Hello everyone- it’s your record breaking student blogger here (record breaking in the fact that I think I have broken the record for length of time between posts). This is even more poignant as I’ve had droves of you coming up to me in public enquiring, nay demanding, when the next blog post will be and telling me how much they love the blog.

That didn’t actually happen, sadly- although I did have a dream like that once.

So I’ve been well, albeit very busy. Christmas and it’s approach had all of the mystique this year that one would expect from a seventy five year old amateur magician with sciatica; it literally jumped upon me without warning. In a haze of Christmas debauchery and Christmas parties (which I inexplicably became de-shirted for a part of) I found myself driving through several inches of snow in a car that refused to acknowledge the function of a brake pedal to the worst place in the world: Westfield. I have nothing against it, per se, it’s just that it embodies the very soul of all that I despise about Christmas; the shopping, the fakery, the having to near-wrestle a person from a table in the food court just so you can sit to eat. Still, it did mean I got all the shopping done in a record 96 minutes and whacked up a credit card bill that single-handedly confirms the reason why students shouldn’t have credit cards.

So after a brief break, which I spent the majority of working (c.f. studying, very little of which in contrast got done) and a New Year’s party in Sutton- which could have been Afghanistan for all the fights, arrests, empty kebab boxes and ambulances- I find myself back in the fold. Indeed, in the spirit of the New Year, I decided to reprise the same resolution I make every year, which is to try and keep that little bit fitter. Thus, on Monday I went for a nice, leisurely job along the river. Jaimie 1 – 0 Apathy.

It turns out, somewhat ironically, that apathy is more determined to express its message that I shouldn’t be doing any exercise than I had anticipated. Come Tuesday morning I was finding it a little difficult to walk on my foot; by lunchtime I was hobbling home from Hammersmith Hospital. It would appear that I have done some damage to a tendon on the sole of my foot. Having “reallocated” a set of crutches from a housemate I am now mobile with the help of a stick. I had hoped to come across a little like House, however the plastic NHS elbow crutches combined with my waterproof coat make me look more “decrepit day release” than “troubled medical genius.” Oh well- it’s not like I was queuing in Tesco when the 85 year old lady in front of me- who walked with a stick and went on to tell how she had Diabetes, taken a recent fall, cataracts, hearing aids and arthritis- told me she felt sorry for me because I was disabled so young, and as I fumbled with a carrier bag offered to help pack my shopping.

Lucky that didn’t happen.
When one adds to this misery the impending exams that fourth years will face in a little over a month, it’s making for a somewhat miserable New Year. My only saving grace at the moment is the glorious new Xbox and 38inch HD TV with surround sound that I have stolen from home and installed in my bedroom. When I’m not warring with one of the interminable 6 year olds who has just (literally) stabbed me in the back f0r the thirtieth time that evening I’m pretending to play Dire Straits on a small plastic guitar, sitting on the end of my bed. It doesn’t get more uplifting than that, especially when I can only master four out of the five frets on the guitar and they’re not even real chords… It has had bizarre consequences on the relationship I have with my girlfriend however- having been resigned to the fact that I now love this heap of metal and plastic arguably more than her, she has decide to put in with the “don’t get mad get even” school of thought and demands to join in whenever I boot up the system and exercise some Zombie-based restorative justice in the character of John F Kennedy. I’m not sure what is more surreal: the fact that my girlfriend is screaming having been laid out on the floor as her face has been ripped off by a zombie, or the fact that Richard Nixon is now desperately trying to put said face back together before the pack of flaming, rabid hounds descends on us all from the indoor lightning. Hrrm.

I have, however, made one other resolution for the New Year- I will update this blog at least every 10 days. I was going to say every week on a specific day- but I don’t want to bore you to tears with irrelevant and aimless posts that tell you nothing (because this has obviously been highly informative).

So Happy New Year- and a word to the wise: if you see me around campus and would like to avoid any painful, forced addition of a crutch to your person, I would sincerely suggest you don’t offer to pack my groceries and let me carry on swearing quietly at my tendon.

Jaimie