high heels and sandwiches

Britain's train system is slowly and surely trying to emotionally kill me!! actually i'll probably die sooner from pneumonia due to the ridiculous amount of time they leave me standing in the cold. Yesterday after a long and lovely day of shopping (in killer high-heeled boots may i add) my mum and I attempted to get home... but no the train demons were against us. After missing one train we decided a necessary glass of wine was in order, the next train didn't stop at our station as it usually does, so we finally (an hour later) boarded our train. But no... after fifteen minutes our journey, happiness and warmth ended with one of those terrible announcements telling you the next stop is your last!!.... and so we disembarked onto a cold, empty platform, miles and miles from our house at 9 in the evening, when we would be much rather sat at home contemplating our day's purchases over pizza and wine. after waiting in the cold for what seemed like forever, i found myself going a little crazy from the artic temperatures and started mumbling about making my own mulled wine, if we ever made it to the sanctuary of our kitchen, as i was hopping around rubbing my legs together for warmth, which im sure looked like i needed the toilet. after an hour long bus journey with screaming teens playing hard core trance music on their mobiles, we FINALLY got home and i grabbed the bottle of red to start attempting my mulled wine hee hee hee...

so as you can guess, i was not best pleased with trains. but oh no.... nothing could prepare me for the onset slaughter of what the trains were going to do to me this morning! woke up to the online news (i know im extremely sad and check my trains) that there was no first train for me to get to work. then attempted to drive to another station.. got lost.. drove around then ran around like a lunatic trying to find it.. got some strange looks.. missed the train.. got another train.. it stopped randomly 5 minutes from work and wouldn't proceed for half an hour.. considerate (cough) train people left the doors of the train open for the 30 minutes so i fretted and freezed and tried to call work telling them i'd be late and wouldn't know if i'd actually arrived anytime in the next 24 hours unless i could get off the stupid train. arrived at work finnnallllyyy very very late, resembled a frozen snowmen with a bright red nose, out of breath from hurrying from the train station. i stood around with a cup of tea and my back against the oven for the majority of the day, attempting to get some circulation back into my poor body.

i think, contemplating my last three days of serious low body temperatures and horrendous, traumatising train journeys (or lack of journeying) i think i have reached the conclusion that alcohol is the answer! On friday i braved the chill outside with sangria and cava at my spanish party and after finding out my train wasn't for half hour, chose a cosmopolitan in a packed out bar rather than waiting in the cold. as i said, last night saw glasses of white as i propped up my high-heeled, weary legs at the bar and dreamt of homemade mulled wine. so now that im home from my horrible horrible day, im warming myself up with red wine, my lovely friend, a christmas tree to decorate and a roast dinner on its way.....

owwwww... 40 minutes continuous running on the treadmill... my calves are so tight i think they may implode! ...and this was after a 7 hour shift on my feet. ran almost 6 1/2 km and burned like almost 400 calories!! i know.. this is like practically a meal! if you hadn't already guessed from my subtle hints, i am rather proud of myself, which i kept telling myself as i struggled to drag my calves to the train station, only to stand on a train packed to the brim of fellow commuters. felt very very guilty about how bad i must smell and tried to inch further and further into the side wall of the train. meanwhile i was trying to balance coffee in one hand and my book in the other whilst holding on tightly so as I wouldn't fall on top of the poor woman sat next to me, who I'm sure had no desire to have coffee and me on top of her.

as i battled my way up the hill home from the station, walked unbelievably fast despite the treadmilling so I could escape the cold weather in favour for the homemade apple cake that was waiting at home for me. wobbly legs from all this excercise reminded me of yesterday, this time red wine being the culprit. arrived at my spanish class cold, hungry and sleepy. managed to warm up by the radiator for the first hour, however this didn't in any way help the sleepyness. neither did it seem the red wine... our ten minute break, mid-spanish sesh, usually consists of coffee and a stretch of the legs. however, as we descended the stairs yesterday we were greeted by a buffet for a concert being held!! hurrah! especially as we were invited to tuck in. and tuck in i did... particularly the red wine and choccies. 10 minutes turned into 30 and as we went back for our last half hour of spanish we were all decidedly more giggly, yet more enthuastic with our spanish. got home only to decide now i'd started drinking why stop, and headed straight for my dad's yummy half finished bottle of red on the side. red wine clutched tightly i proceeded to my favourite late night resting spot under the blanket on the sofa in front of trashy tv.. hurray for ugly betty!!

two alcohol fueled, party hard nights in the capitial = a sleepy me munching chocolate brownies on the sofa as i return to my blog after a short absence. experienced my future life as a nocturnal, carefree student, as I visited my friend at my university I will be at post gap year and enjoyed stupidly cheap, student friendly drink prices. Such resulted in a rather overly uninhibited moi, particularly when it came to the tunes and crazy dance moves of the 80's themed night. After sipping my 'Woo Woo' (I know?!) the mass of raving students suddenly seemed less daunting and after a few more vodka oranges, we got stuck right in. More friends joined around midnight, and after a few more weird cocktails and crazy dance moves later we wound up munching Mc Donalds on a london night bus back to the halls.

Tried to start my christmas shopping with a very strange hangover mid-afternoon the next day, after finally managing to prise myself out of bed, but had strange swaying sensations in my legs and couldn't seemed to fully focus on train times on the screen. After humongous falafel burgers and chips with my friend, we were off again (me in my bright blue puffball dress that i loooveeee...) 80's tunes were replaced by 'cheese night' the songs not a free buffet, so we jumped around to the backstreet boys and by 3am my knees had locked into some weird unmovable position, only allowing my arms to randomly punch the air in some boozy trance. Had coffee with a work friend the next day, who was in London before flying home, although coffee and a small yogurt was pretty much all a could manage, the thought of the amount of vodka i had consumed the night before having not quite yet left my mind.

Arrived back in Manchester one minute after my train home left.. grrrrrrrrrrr... this meant an hour waiting in the station, fully and utterly sober with the majority of Manchester in the midst of drunken antics, enjoying their Saturday night. Sipping coffee and trying to hide behind my new trashy book, I didn't succeed in managing to repel random strangers plonking themselves next to me and slurring in my ear whilst trying to start up conversation with me. Slept for the majority of yesterday due to my late return home and only rose out of bed when the temptation of Jamie Oliver's 'fantastic fish pie' was called by my mother upstairs and I plodded down to rest my sleepy head next to a huge mound of mashed potato, creamy fish and baked beans mmmm......

two long train journeys with annoyingly ignorant people who talk would rather talk loudly on their moblies than allow me to read my book, a 9 hour shift in a cafe, gym session which abruptly ceased due to weird horrible pain in legs and a trek across manchester to obtain train ticket = a VERY KNACKERED me! had to have small edible landmarks throughout the day, such as a yummy espresso and thortons choc to aid my long, cold, blustery walk... (I know..diet...) i chose chocolate over dinner though...

have had a twenty four hours of nice men. firstly was the return of 'hot guy' to my spanish class yesterday, which like usual, provided much eye-wandering distraction. today, hot well-spoken med student came into the deli, actually he came in twice, i amused myself by thinking this may have been due to me.. hee hee (i doubt it, probably more to do with thirst). third hot guy of the day was a cute, young irish guy who only came for an orange but ended up staying to chat about university and south america with me, meanwhile smiling one of those soooo sweet irishy smiles awwwww. and then i rounded off the day in the gym, which so conveniently positioned the weights room on the way to the treadmills so i have to walk through and of course oggle at a whole sea of men, wearing very little whilst they attempt to increase their already bulging muscles.

going to london on thursday night HURRAH my boss let me have friday and saturday off so im train-ing it down south to stay with my friend who's at my future university and do my christmas shopping in the capital. think i might have an early night, but watch old re-runs of sex and the city on my laptop as i drift off... ahh i want to be carrie bradshaw!!

whoop weekend off whoop!! very unexpected, only found yesterday on leaving work, and i think it's very well deserved, have worked stupidly hard this week (cough...) with VERY early mornings. had lots of sleep after a cheese mega feast last night with my dad - mum made a mistake buying an entire platter of delish cheeses which we had no problem chomping through. only had a mini lie in this morning, (tomorrow too hurrah!!) as we were going skiing! no unfortunately we weren't jet-setting off to the alps, only the trafford centre. so i spent the morning in my cute all in one black ski suit in the new "real snow" slope in manchester. as I changed from my trilby into my knitted bobble hat with ear flaps (i no ski-chic hee hee) i decided i needed to diet... i no what u must be thinking with my food obsessed mind that seems to assume life revolves around my stomach. this was due to my jeans feeling a little bit too tight round the old thighs... i tried to blame this on my increased number of gym workouts on the treadmill and my new 'oh so toned' muscles.

skiing was very very fun... we were also joined by my uncle who AMAZINGLY skis on one leg! so all was going well until something went wrong... i blame an icy patch... and i went soaring through the air, did a somersault (perhaps?) and landed heavily on the snow, skis all tangled up over my head, my head then hitting the ground very very hard... it felt like the hangover from hell (yesterday) had returned. recovered from my near brain damaged experience in a mexican restaurant with the folks, with a fatija... don't worry it was vegetable one and i ate primarily vegetables and less of those lovely soft floury wraps mmm... however then we stumbled across an absolutley unresistable ice cream parlour and had some honeycomb ice cream (minus cone, minus fudgy stick).

meetin up with a very old friend tonight (length of friendship not age) to do some serious catching up. however need to de-pinkify my nose first from the all the ski action of the morning and do some definite hair repair as my horrendous skiing accident caused my cute hat to fly off, getting covered in snow but more importantly exposing my hair to the snow also, resulting in many weird kinks and frizzy bits. think i might cook some sort of greek tapas for a few of us at home... going to pop out now to do some tapas shopping in my trilby.. tara xx