Running around halls of residence with my knickers on my head

I've been eating lunch alone all week, slinking off by myself to the campus pond with my sandwich. Sometimes I just get overcome by shyness, which is a surprise to some people because usually I'm quite gregarious; but there you go.

I'm not too worried though, everybody else on the course seems quite shy, too. We're all "mature" students now, you see, sitting back, making notes, and taking everything in. This isn't the beginning of my BA when I was running around halls of residence with my knickers on my head. Oh no. I've been spending my first week productively, in the fees & grants office, or colour-coding the different modules on my Google calender, and I'm sure everybody else is busy doing exactly the same thing.

Or maybe they're in a big gang together at lunchtimes, lounging around in the student bar, beers in their hands and their knickers on their heads?

Karma biting me in my lazy arse

I guess "working from home" made me fatter and lazier than I'd thought, because I got the bus to college on my first day instead of cycling as planned. I'd never seen Dublin pre-9am before, and the 46b was jam-packed with people on their way to work. But I just stuck my beer-belly out and rubbed my lower back, until an old lady wobbled up and offered me her seat.

Today, somebody locked their bike to mine by mistake on Grafton Street. Arrfgh, I thought, when I realised what had happened. Looks like I'll be getting that pesky bus again. So I got out my studenty A4 paper and wrote a note:

"Hello. You have locked your bike to mine by mistake. Please text me when I have been freed: 085 12 345 67."

Which was a pretty nice note, considering I'm getting my period any day now. He's lucky I didn't write PJ Harvey lyrics all over it. Then, I slid it inside one of those studenty plastic pouches, and stuck it around his crossbar with those studenty polo-shaped stickers. And, a couple of hours later, I got a text message:

"Saw the note about the bike. LOL!"

LOL? I am outraged! LOL?! I expected a "sorry", or at least a "sry". I barely know what to say! So I say:

"Um, yeah. So have you unlocked it then?"

"Sry," came the reply. "Not my bike, just saw the note."

I suppose I had it coming to me. I wrote it in very large letters, after all, and went over my phone number with a very studenty pink highlighter pen.

Cue more eye-rolling

I started a brand new blog this weekend. Yes, I can already picture my real-life friends rolling their eyes and thinking, What? ANOTHER blog? but, in fairness, I got rid of the photo-blog and the totally anonymous sex blog earlier this year, so I think I'll manage.

It's basically a blog about my film stuff, with everything from my imaginary screenplay to reviews and interviews with screenwriters, to the glittering and fabulous movie career I'm going to have this time next year. What, this time next year is only twelve months away? Hmmph. I didn't realise it was soon... Annie Get Your Gun

Biscuits or cake, biscuits or cake?

The film course is taught in a building called the observatory, hidden behind the trees at the back of the campus. At first I was all like, the observatory? Did I sign up for some astronomy course by mistake? But, just as I was feeling smart for getting onto some kind of sciencey-degree, I went inside and saw that it's actually a state-of-the-art cinema and lecture theatre, and I got a strange wobbly feeling in my knees.

This whole thing is a dream come true for me, really, and I was on the edge of my seat during the morning's introductory talk, having a real biscuits or cake moment about which modules I'm going to take. In the end I opted for Hollywood, European, Documentary, and Early & Silent Cinema, and then of course there's all the production work where we write, shoot, and edit our own films — kind of like the course I did at the London Film Academy last year, but in more detail.

I got a scholarship to cover part of the fees for this, but it's Bjarni who's sponsoring me for the rest. He's drawn up a contract, and when I sell my first script he's going to get it all back. Until then, I'm more than happy to wear logos with his name on them all over my leather jacket. I think it's going to be worth it.

Who doesn't love stationery shops?

I don't want to whine about the whole "working from home" thing, as I know there are millions of people out there who'd love to have spent the last six months in their pyjamas, but really, there's only so many more days of pressing send & receive and scratching my arse that I can take.

But I finally start the MA in Film Production tomorrow, and it'll be a 7km cycle to college for a day packed with lectures and the student bar. I've been counting down the hours to this since forever, and yesterday I went out to shop for exciting things like pencil cases, and those little polo-shaped stickers that stop the paper tearing in your ring-binder. I love stationery shops, and I'm pretty sure they were what made me want to be a graphic designer when I was a kid: while everybody else dreamt of dull professions like the fire-service or NASA, I pictured myself sitting at a drawing board with a set-square and a pile of Letraset.

But this is 2007, am I really going to need all this paper shit? Doesn't everybody just take notes on their laptops these days? It's been six years since I was in college and I'm not sure what the protocol is. But I do know that if I get out my shiny white MacBook and everybody else gets out their retractable pencils, I'm just going to feel like an arse.

Lying on my blonk just isn't something that I'm prepared to do

Bjarni's parents went back to Iceland this morning, and I'm disappointed to report that their meeting with my own parents went surprisingly well.

My mother, who had spent the day on her knees picking dog hair off the carpet, managed to keep swearing to a minimum and only mentioned sex once. And my father, who had cooked a traditional Welsh roast for the occasion, had had a tooth removed the day before and seemed to have given up smoking. The whole thing was very civilised — kind of like four adults meeting for the first time and having a nice dinner together.

At one point in the evening it was suggested that I make something dramatic up so as not to disappoint my readers, but, unfortunately, lying on my blog is just not something that I'm prepared to do.

Pics on Flickr.

Trying to keep the excitement out of my voice

Our trip around Snowdonia with Bjarni's parents was very exciting for me, as all the things I used to roll my eyes at as a teenager — like Welsh grammar, and bits of slate with red dragons printed on them — suddenly made me feel enormously proud.

"What does araf mean?" asked his mum, looking at the big white letters painted onto the road.

"That means slow," I explained, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. How wonderful, I thought. Our very own language painted right there onto the road, reminding everybody how exotic and interesting we are!

We stayed in Betws-y-Coed, a small touristy village in the trees, and that night I took Bjarni and his dad for a pint in the pub where I spent most of my teens.

"Have you been here before?" his dad asked me.

"Been here! I was fired from here twice!" I exclaimed, hoping that somebody behind the bar would remember me and come over and say hello, casually speaking Welsh to me, asking how I'd been.

But nobody did, and so we took our drinks outside and sat under the heat lamps, Bjarni and his dad talking computers while I nodded along thoughtfully, peering around the beer garden every so often in the hope that somebody from my past would overhear us. Here I am, I thought. Look at me, everybody, look at me! Bet you never thought I'd get out of North Wales, huh, and yet here I am, returning with two handsome foreigners, chatting away in Icelandic as if it's the most natural thing in the world!

But nobody took any notice of us at all, and so I sipped my drink nervously and tried to predict what the next day's introductions at my parents' house would be like, instead.

When two worlds collide

Bjarni's parents arrive tonight, and so I've spent the day scrubbing the bathtub, hiding things, and spelling out cute Icelandic welcome messages on our Scrabble board. I will be the daughter-in-law of their dreams.

On Wednesday, however, we'll be making a trip to Wales so that Bjarni's parents can meet my parents for the first time. Everybody is very much looking forward to this as we've been together for almost two years, and yet up until now — with a little help from the North Atlantic ocean — I've managed to keep everybody apart.

By the end of the trip I'm sure that Bjarni will have called this whole thing off and I'll have to go back to angrily singing Destiny's Child songs on the karaoke every Saturday night in the village pub.

I am one of those melodramatic fools

The happiest moment of my teens was when my mum came back from Cardiff with a pair of cherry-red, shin-high Doctor Martens for me. I was a geeky kid, and had never been particularly cool, but as soon as I pulled on those boots I knew that my life was about to change forever.

Sure enough, not long after that, I met a boy across the river. We shared a smoke in the long grass and talked about Kurt Cobain. He liked my footwear, and the chunk of hair I'd shaved off my head, and I liked the way he strummed Green Day songs badly, but persistently, on his guitar. I'd never even kissed a boy before, never mind had a "boyfriend", but he was from a different valley and had no idea about my secret nerdy past. He made me mix-tapes, hitched around Snowdonia to see me, and would've slung his arm across my shoulder as we walked down the street together, if only he'd been tall enough.

By the end of the summer he'd dumped me for a girl who looked and dressed like a fairy. He was apologetic, of course, but couldn't really hide his excitement. She was both cuter than me and smaller than him, and she knew all the chords to Basket Case on her electric guitar.

The first time I saw them together, walking down Porthmadog High Street with his arm slung across her shoulder, I felt a terrible pain and an explosion in my chest. I staggered backwards and leant against Woolworth's, and felt my heart gloop down through my body until it oozed out underneath the nail on my big toe. It congealed in a block around my foot, and I was never able to wear those boots again.

The Electric Picnic

I saw two acts play at the Electric Picnic this weekend, which isn't very many considering it's supposed to be a music festival, but I'd decided at the last minute that I only like music that's written and performed by women. So I saw Björk on the first night and the awesome M.I.A. on the second night, and that was enough for me.

The rest of the time I spent getting lost, talking to strangers, taking pictures, and making sweeping and sexist generalisations.