Seven Days

I can hardly believe that only one week ago school broke up for the summer.


In the last week I have organised, vastly enjoyed and tried to assist with the fallout of one of my dearest friend's hen nights. This involved zorbing, vast amounts of 'ribena' and a tea party fit for a beautiful bride before descending into a night of many, many shots of hard liquor, somewhat blue comedy and the famous superhero, Mr Muscle.


This experience further cemented my deeply held belief that the people about whom we care are the most important aspects of one's life. Yes, zorbing was terrifying, yes, Mr Muscle was exceptionally and not enjoyably friendly, but someone who is very special to me had an amazing time, saw almost all of her friends together in one place (no mean feat) and got absolutely trashed with hilarious consequences.

What a winner.

The mid point of the week took rather a dip, namely in the diagnosis of a wildly inconvenient malady which is really rather tiresome.


However, the latter-half-of-the-week-upswing came in the form of my graduation which was yesterday. It was a lovely day complete with the wearing of ridiculous polyester gowns (yes, I did a number of Snape impressions), the nerve-racking walk across the stage and neglected practice of general bitchiness which only happens when a group of girls who get along famously are left with no other pastime than to watch other girls and comment upon their outfits. There were some absolute gems.


The day was, of course, tinged with the bittersweet as it is the end of a course which in itself would have been largely unbearable had it not been for some of the people I met through it. Some of them are picture below in a picture which preluded my mortorboard narrowly missing one of the photographers.

Thus, I will finish where I began, with the overwhelming feeling I have of my luckiness in the people who surround me and whose friendship is my proudest possession. 


Now I'm off to sob into a large cup of earl grey.


Lizi xxx

Harry Potter and The Best Week Ever

Hello all,


This week has been quite the emotional rollercoaster. Sure there were dramas at work, sleep deprivation and a mysterious illness but that's not important right now.


This week, (or rather, the last nine days) I have been to see a Harry Potter movie every night. Eight of these were at the cinema. All of them were amazing. The cinema in town made the genius marketing decision to show each of the Harry Potter films in order, culminating in the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on Friday. 


We spent a week at Hogwarts, transported to world of Hippogriffs and Horcruxes, Dragons and Dementors, Slytherins and Snarfaluffs. It was magical, in every sense. Every night a new adventure was waiting for us, an adventure that would shape the characters that grew up before our eyes and form the relationships between them with a subtlety and deftness that can only be truly appreciated when watching the films in order over a short period of time. I was captivated, completely immersed in this world which is so like reality and so crushingly different and I found, as the week went on, an overwhelming sense of melancholy and, dare I say it, dread.

Don't get me wrong, I did not leave the cinema on Friday hysterically wailing that, 'I just can't believe it's all over!' But the end of the series is more than that to me, and to so many other fans of the books and the movies. I am 23, so was 9 when the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was released in 1997. Although I only read it in 1999 after my brother had brought home The Chamber of Secrets from school. I was 11, therefore, when I, like Harry, entered the magical world of Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and Platform 9 and 3/4.


So, with the last film comes the end of my childhood, I suppose. There is no new Potter to look forward to anymore (at least once the DVD has come out). It's a strange, sad feeling, a feeling which was only somewhat ameliorated by how jaw-droppingly, heart-stoppingly gorgeous Ron was in the final film. Gosh.


Mischief Managed.


Lizi