Not Nineteen Forever

The title of this post says it all really. On Thursday last week I officially left my teenage years behind, finally hitting the twenty-years-old mark that I had been dreading since I turned nineteen the year before.

Birthdays have never been a massive deal for me. Or at least I pretend they're not. A couple of years worth of disasters can do that to a person. This year however, I really wanted to make it special and something that I would remember, because if I didn't I'd have been sat in my room sobbing all day over the fact that I could no longer use the excuse "it's ok because I'm only a teenager". It just so happened that Kids in Glass Houses, my favourite band of all time, announced a tour that happened to fall perfectly on my birthday in one of my favourite cities in the UK.

Now, to make my birthday special this required a lot of effort. One - I had to travel to Cardiff in order to see my favourite band. Two - I had to find the money in order to fund this trip. Three - I had to find someone to come with me so I didn't spend my whole birthday by myself. Thankfully, I managed all three of these things and I spent a very drunken night listening to some great music and forgetting how much I did not want to reach twenty.

As well as this, on Saturday night I organised a night out with all my university friends and some of my closest friends from home. It was really nice just to have everyone in the same place at the same time, and for my friends who hadn't met yet but know each other so well simply from me retelling stories over and over to finally meet each other. It felt like both parts of my life, that being Home and University, no longer were completely separate things and I think it's one of the best weekends I've had in a very long time.

I wish I could pretend I was OK with no longer being a teenager, but I'm not. It kind of hasn't really sunk in with me yet. To me, twenty just sounds old (especially when your best friend has only just turned eighteen) and incredibly dull. But when I think about all the exciting things that are going to happen from here onwards, things don't seem as bad anymore. Age, after all, is just a number.

Paramore at Nottingham Arena

On Tuesday night I had the privilege of being part of the audience for Paramore's most recent concert in Nottingham. This is kind of a big deal for me, because Paramore just so happen to be one of my favourite bands and they have been for a very long time now.

Now, this wasn't the first time that I've seen them performing live. It was actually the fourth. But when I stood queuing for hours before doors it felt exactly the same as it did when I was 16 years old waiting to see them for the first time. There's just something so exciting about seeing a band that means so much to you, regardless of if it is the first time you've seen them live or the twenty-first. People constantly ask me why I go to as many gigs as I do, and if there was a way of bottling up that exciting feeling so they could experience it as well it would be the perfect way to answer their question. It's one of those feelings that you can only truly understand if you've experienced it first hand.

One of my own photos from Tuesday night

I may be slightly biased here but I have never been disappointed by a Paramore set, and this was definitely no exception to that rule. The set was a perfect combination of some of Paramore's older hits that got the crowd jumping around like mad, and various tracks from the newest album that made everyone just have a good dance around, and to be honest this was perfect. It made me realise just how much they have changed as a band, and at the same time how much I have changed since I first heard one of their songs all the way back in 2007. 

I've listened to Paramore god only knows how many times over the past six years. Their music has been and still continues to be a massive part of my life, despite the fact that I am no longer the emotional teenager I was when I first started listening to them. There was moments during particular songs from Tuesday night's set where I did feel like I had been transported back to my more angsty days, but only to remind myself just why I love this band so much and exactly why they have remained one of my favourite bands even after all this time. It makes me appreciate just how powerful music can be for people, and how amazing it can really be. 

Post Holiday Blues

I'm back from my holiday with my friends from university. Am I alive? Only just. Am I a broken woman? Most definitely.

On Monday I landed back at East Midlands Airport, greeted by cold and windy weather that made a huge change from the temperatures of 35 degrees that I had grown used to over the past week, and absolutely longing to get a proper nights sleep for what felt like the first time in forever.

Now, what happens in Kavos definitely does not stay in Kavos, despite what a certain television programme may lead you to believe. In fact, what happened whilst I was in Kavos wasn't shocking enough to need to remain there. The holiday itself was not as wild and out there as I expected it to be. I don't think I saw a single person throw up in the street the whole time we were there. I'm not sure if this is because we went on holiday towards the end of the season, or if (like most television programmes of that nature) everything is just over exaggerated for entertainment purposes. Either way, it was slightly different to what I had been expecting. Regardless of this, myself and ten friends from university (and other places) still had an incredibly good week away. In a way I enjoyed that the strip of clubs and bars was not packed every night, because it didn't create a mad crush up against the bar trying to get drinks and we could actually dance without feeling like sardines in a tin. 

My whole week basically consisted of lounging by the pool during the day, and going out and drinking copious amounts of cocktails on a night, including my own concoction of Peach Schnapps, vodka and lemonade which I officially never want to drink again. Ever.

One of the highlights of the week was definitely our second night. We all went to a paint party, which is by far the most fun I have ever had whilst not caring about the fact that I looked a complete and utter mess. UV paint flying at you from all directions will not make you look pretty. But, it was something I had never experienced before and, surprisingly, would definitely recommend. On the Saturday night we also went to a Silent Disco, which while it was disappointingly short, was an interesting experience. I don't think I've ever been in a nightclub and 'Oops Upside Your Head' has come on before and people actually sat down and started doing the routine from discos when we were younger. Another great night was our final night of the holiday, simply due to the club that we were at opening up straight onto the beach (come on, how cool is that?) and the fact that our drinks came in buckets, which provided us with the brilliant idea of using these buckets to make sandcastles on the beach at 2 o clock in the morning. We are all clearly still about ten years old mentally.

While no holiday is perfectly smooth, and ours had a few bumps on the way, the week overall was brilliant. I probably wouldn't go to Kavos again, but that may be more so to do with being utterly defeated by a week of heavy drinking and the sheer thought of a night out currently making stomach churn. No doubt I'll have changed my mind by next week, and I'll be more than ready for my next drunken holiday in the sun.

Ramblings about life

I've been sitting with this empty blog for quite a few weeks now. I wasn't sure what my first post should be about. Should it be witty? Deep and thoughtful? Should I try and make myself sound a whole lot funnier in print than I actually am in real life? I don't know who I was kidding because, like I expected it to be, it's kind of ended up a bit of a ramble and a reflection on the things that have changed my life the most in the past twelve months.

It is quite bizarre how this time last year I was a complete nervous wreck about going to university, leaving my home town and just generally living somewhere that I had very little familiarity with and with people I had never met before. It all seems so stupid now, because in just a few days I'm going on holiday with the craziest bunch of people and that is all completely down to going to university.

These five girls and one guy are genuinely like a second family to me, and being apart over summer kind of made me realise just how weird it is not having them around. I am so excited to move into our student house on Sunday, and just to see everyone in the same room again for the first time since June. It's going to be one crazy week in Kavos, that's for sure.

And it's not just my friendship group at university that has grown. This time last year I'd been back from a weekend at Leeds festival for a couple of days, and somehow in the drunken, disgustingly muddy haze of the weekend I'd managed to make myself a whole new friendship group. I feel like I've known these people my whole life, not just for such a small proportion of it.

It's weird thinking how different my life would have turned out if I'd have done the smallest thing differently. What if I'd have camped with another group of people instead? What if I had picked a different university hall to live in for the year? I wouldn't have met some of the most important people in my life right now, and my friendship group wouldn't have grown in the way that it did. I guess the whole point of this blog post is to say that, as ridiculously cheesy as it sounds, I am so glad that the choices I have made in the past twelve months have lead me down this ridiculously crazy path with these outrageously wonderful people and I genuinely would not change it for anything in the world.