The Time Traveller

For me reading offers me two kind of escapism. The first one is diving into the book itself. I might be sitting on a bus stuck in traffic or in bed after a long day at my mundane job, but in my mind I am studying potions in the dungeons of Hogwarts or Surviving the Hunger Games. In books I have been to College in America, I have worked in a London Theatre, I've been a writer for a rock magazine, I've flown through the air on the back of magical beast and I have fallen in love over and over and over. 

But I also have a different form of escapism when I read. 

When ever I am travelling some where I like to take a new book with me. Something to help me while away the time. I spend a lot of time on trains travelling from the South East of England all the way up to Scotland, so I have plenty of time to take on an adventure. Or maybe something to read while I sit by a pool in Spain, or as I drive through Germany on my way to a Christmas market. I enjoy the journey far more when I have a book full of companions to keep me company. Then when the last page is done and the book is closed and I slot it into my book shelf and I can thank them all for the entertainment they offered. 

Then a few months later when I am low on money and want a book to read I pull one of these books down and I start to read.  Not only am I back in these fictional lands, but I am also back on that train to Scotland, or I am in Düsseldorf admiring their 10ft Christmas trees. Re-reading those words I first read doing something so exciting transports me back there. It sparks memories of those trips that had dimmed in my mind. I love it. They are like little time machines taking me back to all these great places where I met great people and have fond memories. 

My favourite, like so many readers of my generation, are my Harry Potter books. Because I have re-read these books so many times I have so many memories attached to them. I can remember my bedroom and how it was decorated. I remember sitting reading them  until the sun started poking its head above the trees after getting them at the midnight launches. I remember holding the book in one hand and making a sandwich with other because it was literally too good to put down. 

Also the first four books are paper backs. They have creased and bent over time, and when I hold the well worn covers in my hand you can see how my hands have grown over the year as the indents where my fingers grip the book have rippled out over time. Creases and folds over lapping each other as each time I re-read and fill these pages with my own stories and memories. 

When I read between the lines I am reading back my own life. The memories I book marked there for me to comes back to later. So I can relive those holidays or just sit in my childhood bed room as a twelve year old again. 

Rella 

I Owe it to Myself to Write.

I love writing, I love putting stuff out into the world, whether it be creative or a review heck I even feel good when I write a good email. Yet I have this blog which I love and I just gave up on it. Life got busy and I thought I would pick it back up when things settled down, but I forgot to make room for it. I would write blog posts in my head but I would never do anything with it, and doing something in your head just isn't creating. Locking my ideas away just makes my head fill and fill until there is no room for anything else and I just feel disappointed in myself for ransoming my own creativity.

I feel one of the reasons I gave up on this, is I was starting to get a fair few hits per post and I knew some of those people were people I new IRL and to be honest I got a bit shy and embarrassed. I felt like people have one perception of me, and this blog shows a side that people don't expect, and I worry that people might think I was pretensions or fake.

But I owe this to me, this is something I really enjoy, something I would maybe like to turn into something more then a hobby one day. I want this to lead me into the world of writers where I can make friends and read amazing things by other people. Why should I stop because someone I knew five years ago may think what I am doing in childish or lame ?

Lets shake of the cobwebs and reclaim this

I deserve to write 

Rella Reads

Re-Reading Your Story So Far

During the Victorian Era books became far more affordable. With the improvements to the printing press, national literacy skills, and in general the price of making a book fell. Not only did this mean more people could get their hands on books, but also more people were writing books. To be fair there wasn't a lot to get up too, your choices were needle point, sit  in your house and hope someone drops by, or you could always die of polio writing seemed like a pretty decent pass time. 

Paperbacks became very cheap and people could either by a whole book or some books were sold a chapter at a time. In fact paper backs were so cheap that people would tear out the pages as they finished reading them and throwing them away. 

I feel myself doing this often. I finish a chapter of my life and I was to rip it out and throw it away. Sometimes because it was a difficult time, or  things haven't turned out how I wanted, other times things have all been great but for one reason or another I just find it difficult to look back on that time. 

When a boyfriend broke up with me when i was eighteen it broke my little teenage heart. Of course being eighteen I believed we were in love, the real thing that was going to go the distance and no one had ever had a love like this before. Of course like most teenage loves, surprise surprise, it didn't quite turn out like that. So I decided to start ripping this chapter apart. I changed how I looked, made my hair go from black to bleach blonde, I wore clothes I had never dared to before, changed how I did my make up and removed all traces of him from my life. I told my friends not to ask about him, hell I made sure they didn't say his name around me. A bit extreme now that I look back but I was a heartbroken teen and I wanted to pretend like that year of my life had never involved him let alone revolved around him. 

When my Grandmother died I wouldn't walk down the road her house was on. I didn't want to see a place that was once a place so full of love and family and happiness belong to a stranger who didn't know I use to love running around the bush in the front garden, and they had never attended one of the BBQ's in the back garden where my Grandmother would always rent bouncy castle for the grand children. It was difficult to look at a place where so many memories were formed and now I wasn't allowed in. I didn't want to forget my Grandmother but I preferred her house to become a dream house that exist only in my memories and the physical form doesn't exist any more to me.

Then there are friends, because I so often scrub out sections of my life. I clean out everything I don't want, and just carry forward what I am happy with means I am terrible at keeping in contact.I mean if you rip out a chapter it is hard to go back and just re-read the bits you enjoyed. I had some really close friends as a teenager, but then my Mum sold my childhood home and I no longer had a base in the place they lived it meant it was more difficult for me to stay in contact. Then when I would visit I was almost insulted that they had carried on their life with out me, they had made new friends and got on with their lives and they grew into people with these lives I hadn't been apart of. Although I still cared about them we know longer knew  other, and now when ever I see them post on-line I feel a prang of sadness for a friendship that once meant the world to me and now had faded. I find myself telling the stories of my teen years less as I slowly tear these pages from life. 

However recently things have been going pretty good for me. I have a nice flat, and I get to spend more time with my family. I am talking to my brother more, who has always been one of my favourite people, and I have a boyfriend who is caring and funny always tries to makes me feel good. A website decided my writing was good enough to let me be one of their contributors, and I have even landed a full time job. Then just the other day I was sitting in my room and something suddenly reminded me of one the places I had hated living and I stopped myself thinking about it, while telling myself " no you are trying to forget about that" and like a blinding light I thought to myself NO. 

I am not going to keep ripping pages out of my life. Everything I have been through deserves to be in my story. Things have made me unhappy and angry and sad, but the memories of my past should also be able to make me feel happy and I should be able to enjoy where I have been.

Maybe I should reach out to more people from my past and re-connect or maybe I should remove them from social media and just be happy that I got to experience them in one of my chapters, that were shared what we did when we did. Rather then watching their lives go on wishing I was still part of it. 

I am ready to start my Hardback and stop ripping apart the Paperback.

Rella 

Xx

The Role Model For Your 20's

As you grow up most people want to be like their parents when they grow up. I know I did. My Dad is a Police Officer and I remember telling all of my friends about this. To the point that I would make up stories that he would take me on police chases to impress the other kids in the playground ! And my Mum, well I though she was the greatest Mum ever, and of course I still believe this, so I wanted to be a mum as good as her while fighting crime just like my Dad. Even my big brother was a role model. I thought he was one of the smartest coolest people ever. Everything he did I wanted to do, he was great at computer games and sometimes he would even let me be Tails when he played Sonic ( though this often resulted in my flying off screen and my brother having to take the controller off me to get through the difficult bits) .

As you get older you realise that there are so many people you can look up and admire and want to emulate. Of course my family are still and always will be a huge influence on my life. But I have other people I also look up to. For years these people were celebrities, that seem to live on another planet that no one could get access too. But as the internet expanded and grew and Social Media loomed out and grabbed every-bodies attentions I started to realise that there were other great people in the world and some just as close to home as family. 

There are two people that I really look up to, and they are both people I know personally. Girls I have had drinks with, gone shopping with, talk about boyfriends with and talked about what we want for the future, and then I have seen them take their dreams and run with it and it is truly inspiring. 

Stephanie Ellen Model

The first is a girl who I met when I was about 16, Stephanie and me had a similar friendship group and a we shared similar interest and our worlds collided. I remember at the time she had mentioned modelling a couple of times, but at the time I just thought that it was one of those interest you have as a teen but it will probably never happen. 

One of Stephanie Ellen's early modelling work

But Stephanie did take no for an answer and she made it happen for her self. To be honest it is really impressive. I remember her first sharing her photos online, and I thought to myself " Oh they are pretty, but she probably won't keep it up for long" not because she wasn't any good, she is very good, but still being a model is one of the dream careers that so few achieve; but still the photos kept rolling in and they were getting better and better, and she wasn't slowing down. She was doing all this while studying Law and it was so impressive. Then at the start of this year, she quit her job and now is a full time model. 

She is always making bookings, and it seems she is often fully booked. It's just so awesome to watch someone go from talking about a dream job on a bench in your home town to seeing someone grow, peruse and and work hard to get to where wanted to be. 

The work she makes now 

Find her page here

Sarah Cook - Film Writer 

The second person is a girl I went to Uni with, Cookie is a brilliant and passionate girl who is incredibly friendly and fun to be around. I met her in my first year and we shared an interest in music and were both taking some of the same classes and I thought she was pretty cool from the get go. In our third year we had to choose between a dissertation or a creative project, and Cookie decided to take the creative option. I remember talking about her project, a website dedicated to her love of film and thought it sounded pretty good, and it made me wish I had come up with her idea rather then taking the dissertation option. 

 She created it and wrote frequently on it  for the duration of our third year honing her writing technique and growing in confidence, and after we graduated she kept up her website,and he hasn't stopped working on it. Every day she mentions what she's been working on, editing and interview and review and it is amazing what she has achieved. She started getting press passes to interview stars of films, she would get spots on the red carpet at film premiers and this year she was sat with other media big shots at the BAFTA announcements. 

It was because of her that I decided to start my blog. And her perseverance is what encourages me to write when I don't feel like it, or when I have sometimes felt like this is all a waste of time. Because I am able to see someone who I know grab on to future that she wants for herself and MAKE it happen its just so amazing. She is currently writing a film and that seems to be getting some real momentum behind it. 

Cookie's Short film 

I feel so often we are quick to put people down. If someone says to us that they want to reach for the star we would roll our eyes and think " yeah what ever". People are so quick to think you have your head in the clouds of idealistic wishes. If someone says they want to be a model or a writer they will say y "but what's your real job going to be?"I remember when both of these girls started out I thought to myself, "yeah nice idea but it it won't last" because that's what people do, rather then offer our support and encouragement they instead wait for them to fail and say told you so. Where as maybe if we said, "you would be great at that !" or " What you are doing is really impressive" or " I believe in you" more people would reach their dreams.

What has been so great about seeing people you know climb the ladder of success is you can see the hard work they have put in. It would be an insult to Cookie and Stephanie to say this has just fallen into their lap. They really have worked for everything they have got. You here celebrities say that all the time, but it hard to believe because they just seem to appear from no where and get paid incredible amounts of money and seem to live a blessed life. I don't doubt they worked hard but it seems so much more impressive when you can see each step of some ones dream becoming a reality. 

I hope both of these girls continue their amazing work, and inspire others to give their dreams a chance. Hard work really does pay off and I must say both of these girls seem so happy with their lives and I hope one day I will be able to look back on my hard work and see how far I have come.

Rella Xx

Bargain Christmas + Video

I love Christmas, every year from about October I start looking forward to it. I plan what presents to get, start dreaming of Christmas Dinner and begin to watch Christmas movies. However for the past five years I have lived in a house share. but this year, as you all know, I moved into a flat which means I can finally have my own Christmas Tree something that was never possible before!

However to decorate for Christmas you need money, something that is always tight with us. So feeling like Bob Cratchit I started looking for bargains and ways to save money, and I thought I would share my finds with you. 

1. Start Early.

I bought my first Christmas decoration in October, along with my first few Christmas presents. It is always important to spread your money as far as you can, so start buying things in September October time and store them away, when December rolls round it will be like a mini Christmas as you re-discover everything you have bought.

2. Use Coupons 

I am with the mobile phone provider O2 and they have something called O2 Priority Moments and you often get Coupons for free items from shops such as W H Smiths Game and Halfords. So far this year I have got Wrapping Paper, Christmas Cards, Chocolate Coins, a Calendar, a Hunger Games Keyring and a Disney Infinity Character all for FREE ! I also got a coupon for 20% off everything in store for 7 Days at W H Smiths so I picked up Advent Calendars Stocking Fillers, Chocolates and Annuals all for 20% off. I also work in retail so I used my 10% staff discount to buy Christmas Trees and Fairy Lights.

3. Find Out What Promotions Are Going on 

In Argos they ran a Toy Drive for Bernardo's Children, where if you donated some old toys you got a £5 off voucher on £30 worth of toys. They also had a get a £10 voucher if you spend over £50 and get £10 if you spend over £100, so when I bought new stuff for my flat I collected a few of these vouchers. The store then fan a 20% off all toys for one weeks so I picked up my brother a set of Lego that normally retails at £70 but using all of these vouchers I had collected I got it for £25 !

4. POUNDSHOPS!

As these pound shops are getting more and more popular here there stock is also improving. I picked up Tinsel, Candy Canes, Baubles Garlands and much much more. The quality is just as good as the items you would pick up at any Supermarket. You don't need to buy high end expensive decorations when you can get items that look just as good at the fraction of the price. Next have a Merry Christmas garland for £10, I got one that looked just as nice for a £1 all you had to do was thread the letters on yourself.

5. Look in Unexpected Places.

Sports Direct have a great range of Christmas Jumpers, especially mens. In most shops mens jumpers are comical where are these ones fore more traditional Christmas knit designs. In Argos I picked up a Tag and Bow set for wrapping gifts for £1. Keep you eyes Peeled as you never know what you might find.

So I hope you found this helpful and enjoyed it, let me know if you have any money saving tips you use at Christmas. I made a little video on my iPhone to show you the result of my bargain decorations. 

(though be warned, the quality is really low! So probably best to watch it on a small screen!)

Merry Christmas

Rella

Xx

Leaving the books at home

When I was 20 I started seeing an ex boyfriend again for the third time. I was convinced once and for all we were going to make it work because to me he was this wonderful perfect boy and we were made for each other. One day I returned home and my house mates announced a gift wrapped packaged had arrived while I was in my lesson. I very excited opened it and discovered this guy had sent me a Kindle. 

Kindles were brand new at the time and cost about £119, and I had mentioned in passing that I would like one as I had to carry a lot of books around, what with doing an English course. And suddenly a week later I had been sent one, and I was shocked and touched by this gesture. That evening I downloaded some books onto it and in my next seminar when I whipped out my flash new toy the whole class wanted to have a look and my lecturer asked what I thought of it and I sang its praises how the books were so cheap and in some cases even free, and it was so light and the battery life seemed endless. 

A couple of months later unsurprisingly, the somewhat rocky and pretty unhealthy on off relationship with this boy came to an explosive end, though we were not officially together picture of him in bed with someone else while he was at his ex girlfriends wedding, and him not wishing me Happy Birthday on my 21st birthday which all happens to be Valentines day finally did it for me. We had a heated phone call and after I sent him a strongly worded text telling him to never contact me again culminating in my throwing my phone across the room. We haven't had any contact since, and neither has the Kindle and me.

Once I cut off ties with this guy I wanted to rid myself of everything that reminded me of him. I threw out stuff he had given, re arranged my room so it wouldn't remind me of him, I dyed my hair so I didn't look like the same girl who liked this guy, and because I couldn't bring myself to throw out a perfectly good working Kindle it went into the bottom of the wardrobe where it stayed until this September where it finally made its way into the bin. 

My feelings toward e-Books also changed. A Kindle was not practical for a Uni student, I couldn't highlight important parts of the text. You couldn't quickly flip to a page to refresh your memory on what had happened, You couldn't read it in bight lights and they Uni didn't have a format that allowed you to properly reference digital books. I honestly didn't like them, I only liked them because the boy I fancied had bought me one, and I didn't use another e-book format again. 

Until the latest iPhone update where they introduced a new app rather un-inspiringly named iBook. When ever my Phone updates I have a little tinker around with the new apps, and they never touch them again ( has any one every used the Pass Book app?). So I clicked on it and it is basically the same as the Newstand on the iPhone which allows you to down load Magazines but this one it for books. I saw they had a few books which you could download for free and I browsed through thinking they would all be rubbish books because why would an author of a good book allow their work to be given away for free and I came across a book I really like Starter For Ten by David Nicholls. Which made we think the other free books might not be that bad after all.

I decided to download two books, both genres that I normally wouldn't go for one was a crime book The Woods  by Harlan Coben  which is actually pretty good and would recommend you get if you have an iPhone, and the other was a Chick-Lit book called The One you Really Want by Jill Mansell which really isn't that great. I started reading The Woods  first and it is a genuinely interesting book about a man whose sister was killed when they were at a summer camp together as teenagers and her body was never found. The story had lots of twists and turns and suspense it was a good read. 

I found reading it on the iBook meant I was reading at times I wouldn't normally read. The Advert breaks on TV, while waiting for my Boyfriend to meet me in town, and on the bus to work which is only a ten minuet journey. Because the book is right there in my pocket and the pages are only the size of the screen I can whip it out read a few paragraphs and pop it away again. I also really liked that the screen alters is brightness depending on the room your in, If the room is well lit it will display traditional black text on white, but if you are reading in bed in low lighting it will display white text on black which is easier on the eye which reading off a screen. 

Also at the bottom of the page it tell you how many pages you have to go before the end of the chapter, which is handy because if you are reading on the go rather then trying to rush to the end of the chapter you can instead plan to stop at the next paragraph break because you know you just wont make it to the chapter end. 

How there are still thing I dislike. I will never get use to not being able to quickly flip back a few pages to re read a line with out loosing my place. And the other day while reading I accidentally flipped to the end of the book and it was very hard to find my place again. Also I just don't think I could ever bring myself to pay for a book on this app. Because in the back of my mind I will always be thinking "for a couple extra pound you could have a physical book" 

So as far as my relationship with e-books, I feel we can work it out, we will never be where we were but I feel we can be friends. As for that guy ... well that ship has well and truly sailed.

Rella

Xx

The Bookshelf Tour

For every book lover one of the most important things you own will be your bookshelf. I have moved a lot in the past few years as I have mentioned before in previous posts, but not matter what I always make sure I have a book shelf. 

For me book shelves aren't just somewhere for books, they are a place where I also keep little trinkets, post cards photos note people have given, anything that I feel is important tends to end up on their either tucked into a book that reminds me of the person who gave it to me, or set next to some books that I feel reflect the item. When I moved I had to take all my books off take away all the trinkets and ferry them over to my new place, but I took some photos before I took it down and I wanted to take you on a little bookshelf tour.

Please forgive the terrible photos but I panicked last minute remembering that I wanted to take some photos before it all came down, so they aren't the best. but here it is my old book case. 

As you can  see it is totally jammed packed. Like many people my collection had outgrown the case and although there was some order there at some point it has very much disintegrated into a mess! But a very much loved mess. 

Now I wanted to take you few a through of my favourite bits starting at the very top

This is my collection of vintage books, I do have a couple more on the other shelves as well, but the main bulk is kept at the top. All of their books are either gifts from my Dad or I inherited from my Great Grandparents. my favourite one is Homers Iliad, third from the top as well as being a wonderful book in itself steeped in historical importance this old copy has a beautiful cover,  and it is in wonderful condition. 

My other favourite is a copy of Little Women, pictured just below The Iliad, that was passed down to my when my Great Grandparents passed away, the reason I love this book so much is because on the title page in a child's hand the name Nita is written, which was the name of my Great Grandmother, now I don't know if this was written by her, or later on by a child or grandchild but I love that it is there none the less. it give the book such meaning to me that makes me cherish it so much more. 

Another great book is Mrs Beeton All About Everything,below Little Women in the photo, which was a gift from my Dad on my 22nd Birthday, he gave it to me after we had spent the day at the Harry Potter Studio Tour. This book is fantastic as it is literally a book about how to do things like, make jam, polish shoes and also has how to treat medical ailment, and basically not matter what this issue is, part of the treatment will always involve giving the patient Gin. 

Now my bookcase was covered in little trinkets such as these, these were just little gifts given to me over the years which I liked and wanted to display, the Harry Potter Lego was a gift from someone at work, and though I love it constantly fell off my shelf, the trunk use to be filled with gold coins but every time it fell they would scatter across the floor and now only one remains. 

The little jars of spices again came from my Great Grandparents, they were something that were uncovered during the clearing of their house, and given to me, they remind me of something you might find in a potions class, or maybe a Victorians doctors cabinet. Although I never saw them in the house, I liked that they had been hidden away for all those years and felt it about time they were put on a shelf for all to see.

Now these a little puppies that I make  in my spare time. I was bought a kit by my boyfriend last Christmas, and once I masted the first one, the Pug, I was off. It is great fun and I love hand making things but don't always have the space or even the confidence to give it a go, now that I have moved space won't be an issue. But I was proud of these little creations and wanted them on display so up they went on the shelf, though towards the end I did end up with a few too many up there. 

Now you may have noticed that one of my all time favourite book series Harry Potter is missing from this self. That is because when I first moved out to uni I did't want to take all my books with me, as my room was only small and I needed space to keep my books I would need for my course, to the Potter books along with The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials all got packed away and lived in my Dads shed for the next five years, a decision I started to hate myself for because I often found myself wanting to go back and read them, but just simply didn't have access to them, but I now have them all back up on my shelves where they belong. 

And finally this is my over spill from my bookcase. I didn't have room to buy a new bookcase so as my collection grew it became too big for the selves and leaked out onto the floor, so they were caught up with the internet routed and always covered in dust. When I moved I did donate two bags of books, which although it is great that others will get to enjoy those books I always find it hard letting go of books. Especially as I do dream of one day having a room dedicated to the books I have collected over my lifetime, and even if I hate a book I want to keep hold of  it, so when peple see it on my shelf I can tell them what I really think of it, but I did finally let some of them go and I now have a much neater book case, though there is still an over flow issue that may still give me an excuse for a second bookcase soon much to my Boyfriends dismay

In a few months I will do a post about my new arrangements but right now I am still not happy with the lay out of it and it fill be reshuffled a few times before I am happy with in. But I hope you enjoyed this little tour of my old book case. there are so many more interesting little bits and pieces on these shelves that I just didn't have time to photograph in the mad rush to get packed away, but I am so glad I took some to look back on my collection in a few years and hopefully it would of grown some more. 

Rella Xx

1838 Days of London

I always look forward to September because no matter what September always brings a change for me. It almost like September is my new year, to start fresh and redirect my life or push it forward to the next stage. 

When I was younger the school year always started in September, so I was either starting a new School or at least starting a new school year. I would get to put on my new uniform and pack up my new stationary and get ready to face what ever challenges I might come come up against. 

One of my most monumental Septembers was in 2009, the year I left my place of birth and moved to London. I grew up in Surrey, I got my education there, all my friends lived there and  my family home, the only home I had ever known. I had lived in the same house for 16 years, and earlier in the year I had to move out as my Mum moved to Scotland and I was in the middle of my final year of college, I decided to stay behind and moved in with an Aunt I really didn't know all too well. 

And it was my support group of all the people in Surrey that got me through. I didn't have my physical home any more, but the familiar streets were home, my friends were home, the trees that line every Surrey road was home. 

My wonderful friends who helped me out so much when my mum moved away

When I got my college A-level results I was sat in a cow shed logged onto a computer in  a makeshift internet cafe with my best friend, and I suddenly realised I would be moving away to London. Away from everything I had always known into something I had always wanted. I had achieved the most amazing thing I had ever done, I had got into university. I got myself through my GCSE's without too much support, I had dropped out of my first round of college and on my second attempt doing A-level my mum had up rooted the family, and yet I still managed to maintain my college work and it had lead to that moment, at 8 am in cowshed in Somerset. 

One of the hardest parts of moving was not having my parents to help prepare me to move. I had a friend who I had grown up with, he had lived across the road from me and our mum were best friends, and he had his mum too him out to buy things like plates and kitchen ware and new bedding, and I tagged along,, not really knowing what to do or where to start. My very best friend, who had been with my in the cow shed, did her best to include me in her uni prep but I started to realise how on my own I was. 

Don't get my wrong both my parents are amazingly supportive, but distance limits the actions they carry out. I feel in that one month of preparing to move to uni on my own, working out this maze of unknown territory of kitchen pan sets and storage solutions I became incredibly independent and have remained so ever since. 

I moved to London on September the 17th 2009. I packed everything of value into my Dad's car and he too me to Greenwich, he dropped me off, and he couldn't hang around long, he was only allowed to park for half and hour I think, and suddenly I was alone in this city,in a single room with my possessions in boxes for the second time in a year, with my friends dotted up and down the country and my family spread out as well, and I had not idea what the future had in store, in one year my life had totally changed, everything I knew was different now.

 

My lovely uni house mates in our first year

Turns out a lot of amazing things and opportunities. The past five years have been amazing. I have met some amazing people, and done some pretty impressive stuff and even got a degree and fell in love along the way, and still every September my life would take a new turn.

September 2010 

I moved in with friends into the worlds worst house in Lewisham, and got my first ever London based job

September 2011 

I moved into a shared flat with one of my old House mates and met my boyfriend 

September 2012 

My boyfriend moved in with me, and I went to my first ever wedding that just so happened to be my Best friends, and to to celebrate my year anniversary with my boyfriend, which was also marked my longest relationship ever

September 2013

 I quit my job in the start of the month and by the end I started a new one, and I started a College course

And here I am in September again, and I am facing the biggest change since my move to London. That is my moved out of London, today September 16th 2014 I submitted the final bits of paperwork for a flat in Kent. I have let everyone at work know I am leaving, told my Landlord in London I won't be signing a new lease and started getting things ready to leave. 

It is an end of an era, a great era, in five years a little patch of the world I knew nothing about became a new home, red buses line the streets instead of trees and some of the friends I held so close and drifted away and new ones have filled their gap, and the streets I call home have different names now. On the 29th of September I will walk out of this little flat in London and into a whole new Chapter of my life. It's scary  and its exciting, the sea will be on my door stop instead of the tube, and family once again within touching distance. 

I am excited, this next chapter 

Rella

Xx

Let's Get Physical

GUESS WHO'S BACK ! 

A replacement charger arrived yesterday and I am back on-line. Which is nice, but i must say being off line was not as back as you might expect. Of course when I first found my charger broken and my Laptop dead i was annoyed, more so about the fact that I would have to shell out money for a new one, then anything else. Also when you loose anything you suddenly remember the 50,000 things you needed to do on-line, like I had to email a company about stuff that didn't arrive, I needed to change my ticket for travelling to Scotland, I had to order a birthday present for my Mum and I also had a post that I wanted to put on here as I had a pretty good stride going ( that post will be up soon) 

But by that evening once I had got those things sorted I sat down with a cup of tea and my book (A Storm of Swords Part 1) and I had a pretty good night, I read a good chunk of my book and enjoyed the lack of distractions. I should also point out that I don't have a television I use my laptop for that as well. 

However one thing I did discover was, I hate doing things on screens. I have always preferred writing my notes down on paper, and I use a real life calendar to keep track of my events rather then my phone. I feel like an old woman in my generation sometimes. I will be writing a note to someone or making plans on paper and some one will always say Why not use your iPhone ? or something along the lines of  It's quicker to do that on-line. Well I don't like do that.

When I was at Uni I would use my computer just to write essays, my research my book my class notes would be around me, and I would physically turn to the page I needed or highlight the information I wanted to use. If I could avoid on-line research I would, because I feel trapped by the screen, like my brain doesn't have enough room to think within these little squares, no matter how many new tabs I open.

When creativity is limited to keys and a screen I feel claustrophobic. I like making things with my hands not just the tips of my fingers, I feel like I have something to show my hard work if I fill a note book with my work rather then a Word Document. I like it when someone hands me something they have made rather then send me a link. 

In my ideal world this wouldn't be a on-line blog, but rather a mini flyer I could send everyone. Now I know this probably sounds like I am trying to be of niche and different but truly I have tried, I once had a Kindle, because what could be better then a library in my pocket, plus carrying a few novels to Uni every day was really heavy. I used my Kindle for one month then I shut it away in a drawer. I missed being able to flick through my book and highlight passages and quickly re-read a page, I missed cover art, and that feeling when you are approaching those last few pages, I missed my book mark I missed books. I remember when I was 12 my neighbour brought over a Digital Camera, It was the first one I had ever seen, and I remember thinking, That will never work, people like hold their photos, how wrong I was, and although I love always having a camera on me, I still print out physical photos in my local Boots and put them in frames or scrap books. 

My scrap book.

I always love it when my Mum gets out her photo albums from her younger years, and she has a huge chest in her room with a lock on it and that it where she keeps all her memories, things she has collected over the years letters and trinkets and when she lets me peek inside and pull a few bits out it is so exciting, we have spent hours travelling back into her memories like that, but I share my moments on a social media page, so she always knows what I've been up to. I just really like the idea of in my old age being surrounded by things that I have created or mementos that I have collected, rather then have to log into a Facebook account aged 75. 

I love technology I really do, I just wish we didn't all have to hide behind a screen to be creative.

Rella Xx

I open at the close

Yesterday I had the utter joy of meeting up with two of my house mates from university, I hadn't hung out with both of them together in three years, and for two years I barely saw either of them so it was very exciting to meet up with them in Greenwich where we went to uni and spend a few hours pretending we were students again. 

My two house mates and their boyfriends

University was such a huge massive thing in my life, I started thinking about it at 15 as I was sitting exams in secondary school, and my three years in college was basically working towards the goal of getting into uni. I remember the night before I was due to get my A Level results which would either mean I got in or not, so clearly. I was volunteering at a Summer Camp in Somerset I was with my best friend who was also getting her results tomorrow, and I was laying in my tent unable to sleep as I jumped between feeling very very excited about going to uni and the utter dread if I didn't get is as I had absolutely no back up plan in place. In the end I told myself  "I can't change anything now,  and what ever happens I will just have to get on with it" and went to sleep ! 

At the time I didn't realise just how exciting university is while I was there, but looking back and talking with my friends about everything we got up to, you realise just how great it is and how many firsts we shared together. Moving out for the first time, cooking for the first time, going on a bus in London for the first time one of the girls had never ordered a Chinese before she moved to uni. 

That's the thing about uni house mates, yeah I had other friends who went to uni and I did make many friends at uni as well but your house mates experience everything with you, these girls saw me drunkenly stumble home, they saw me  the next day in a less then graceful state, they saw me cry over break ups, get exited about exam results, stress over essays and we have all cried with laughter together. We spent birthdays and Christmases together introduced each other to our family and friends from back home. So many experiences that you could only have because we all shared a flat.

Also it helped us all find our passion. When I first thought about going to uni I wanted to do History, for about 4 year it had it in my mind as that is what I wanted to do, I was very good at it, I really enjoyed the subject and I already knew what areas I wanted to focus on. But as college wore on there was a little flame growing that was getting brighter and brighter and by the time it came to filling out my University application there was no way I was going to pick any other subject apart from English. ( Though I must say I do still love History !)

And with my house mates I got to really dive into it. Me and one house mate, Alice, would spend hour talking in her room about Books and philosophers and essays and God, until the moon slipped away and the sun was peaking over roof tops. It was fantastic these new conversation I had never had before, all because we had be brought together by a desire to get a higher education and we all had our own specialised interests to bring to discussions. 

Going to university is like being an adult, with disposable income and freedom but no real big responsibilities expect to pass your degree, which isn't by any means easy, but when you have literally having nothing else to worry about does help. 

Meeting up with them was like re reading a much loved book, it took me right back there to that adventure we shared, forging our way together into adulthood. I could re read that book everyday and I would never get bored of it. 

Thank you girls for being such great character in the best chapters of my story so far !

Three of us at our University grounds

Rella Xx

Baby Steps

So over the weekend I had the privilege to watch my boyfriend graduate University. I met him during his Fresher week, he was just starting his first year, I was about to embark on my third and final year and now here we are both graduates, and I can hardly believe we have made it here already. That now, for the first time ever neither of us are students.

Here we are at his graduation!

However I am proud of both of us for following our dreams and getting a degree, I have found it has filled me with a lot of worry and fear now. As a graduate every-ones expectations are so much higher, a simple entry level job simply will not do, and you are expected to have this whole plan in place, and these wonderful jobs with fantastic salary's are meant to be flying at you left right and centre. But they're not. 

I know my family is very proud of me and my boyfriends family are equally chuffed with him, but all weekend the question on every bodies lips is "What next?" they want to know what jobs we have applied for, and when we are going to move into our own place, have we started driving yet ? or thought about where we might move to for work ? any interviews lined ? I know their heart is in the right place but, I don't know the answers ! I wish I knew, but I don't even know what job I want let alone how to go about getting it. 

When you're a child you have this image of your life, as if its a thread that will weave in and out of opportunities and goal, and more threads with join in and twist together as you get married and have children and, in the end your thread has made a beautiful tapestry of all you've done, but the reality isn't quite so smooth, your thread get tangled and knotted and you fray it as you work away at the mess and you carry it round in stomach everyday feeling it getting more knotted and tangled and its just not working out the way you wanted it to, and you feel like such a let down. 

I finished my degree and I still work in retail, and I don't like it at all, and family and friends will joke about me working there when I have a degree to my name, while others point out how they have a better job then me and they never went to uni, and it starts to hurt. 

And here I am watching my boyfriend take these baby steps into the world of work and I am worried for him, worried that he ends up trapped like I am, not knowing what path to take or in which direction, worried that the constant job applications will wear him down, worried that this time next year we are no further forward then we are now. 

You are always told to follow your dreams, to reach for the stars, but no one tells you what to do when you holding it in your hand and it's starting to burn.

Rella Xx