Name change

As you may, or probably may not, have noticed, I've changed the name of my blog.  Reflection of Me was a bit emo for my liking and well, there's nothing wrong with a bit of French and a revamp for the New Year.

I'm yet to find a really cool blog skin to really change the blog and keep it more in line with the new theme (wedding!) but I think the font is the colour scheme for the wedding anyway.

So, I had lots of things to tell you all about over the weekend, and now it's Monday morning and I'm at work I've completely forgotten all of it!

Mainly it was to say that we're viewing our first venue on Sunday, the Fitzleroi Farm Barn.  I have no idea what to expect, but at £3k it's the top of our budget for venue alone.  Whilst we could hire somewhere else for about that the bonus of Fitzleroi is that they don't insist you use their caterers (they prefer you to but don't charge if you do use someone else) and they are opposed to corkage.  So that ticks both of our main boxes. 

I think our only bugbear is that it's about an hour away from here.  There are some lovely hotels in the area, and its near to Chichester and Arundel.  It's just where to get married as they're no licensed for civil ceremonies, so we might take a quick look at the churches in the area too.

Here's a picture of the interior.  It seems to be just what we want.  We'll wait and see, my only worry is that people are going to turn round and say "You can't book the first place you look at," which is fair enough.  It's not like we can book it anyway as we have zero for a deposit!  We'll try and line some other places up perhaps, wondering if we can also look at Grittenham Barn on Sunday afternoon as mum has Scarlett for the day.

Anyway, Happy Monday to anyone who drops by!

My first wedding mood board - what a geek!!

Don't Stop the Rock!

Anarchy for Dummies

Yeah, so I haven't been around much since my 100th post!  How are you all?

UK readers keeping warm (I don't actually think I have any overseas readers - feel free to correct me on that though!)

I've been a bit inspired to blog this morning because of the student protests.  I work at a university, I should state that for the record.  It might be easy for me to say because after all, I've done my degree, but really, do the students think that wrecking buildings and attacking Prince Charles in his car is going to get them anywhere?

It's like they've been reading Anarchy for Dummies for heavens' sake.

I'm a bit fed up of it.  All it's done is cost the taxpayer loads of money in policing and clean up costs (and we all know how the taxpayer likes to complain about the students!)

I get it, you don't want to pay up to £9,000 a year for your education, I can understand your beef with that.  But maybe it'll make you work harder.  And it's not like they want you to cough the money up front!  Okay, so it's another £50 or whatever coming out of your paypacket a month (on top of Tax, NI and Student Loan contributions) but really, grow up, it's called being an adult.  There's no such thing as a free lunch.

American students have to pay a lot for their education, which is why American students take College a bit more seriously than we do over here.  We live in a benefit society, a lot of people in this country expect to get life handed to them on a plate.  What happened to some of the old fashioned hard work that this country was built on?!

I went to uni, because it was what everyone else was doing.  I did Photography, because frankly I was shit at school, I'm highly intelligent, but when you're 17, suffering from depression and you've passed your driving test and have a mini sitting outside, you're hardly going to go to school are you?  Well, at least, I didn't.  I showed up for Media and Photography and spent the rest of the time driving around in the mini. 

So, by the time it came to the big, What to do after school, question, I assumed I had to go to uni.  It didn't occur to me that I could've just gone and got a job - saved myself and my parents some (a lot of) money and probably still end up where I am today.  It hasn't made a blind bit of difference.

So I think instead of all this, 'inclusive' bollocks, and yes, very nice, great idea, lovely, lets get the kids off the streets, off the council estates and into university, it's just pointless.  I think we need to look more at better work based training for people.  If I had thought about it, I should've gone and got a job in a photographer's studio, I should have trained as a photographer on the job - what the heck does a degree in photography teach you?!  For me, nothing, it wasn't a great course that I chose.

I probably sound like an elitist snob or a Daily Mail 'journalist' but really, I look at the kids at this uni and I just think, why are you bothering?  We don't seem to care that a lot of the students here are failing, they seem to contstantly get through by the skin of their teeth.

So what if some of the universities close.  They were probably crap uni's anyway.  They say, A degree is a degree.  Well no, it's not.  The rate of graduates receiving Firsts and 2:1's has increased in recent years - and when recruiters get 100 applications and they all have 2:1's, they naturally start to look at where the degree was earnt - a 2:1 from St. Andrews is not the same as a 2:1 from De Montfort (where I studied).

Like I say, inclusiveness is a lovely idea, but I just don't think it's practicable.  Fuck it, it's survival of the fittest.  That's life.  That's human nature.  That's evolution.  I'm at the bottom of the food chain as far as I'm concerned and I have a degree.  I'm the only one in my team of admin colleagues who has a degree.  Apparently I should therefore earn more than them, have more responsibility or something?  Why does everyone think a degree is the be-all and end-all?

I think work based learning, apprenticeships etc, like the olden days, would benefit more people than university.

I'm a mother, I have a daughter who will be 3 next March.  If she decides to go to uni, she will be affected by these changes - so should I be out there protesting on her behalf?  No, when the time comes, I'll just help her to make the right decision.  If she wants to go to uni, to do a course of worth (Pharmacy, Nursing, Computing etc) then fair enough.  But equally if she's not 100% sure, or doesn't have a career idea at 18, I'd rather pay for her to travel, learn about the world, and not rack up debts that she can't afford to pay (like her dear old mum...!) 

I'm 25, I have a degree in photography, £15,000 of debt, plus £12,000 in a student loan, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. 

Lets face it, majority of students, and I really wholeheartedly include myself in this bracket, go to university for a good time.  Okay, so I had to endure depression for the first two years, but eventually I learnt how to have a good time, and a good time I had as my credit card bill will testify, I wonder how many times Soar Point, Po Na Na or the O Bar feature?!  It meant I had to pull a fucking miracle out of my arse in the final year and scraped through with a 2:1. 

To this day I feel guilty - my sister also studied photography, at a better university I might add, and she worked her socks off, but only got a 2:2.  I think there's some kind of point in there, I've run out of tea and I'm struggling to find it...!

So, I'm not sure what my point is, mostly I think it was just to say that I think the students need to work it out a bit, stop being so violent, they're giving themselves a bad name.  I'm sure is the few spoiling it for the many, and I probably sound rather Daily Mail, but on the whole, I don't see where it's going to get them.

*sits back and waits for the contradictions and attacks to roll in, promising herself not to take it personally.*

100th Post

So apparently this is my 100th post.  I had something grand planned, I was going to post about how my hair literally never changes, no matter what, where, when, I always seem to have a pomp/quiff.  The only excpetion to this rule is when I have a nice thick fringe, but I so rarely get that to work and look nice that it ends up getting pinned back into a pomp anyway.

I did find some older pictures and it's funny how I never used to really pomp it up, I'd pin it back so it was almost flat, and yet recently, I've really gone for it and it's ended up quite high:

But my grand posting plans failed and I couldn't find many good, hilarious pictures of me, so I've mostly given up.

But I do want to say Happy Monday!  And that things don't feel so bad this week.  It's payday on Thursday but I have to be really careful that it doesn't all disappear straight away, we need to start shopping for Christmas and I need to stay in budget.  At least it's only October, and I have 2 more paydays after this one with which to get shopping, I just want to do most of it this month!  But I think that's just because I like shopping!

I also want to say, that I think you should go and read the blog that me and my oldest friends are working on together.  It's subject is Strictly Come Dancing, so you probably need to like that but we're mostly pretty funny and entertaining so you might like it even if you won't like Strictly....  It's called Strictly Sequins, naff I know, but go and follow it, even if you don't read it, it makes me sad seeing that it only has 3 followers, two of whom are the sister's of one of the authors!

And also, although I haven't set it up yet, I'm thinking of starting a blogging Secret Santa this year, if anyone is interested.  It's a bit like Postcrossing or something, we used to do it on IAM and it worked pretty well, just a small gift, no more than £5.  Element of trust is needed as I'd need to collate people's addresses but we'll see if it works and if anyone is willing to share the Christmas spirit with other bloggers!  I'll post more deets when I've set up the blog for it.

Update on Fail

I'm still in a bad mood.  I didn't get the job I applied for, not even shortlisted, so am going back to the job where I'm treated like a 5 year old.  Depression awaits....

Fail

Well inevitably that went out of the window right.

I just haven't felt much like blogging, it's all just woe is me emo crap anyway.  I don't know whether it's SAD setting in early or whether it's just a general malaise.  Yknow the Moby song, Why Does My Heart (Feel So Bad)  It's totally like that.  It just consumes me, for no real reason, and I can't shake it off.  And all I want to do is sit in my fat clothes and eat food.  Which is what I did yesterday.

I told work I had a migraine.  I think most of the blokes in my office knew it was more than that, one even said, "I knew it was because you just couldn't be arsed..."  It's good that they understand and don't judge me for it, I think they feel bad for me really, enjoying this job and having to go back to one which literally depresses this life out of me, hence the depression setting in now I think, because I know that if nothing else comes up, I'm going to be back in Admin Office hell in 2 months time.

I actually started crying this morning when I got here, what a tit, well not proper crying, I did feel like I could easily have freefalled into full on crying, but I kinda just got choked when I was telling them about how much I hate my 'normal' job.  In fact, most of yesterday I felt like I just wanted to cry; yknow sometimes you just need a good cry. 

Literally zoned out for like 10 minutes there.  Just staring at my desk.  Good to do that sometimes, just let your brain wander.  Was thinking about my old desk project that I used to want to get off the ground.  The idea was, that people would take pictures of their desks and post them in the Facebook Group.  It was quite interesting, well I thought it was interesting, but most people just didn't bother!

Anyway, going to go and slit my wrists in the toilets (funny how often I genuinely think about suicide and yet my doctor never takes me seriously, perhaps it is just a cry for help.)