Brighton Rocks

Alas I think I’ve left my camera in my room at my parents’ house. I went to Brighton with my mum on Friday for the night/day so made do with my phone’s camera. My mum was on a course (I was just keeping her company) so I went walkabout.

(By far the best find of the trip, Silverado)

I hadn’t been to Brighton for a couple of years before this trip. There are so many new restaurants and new buildings. It used to be a weekend hangout for my school friends and me between the ages of 14 and 16. I guess it’s true what they say about your wants and needs changing from year to year. I didn’t buy a single thing while I was there (except sticks of rock, obv), and I find it really difficult to remember the time when I would cover myself in bracelets, necklaces, rings, bits of fabric. What was I thinking? Bah. I’ll probably look back on what I’m wearing now and think the same.

I’ve swam about 2km since Thursday, and I’m going again tomorrow. I’ve had a lot of nervous energy over the last month so it’s nice to have some sort of outlet.

This essay is not going to write itself. I’m trying to resist watching iPlayer…I’m going to have to compromise and attempt to work while watching/listening.

Oh joy!

Finally, finally found a swimming pool near my flat. Somehow the Bloomsbury branch of Cannons Health Club didn’t come up in any of my internet searches. I stumbled across it on the way to a lecture the other morning. AND it’s open from 6.30am which is, like, perfect because I only swim very early in the morning (otherwise I never go…all or nothing). Perhaps now I’ll sleep better by tiring myself out a few days per week.

I’ve got a couple of deadlines looming (well, one passed me by on Monday) but lecturers are being very sympathetic and flexible so I’m just plodding on as best I can right now. Had my first Starbucks Christmas coffee of the season with Sam today. Toffee Nut…mmmmm… Simple pleasures.

Support work is really stressful these days. At the end of the last few shifts I’ve felt like banging my head against a wall, but then I guess with the nature of the job and the events of the last few weeks, it’s not surprising. Students who require support just have such extensive emotional needs, I just don’t have it in me right now. I’m snappy and curt. I’m never usually like that with my students. I need to snap myself out of it.

I’ve been in the library an hour and so far I’ve only watched two episodes of Eastenders on iPlayer. I guess I should read something while I’m here.

Ain’t no party like a Democrat Party.

It was obvious in the weeks leading up to the 4th of November that Obama had it in the bag, and also that McCain was clutching at straws. If it had gone the other way, I would have been absolutely outraged anyway. With McCain going to great lengths to conceal his medical records, and the real danger of Sarah Palin becoming president of the most powerful nation state in the world, there was no way it could have been allowed to happen. I would bleed to death from my ears if I had to listen to Sarah Palin’s speeches on the news on a regular basis.

As a citizen of the world as it is today, that is, the world as it is directly affected by US actions in terms of political and economic (and more specifically business) relations, I have been really turned off by the way election campaigns must be conducted in the US. In so many ways, America is so detached from popular strands of thought around the world. For example, the fact that people are outraged by welfare programmes, condemning them as the redistribution of wealth, or socialism, or communism. What is wrong with redistributing wealth through welfare programmes, when 37.3 million people in the US were below the UN poverty line in 2007? 37.3 million people in poverty in what is supposed to be the role model for liberal democracy, in the country which less economically developed states are supposed to aspire to? Why does welfare have to be such a dirty word? So as a citizen of the world, part of me is outraged that I don’t have a say in US elections. Why shouldn’t I and others have a say, when US actions have such a profound effect on our own states, when the rest of the world ‘catches a cold’ whenever the US sneezes? Why should it all be left to welfare-phobes who grasp international relations exclusively from a US perspective?

Another gripe I have is that both Obama and McCain were agreed (for once) on increasing funding to faith-based programmes. No prizes for guessing who they were pandering to, despite the fact that the separation of religion and state was a founding principle of the US. Obama can’t sit on the fence anymore. He can’t say that although he is morally against same-sex marriage, he would vote no on Proposition 8 (I lol’d that the interview was with MTV). Now he is going to come into power, his real views have to come into focus and many, like me, will be watching closely.