Rocking the Summer house!

It's been awhile since I've been able to say 'Yes, I really loved that book, I'm adding it to my fav list right now.' I've been reading so many books for eng lit and just been suffering because of it. I've been bored out of my head by these Victorian books, which just goes to show how the writers' believed novels had to be written to certain rules and things like love must be hidden under different words so that people wouldn't be horrified by such exposed things. Well, I finally decided to take a break from them- I was at the halfway point anyway and by chance I picked up a book I brought in my last trip to Liverpool - J .R. Ward's Lover Eternal. It blew my mind away and showed me how much novels have become exposed now -you can get away with just about everything now days if a publisher likes it!

I hardly put it down, because I got so wrapped up in things. Then when I read the last page, I discovered it was the 2nd in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I got on Amazon fast and grabbed the 1st and 3rd. I'd brought the 2nd to last one with Eternal, so I just need to get my hands on the others now. I've decided to take these two on holiday, as well as the 3rd in the Sliver/Flint pirates of Treasure Island books I've been reading-The 1st made it to my fav list. I was meant to take Wuthering Heights-the next in my Eng lit books away with me, but the thought of sitting on a beach trying to read that doesn't seem so good to me.

I've nothing against these novels, I'm a bookworm, but sometimes these types of books just don't grab me....vampires however do!

The summer house

I'm currently chilling out in the summer house at the minute. Well its more of a DIY, pop up place, because my dad made it out of a gazebo house and also a smaller gazebo, some wood, plastic sheeting, so bricks and old sofa cushions. So though it does look little untidy, it is the perfect place to hang out in-sun or rain! Its cool, but warm at the same time and it does leak but only in a heavy rainfall. The bench chairs are so comfy though and there is a table, power plug for laptop and a speaker which links to the Hifi system in the shed. There are lights too and a pool/snooker table. No one could really ask for a better place in which to chill out in when it gets too hot on the grass or the lawn chair breaks again. It's bigger then the photo makes it and just right for taking a nap in.

Inside the summer house.

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Lastly, this is a photo of Hairy von Baron Strawberry. His name came from a joke and a misunderstanding. He is a barren Strawberry plant and I misunderstood this and thought he was a baron instead, then his first name comes from the fact he was very hairy when I got him. So I just stuck all of that together and so he was named! My best friend, who give him to me, said he wouldn't get strawberries this year because he was just a baby......well, it seems he didn't listen to that because now he has 6 strawberries growing and he also seems to have got more leaves. So he must be older then she thought or he likes his spot in my garden so much that he's just grown up! Anyway, I'm hoping to have some home grown strawberries in late summer!

St James' Cemetery

Finally got one of my goals completed on last Wednesday! I found St James' Cemetery in Liverpool and was able to tour the cathedral and the cemetery. It seems strange in its location because it was just sort of in my face the whole time, I just didn't walk up the road far enough. It was worth it and waiting for it made me respect it more. The cathedral was wonderfully, so huge and with so many corners to explore. The peacefulness of the place in the middle of a city was also interesting. When you walked in, you sort of forgot where the cathedral was placed because you couldn't hear anything of the outside world once you were inside. I don't think I can describe it any other way then saying it was spiritually up lifting. Maybe I would say I felt closer to God as I walked around and saw the alters and candles, but I think maybe it was more of a case that I was so relexed.

Of couse the cemetery held more intersted to me and it didn't fail. The cemetery is sunk below the natural ground level of the city, so you get to walk in a small valley whilst the city carries on life above you. They have rearranged the gravestones so now they line the walls of the cemtery, but 99% are still readable and in good condition. Also there are some very interesting gravestones- due to famous Liverpool people being buried there, but what touched me most was the hopstial and ophan headstones, which listed lots of young people and childen, who must have been all buried in that plot on top of each other. I'd neverf really seen anything like that before, but I've learnt enough history of Liverpool to understand the harshness of life in the 1800s' so I moved on to another intersting feature in the cemtery.

There is Liverpool's first and suriving freash water spring, right in the heart of the cemtery and also family crypts placed into the oppsite wall and split into two different levels. It is hard to see who these belong too because most of the gravestones are missing or have faded with time. The cemetery is a relfective place and there lots of people just chilling on the grass and whilst I was buy taking photographs, I left my friend reading Shakespare on a large rock in front of some of the headstones that had not been removed.

I try to explain my interest in graveyards and cemteries everytime to people or whilst I write. It's differcult for me to explain, because I know peoples' feeling about suit places, but to me its a place to get closer to nature and think about the past. It's nice to remember people who are no longer with us and think about your own life.

A Flowery Suprise

This is Bob, the cactus. He use to have his own blog, but it became to difficult for me to write 4 different blogs, so I forced him to stop writing.....he spiraled into depression and I thought he'd never been happy again. But then during my last break from uni, I replanted him in a bigger pot and it seems that though he's not been writing his blog, he's happy enough.....I came back after my long weekend at home to find that he had flowered!

I know that he can flower, he has done so before, but this time he seems to have gone a little crazy and has had a lot more flower buds then I've known him to have before! Seems that my student house bedroom window sill gets a lot of sun and that's the only reason I can come up with. Unless because of the bigger plant pot he's become a more mature cactus.....

Still tho, its brightened up my room and my day! The weather is bad out there today and I most go for a walk and then up to uni. Its another guest lecture tonight. The uni is running this summer program all about the Romantics, but with a very different light to the normal. I went to the one last week about how the Romantic writers showed people with mental and physical disabilities in their works. It was pretty interesting and this one tonight looks even more interesting.

I've very little else to do right now. I've kept myself busy with a scrapbook about my first year at uni and in reading novels for 3rd year. I'm on my 4Th now - Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I watched the movie first and when I started reading the book, I got more interesting in how Woolf writes. Seems that its more good then I first thought. Also its so short that I'll soon have it finished!

Think its time to go for that walk now, getting cabin fever stuck in this room.

Formby Woods

Its been too long again, but I seem not to be able to find the time, of late anyway. Hopefully I'll have some time now because very little is currently happening. Everything seems to be winding down to summer and the holiday plans. I should be glad for the break, but I feel lazy not doing anything, so I've been reading the set novels for my 3rd year, I'm on my third one now- The Moonstone by Wikie Collins and unlike Oliver this one is more hard to read. I'm not getting into it and so far its taken me just over a week to read 166 pages....but there must be 200 words per page, as the writing is so small and a great many things are happening within them. I must push on though and it might get better later on.

Anyway, I've chosen to write about Formby woods today because I've photos for it and it was the highlight of last week. Its a national animal reserve in-between Liverpool and Southport and is a pine forest really. There are lots of trails through the trees and you sometimes can go off the path, but they are led to the sand dunes and to the beach.

Its less then an hour away from my student house by train and since the weather was okay and we were bored, it seemed a good place to go for lunch. We took sandwiches and ate them on the dunes whilst playing in the sand and joking about moving dunes. That's what most of them are-still growing dunes but it was funny to picture a dune getting up and moving around.

Pine trees

Then we walked back across the beach and drew somethings in the sand, as you do. We got back to the train station and decided to go for tea in Southport....how that place has gone down hill is shocking. I've been before, but this time we went to the pier and all the seaside places. It seems you can do very little there now and what's left is just an empty shell of by gone days. There are things where you can picture the place being once alive with people on holiday and having fun, but now and I guess like many places around Britain, it has fallen prey to the growth of aeroplanes, package holidays and the British peoples' urges to 'escape the country/weather'.

One of the walks at Formby

So many people are missing out and what England has to offer! So what if the weather isn't so good as Spain or the USA? Many places in England are soaked in history, most of it very exciting and you don't have to dig so deep-even in your pockets! to find it. That's why this year I'm grateful that once again I'll be holidaying in England, a place in Cornwall I've never been before and who knows what I might discover there?

Train map To Formby