Bloody hell, it's October tomorrow!!! Alas, Summer has well and truly gone. I am sat in my University abode, and the weather outside can be descrived as "miserable", at best. I've certainly had a memorable Summer. Memorable for so, so, so many reasons, here are just a few of 'em:
01.
Summer job
This Summer, I re-visited the same place where I worked last Summer, working as a data entrant in a pharmaceutical company. I worked between June to the end of September, for almost four full months, and during these four months, there was often a lot of overtime. Though I was tired at first, I soon grew to get used to the experience, and, whilst it was a lot of hard work, I’m pleased with all the hours I worked, and believe it to have been a rewarding experience in which I grew up a lot in, thus, I am very grateful to have had such a job. Furthermore, the place I worked was full of lovely people, and through trips to the pub on a Friday, company barbeque, and countless moments of friendly banter, I made a lot of good friends, whom I will miss a lot. (When it came to saying goodbye last Friday, I genuinely did feel malaise; think Edith Piaf when she sang
Adieu Mon Coeur), and I won't lie, I shall probably pore over the leaving card they wrote me (all four pages) repeatedly. On a completely unrelated note, I want to go on holiday to Croatia next Summer for some reason. Magical.
02.
Italy
In between said job, I took five days off in August to go to Italy with my family. We covered a lot of ground, landing in Milan, before we got to the train to Verona (wherein we deviated to Peschera del Garda), then Venice, and finally backtracking to Padua. Italy is a beautiful country, with so much culture, history and beautiful sights, and we only touched the surface of it, but the holiday was much-needed, especially in me and my dad’s cases, as we’ve been working very hard all Summer. There were down points – as in China, there was a heavy multitude of mosquitoes, all of which took a liking to my blood type, as well as the hotel we stayed in in Verona being an absolute hell-hole. But as far as holidays go, it was certainly one of the better ones.
03.
World Cup
“This could be our year!” was the optimistic undercurrent running through the tabloids for World Cup 2010, and, as loathe as I am to admit, some of their (misplaced) good wishes rubbed off on me, and I actually believed England would make it as far as the semi-finals. That happened(!) Despite England’s complete and utter fail, it proved to be a good tournament, one which Spain won thanks to a goal in extra time from the monumentally talented Barcelona midfield maestro Andres Iniesta. Though the initial start was a little underwhelming, things soon got tasty, there were upsets aplenty, as well as hot men taking their shirts off at the end of games. All a girl can ask for, really. Though, that being said, my heart still hurts every time I think about how criminally under-used Peter Crouch was in the tournament. Oh, Peter. :( (in fact, it may interest you to know that hardly any of the players I'd rated
to do well in South Africa actually delivered. Bigger jinx than Mick Jagger, I am).
04.
Boyfriend
I got a boyfriend this Summer! He was a fellow employee in the company I worked at, and the revelation that he liked me was unloaded (in a rather brusque manner) at the company barbeque, in which his line manager drunkenly asked me “so you’re the girl he’s always going on about, then.” Despite my initial hesitation, I decided to make a go of things, which now, looking back, I realise I probably shouldn’t have done, and saved time for the both of us. He was a wonderful person and a lovely lad, but I think he wanted more from the relationship than I could give, and as such, he ended up quite hurt (though he was the one that dumped me, read his dump message
here). Oh well, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and that. We did have some great times, mind, and it's a measure of what a nice person he was that I (oddly) don't look back at the relationship with any of my signature bitterness or anger, and am actually able to laugh at the hilarious way in which I was chucked. I wish him the best, and hope he finds a nice girl who really deserves him. :)
05.
Summer Blockbusters
But of course I visited the cinema!! There was one film which I was most excited about – the second
Sex and the City film, and, whilst I fully realise that it was actually quite shit, I am a complete sucker for all things SATC, thus, I had a great time with it. Another film which I enjoyed far more than someone with a poncy film blog should was
StreetDance 3D. There were no good performances to speak of and the plot was thinner than Nadine Coyle, but I am not exaggerating when I say some of the dance sequences are the finest I’ve seen. A film which I'm not at all ashamed to say I love was
Toy Story 3, which, unsurprisingly, moved me to tears. I also watched
The Karate Kid, which was tolerable,
Twilight: Eclipse, which was absolutely atrocious, and
Inception, which, despite every single man and his dog having a good fap over, left me totally cold, and borderline angry at the level of pretension.
Oooh! Three levels of dreams! Woaw!!!!!!! ~~~ It never toppels?!?!?! Deary me!!! Do we really need two films with Leonardo DiCaprio having a crazy wife in 2010?!?!?!?!?! It’s only ‘cos I wasn’t intelligent enough to actually understand it, mind.
06.
TV
When I wasn’t at work, I did find time to watch a few of my favourite TV programmes. The Inbetweeners has recently returned to UK screens, and it is comedy gold. I cringe at least 5 times an episode, and belly-laugh a good 10 times more. However, the TV programme that really turned my head this Summer was the BBC’s adaptation of Sherlock, which sets it in modern day London, complete with iPhones. Atonement’s Benedict Cumberbatch plays the ingenious sleuth, The Office’s Martin Freeman, his hapless war doctor Doctor Watson, and the chemistry and team dynamic between the two is every bit what Arthur Conan Doyle penned it to be. The mysteries are taut and intense, and the finale blew me away (literally). Bring on series 2!
07.
Style
So far in the 20 years I’ve been living, I’ve been a bit of a fashion fail, modelling my looks on Frankie Muniz in his Malcolm in the Middle days. Maybe it was working in a working environment, or my colleagues giving me constructive criticism on how the better my look, but this Summer, I definitely boosted my image a bit. Out went the tatty scuffed jeans, and in came the… smart jeans. OK, so it wasn’t a massive change of image by any stretch of the imagination, but the point is, I felt smarter. All that said, I still wouldn't ditch my kooky style for the world. One can never have enough T-shirts with cartoons on 'em!
08.
Mates
Due to work, I lamentably didn’t get to spend anywhere near as much time with my friends as I would have so wished, but that didn’t mean my Summer was completely devoid of meeting my mates. I visited Anna in Coventry for her 20th, in which we had some immense lulz, and I met up with my friends from London on several occasions, whether it be to have a gander around the capital, watch games in the pub, or just a giggle and a goss. After all, girls just wanna have fun.
09.
Food
Mmmmm, food. I worked in Croydon for most of my Summer, in a hospital that was located smack in the middle of two streets that were choc-a-bloc full of fast food places (ironic, really), so I was treating myself to junk food everyday, varying between Indian, Chinese, burgers, chips, or sometimes, a combination of all of them. My lovely colleague Yvonne is an amazer baker, and would often bring in cakes that she'd baked, which I'd then devour greedily. I'm ballooning up at a rapid rate as a result, but, what can I say? I like food.
10.
Music
A Summer isn’t a Summer without me having a few distinct songs to remember it by. At work, we had the radio on and I found myself humming to a fair few songs, so a lot of my memories of Summer will be attached to a couple of those songs. Here are my Sounds of Summer, 2010:
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Call the Shots / Girls Aloud
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Untouchable / Girls Aloud
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Graffiti My Soul / Girls Aloud
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Sexy! No No No... / Girls Aloud
(pretty much every GA song, to be quite honest)
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On to the Next One / Jay-Z
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Fireflies / Owl City
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Empire State of Mind / Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys
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Billionaire / Travis McCoy ft. Bruno Mars
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Love the Way it Hurts / Eminem ft. Rihanna
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Shout / Dizzee Rascal ft. James Corden
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Teenage Dream / Katy Perry
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California Gurls / Katy Perry
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Boys / Cheryl Cole
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Spiegel im Spiegel / Arvo Part
