Funny finding things as you left them. The day before I left, I changed my desktop wallpaper to a Doctor/Master/Whitechapel one on Livejournal, partly because the synchronisity is too good to ignore, but mostly because it had photomanip'd them both into Victorian dress, and had a grungy sepia feel. I probably would find that more objectionable now. And finding items I thought I'd lost in London, and of course - all the clothes I left behind. Washing machine broken for so long that I went on a clothes shopping mission to Oxfam, in what was probably the most borgeosie act of my life. But clean clothes! Ah, excitement, and so is the excitement of having guilt-free milk and cerial in the cupboard!
Guernsey hasn't changed. Neither has the crappy quality of the internet connection to my room, which has trouble finding Google. Neither has my beautiful piano: suddenly, I understand why playing the piano has apparently lost all it's joy for me across the last term. Nothing can match having your own real piano, in a space where you can scream and bang as you like.
Or not. The most obvious change: my mum has repainted my room white, and doesn't seem to understand why I might find this objectionable. I'm more mock wounded than genuinely miserable, but all the same I feel a little weird. I'm more cheesed at the intrusion of it, that I wasn't asked first what I might want doing with my own damn room. For one thing, I wouldn't have chosen white. I'd have rolled with whatever current obsession was under way - steampunk now, who knows what else? My choice of brown wallpaper, curtains and doors was motivated in part by the yellow walls, aiming for a sort of sepia tone, and it now looks horribly out of place. I like rooms which are cluttered and cosy. White has the clinical glare of a sanitorium - I feel like I'm living in a mug of tic tacs. It's rather like that scene in Tideland where they paint everything white (and stuff the human corpse and leave it in the chair as taxidermy...). I've never felt comfortable in this house on my own - the reasons, one would hope, are subtly mundane (like the layout of rooms and quality of light) or a manifestation of how I feel about being here, and not otherworldly.
From an aesthetic perspective, I admit it looks good, especially if I wanted to go nautical or Space: 1999. But then there are the posters, which haven't been replaced. People with goldfish memories need tangible reminders, and I do get very sentimental that way. I mean, it does represent the clutter of a life - and all my posters I put up at a certain time, for a certain reason, reasons which I can't bring myself to duplicate now. And I'm not sure anything can replace my Doctor Who glow-in-the-dark stars which, I note, are no longer on my roof.
Little things have changed too: I found myself giving advice on rice cooking. My sister can drive and also now has a beau.
And some things have almost changed. Like The March of the Movies, a book from the 50s about cinema that I'd never read. I took a flick through to see if there were interviews with Jessie Matthews (who we studied this term) and discovered, to my joy, loads of plates of London Town, an epic flop musical and worst film I've ever seen. Last term this would have meant nothing to me - now, I'm very amused. It must have been hot stuff at the time.
Guernsey hasn't changed. Neither has the crappy quality of the internet connection to my room, which has trouble finding Google. Neither has my beautiful piano: suddenly, I understand why playing the piano has apparently lost all it's joy for me across the last term. Nothing can match having your own real piano, in a space where you can scream and bang as you like.
Or not. The most obvious change: my mum has repainted my room white, and doesn't seem to understand why I might find this objectionable. I'm more mock wounded than genuinely miserable, but all the same I feel a little weird. I'm more cheesed at the intrusion of it, that I wasn't asked first what I might want doing with my own damn room. For one thing, I wouldn't have chosen white. I'd have rolled with whatever current obsession was under way - steampunk now, who knows what else? My choice of brown wallpaper, curtains and doors was motivated in part by the yellow walls, aiming for a sort of sepia tone, and it now looks horribly out of place. I like rooms which are cluttered and cosy. White has the clinical glare of a sanitorium - I feel like I'm living in a mug of tic tacs. It's rather like that scene in Tideland where they paint everything white (and stuff the human corpse and leave it in the chair as taxidermy...). I've never felt comfortable in this house on my own - the reasons, one would hope, are subtly mundane (like the layout of rooms and quality of light) or a manifestation of how I feel about being here, and not otherworldly.
From an aesthetic perspective, I admit it looks good, especially if I wanted to go nautical or Space: 1999. But then there are the posters, which haven't been replaced. People with goldfish memories need tangible reminders, and I do get very sentimental that way. I mean, it does represent the clutter of a life - and all my posters I put up at a certain time, for a certain reason, reasons which I can't bring myself to duplicate now. And I'm not sure anything can replace my Doctor Who glow-in-the-dark stars which, I note, are no longer on my roof.
Little things have changed too: I found myself giving advice on rice cooking. My sister can drive and also now has a beau.
And some things have almost changed. Like The March of the Movies, a book from the 50s about cinema that I'd never read. I took a flick through to see if there were interviews with Jessie Matthews (who we studied this term) and discovered, to my joy, loads of plates of London Town, an epic flop musical and worst film I've ever seen. Last term this would have meant nothing to me - now, I'm very amused. It must have been hot stuff at the time.
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