Touching strangers

This week, my school friend Ashton was making a business trip (swanky) up to Edinburgh and extended his adventure by staying with me for one night. My friendship with Ashton goes right back to lower sixth, when we cavorted off to Cambridge (lol), on an open day (double lol), and spent most of our time making outfits out of balloons and bin bags, and wondering if our teachers were drunk (they were). Since then, we have made cakes of different anatomical shapes and sizes, screamed at each other on New Year's Eve (my fault), and lost pieces of my charm bracelets, only to find them in Ashton's pants.

To start Ashton's Edinburgh experience off, then, we began by embarking on a ghost tour. We giggled at the guide's swishy black cape, and duly followed her down into the vaults. We pretended not to be scared, but halfway through we were clutching each other's arms and trying to forget that our phones DIDN'T HAVE SIGNAL DOWN THERE. I won't spoil the ghost story experience for you prospective punters, but, right at the end, she was holding a candle to her face and regaling us with more horrors. With the climax of the story, the guide screamed. Ashton screamed. I screamed, and, already having a firm hold of Ashton's arms, reached for someone more comforting - the girl in front. Suddenly being accosted by a stranger in a dark underground room, the girl in front screamed. The guide looked at us disapprovingly and I hastily apologised. I had noticed the girl at the beginning. She had come on the tour on her own, and I remember thinking how brave it was. Apologies accepted, the guide carried on with her tales. The girl asked the guide to 'please not scream again'. At the end, she finished by blowing out her candle and plunging us all into darkness. -  I shrieked even louder and grabbed the poor girl's shoulders again. My string of apologies was drowned out by Ashton's giggles.

Now, as the end of undergrad life quickly approaches and all ideas with what to do with my life quickly disappear, I have been hastily applying to things. All of these things need references, and, for my poor tutor who thought he had escaped from all university duties on research sabbatical, this meant more work. I had plagued him with emails a few times, before being told to wait patiently by the people at the college reception. I had loitered outside his office a few times, before halting my ready-to-knock hand and going back downstairs dejectedly. So when he replied, joy of joys, I was overwhelmingly relieved! (This is the tutor at uni who supervised my dissertation-like essay AND taught me for a semester. Like, he knows me well.).

We had  a photoshoot at the beach

Anyway, on taking Ashton back to the station, we stopped off at Sainsburys on the way for some train-time snacks. Sausage roll and pasta in hand, Ash sauntered off to the queue, and to me, it looked like he had pushed in. 'ASHTON, did you PUSH IN?' I half-announced, half-questioned. Ashton turned round to face the patient queuer he had offended. I turned round, and saw the man who held all the abilities to both grant and dilapidate my dreams. There was my tutor who had finally agreed to write a recommendation. I gave awkward pledgings of thanks and shuffled Ashton out of the door.

No One Ever Has Plans For NYE

Every year, my friends and I go through the same anguish. It starts in October, when the first festive rolls of wrapping paper arrive in Tesco, and oddly-flavoured lattes appear in all of the
coffee shops. 'What are you doing for New Year?' is whispered around flats, on campus, and whatsapp groups up and down the country.

Something needs to be done about this situation. No one ever knows what they are doing on New Year's Eve. Sometimes, even after it's over, no one knows what actually happened.

I've had new year's in a club, new year's at house parties, new year's in the village Scout Hut, new year's at home watching the London fireworks on television, and, for the past two years, new year's actually watching the fireworks amongst a shivering, and rather bolshy crowd. Each of these NYEs were great in their own little ways, but none of them validated my three months of questions.

That much-coveted view of Big Ben

Which brings me to this new year. After a dinner finishing at 11pm, we had 1 hour to navigate the crowds of the capital. And crowds there were. Trafalgar Square was already packed, but Sam decided that etiquette wasn't important in the last 60 minutes of 2014, propelling us through people who had been standing there for hours to get the view of Big Ben. We were verbally abused, and someone spilt a pungent alcoholic liquid over our bottles of Prosecco. Once through, Sam decided now was the time to attempt a crossing of the river. We got stuck on the mall. He admitted defeat. Some Germans began to talk about us, and I immediately jumped in to top up my oral skills for the end of the year. A common stereotype is that Germans are not polite. On the contrary, Germans have excellent social skills. I only had to murmur a handful of incorrectly-conjugated verbs before in came the compliments.

Fast forward to the early hours of 2015, and we had returned to Trafalgar Square and the excellent view of the  Big Ben. Sam was in deep discussion with a policeman who didn't really know how we would ever cross the river before January, 2. A Spanish man saw room for interruption, charging up to us and bringing the discussion to silence.
'Excuse me', his politeness was almost on a par to that of the Germans -  'Where is Big Ben?' - unfortunately his navigational skills were not.