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.