Returning to uni means moving in to a new house which will be my Cheltenham home (my second home – I sound like an MP now) – until I leave uni in Summer 2013.
For the first time, I’m now living with other radio students – three people on my course – rather than with people I’ve never met before.
This is a completely different area of Cheltenham to the one I’ve been in for the last 2 years. I’m basically living opposite the railway station now. During my first year I was in halls not far from Pittville. During my second year I was in a house of 8 in Fairview Road, just 2 minutes from where I was the previous year.
So yesterday was a day of finding my way around the local area, and topping up on food supplies. I’m just 15 minutes walk from the big 24 hour Tesco – a lot closer than I was last year. It is also a 7 minute walk from here to the big Waitrose, from where I got last night’s dinner: γίγαντες (greek beans in tomato sauce), served with bread to dip in the sauce. It appears Tesco has stopped selling them – they’ve also been removed from the Tesco website since I got them in an online order just a couple of weeks ago.
My Room
I’m on the ground floor here – the other three are all upstairs. That’s quite useful: No need to worry about waking everyone up when I go in to the kitchen to get breakfast at 06:30 in the morning.
My room is also much larger than the one I had last year… It hasn’t taken me long to move everything around inside it – I’ve pushed the bed away from the middle of the room and in to the corner, and I’ve turned the desk around, so that rather than facing a rather blank wall, I can sit facing out the door and see anyone coming in/out of the house.
It has already been said that my room now resembles an office/reception desk (thanks Jack)!
Although I take that as quite a compliment, on the basis that an office is a working environment and there is no expectation for it to be tidy.
Actually I’d say that – compared to my room at home – it is tidy… it might look a bit disorganised when you look at what’s on the desk and on the shelves. But that’s because its organised my way. Organised chaos! I like it.
The Kitchen…
I’m pleased to say it has gas. That’s good, I prefer a gas hob to a silly little electric one which never works when you want it to.
There is also a microwave. It has lots of buttons and a very complicated display. It took me about 15 minutes to work out how it works!
I switched it on last night to heat up the Greek beans, and it went through a weird process of not responding to the buttons I was pressing, instead going in to the complicated menu system regardless of the button I pressed, and ending up looking like it was about to cook scrambled egg.
I switched it off at the wall, then back on, and it did the same again. It did this a couple of times. Then it came up on screen saying “Demo mode will continue in 9 seconds…or press stop” (or words to that effect). Oh dear! I was pressing buttons not realising it was a demo showing me how to work the infernal machine! I eventually worked out how to work it, and I have to say I quite like the little tune it plays you when its finished cooking!
Right… I’m off to get today’s paper. I’ve got a lecture this afternoon. I’ll write again soon.
Bye for now,
FH.
