Growing up

When was the first time you truly felt like an adult?

A couple of weeks ago I was in a Mediterranean restaurant with about twenty of our friends for a birthday celebration. During the evening I gazed around as people relaxed round two huge circular dining tables, pouring wine, mixing up dressing from the bottles of Spanish vinegar and oil and laughingly passing round olives and crusty bread.

It suddenly struck me that I am an ADULT. No one organised for me to be there. I wasn’t just tagging along with my parents. I was there because I was part of a group of intelligent, engaging people who liked me for who I am.

Now, this might seem a little random and I’m certainly not saying I feel immature or out of my depth. It was just one of those light bulb moments where you feel how did this happen? When did I make the transformation from gawky teenager, to shy student to happy-as-I-am adult. Weird.

I guess all of this has been going round in my head because we are making some big decisions at the moment. In the next couple of weeks we will be taking another step towards our future, and will be finding out whether the door we’re pushing is going to be opened wider or slammed in our faces.

We’ve also recently found that a couple of our close friends are having a baby. They are the first in our close friendship group and it just makes you realise that we are getting to the age where loads of our friends seem to getting married and having babies.

 I wonder if people look at Josh and I and think we have it all together? I’ve already made the link between ‘growing up’ and ‘getting married’ – and we’ve been married for over two years. While, I’m not saying I feel immature (in fact Josh and I have had to deal with lots of situations that you could say are beyond our years), I’m not saying I feel like I have it all together either…

 I’ve got a feeling that becoming an adult is one of those mythical statuses that you aim to achieve as a child. Like turning 16 or 18…when you actually get there it doesn’t feel any different.

 So…a question for you. When was the first time that you felt like a real adult?

How to go for a walk…

…Will, Anna, Becky, Hannah, Josh and Rachel style!

 1. Peruse a map of your local area and notice that one of the nearby hills is called Welshie Law. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter that the surrounding land could be a midge infested bog, this is an adventure! And it’s called Welshie, you have to climb it!

2. Arrive at the tiny village of Yarrow to begin your walk, only to find that there is a huge funeral being held there and that every sensible parking space is taken.

3. Drive out of village. Do perilous three point turn in farm gate. Lose hub cap.

4. Park inappropriately at the side of the road and awkwardly walk out of the village avoiding eye contact with the steady stream of mourners walking the other way.

 

5. Find hub cap at the side of the road. Decide it would be too embarrassing to run back to the car past the mourners so carry it on the walk instead.

6. Find path.

 

7. Act out the Christmas story to keep yourself amused (only advisable if you’re walking with children’s workers)

 

8. Remember half way up the hill that you’re ridiculously unfit. Feel like legs will fall off. Dump all bags on the ‘fit one’ (read: Josh)

 9. Remember that the big bottle of insect spray you bought especially for the trip is still back at the cottage. Proceed to be attacked by flies.

10. Admire the amazing view from the top of the hill. Feel like it was well worth the toil after all. Eat lunch, take photos, play Frisbee.

 

11. Walk down other side of hill and realise you have lost the path. Consult map. Trespass on farm property and worry you are about to be shot by farmers.

 

12. Finally make it back to the inappropriately parked cars and head home, happy.

 13. Eat cake

B.F.F

Meet Hayley.

When my parents moved to Exmouth in 1999 I had to cope with adjusting to a new place, a new school and new friends. Several weeks after I arrived Hayley started at school as a new student too. We got absorbed into the same group of friends, and gradually got to know each other. Soon we were visiting each other’s houses after school, and before long we were inseparable.

We would spend hours playing The Sims, talking and laughing in my attic room, and getting high on coke. 

Hayley is a complete coke addict. I’ve been kicked and thrown around when she’s on one of her highs, but our friendship still survived it all. 

(You do realise I’m talking about Coca Cola right? Who do you think I am?!)

Anyway, when we turned sixteen we both headed off for different colleges. Although we still spoke on the phone and over the internet our friendship suffered as it was difficult to see each other often and we were hanging out in different friendship groups. 
Over the next couple of years we went our separate ways, reaching adulthood via different life experiences.

When Hayley text me about a month ago to ask if she could come and visit us in Aberystwyth I immediately said yes. Then I began to worry.

What if we didn’t get on anymore? We haven’t really hung out with each other for five years. What if we don’t have anything to say?

I needn’t have worried. We had a great week, hanging out, chatting, laughing and reminiscing.
On Friday we walked all three beaches in Aberystwyth just chatting ten to the dozen – just like old times.

AND THEN, I found a CD of all of my files that my dad had burned from our old computer before they upgraded. We had such great times looking at all the old pictures and laughing over old MSN conversations. I didn’t even know that MSN conversations are automatically saved to your computer! Can there be anything more hilarious than pouring over hours and hours worth of teenage angst, young love and just downright randomness. I mean listen to this…

Haylesberry:     What r ya pics? [on webcam]
Rach:                    lol. It’s pheobe’s corpse
Haylesberry:     Whos Pheobe?
Rach:                    My pet balloon [chicken shaped orange balloon]
Rach:                    Its very distressing
Haylesberry:     rofl

Rach:                ive had her for two months and kept her perfect without deflating
Rach:                and then jen came along and squeezed her and she just died
Rach:                so i attempted resuscitation this morning but she couldn’t hold her skin together and her head blew off
Rach:                and now she’s dead
Hayleysberry:   rofl

RIP Pheobe

SEE! Don’t you just miss those days when you found the most random things absolutely hilarious?!

And then we found the conversations we had when I first started noticing Josh around…

Rach:                lol! [boys name]’s bugging me about Josh liking me
Haylesberry:     lol. Which Josh?
Rach:                Josh from Chapel. We’ve been talking a lot lately. He doesn’t like me, but [boy] thinks he does
Haylesberry:     HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA.
Haylesberry:     Sozzy
Rach:                What?
Haylesberry:     He’s getting jealous of Josh?!
Rach:                He’s cool beans
Rach:                If he was in our year you wouldn’t be saying that. He’s really nice.

Two months later…

Rach:                    Josh is going to ask me out on Wednesday, I just know it
Haylesberry:     awww! What you gunna say? How do you know?
Rach:                    I don’t know
Rach:                    I think I’m going to run off or shoot him with a paintball

Yeah…I was kind of scared of boys back then. And, we were going paintballing that day – I don’t just randomly carry around a paintball gun to ward off persistent boys. Oh, and Josh asked me out on Thursday, so my instinct wasn’t far off.

Anyway, back to the point in hand – I’m so glad to have made proper contact with Hayley again and to have renewed our friendship. It really does feel like we have picked up from where we left off

Other than now I have to pay my own phone bill, which kinda sucks.

Hayley has just started a new blog. Why not head over there, introduce yourself, say hi and welcome her to the blogging world!

Staff Fun

Monday was our annual staff day out, which is always looked forward to with a mix of trepidation and hilarity.
This year we went to ‘King Arthur’s Labyrinth’ which didn’t really help quell the over-excited among the group*.

*The Children's Worker

It was, as expected, hilarious.

You’re taken into ‘the past’ by a mysterious cloaked man on a boat into some underground caves and made to walk around in the dark with only a few small lamps dotted around while you’re told some of the lesser known legends of King Arthur . One of which involved a head in a box…

 

I can't really remember was this was about

Most of us regressed back into childhood happily…

The we headed back to Aber to my boss’ house for a BBQ. Her husband is a butcher and we had pretty much every meat you could think of. SOOO good! Sorry I don’t have any photos, I was too busy stuffing my face.

Then, in the evening Josh and I headed out to do some moth trapping, and I had one of the best wildlife experiences of my life.
Unfortunately I have guests coming over in an hour and I need to start preparing food. Check back tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about it. For now, here’s a taster…see if you can work out what we saw that was so amazing…

Answers on the back of a postcard please...

Moving

Check out those muscles

It has now been a week since we moved into the flat. It seems like a lot longer. This week has been busy with trying to combine normal weekly activities with unpacking. We’ve done pretty well though, most of the rooms are liveable and only a few things need to be sorted.

The jury is still out, but I think I prefer this flat to the old one. It’s smaller yes, and there are a few niggling problems which we haven’t sorted out yet but the cut in rent more than makes up for these issues. The carpets and sofas make it more homely than the old place and it makes inviting people back much easier as we actually have a decent space to host them.

However, this week I have realised once again that I simply don’t do change very well. On the outside I’m calm, and people have even commented that we seem to have coped with the move very well, but this week I have just felt very odd. I can’t understand it myself so poor Josh has no chance. I just feel weird and unsettled. Not myself at all.

It doesn’t help that we now have single glazed windows in the bedroom and have moved closer to seagull city centre. If you have never lived in a seaside town you simply cannot know the racket that these birds put up every morning from 3.30am onwards. I don’t find it too bad as I have grown up in seaside towns, but it has caused me to be more tired that I would normally be.

I’m just looking forward to time passing and feeling that the ‘new flat’ isn’t new anymore. I want to feel normal walking back from work a different way. I want it to feel like home.

But it could have been so much worse. I cannot even express the full extent of my gratitude for the twenty or so people who gave up their time on the hottest Saturday of the year to help us move. Who packed and lugged heavy boxes to and fro and who helped us clean our flat from top to bottom. I really don’t know what state I would have been in if you hadn’t been there; you saved us a lot of time and stress.

Oh no! I've just poured water all over your floor!

Stay tuned for some before and after photos of the new flat when we are all unpacked and tidy!

Money, Money, Money

Unsurprisingly everyone is blogging about money. Well, I just wanted to give you an update on our ‘frugal January’, so you’re getting it from me too, horray!

 

Well, I’m happy to tell you we were within our budget this month. We had a few unexpected LARGE pay outs which would have normally meant we would have spent well over our budget but because we really cut down we were still within the budget which is great!

 

So what did we do? Here are some of the things that really helped us save the pennies…

 

We’re Back! Happy New Year

We are back from Devon! I will do a proper update of all our news very soon. At the moment I am in a little room with nine other people trying to conserve warmth- apparently it’s -3 outside! That’s eco-friendly for you!

Happy New Year!

Catch up in pictures