, there will be time enough to worry. And this is the Christmas season- jolly and holly and merry and bright and all that. And I'm going to be in England with my fam jam. And I'm done school. And I have the best friends in the world.
OH DARN I'M HUNGRY. THEY BETTER FEED ME ON THIS FLIGHT.