Observations of a Fictional Girl

Hello there dear readers, I hope your respective Friday evenings are full of the relaxation or celebration you need after a long week. For me it has felt a busy yet lovely one but I am slowly losing a sense of what day of the week it is as they are all blurring into one, so the weekend is a welcome break. However in contrast to my light hearted blog posted this morning I'd like to take this chance to write about something serious and personal if you'll bare with me. As today is World Mental Health day I'd like to share with you my experience with mental health issues. Since I started writing  a blog I have debated using it as a method of 'confession' and I feel like today I am doing so for the right reasons and not for gratuitous publicity. Please feel free to tell me if anything does sound preachy! I'm not a hundred percent sure how to begin and I don't feel like sugar coating things is the way to voice this aspect of my life so I'll just state ...

Hello there dear readers, I hope this blog post finds you well and your respective weeks have been suitably exciting. My own week has been rather wonderful and this is largely due to the visit my grandparents made up to Sheffield for a few days. It was very special to have this company as living a reasonable (a body of water separating) distance from my immediate family I can't go home for a weekend when I feel like it and as exciting as university is there are several moments when this extra distance is felt keenly.  My lovely family when we were on holiday in Amsterdam, eating a curry as per usual.  I miss them lots. The presence of lovely flatmates and wonderful friends are already a blessing but having family around was a real treat. The grandparents- or Grammie and Grampie as I like to call them- had planned to visit me in my first year of living in Sheffield but we all ended up being so busy that it just didn't happen until this year. They arrived on Tuesday...

Hello there dear readers, A very warm welcome on this cold Sunday evening to the third and final instalment of this bumper edition of Observations of a Fictional Girl. I'd like to take this opportunity to devote a blog post to one of my inspirations in life whom I was lucky enough to meet last week in Sheffield City Hall. I am referring, with great reverence to the wonderful man that is Stephen Fry. It was way back in May that I booked tickets, at my boyfriend Leo's suggestion, to go see Mr Fry live and I have been excited ever since then not really believing that it would ever actually happen. Then last week it did and it was glorious. Stephen Fry, as most of the well informed Harry Potter fans among you will know, provided the voice for the Harry Potter series when they were turned into audio books and as such his voice has always been one I was familiar with, and had a presumed companionship with, from an early age. This link was what started my awareness of ...

Hello again readers, As promised here is the second instalment of this weeks bumper edition blog from yours truly. This week has been my first experience of my autumn semester modules of level 2 and it's been all guns blazing with no nice fluffy introductory period like first year. This was particularly highlighted for me by my brains continual acceptance of such a gear change in reading from books I enjoy to a multitude of articles but such is university life and I will adjust in turn. Plus the fact the my Woody Allen module involves a weekly film screening (regrettably at 9am on a Monday morning) means that I can have a slight reprieve from the medium of literature that pervades my week. In regards to reflection I draw my subject matter back to the weekend of September the 20th and 21st, which was only a fortnight ago but feels much longer than that, wherein I assisted at University of Sheffield's Intro Weekend helping first years move into their accommodation. The posi...

Hello there readers, It's been a while since I proffered my internal musings up to the internet and to you lovely folk. I apologise for my lateness.  When I last wrote- over two weeks ago- I was just settling back into life at Sheffield  and left you with the tantalising promise of a post the next week regarding my thoughts on first year and surrounding the start of my second year at university.... Then life, as it so often does, pressed the fast forward button. My free time evaporated and stress levels hit maximum and this was all before I started back at university. It's my first day back today and thus I'm grabbing a moment in my 9-4 Monday timetable to update you all as well as send my apologies for the lack of posts these past few weeks. However I believe it is true that if you don't take time to live life you won't have anything to write about so I offer this my humble excuse and promise a special bumper edition of the Observations of a Fictional Girl blo...

Hello again my lovely readers, This week has been a bit crazy so it's been hard to find a moment to sit down and share my thoughts with you all about finally being back in Sheffield again but I'm snagging a moment before I curl up in my big double bed and sleep for a long time. Firstly it was very hard leaving home (it feels like I have a lot of different homes at the moment but in this case I mean Northern Ireland) and my family to come back to Sheffield even though I'd done it a year earlier under considerably more nerve racking circumstances. I was excited to return to university, see friends and resume a more independent life yet it was hard as I had to give up other lovely things to. I miss living by the sea. I miss attempting to beat my brother at FIFA and having a bedtime cuddle with my sister. I miss driving. I miss family dinners.... A gorgeous sunset from the Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland near where I live And so the list goes on. However I feel...

Hi there readers,  Welcome to the first page of my blog, it's so nice of you to stop by. I have wanted to start a blog now for a while, but haven't really felt like I have much to say or share with the world. However I love writing so it felt like a natural progression to share my thoughts with others as mundane as they may be. This blog begins just as I am poised to partake in my second year of studying English literature at the University of Sheffield and will hopefully give you an insight into the university lifestyle- in my case lots and lots of reading whilst drinking chai lattes- as well as my general musings on the ups and downs of life in general.  I thought I'd start this first page- or foreword- of my blog by giving you an insight into a few things that I'm looking forward to about heading back to Sheffield (I can't believe I'm flying on Monday, where has this summer gone).  1) I'm looking forward to having my own double bed for the first...