5 things I want to do this summer!

Hi guys, so as I've finished university for the summer i was thinking about all the spare time i'll have here in Falmouth and decided to write a post on 5 things i want to do this summer before i go back into second year! I hope you enjoy reading!

• Go skinny dipping. Yes, skinny dipping. I've never done it before and it just seems like a 'rights of passage' type thing. I live by lots of beaches and although the water is still pretty freezing, it seems like it would be a lot of fun and i think would also help me have more confidence about my body, it seems so liberating!

• House Shopping. I'm moving into my new house for the next year with four friends on July 1st, and so i want to really personalise it which gives me the perfect excuse to go shopping for fairy lights and cute cushions! 

• Start writing my novel. So i really want to write a novel and i've started brainstorming ideas over the past couple of months but i really want to crack on with it this summer. 

• Beach BBQ. it's crazy that i live right next to the beach and still haven't had a beach bbq! I definitely want to have at least one over the summer,i couldn't think of anything more perfect that me and my friends snuggled in blankets with music on and eating s'mores

• Walks. I usually am not a massive fan of walking, but Falmouth is such a beautiful place to live and there are so many different places to walk to and explore that i really want to explore some new places over the summer.

Ciao! xo

1st year of uni continued

Hi guys, following on from yesterday's post i thought i would share a couple more pieces of work i've done for uni over the past year. The creative writing aspect of this degree has been my favourite, writing short stories and creative/critical pieces of work. Again, it would be appreciated if you would have a read of them :) As i am in the beginnings of working on novel ideas, this style of writing, including my last blog post has been really helpful. Ciao!

|| The early morning sun pushed its way through the curtains as I woke up. Everything was hazy. My head was pounding and my jaw hurt. As I sat myself up, I could feel the veins under my eyes pulsing and I moved my fingers down to my mouth where I felt my new fangs. I couldn’t believe this was happening; but the most bizarre part of all this was the fact that I was craving it. I was craving blood. I glanced down to see the day ring that Claire had made me on my finger. It was a beautiful ring, an Amber antique with silver framing, I’d had it for years and it had been passed down from generations of the women in my family, only now when wearing it I was protecting myself from the sunlight. Freaky, I thought to myself. I didn’t want to admit it but it was true. I was a vampire. I got myself up and went in search of some sustenance in the form of a blood bag. Even the mere task of walking through my house felt different, everything felt different, I was different. Everything was heightened, I felt angry and confused and overwhelmed all at the same time but also happy and grateful that I had Simon to help me through it all. I walked into the basement and opened up the cooler where there was a stash of blood bags, picked one of the newest and headed back to the lounge. Simon was there waiting for me, he gave me a half smile and asked me how I was feeling. I told him I didn’t know, I didn’t want to be this way, living for eternity was not something I had ever thought about; I wanted to be able to make the normal life choices a girl my age does, I always wanted children, I wanted to live my life and die. But this wasn’t the case anymore. I sighed and sat on the edge of the leather chair I had woken from, Simon came over to me and kissed my forehead and told me everything was going to be ok. Weirdly, I believed him. ||

|| The empty showroom echoed as Stefan walked across the stage. “this is it, today’s the day” he murmured, his gaze in complete awe, his eyes twinkling as he scanned his environment. In just a few hours, his 24 piece collection of men and women’s Haute Couture clothes would be modelled down the notorious runway that had seen many a great designers in the past such as Ellie Saab, Zuhair Murad and Vera Wang and would be soon exhibited in front of hundreds of people he’d never met before. He felt as though he was baring his soul, he had worked so tirelessly for this very day and in such a short space of time so many mental opinions would have been made and even maybe a few said to his face. He could feel a lump begin to set in his throat and his palms became damp with sweat. He’d never experienced nerves like this, not when he had his first crush and didn’t have the courage to ask the girl out, not when he travelled all the way to Ireland from America by himself, not even when he sat in the library in his third year of university with a million and one things to do, falling asleep into his constantly refilled  coffee cup, with the knowledge that everything in that moment would mean one of two things; he’d come out with a first class degree, or everything he’d worked so earnestly for would have been for nothing. But this was something else. It wasn’t just nerves that were riling up inside him; he had a sense of pride and accomplishment – which somehow was so overwhelming. And at the mere age of twenty-four, he’d finally achieved his first of many life goals, creating something to express how he felt towards the world, towards culture, something that hopefully would stamp his mark on the universe in some, maybe mediocre or maybe miraculous way, but in a way nevertheless.

“Stefan!” a shriek resonated in the quaintness of the room. It was Anna. Ex-girlfriend Anna. The Anna who broke up with Stefan days before his flight back to America six months ago and who decided the relationship wasn’t working because he was too career focused and was not paying attention to the other important things in his life, i.e, her.
“What are you doing here Anna” he quizzed her, and looked at her seriously for a few moments before turning and walking in the opposite direction. “You know, you really should have called if you were going to show up here, unannounced. That was very interrupting of you. Can’t you see I’m all very busy here?” He called back sarcastically as he continued striding through the rows of chairs, hand brushing across the tops of them delicately.
“Look, Stefan, I know but I really need to talk to you.”
“Well Anna now isn’t a good time, the show starts in a few hours, MY show and as you are aware I didn’t invite you here – not that it matters. Clearly.” He twisted his head to face the other side of the room, locking eye contact with her.

She wondered how he did it. How did he always manage to make her heart race and cause the back of her neck to burn so red, so quickly? No matter what he would say, somehow she would always see a glimpse of a stupid grin hidden behind his very mysterious and concerned looking expression. It was knowing of this grin – this other side to him that built up the excitement in her. Stefan always was exciting. Almost somewhat like Mr. Christian Gray. Calculating, reserved, but a very put together man. “I know I can make it up to you. I always could. Aren’t I right, Stef?” Anna said tentatively. Running a few feet towards him she continued “I’ve done some shitty things okay fine I get it but so has everyone, that doesn’t mean we’re shitty people. You’re sure as hell acting like it though.”

“You’re right, you always could make it up to me, and I always could do this.”
He marched towards her with such a certainty and without even thinking picked her up, hoisted up her legs around his muscular waist, and kissed her so passionately that it made him slightly dizzy. Not letting that affect him, they stumbled to a back room where he gently lowered her down and turned her so her back was against a wall. He gripped his hand at the nape of her neck and began kissing along her so perfectly defined collar bones, using his other hand to tug at her bra strap. ||

1st year of uni!

So i've just finished my first year at University and although not getting what i would have hoped in all my modules, i am happy with the 2:1 and 2:2 i got, and overall i think i have still passed - silver linings, i guess. This was one of the pieces i wrote for the module Creative Writing Strategies, a short story about a girl called Aly - based on the theme of colour and light in relation to the book Light by Eva Figes. It would be awesome if you could read it and tell me you think! I'm personally really happy with it, this is the sort of writing i really enjoy. :)

|| The sun rose against the raindrop smeared window panes of Aly’s room. The light was a mere yellow at this point, like the colour of lemon sherbet. It had been raining all night, Aly couldn’t sleep so had stayed awake, hunched over her laptop researching the best art universities in the country. She rubbed her eyes and peered at the alarm on her 1950’s-style dresser. It was 6:15am. Time for another cup of coffee, she thought to herself. She closed her laptop screen and made her way in to the kitchen, clicking the switch on the kettle for what must have been the 5^th time that morning. She stared wistfully out of the window while she waited for the water to boil. The colour of the sky had changed now and was becoming a cornflower blue with hints of lilac still fading as the sun rose. The clouds were a pure white and were dotted about as if an artist had flicked their water-coloured paintbrush on to a canvas. Art was the only thing that made sense to Aly, colour and shape and light; art was her escapism. The kettle had finished boiling and made a beeping sound making Aly jump a little where she stood, she’d been in her own bubble looking out at the morning’s sky. Aly poured the steaming water in to her favourite coffee cup and swirled it around with the tip of a teaspoon. Even something as mundane as the froth contrasting with the almond colour of her hot beverage sparked something magical in Aly’s mind; colour seemed to jump out at her – even if sometimes there wasn’t really any there.

She wandered back in to her room cupping her mug of coffee like it was her baby. Sitting on her windowsill and carefully placing her drink down next to her, she got out her diary and started writing todays date. Most of what Aly wrote in her diary wasn’t the typical thing you’d expect, she would take it with her everywhere and scribble down anything and everything. She’d write about her favourite artists and what their work made her feel, or she’d pretend she was an art critic and write her own reviews. Her previous entry had been about some work of Claude Monet’s. She thought to herself, just like her diary which had mad scribblings and random words here and there, she always had to write the date without fail. Monet’s work which was beautifully blended and wasn’t the most structured of paintings, still had form and the compositions were always attentively thought out. That was what Aly loved about his work, it had suggestion of painting free and without too much study but at the same time had SO much of it that it made his work speak to her in a way that caught her attention more than when people were actually speaking to her.

Without realising she had been sat writing for nearly two hours, it was now 8:30am and Aly was rushing trying to find everything she needed for college, arms flailing about with paintbrushes in both hands, her phone between her teeth and one shoe still not properly on her foot. She shouted bye to her mum and sprinted to catch the bus which should have already set off four minutes ago, luckily it was still there. The bus driver sighed as she smiled meekly at him and swiped her bus pass across the scanner and sat down, still panting for breath. She gathered herself and started tying up her patent purple doc marten that she had failed to do up as she dashed from her front door. Being an art student, it was rare that anything Aly owned didn’t have a splodge of paint on here and there, even when wearing an apron she managed to get oils in places she didn’t think was even possible. There was a slick of yellow acrylic still slightly sticky on her shoe laces from yesterday, she noticed, as she did them up in a bow. Everyone always thought that Aly was a little wacky, dress-sense and personality, but Aly’s mentality was that if there wasn’t colour in the world then there would simply be no beauty. Hence why she always wore colourful clothes and dyed her hair twice a month, she insisted that this way of living helped her with her work, “how can we find the light in someone’s art if they live in black and white?” she would always say, it was basically her mantra.

The bus pulled up at college and Aly jumped off, speed-walking inside. It was 8;59am and Aly only just made it up the stairs to her art class. She shoved her stuff in the back computer room and pulled her ‘personalised’ apron out, as Aly liked to call it, though she was probably in need of a new one as the amount of paint on it made it almost a piece of art in itself. She got herself set up with an Easel and the canvas she had been working on, a piece inspired by Monet. He was her idol, her role model; she basically thought he was an angel. Since she had discovered that art was her forte and life passion, Monet had been her favourite artist. His work mesmerised her, it was pure beauty and had something so subtle and ‘light’ about it that no other artist could achieve. The pieces she was focusing on were the ones of water lilies and Monet’s own garden landscapes. She sat at her desk, which was by the room’s windows, eyes focused on the canvas in front of her. It was appearing to be a lovely sunny day and the light glared straight on to her work, making the soft and mellow colours pop. The creamy mint greens, muted violet, shell pink and the bright but not too bright turquoise surrounded by a dark and dirty looking olive shade, blended together, created such a luminosity that it made Aly start smiling absentmindedly. After a couple of minutes of admiring what she had started, she took out her paint kit and got to work.

She studied the picture that was clipped up on her easel and started swirling together the colours in her palette. There was a range of brushes on her lap, opting for a very fine one she proceeded to gently stroke the canvas’s surface. A bit of blue, a slight of yellow, a tinge of pink – every stroke mattered. Aly was seated next to her favourite spot in the room for two hours as she painted, painted and painted. Blinking, she swivelled her head around to see that everyone else in the class had already left while she was still sat there, although now with an almost finished piece of work. ||