Shopping.

This weekend we have shopped, most importantly for me, with very little of my own money. I now have some exciting things to take to uni with me, namely a new plate, a ring-binder and a washing-hanging-ring-thing with lots of pegs.

We also have a new car, a pretty silver 2002 Astra, so there will (hopefully) be no more great train lugging fests to get through! Sadly though, what with me being a 19year old male, I am not trusted to drive a car (apparently people on Big Brother (as an example of the dregs of society) are safer drivers) and so the insurance company will charge me through the roof to insure me. Batties.

I also have 65p shaving cream! Woo! 6 times cheaper than gillette, and not 6 times worse... maybe 2 times worse, and therefore worth it :) It really does look pikey :) God bless Wilkinsons.

Listening to: Manic Street Preachers... A soul in pain has no spirit to regain. To repel ghosts..

My Face! My (beautiful) Face! [Update]

Just to let you all now that my face is now healed, and apart from a little red patch on my forehead I am looking back to normal.

And I've put a pic up on the old post - here:

Over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders

My sister has just embarrassed me (well, perhaps more entertained me) by referring to bras as 'over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders'. Apparently it's from a book she read - dear oh dear, what are they teaching kids nowadays. The books were these:













We should campaign to have them outlawed! OUTLAWED I SAY!

New Layout

I got bored of the old one, so here's a brand spanking, shiny (if simplistic) new one. I've changed the colours from the default white as that was REALLY dull!

Vetsci Discoveries

I'm sat watching the cricket (Steven Harmison is kicking arse! He's 20* and England are 373-9 (dammit... 373 all out now)) and I've been looking through the BBC news website, following on from finding that picture of Banksy's.

Apparently, some PhD student in Melbourne has discovered a way of identifying a dog's blood type - could be useful, particularly in saving old Dave the Greyhound giving blood to some dogs with a different blood type, or maybe getting him some companions! But, there's never going to be a country-wide canine blood bank whatever happens, that would just not be plausible (or sensible), so, it could be of limited use, unless every practice keeps donor dogs ready and waiting to be cannibalised, which may be seen as wrong, though perhaps the lives of however many dogs may be saved is worth more than the continued discomfort of one dog?

I've also just been reminded of the sueing (is that how you spell it) of a vet who administered cortico-steroids to a show-horse without warning the owner of the slight chance of them causing laminitis that I heard about from Alex's family... she won £350,000 apparently. I guess this proves that you really do have to cover every single angle that you can to protect yourself, and stick it all in writing... or, don't work with expensive horses!

Banksy - Great Name, Great Paintings.

I was watching the BBC news last night, and saw an article about the graffiti recently put on the palestine side of the west-bank wall. This artist has been painting satirical images of window-like holes in the wall showing a beautiful mountain view. The grass is always greener I guess. This is the picture I liked best:


Picture courtesy of BBC.

But they quoted an email he sent to the BBC in which he wrote "The role of graffiti has always been to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I just took this literally and drew a load of giant armchairs." That just tickled me. From what it seems, his other stuff is a load of rubbish - just the odd stunts, but I really like these West-wall paintings!

It's 0940 and time for sleep, dum de dum de dum.

0940, I've been up for 40 minutes... It's the summer holidays and I've got nothing planned for today apart from watching the last Ashes Test. Why so early I hear you cry? Well, my neighbours, have decided to have an extension built over their patio, which is conveniently next to and below the wall my bed is next to. Pneumatic drills at 8.40am are not fun; I stuck it out for 20 minutes, but then it all became too much. But oh well, it'll make the day seem longer.

GO ENGLAND! Let's hope you do a better job than the bloody football team.

Festivals, Faces and Brighton!

It's been a while since I posted again - sorry about that, I've been distracted by a number of things and not actually got round to putting down any of that stuff that's been going on. Now my sister is back at school so I'm home-alone again, so I have a chance to post without feeling neglectful. So, since my last post about cows, the above things have gone on (see post title), So all the posts below are backdated...

Au Brighton je me ne pas suis reste a la maison!

Today, My sister and I decided to take a say trip down to Brighton - we'd done it last year, so why not go again. We arrived in superquick time, leaving the house at 9.30am and being in Brigton just before 11. We wandered down to the promenade by the sea and spotted a cycle hire shop, and, on the spur of the moment hired a tandem! I asked the guy how likely we were to kill ourselves and he replied "not likely", though I'm sure he took one look at my face and wondered if he'd ever see his bike-for-two ever again. Fortunately we didn't crash... we wobbled, and I paniced whenever we went past someone coming in the opposite direction, but we survived! Hopefully I'll have some photos up - I forgot my digital camera so we had to buy a disposable so I'll have to wait for it to get developed.

And so we discovered just what a talking point a Tandem is - an old woman from south Wales came up to us and said "you don't see Tandems very much nowadays!", after which she continued for 10 minutes to tell us about her grand-daughter who lived in Hong-Kong for 2 years... each of the things she told us had the smallest relation to the tandem, so it all tied together, but her 10 minutes was 70ps worth of tandem time gone - still, we were polite young children and listened "interestedly" - I was more entertained by her husband who just stood there and mumbled a nod every now and then.

We also got fish and chips and ate them by the sea - classic seaside fare of course. We had an icecream, wandered about the pier and imagined what it would be like to go on one of the rollercoasters. Then we played crazy golf and came home!

My Face! My (beautiful) Face!

It was all going so well. It was Sean's 19th birthday, and the night had gone well. McKrusties was full for once, had danced and chatted and perhaps drunk; and somehow on the way home I managed to stumble and fall on my face. There was alot of blood, people looked very concerned, but somehow I wasn't concussed. Luke walked me to the end of Latchmere Road to make sure I had all my senses about me, cheers mate!

The day after my face was BIG and bloodied, my nose was twice its normal size and my top lip was well swollen. The day after that, I had two black eyes. Hooray :(

Still, hopefully all will have healed by the time I have anything big to do!

A Picture:

Leeds Festival

Leeds Festival

Leeds festival was amazing - my first festival, and well worth the £136 odd we paid for it. We (Alex and I - oooh correct grammar) saw about 24 bands (I think) including the wonderful Cooper Temple Clause, The Coral, Elbow, The Killers (who were distinctly average), The Foo Fighters, Babyshambles, Razorlight, Clor (who amazed me both in being great and in having a guitarist who looks just like Ben...), Maximo Park, Sons and Daughters, Yeti, Forward Russia (with the best ginger, plump, glasses wearing, bearded guitarist I have ever seen - everything a guitarist shouldn't be, yet amazing!), Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem, The Futureheads (bore) and Kasabian.

We arrived on Friday morning (probably around about 8am, we had to get up at 5.30!) and hunted for a tent pitching spot, eventually finding one next to three tents with "peace and love" stickers on their outsides - clearly we had friendly non-rioting neighbours! So, we pitched up and then made our way through queues and queues of people to get our wrist bands (which has since fallen off my arm - grr, they are supposed to be invinsible) and to get into the main arena bit. I was amazed at the sheer volume of tents there, it took about half and hour to walk from our tent to the arena, through a sea of tents.

We did stuff other than listen to music of course, including a Ferris wheel trip, the eating of lots of lovely festival food (including tent-cooked super noodles; so good!). Alex also got a henna tattoo, a picture of which is below - fortunately it had just dried by the time we went to see The Coral as the henna got minced by the bouncing crowd! I could have said 'mosh' but I don't think a Coral crowd can be described as a mosh - it was all too friendly.

It was always interesting being woken up in the middle of the night by random drunk people stumbling over your tent's guy ropes and other people loudly asking their friends questions; questions including the classic: "have you got any cashew nuts?"

Generally the weekend was amazing, see the photos below!

Our tent, pitched up and safe from arsonists.


Forward Russia's guitarist :)


The arena, including shark-shaped Lee Sounds Unsigned Tent and someone in the foreground who I assure you is not Mary.


The Elbow photos came out best because it was daytime. They were also amazing!


A good shot of the main stage and screen


They sprayed us with little bits of paper with the title of their new album on. Best marketing plan EVER. I'm buying it! It was like it was snowing!


Alex displays henna tattoo.


The Cooper Temple Clause how I love you.


The Killers... pretty lights!


Look! Up high! Goodbye vertigo, we went on the ferris wheel... the rickety old ferris wheel... that wobbled... and unscrewed itself... and clanked and clunked...


Alex was windblown and scared... come to think of it, so was I, but I didn't capture that on camera. haha


Guess who these guys are!


A round of a clause


Yes, the lasers were better than the foos.

Tom Knows Cows

Just spent 2 weeks on a cattle farm. It was an experience, I would perhaps like to repeat but definitely not like to do for a living. The cows were cool, most of them nice (though 28, 53 and 107 are the evil kicking ones that stick out in my mind), number 7 was particularly pleasant despite being an old grandma with a top speed of about half a mile an hour (quite literally).

I got to do a rectal examination (well, more of just a general feel around before the farmer did AI, but I got an idea of what I should find up a cow's arse), which was great fun (don't laugh), I feel like I have lived the vet dream now (and so can happily retire :)

I got to calve a calf, which, either fortunately or unluckily depending on from who's point of view you look at it, began to calve when the farmer was away. So I rang him up
"Um, Wilf... one of your cows is calving," to which he replied something along the lines of; "I'll be back in 20 minutes, just get the calving ropes out of the house, my Mum will know where they are, and give it a go."
"Do i burst the bag?"
"Yes"

Twas great - what greater experience I am getting than a medical student!

Other stuff I got to do included

* Injecting
* Dehorning (which is gruesome - you get a huge soldering iron thing and gouge the horn out from their skull)
* Ear Tagging (less gruesome, more like ear piercing, but with a bigger hole)
* Milking, LOTS of milking
* Moving shit about... LOTS of shit.
* Making fires (muwaha)
* Watching for "heat"
* Following a vet round briefly.

So yeah, a worthwhile venture in the end. Glad I went! So, 4 weeks down, 8 to go!

PICTURES!!!!!!!

Granny


Some little week old Fresian/Holstein Heifers.


The low yielders enjoying their sileage, maize and sugar beet lunch.


Limousin Bull


Jack the Rotweiler- a sweetie really.

Tornados, Teats and Trips.

A tornado in friggin' Birmingam! A big bone crushing tornado! Jeez. Reece is ok thankfully - got wet though. I don't know what's going on with this country, it seems to be falling apart! Apparently (according to my a-level biology... good old Mr King) Exeter (I think - or possibly Somerset - somewhere in England anywhere) has the highest tornado frequency of anywhere in the world, just they are really diddy :) <-- dunno why I smile... how strangely proud I am of this country. Oh and, while we're on the topic of natural disasters, my condolenses to those involved and killed in the Bombay monsoons. I hope Rahul is ok - is that not where he went on holiday? What have I been up to I hear you crying? Well, actually, not a great deal. I've done some work :o, bought a little note book to put down interesting things I read. I've done one chapter "The Common Integument" already. Woo. Did you know that the scent of "wet dog" is due to their sebaceous glands - not sure how exactly, it was vague on details. Or, that cats have 8 teats, and dogs have 10. Fascinating.



On the topic of teats, I found this photo with the caption:
if women were built like horses they would look something like this:
Though, in my opinion the bra is still a little too high.





Am off to London tomorrow to see Vicky, Alex, Reece and Iona. Woooo! Can't wait. Am taking the "North London Line" to Finchley.

Slaps for Neglect

Le blog du Tom est desole! (wouldn't Jen be proud - even if I couldn't be bothered to put an accent on desolE (grave- also with an accent i believe))

I haven't posted for bare-long-tings, which is bad. But, not too much has been happening, apart from London.

Hope all is good.

<3

May Ball Photos are now up!

Ciao.

they have picked the wrong city to pick on.

It's a beautiful day!

Met up with Mary (who is farming in north London) and went for a walk down by the river. She's doing well, and was brave enough to venture onto the M25... I certainly wouldn't have been!

My sister had her "highschool" prom the other day (AARGH... Americanisation), and thoroughly enjoyed it. She looked so pretty in her purple dress.

In other news, we were all very upset by the London bombings a few days ago. Luckily my Dad (who works in central London) missed it, and Vicky, who was very Kings Cross at the time survived unharmed. It touched us all though - it was weird to be so close to something so big, and scary - I've always felt so detatched from it all when it happened before elsewere (New York, Madrid) - it's a bit creepy it being so close. It's the way it all comes down to luck that makes it hard to accept; there's nothing you can do to stay safe really, save never leaving your house (and then you'd probably die of vitamin D deficiency; and if you do that, who's won?
I was touched by a letter I saw on the TV with some flowers on a wall in London that summed up the feeling in London at the moment: "Yesterday we fled this great city, but today we are walking back into an even stronger and greater city. The people who did this should know that they have failed, they have picked the wrong city to pick on. London will go on.".

I've managed to track down a picture of it from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/



Sorry for the sparseness of posting. I'll try to put up MayBall photos soon... They're on my laptop which is awkward to connect up to the net...

Tom
xxx

Results

Yay! A 2.1! Kickass!!! And i got a 1st in anatomy! What is the world coming to!
So pleased!

London 2012

Wooo! We have the olympics! It's been a long time coming (nearly 60 years) but the Olympics are coming to the UK. Hopefully this will mean air conditioning on the tube!! Yaaaay! I'd go into how cool it was to beat the French, but I guess you will have heard it all before!

Also, sorry for the lack of posting on here - I've been lazy - plus there is nothing to procrastinate away from at home. Hehe

May Ball Photos

Finally, some May Ball photos!

Don't they all look so beautiful!


Jen and Dave, overexposed sadly (overexposed in the photographical meaning of the word I would like to clarify)


Fi! (again Overexposed. My apologies for the poor camera work).


Jen and I. (aha! Overexposure not my fault this time!)


Alex and I, my face looking half plastic...?


The entrance... Old Court Transformed


Pegasus - a (anatomically correct - except for the wings, not sure about those) sculpture in Old Court. I really liked it!


Fi bowls! Can't remember who won. I remember having chocolate fondue at the time though :)


Alex with fondue beneath the green willow. I love this photo.


Andrew's Painting - blurred by my unsteady hand. Proper bo it was too!


Pre-british sea power.


British Sea Power! In Clare!


Me, falling off the bouncy castle.


Laura Plays Batak!


The fellows' garden.


Blurry, but, Matt, Davy, Lydia and Me.


Taking the survivor's Photo


Helterskelter!!!!


Bear Dances (was it Fiona bear... tom's short memory avails him again).


Aw... Ella and the punting hat!


Jen and Tom Punted poshly.


Alex and Fi also punted.

A little pose for y'all.

Hehe. See you later!