A Fenland Sunday.

As much as I love relaxing at home without having to think about anything, its always nice to get out and actually do something. This is easier said than done as most of my friends have stayed in their uni cities for the summer and the rest are at work (something I should probably be doing!). Yesterday was fun though - I went to my Grandparents for Sunday dinner as per usual and then my friend Jess picked me up to chill out for the evening. We walked Stella, had curry and then went on a spontaneous drive out into the Fens as the sun was going down. It was stunningly pretty and so peaceful out there. I always forget how lucky I am to live somewhere with such a beautifully unique landscape.

My Flip Video camera came in the post on Saturday so I decided to carry it with me yesterday to try and get enough footage to make a decent(ish) video for the channel. Its such an amazing piece of kit, I'm very impressed. The quality is awesome for such a small, portable gadget and the uncompressed video straight out of the camera looks really, really good in HD. Obviously Youtube destroys the quality somewhat but it still looks great in the widescreen player! In my opinion, its the perfect camera for Youtube vlogging and I definitely recommend it to anyone thinking about it. The only hassle is trying to figure out the right export settings once you've edited the video - its completely trial and error but I've found that if you export it in MPEG-4 format and then drag that file back onto your Flip, the built-in Youtube uploader will upload it 10 times faster than YT itself. Handy tip for you there.

Other than that, has anyone listened to the new album by Florence & The Machine yet? Its incredible. I've had it on repeat all day, its so haunting and mesmerising. Its what I call perfect 'night music'. My favourite track is 'Cosmic Love' by far! Go and check it out, it's called 'Lungs'.

Fruits of the soul.

I'm now back home here in Fenland for the summer. I moved out of the uni house on Wednesday - an absolute nightmare. There wasn't a single parking space near my house so I had to park several streets away and keep looking out of the window to see if a space opened up ready for me to load my stuff. Unfortunately, I had to wait until 10pm for the space and ended up coming home around midnight. The dark country roads definitely weren't fun. I'm just glad that it is all done now and I can sit back and relax for a month or so without having to worry about where I have to be at certain times.

I woke up early to discover a beautiful sunny morning and decided to walk to the dentist rather than drive. It was nice walking in the sunshine (which was incredibly bright for that time of the morning) and seeing how the village had changed since I'd been away. It also amused me how nearly everyone in the street was over the age of 80 and wearing coats and body warmers despite the temperature. It's as if pensioners have a small unofficial window of time within the day when they can come out and do their shopping without distractions. I love it.

My happy mood was boosted by the dentist telling me that my teeth were perfect so not only did I avoid any work, I also avoided having to spend an extortionate amount of money. Win win situation.

I rewarded myself by making the world's largest fruit salad (as seen above) even though I am the only one in the house who actually likes it. It'll go down nicely for breakfast tomorrow - I find it hard to eat anything in the mornings as it makes me feel sick but I can usually squeeze some fruit down.

Oh and after moaning constantly about how frustrating it is for me to film Youtube videos these days, I've ordered a Flip Video Ultra HD camera so now I have no excuse! Its small, portable and plugs straight into the computer so I'll be having lots of fun with that when it arrives. Expect lots more videos.

Now I'm going to finish up watching this episode of The Simpsons and then collapse in bed. It'll be nice to get to sleep at an acceptable time for once.

Cruel, Cruel Summer.

First up: Happy 4th of July to all my American followers! Hope you have a good one. I'll definitely busy myself watching all of the celebratory Youtube videos later.

The week's heatwave seems to be subsiding slightly now. I can't say I mind either way - I love being out in the sun but at the same time, I always welcome a change. We did have a few hours of relief yesterday morning with torrential rain but by the afternoon, you couldn't even tell that water had even hit the ground. I think it was just enough to keep things green though. It certainly is a strange time of year.

The heat has managed to put Stella into a sort of a coma for most of the day but this results in her acting manically as soon as it cools down in the evening. We literally can't control her - she has dug up Dad's flowerbeds, taken stones from the rockery and tried to get out twice. I've been placed on constant guard.

You'd never believe that something so cute could ever be responsible for such things would you? You'd be wrong. Very wrong.

I keep getting (gentle) reminders from followers on twitter that I haven't made any Youtube videos for a while. I really, really want to get back into the swing of it but the last one I filmed on my camera resulted in the audio going out of sync when I edited it. I have no idea why and whenever I use my Macbook to make a video, people moan about the beeping sound so I really can't win! I'm seriously considering buying a Flip video camera to make things easier cause my Youtube channel is really important to me and has allowed me to meet so many amazing people online! I'm going to investigate the audio problem later though and hopefully, I'll have a new video up by the beginning of the week :)

After finally getting to sleep at 4 o'clock this morning, the biggest group of noisy 16-year-olds on their way home from the Summer Ball woke me up at 6 .... so it looks like I'll spend the day lazing around in a daze listening to La Roux's album yet again. Oh well, there are worse ways to spend a Summer's day I guess.

Soar subject.

The English language is so damn strange at times.

Earlier, whilst uploading a new post to my Tumblr blog, I ended up spending a good five minutes trying to decide on the right spelling of the word 'soar' to fit the purpose of a particular sentence relating to temperature (I often have mental lapses).

Then, after thinking for a while, it struck me that we have four homophones (technically three but for the purpose of this blog I'm saying four) for the word 'soar'. Of course we have 'saw' as in having seen something, we have 'saw' as in to cut wood, we have 'sore' relating to a wound and then there is 'soar' meaning to rise.

This then got me thinking of other examples such as the infamous 'there', 'they're' and 'their'. I just think its so odd. Couldn't we have developed the pronunciation slightly different to make life a whole lot easier? I love thinking about language in general and homophones will always amuse me. How can words have such radically different meanings yet sound exactly the same? Where on earth did they come from?

I was wondering, do other languages have as many instances of this as English? If any non-english speakers or multilinguists read this then drop me a comment and let me know - I'd love to read some examples!

Summer lovin'.

Quite a few people have asked what the infamous Stella looks like so there she is in all her glory. She isn't as innocent as she looks though, trust me. For those that were interested, she's a whippet/greyhound cross Lurcher.

The weather has been stunningly beautiful for quite a while here now which is extremely peculiar for May/June. I know that non-Brits find it so ridiculous that we are so obsessed with the weather but if you lived here, you'd know why we are. We have one of the most unpredictable climates in the world which can be fun I guess but it makes planning things pretty difficult cause 80% of the time, you know that you are going to have to resort to your wet weather alternative. Most of the time our weather is pretty much awful which is why we go stark raving bonkers when the sun comes out (you'll know this if you follow any northern-Europeans on Twitter). Contrary to popular belief though, we can get quite hot for a northern country - shocker I know! The thing I love is that, because it rains so much, everything is usually so green and when the sun does decide to shine, it makes things look so much more vivid! Needless to say, I spent most of last week doing this:

With the garden looking so nice in the sunshine and the fact that I just got my camera back, I couldn't help but take a few photos.




Blogspot seems to be quite talented when it comes to destroying photo quality so I'm thinking about creating a Flickr account or something. Do any of you guys use it and recommend it?

Also, its quite hard to think of things to write about here so I hope the occasional commentary/anecdote/picture-spam is okay! I do still keep reading everyone else's blogs and I do try hard to comment and offer my encouragement. Its so interesting reading about everyday life in different parts of the world. The internet is so great.

P.S - I finally got around to replying to most comments on the last entry so that should be visible in the comments. I usually just reply to people in the comments on the same blog rather than going to each individual person's blog. Its just easier, especially as some people don't actually blog themselves (which you should!!) ha :)