Two weeks today until I head off to university – eeek! Today I went to Aberystwyth, one of the bigger towns within relatively easy reach of where I live, to do some shopping in preparation for that momentous event. I hardly ever shop for clothes, and so I both needed quite a lot of stuff and had quite a lot of the money that my parents have been allocating monthly in their budget for my clothing saved up. At the beginning of the summer, I replenished my wardrobe of summer clothes, and today I bought some warmer attire. Not really much to report – I’m a bloke, I don’t really take much interest in these things!
The most telling item was probably the leather jacket I bought in a second-hand shop. This was influenced by no small amount by this being the costume worn by Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who in the new series being filmed at the moment down in Cardiff. Yes, I admit it, I’m a Doctor Who fan. It didn’t take long for that little fact to slip out. I’d probably have had a hard time hiding it! I’ll mount my defence of this rather wobbly television show at a later date, but trust me when I say that the new series is looking like it’s going to be great. My sisters were not impressed by the jacket. But I quite like it though!
I also tracked down cheap copies of some books for my university course, specifically “Sons and Lovers” by D H Lawrence, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James and “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy. I couldn’t resist buying some other books, such as one of Adrian Plass’s “Sacred Diary” books. Another book I bought was “Studentdom” by Matt someone-or-other, which is a Christian guide to university. I read most of it on the bus back home. (It’s a long journey rather than a short book, by the way). It was good, both practical and soundly Christian without either being too compromising or too unrealistically pious, though only time will tell how accurate a picture it paints of university life.
Well, that’s all for now folks. Hopefully the weather tomorrow will be as beautifully warm and sunny as today – summer seems to have sneaked belatedly and sheepishly in at the very last moment!