Warning: This article does not contain reference to nudity.
Many a strange thing happened last week. Firstly, it was HOT! The streets of Leeds were filled with people sauntering around in shorts, ice cream in hand, sunglasses on face. I actually overheard someone asking their friend whether they could stop in the shade for a minute. Have I come back to the right university…or country? I have also been donning the shades this week, not in order to protect myself from any rays of sunshine that manage to force their way through the thick grey cloud, but from the surprisingly sharp-edged autumn leaves that are being whizzed around in a rather disorderly fashion by what can only be described as gale-force winds. (Admittedly the situation was not quite as bad as a particularly windy day in my second year, where I had to cling onto a lamp-post to prevent myself from being blown away. No, really.)
Secondly – although perhaps this is more ironic than strange –I have been allocated the highest shelf in the fridge despite being the shortest person in the flat. I have never spent as much time on my tiptoes as I have this week. Screw journalism – clearly by the end of the year I shall be pirouetting my way into the Royal Ballet School.
Thirdly, a fellow student decided to take photos – with flash – during one of our lectures. Of the lecture hall. Whoever knew the whitewashed walls and glaringly bright electric lighting courtesy of the prison-like Roger Stevens building could invoke such spontaneous artistic inspiration?
A number of embarrassing moments have also befallen me of late to complement these oddities. In the main reception of the School of English, I pondered aloud over the whereabouts of a particular room and the conversation went as follows:
Me – “My tutor said it was at the top of the stairs of this building, but which staircase did he mean?”
Cue baffled member of staff plus accompanying head-scratch – “Which house number?”
Me – “House 9”
Member of staff – “Yeah, this is house 10…”
The same day, I also had difficulty finding the Michael Sadler building AND the way back to my flat. I have definitely been away from Leeds for too long. Later that day, module change request form in hand, I ambled into the Student Support Office (I got lost on my way there too) and handed it across the desk to one of the admin staff, who asked me to wait for a few minutes while she sorted out the other module change forms, “otherwise you could end up doing Asian studies” she said. “Oh God, that would be awful!” I replied, only half-joking. Only then did I look up and see that she was wearing a head scarf. By the time I’d removed my foot from my mouth it was just too late.
From this you may deduce that it has been a strange and embarrassing week. Au contraire – it’s actually been pretty decent. Thanks to a good bit of badgering I managed to get myself a nice new mattress to replace the original one which had somehow acquired a suspicious red stain (prior to my arrival, might I add). I say ‘somehow’ as if I want to know…I don’t. Added to this happy achievement, I am also starting to learn French again and I had one of those squidgy Haribo love hearts for the first time in months. Oh, the small things in life…
So, despite the peculiarities of the past week and the moments that made me want to dig my words out of people’s ears and ram them back down my throat, I have concluded: ça ne fait rien – life’s too short to focus on the bad stuff. Focus on the Haribo instead.
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