Death by Stuff

After doing pretty much nothing for the whole of the holidays, these last couple of months have been something of a shock to the system. I've sent off my UCAS form and everything (a week and a half ago now!) and I have not yet heard anything from anyone other than UCAS themselves (their letter came REALLY fast, considering). I'm not particularly worried though, I guess the universities I have applied to just don't do the whole confirmation of application thing. As long as I get in somewhere by next May or whenever the deadline for responses is then I'll be happy.

Now that personal statementing and worrying about my UCAS form is on the backburner a bit, I am free to be busy with other things. I've been working in a bookshop for the last month and a bit, and it's fun, if hectic etc. Today I read a bit of The Divine Comedy, and I want to buy it. I probably will at some point. But yeah, I'm also busy with school, of course - I'm doing four A Levels. I haven't exactly been swamped with work yet, though, but I do have a number of essays due in at various points next week and I also have various things to do for art. I got a new camera for my birthday, which is exciting.

Oh yeah, my birthday! I turned eighteen exactly a week ago today, which was both great and awful. The birthday part was great, of course - I got some awesome presents and cards and I went for an ace meal with my friends, but the turning eighteen part... I'm not sure. I don't want to be an adult. I like it, in a way, but it's like - where's the fun, now? Getting into gigs underage was always amazing, now that I'm old enough to go to any I want to? I dunno. It'll be less annoying when I get IDed, anyway.

This last few weeks have been very poetry-orientated. I went to the FYP awards (of which I have already blogged, o readers) and then on Tuesday I went to Buckingham Palace. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. It was very strange. I don't really have much to say about it - it was nice meeting so many people and all that, but it was all a bit of a whirlwind - I mean, it was over by half one. After that we poetry-cafed and then Emily Middleton and I went to Foyles in London. I have been spending far too much time in bookshops lately, but I don't mind - I LOVE bookshops. And the poetry section in that shop is awesome.

Talking of poetry, I have been reading Luke Kennard's collections a lot recently, and I would just like to state, for the record, that they are amazing. They're so other, if that makes any sense - they're funny and political and just so sharp, not a single word in any of his poems seem to have been wasted. I read The Harbour Beyond the Movie before reading The Solex Borthers, but they're both wonderful, and I recommend them really, really highly. I just wish he'd won the Forward, sigh.

For my birthday, among other books, I got Frank O'Hara's collected (!!), David Morley's creative writing book and some money with which I bought a hefty anthology of Central / Eastern European poetry in it. I've been reading a lot of stuff in translation recently, I'm still reading The Master and Margarita (awesome) and I have various books of russian poetry and Romanian poetry lying around. I'm learning Russian at the moment actually, it's great, even if I'm a bit slow.

I'm off to do something else now, this is far too long. I'm doing an open mic night in Cambridge on Tuesday, wooh! Exciting stuff.