40 Days and 40 Nights....

It’s actually 46 days and 46 nights but the six Sundays in-between are not counted… but who’s being pedantic?

The period I am of course writing about is the days between Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday…. The period known as “Lent”. Traditionally, the Church imposed a strict fast where people gave up all rich food to remember the time Jesus spent alone in the desert without food whilst enduring temptation from the devil. Are you with me so far?

First of all, let’s get one thing straight… I am not religious in the slightest. I’m not going to go into detail but basically my brain cannot comprehend the teachings of the bible. I’m not saying I’m excluding the possibility that something created everything… I’m just not a believer that it was created in 6 days by some bloke sitting on a cloud… (Remember boys and girls he used the Sunday for some chill time… also known as the Sabbath… which is why those six Sundays during Lent do not count… because they are a day of celebration… still with me?)

I’ve actually seen first hand what the effects of fasting can do to your body. I had a Muslim friend at college who fasted during Ramadan. It meant she had to abstain from food all day and was only allowed one meal after sunset for an entire month. For the first 3-4 days she felt and looked awful and it wasn’t until the 5^th day she started to “get used to it”. Now I know that the Church doesn’t impose strict fasting these days and that there are different variations of fasting but why on earth did humanity think suffering made them feel closer to God? Apparently it is believed to “concentrate the mind on holy thoughts”… For me it would “concentrate my mind on thoughts of FOOD” and how hungry I am!

This wasn’t supposed to be part of my blog BUT I come across this when I was researching Lent and would just like to say a few words. The number 40 has quite some significance in the bible. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights when God flooded the earth after Noah built the Ark… Moses spent 40 days on a mountain with God… The Hebrew people spent 40 years wondering the desert travelling to the Promised Land (Yes… I’m sure they did) and it goes on…. Couldn’t the Monks who made these stories up think of something a bit more original than 40 every single time?

To be honest I’m not overly sure on where this blog is going but I do want to write a little bit about why I think Lent is important for all of us. And yes that does includes people like me who don’t necessarily believe in its origins. Most people try to give up a luxury, usually something that they love which isn’t particularly good for them. Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, (when Lent began) Facebook was awash with girls saying they were giving up chocolate or crisps… no one pledged to give up alcohol mind you. Someone did however pledge to give up Facebook in its entirety if he got 20 “likes” on his status which told his friends exactly that. He got 23 likes and updated his status cursing everyone saying he’d be back online in 6 and a half weeks time!

I give him 6 and a half days.

To give up something that worsens your health or diverts your attention away from the important things in life encourages self-discipline and self control. I also believe however, that alongside giving something up, we should add something to our lives in its place… being that replacing chocolate with fruit… replacing Facebook with spending more real time with your friends or family… and so on. And if it works you never know you might actually enjoy it and change for the better J Or like most people, you will probably fail and carry on eating chocolate and sitting in front of Facebook every night.

I gave up chocolate during Lent when I was about 16/17… Now this wasn’t easy for me… you’re reading about someone who went to Cadbury World for their 21^st…. no, not 10^th birthday… 21^st! But anyway, after about a week I was fine; cutting out all that sugar from my body for 6 weeks really helped lower my cravings.

This year I am going to cut out fizzy drinks (not that I drink them much anyway) but mainly because I’m also going to attempt to drink at least 2 litres of water per day (excluding tea). This is motivated by an experience from last weekend…

I had a few “friends” grow on my chin… not just one but five of them. Now these friends don’t visit that often anymore. My favourite was the massive under the skin one called “Bob”. He f**ked me off because he made my face really sore and unattractive… then it got past the point of being cute of calling it Bob and I do believe the C word left my mouth a few times…I think it was a delayed reaction from the stress of last weeks blog.

Anyway the point is that drinking 2 litres of water per day is meant to promote a clearer complexion. So fingers crossed I’ll get used to drinking this recommended amount of water and there will be a very very low chance that Bob will come back to visit.

*Warning*

This will probably not be of any interest whatsoever to any readers who do not wish to become lawyers…. But feel free to read and then laugh about my misfortune that is being a part-time post-grad student at the College of Law.

I reckon that 90% of students would agree with me that the worst day of the exam period (besides the exam itself) is the day before… A few Friday’s ago I was off work with my head in a book hoping I wouldn’t lose the ability to remember to write my student I.D on the paper, let alone the ability to answer the actual questions. So, ONE day to go and my Mum made the announcement that our boiler had broken and therefore the heating will not be working. Great. No heating in fecking February... verdict? Freezing my bollocks off while trying to study.

The next part of the story is about me being left alone as my Mum and step-dad had buggered off to Birmingham for the weekend. So… there I was sitting at my desk wearing my *bright yellow Spongebob Squarepants* dressing gown in a failed effort to keep warm and this bloke opens my door without knocking…. “Oh ermmm sorry…. I thought this was another cupboard…” Yes. Suuuure you did mate.

            Finally the heat begins to come back through the radiators and Mr Boilerman can leave but the best part is that he left the entire contents of the airing cupboard on the landing floor… not just on the landing floor and put neatly like a normal person would do… but thrown everywhere… Arghhhh!!!

As a student I quickly came to the conclusion that I did not have 10 minutes to spare to place all these things back into the airing cupboard before my exams were over. I would rather spend 2 days climbing over everything and allow the cats to make camp on the sheets and towels for this period of time.

Oh and then later on the heating stopped working again. Back to square one!

Having an exam on a Saturday is to put it bluntly; rather shit. As my alarm blared out at 6am I couldn’t help but think “Jesus Christ… a law exam… on a Saturday? Surely I should be feeling mildly hung-over (or still drunk) at this time and day of the week? Not about to sit a law exam in four hours time.” Dammit.

Whilst wearing two dressing gowns and three pairs of socks I managed to squeeze in an hour of extra revision between 6 and 7am. I then got ready, climbed over the mountain of linen on the landing, walked out the door and was on the train to London by 8:02am.

The closer I got to Moorgate the more and more students I saw with mini suitcases for all their books... I on the other hand had with myself a rucksack and a shoulder bag; not sure if I looked like I was trying to be different or if I just looked like a retard? ;)

Relief swept over me when I opened the paper and found Corporation tax to be the first question. I missed a workshop on IHT (Inheritance tax) and decided against studying it for the exam… a decision that was highly likely to result in an “epic fail” if it came up.

I made a complete bulls up of the second from last question. Insolvency. I really like this area of law but was obviously ill-prepared. We were asked to calculate the dividend which would subsequently calculate how much money there was available to each creditor. I had a look at the balance sheet and the company had absolutely no money… I was obviously missing something because for the life of me I could not work out how there was any money for any of their creditors if the company had NO MONEY….. ARGHHHH!!! Stress… Panic… Breathe… Move on to next question and try not to worry about it.

By this point I could feel the heat from my forehead creating steam. It wasn’t a 2 and a half hour *here’s 6 questions but pick your best 3, put forward an awesome argument and anything goes* under-graduate paper but, *here’s 12 questions and you have 3 and a half hours to answer them ALL* post-graduate paper; jumping from an “argue well and anything goes” possibility to a “Shut up, that’s the answer… tough shit” position.

1.30pm: After the exam it would be fair to say that no-one was in much of a good mood. It was a case of… “How’d that go?” … “Erm… Okay I guess, you?” “Yeah good, thanks.” “Okay well see you tomorrow.” And off we all hopped back home as tomorrow was Sunday and we still had TWO more exams still to do…

I was missing an awesome Ice-Hockey match with Mark at Riverside AND a night out for one of my best friends, Joe’s birthday because of these 2 exams the following day; the authority for this situation? – Sods Law. I arrived home around 3pm and was in absolutely no mood to start studying straight away... so I met up with Joe and Terry and had some food with them at TGI’s… *nom nom nom*…

By the time I was ready to start studying it was 7pm. The exams were each an hour in length and were MCQs (multiple choice questions)… sounds easy… pah ha ha ha… you couldn’t be more wrong. They may be better described as “multiple c**t questions”. MCQs are basically cryptic bastards. I find the process of elimination to be the best technique… 9 times out of 10 you can knock 2 answers out of the 4 on the head. You are then left with 2 answers of which you pick one at random, sing “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” and Bob’s your uncle… you have yourself an answer!

Ha ha…. I wish it was that easy.  

Sunday morning brought with it more fun. My train was not leaving from Pitsea and therefore I had to drive to Basildon and catch one from there. It wasn’t too much of a stress… just something extra to worry about.

I decided to use the time I had on the train to have a quick look over my business notes as the night before was spent completely on wills. Wills has some complex IHT calculations and therefore I would certainly require a calculator in the exam… So what do I go and do? FORGET my calculator! And then in typical lawyer fashion… blame my mistake on somebody/something elseJ. The train issue of course.

After a few frantic texts to other friends who were sitting the same exam I was lucky enough that one of them had a spare calculator. Pheeewwww!!

When I arrived at Moorgate Sarah informed me that Chris was still stuck on a platform in Stevenage (20 minutes before we were due to start our first exam). We were in conversation with the College trying to find out what would happen if he missed the exam. They said he would have acceptable mitigating circumstances and would re-sit in the summer… along with the 3.5 hour written exam we did the day before! Sarah was so gobsmacked that she had to sit down. We were all in shock and just hoped he got there soon enough to be able to finish the paper.

Thankfully he got there with 40 minutes to spare. 20 minutes less but hey… it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting the entire module again.

After the first exam we had about 45 minutes to kill before we had to be back in the same room for the next one. We decided Tea would be a good idea and headed to Costa Coffee. The only crisps they had were 95p per bag and I know its London but come on! For 95p they better be bloody good crisps!

When the exams finish and the adrenaline stops I don’t know why but this feeling of “utter shit” swept through my body. I went for a meal with the girls just outside Liverpool St; we drank some wine and had some giggles.

I arrived home at around 4pm with a full belly and a headache (just to remind me how drained I really felt). Oh and I forgot to mention earlier… all I had now to do for the rest of the evening was move house.

What a weekend.

Call me unromantic...

So… it’s already February and Valentines Day is just around the corner.

You may love the idea of Valentines Day and as a teenager waited eagerly for that card to appear through the letter box on the morning of February 14^th or like me, you may think that it’s a load of over commercialised bullshit.

You’re probably thinking *Oh dear, another bitter singleton…* I’m actually in a very happy relationship and the funny part is… the person I’m with likes Valentines Day.

So why do I (lets say) “dislike” Valentines Day? Well I believe a quick lesson in history may be necessary here…

St. Valentines Day as its official name celebrates “love and affection between intimate companions” (so Wikipedia tells me) on the day of February 14^th. The day stems from between one and three Christian Martyrs who were alive in the Roman era and were called “Valentine”.

The main belief however is that St. Valentine was a priest in Rome who was martyred under the reign of Claudius II. At this point in history, Valentine was caught marrying Christian couples who were being persecuted by Claudius II. Back in the day helping Christians was considered to be a crime and hence why he was arrested and imprisoned. The Emperor for some reason took a liking to Valentine until of course he made a twat of himself and tried to convert the Emperor…. who then condemned him to death. When beating him with clubs and stones didn’t kill him, Valentine was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate and buried on the Flaminian Way on… you guessed it… the 14^th February way back in 269AD.

During his time in imprisonment, Valentine was said to have converted 46 members of a guard’s family to Christianity….

So let us re-cap! In simple terms…. There was once a bloke in Rome who committed a crime by converting many people to Christianity when people of the Christian faith were being persecuted (that is punished solely because of their religion)… Oh and he just so happened to marry some Christian couples while he was at it. So from the facts there is no evidence that this priest had some crazy interest in romance, affection or love… call it what you like.

And from that above *a small obscure link from a roman priest*, the commercial industry has exploited Valentines Day to the point that it is now worth millions of pounds every year. Cards, flowers, chocolates, teddy bears, perfumes, aftershaves, CDs, DVDs, clothes, jewellery, holidays…. I could go on but I won’t bore you. I even saw an article on “What to Buy for Valentines Day”. Amongst the other ridiculously priced items I was most shocked to see an Ipad in the list! I mean come on… an Ipad for Valentines Day. Seriously? Get.Real.

The articles that really make me laugh are the ones that “explain” to either male or female “How to act” on Valentines Day around your partner… and my personal favourite “What to wear”. I think I know how to dress myself and look nice for my boyfriend thanks.

And honestly… Do the public seriously not know “how to act” around their partner just because it’s Valentines Day? … Be nice to each other. Show your partner affection. Offer to help out around the house. Be spontaneous. Ahem… Pardon me but these things should be done on an extremely regular basis. If that scares you, then it’s okay… because the media says you’re only supposed to do these things on Birthdays, Christmases, Anniversaries and Valentines Day! Whaaaa hooooo!!

That leads me to the sickening thought of when people propose on Valentines… I think if this happened to me I would want the ground to swallow me whole and that’s all I have to say on that point.

One of my final points will be… Why for some (mostly women) does this day (excluding birthdays/anniversaries etc) have to be about being spoilt rotten with gifts, days/evenings out and being told “I Love You” more than on a normal day? When there is the rest of the year, *364 perfectly good days* to do these things on? I for one would much rather be surprised on a random day with a gift than on Valentines when it’s almost expected – due to it being shoved down our throats from mid-January onwards.

So what am I doing for Valentines Day this year? Well… despite my obvious dislike towards the day and my absolute refusal to bother celebrating it… I am being taken out for dinner… against my will. Except that was just a lie and it’s not against my will… So call me unromantic but I’m pretending it’s just a normal lovely evening because my boyfriend does like Valentines Day and because I care for him and want to show my affection I will go…. Because of course, to me…. it’s just another day J