"I Can't let you go Hungry..."

I looked at the woman at the till in my blank, delirious sort of manner. As you do when you've stumbled down to the shops to buy food when you'd really rather be in bed feeling sorry for yourself. I'd taken £100 out of my wallet, thinking I wouldn't need anywhere near that much, and had in fact taken too much out instead...so I was 20p short of the £16.79 I owed her for my various food/medicinal products. I think every till workers worst nightmare (the prospect of the customer having to put something back and screw up the whole line) made her do it more than anything else. Remind me to donate (at least) 20p to charity in return for that favour.

I'm also aware that over the weekend my posts have been...lacking. But I guess that was due mostly to illness and forgetfulness. Both of which are reoccuring features of my personality and/or day-to-day life, and both of which are more than fairly annoying. Not just for me, but for anyone who comes into contact with me.

I attribute my current illness to Fresher's Flu. I don't have the flu, but I'm sure I have a cold. The major difference (to me) being that flu gives you an excuse to stay home and feel sorry for yourself there, but a cold gives you no such excuse and people expect you to soldier on and pretend you don't feel like your head's full of hot cotton wool. What's worse is that there's no real cure for the common cold, although I am aware you can get cold and flu tablets (but what these tablets do is a mystery to me).

As some of you may or may not know, I have a thing against medicine and doctors. Either it's a psychological 'don't like to succumb to the weakness of medicine unless i really have to' thing, or whether I just don't like the taste is still undecided. For the most part I only take meds when I simply can't go on, or when I need them to function. Here, at University, I have to take meds more often than I would at home. There's no one here to wait on you hand and foot while you lie in bed: here you're going it alone.

So far I seem to have succumbed to a cold at the same time that a major ulcer seems to have taken up residence in my mouth. Much fun, I've never had a major ulcer before, but on my excursion down to the shops I bought some bonjela, and that seems to have kicked it in it's proverbial balls for the most part, so I can once again eat without cringing at each bite.

Now, like any person I look forward to the next major "thing" in my life. Be that going out with friends on a Friday, or, in this case, going home for the weekend, we all slog through the trials of daily life looking forward to these few islands in the proverbial sea of monotony. And this one is no different. Having survived two weeks and a bit here at University by myself, nothing major has gone wrong (aside from the laundry fiasco, but we shan't speak any more of that). But I feel it's time to take a trip home, seeing my old friends again is actually at the bottom of my list of things I'm looking forward to. I suppose I should write out the list here, what the heck, it's my blog after all:

1. Mother's Cooking (in Halls by myself I really can't be bothered cooking/making anything that takes more than 10 minutes to prepare).
2. Family (social interaction with more than just my TV, and the few times I see my flatmates each day in passing or in the kitchen).
3. My Bed (this Uni bed is horribly small, hard and downright unpleasant).
4. A Dishwasher/Someone else doing my Laundry ('Nuf said really, I hate washing up and doing laundry, I don't think I ever took for granted all the work my Mother did each day at home before I left, but I'm sure I won't ever do it again).
5. Friends (as much as the people here are interesting and friendly, they're not my friends as such. Friends take a long time to develop and the only people who match that description are back home).

And there's the list. I'm sure I've missed off a few small points there, like Sky TV instead of Freeview (blasted Freeview) and just the general feel of being back home. There's a vast difference between my suburbian Cambridge home, and my inner-city Southampton Flat/Cubicle/Cell/Cupboard. All in all I shall look forward to the trip there and back, as well as the homecoming itself: conversations with my Uncle are always entertaining. I just hope I'm feeling a little bit less under the weather for when I go.

Oh yes, and I'll also be taking a big bag of laundry home with me. As much as I can carry, no sense wasting a valuable resource!

-Ross