October Life; Manchester Bee Trail (Part 3) Saying Goodbye To The Bees!

Hi readers,

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to go to the Goodbye Bees event which was a chance to see all 101 bee statues in the same place and for the last time.

Many of the bee statues are being auctioned off next weekend and who knows where they'll end up and if they'll be on public display again. Some of the bees though are being given back to the charities who sponsored them or are represented by them. For example, Harpurbee will be going back to The Manchester Youth Zone. (I believe it'll be placed in the closed car park/allotment garden back area which isn't accessible to the public).

The event was held at the Manchester National Cycling Centre with some of the bees being inside and most of the being outside. It was really busy - lots of people eager to see the bees they had missed during the trail and the weather was bad too - the tail end of a storm that has flooded part of the UK this weekend.

To add to this my boyfriend had started with a cold and wasn't feeling well. We also had a nightmare parking! We ended up in the wrong place but then got told to go back there as there was nowhere to park around the cycling centre! Walking through the rain to get there then having to walk around the bees in the rain didn't help improve our moods but I tried to enjoy it as best I could.

It was really nice to see all the bees together and look at the ones we'd missed. I think we got to see around 50 on the trail and I realised whilst planning the second trip to see them that there was going to a few that I'd never get to see. So, it was good that the event was held and I could get tickets for it as I didn't feel like I'd missed out!

Of all the bees my favourite is still the one in the opening photo, Bee-You-ti-ful. I love the washed out colours and the inspirational imagines and quotes. A lot of the other bees are also inspiring and carry positive messages but there's just something about this one bee that really speaks to me!

If I had to pick a second favourite it would be this one below; Sundae. I love the ice cream look created on this bee and it feels so summer-y. For me this bee was also very different from all the others, I guess because it didn't have a 'bee' theme as such like some of the other ones do. Also, I love ice cream!

Due to how they had set the bees up it was hard to get a 'group photo', I tried my best but there was also trees and people in the way too! 

  

Now, here's a selection of bees from the event that I liked best and all of these are ones we didn't get to see during the trail.

I love this bee above! It had this really old stone look and reminded me of a headstone! 

I like this one below too. It's simple and pretty with the butterflies on it. 

The bee above is themed around the 80 Days Around The World novel and the bee, I believe, was at Manchester Airport to celebrate the airport's 80th birthday! 

I also liked this Egyptian themed one too.  

I think this bee was called something like The Sky Isn't The Limit and it has this star consolation theme. I liked the Galaxy painting on this bee.

The below bee really sums up Manchester for me; Cottonopolis. Manchester in the past has long been the centre for the cotton industry and the worker bee is the symbol of the hardworking people. 

This is Rainbow bee, who I also liked and seemed fitting in all the wet weather!

And this last Bee, I mistook as a bee with a cold as he was called sneezebee and I joked that my boyfriend was feeling like the bee was! Actually, this bee is theme around allergies, especially pollen which makes sense in the summer!  

So, that's it! The bee trail is officially over. I am super sad to see the bees go and it's a shame they can't be left on display around Manchester. It was a good way to bring people together but I guess there'd be too much up keep. 

I did buy the book of the bees though which lists them all and the small bees too. It's a great reminder of all the bees and fun that we've had finding them. I got a set of postcards too which had some nice photos of 9 different bees and the 10th postcard says something like we completed the bee trail. 

So, it's goodbye from the bees and goodbye from me. Until next time readers. 

(All photos belong to me.)

May's Update

Hi, it feels like awhile since I was last on this blog, even though its been a little over a month. I've not been as busy as I should have been this passed month. I've been writing a story a day for my other blog and working on my novella as well as another short story I've been kinda thinking about making longer. I've been doing what feels like a lot of reading, but isn't really! I've also been following Britain's Got Talent -thank God for the fast forward button though!- and going to work.

My main contraction has been on my driving lessons. I had my driving examine today and though I only got 5 small faults, I got a serious one and thus failed. I'm really frustrated by it and I think the examiner was being a bit unfair. I was carrying out the reversing around a corner move and just as I was about to straighten up and reverse just a bit more back, a Land Rover came behind me. I stopped, believing the driver was going to overtake me and I did give him/she the chance too. However, the road was narrow and I think they believed/knew there wasn't enough room. I then decided to carry on reversing backwards and as my car came straight, the Land Rover rushed passed me. I did stop again, but it seems that I wasn't being observant enough -though I genuine thought I was being!- for me to pass.

I've known for a little while that I need to be a bit more observant and not concentrating too long on looking in one direction. But I just didn't feel the need to do a double shoulder check when I knew there was a car beside me and all I would have been able to see is the side and back of the Land Rover. I was careful not to be moving when they overtook me and I did check again -or at least I think I did- before finishing the move.

Knowing I was so close, does make me feel bad. Perhaps, there's a reason why things turned out this way. It's one I'll probably never know and yet continue to wonder about. The driving exam is so tough. I get why it has to be and I think sometimes if some of the people I see driving unsuitably on the roads were to take the examine they'd fail. It kinda reminds me of a maths test. You spend an age learning a ton of stuff then only some of that appears on the test and afterwards, you use hardly any of it and then forget the bulk of it. Of course, you really shouldn't forget anything whilst driving. But what I'm trying to say is that somethings are just done for the test and then there's no need afterwards.

Right now, I could easily give up. I could easily say that I don't want to drive any more, that it feels pointless and that I just don't want it. But I know I only feel like that because I'm upset and frustrated by one mistake. Everyone says I should be happy that I only got 5 faults and I did really well, better than expected etc. But giving me all the praise in the world doesn't make the failure feel any less. Truthfully, I don't want to give up. Yeah, I know I'm going to end up in a bit of a situation when I do pass my test (I can't really offered the up keep of a car, nor at this moment have any real reason why I do need a car, plus a few other things. But they are for future me to figure out), present me wants it though. Just to say I can do this and here's the prove. It's sort of like another stage of being an adult and more freedom.

I'm not looking forward to paying out more money. I've just had to though as I've now re-booked my test. My driving instructor made me. He said if I didn't then it'd be harder to come back from this and I'd feel less like trying again. I feel oddly determined though, but he is probably right and I would have maybe talked myself out of re-booking it. I got to pay him for more lessons too. Though I don't really need them, I got to keep practicing and improving. At least I know what I've really got to do now and that does help. I'll just keep going and next time give it an even better shot!

    

Rainny days

Hi, this is my 80th blog post! Well so it says on the dashboard and I think that's been the most interesting thing of my day. I've not been doing a lot because of this;

Rain. It's been like this all day and for most of the last two days as well, though we've not had gale force winds today yet. I did brave the weather and go to Ormskirk for pop tarts and cake, but then I've spent the rest of the day in bed. I've been making notes in Wuthering Heights- getting it ready for my Vic Lit projected in March and watching TV movies; first the Corpse Bride and now Jane Eyre a black and white version, but as I'm soon about to be studying the novel- I read it over summer- I thought having it on in the background couldn't help. I still have Brent Weeks' The Way of Shadows to finish- 6 chapters left now. I've been busy doing other things though.
My uncle died on the 26th Jan and it was really sudden, so I've not had the will or the mind to be doing much. Luckily, I've had little work to do though, its about to change. I've an essay to write for Lit Modernism- 2,000 words on Kathrine Mansfield's short stories and her Modernism symbolism.

Guess watching the Corpse Bride has made me lit these. I like candles though, but the only tea light candle holders I have are Halloween ones. Still it doesn't matter, I like Halloween too much. Anyway, the candles are for my uncle tonight.
I've been baking cakes too. This is my latest design; a full moon with bats, misty clouds and stars. I don't think it was cooked in the middle but my housemates still ate it!

So I've not been doing anything else lately, though I've been thinking about giving Bob the cactus his own twitter account, though I've two of my own on the go right now, but it would be easier then his blog! He's doing okay, growing fast, though he still hurts when he gets you, but it seems he likes watching the world go by and everyone hurrying to and throw and missing the simple things as they pass.

So lastly for today, I've been trying to get my TV sorted, by upgrading the channels. It took me awhile to find the channel scanner button though, because this TV is a bit funny. So I found the button and scanned and then the TV lost all the BBC channels. It really loves doing that, so I had to watch the start of Star Wars 4, till I could rescan it again-not that I didn't mind, it's an okay one-and then it did it again! So had to go for the 3rd time luckily step and now I've all the right channels and I'm still watching Jane Eyre!

Summer's still dragging

Hi followers!

I hope your summer is going better then mine, at the minute things are heading downwards again. I got out of my Sims3 addiction because I was bored of it and all that time in Sim world was making me believe that living in that world would be easier then this one! I mean you just have a pile of money, you buy a house straight way, fill it with cool stuff, go and get a job straight way and make more money to buy more stuff. So I had to get myself out of there!

I'm struggling on the main pc today, can't be bothered getting my laptop out, but so typical some idiot has come along and messed everything and me not really knowing my way around computers is having to cope with what reminds of someone downloading a new Internet explore link, so that I've no fav files, no tool bars and a home page which keeps demanding I sign up to 02 phones. I only came on here to listen to music whilst I finished my book off, but my msn had to start playing up when my friend tried to talk to me and now It's been like half an hour and my book-4 chapters from the end! has been abandoned.

It's a hard book to abandoned though..... Lover Eternal by J .R. Ward and if you go down a few posts to 'rocking out the summer house', you'll see that I'm reading it from the second time now. I got the whole series (The Black Dagger Brotherhood) and I've given up with the uni novels now-I was just suffering under their heavy weight of Victorian/Edwardian life. So much that I'm now positive it effected my need to write my own novels. Once I read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre I was like what kind of novel can I write to top that? So I've not really wrote much, beside from one short story and some of a random novel was writing an age ago.

Anyway, I've to leave and go on a quest to find a dungeons and dragons board game for our boat hire holiday.

The Thin Executioner comes to town.

I've been mega busy since posting my field trip post and that's mostly to do with my uni work. Last week was so crazy, I had work in and work to finish off and on Tuesday I handed in two essays and tomorrow I've another one due in! I need to finish that other one tho, because it's a short story I re-wrote, so it just needs a little bit more.....

Anyway, today Darran Shan was in Liverpool 1 Waterstones signing his new novel - The Thin Executioner and I being a fan, decided to drag some friends along to the book signing. I was looking forward to a nice afternoon in Liverpool doing a bit of shopping before popping into waterstones, but so typical of the British weather it was raining! And it was the second worse kind of rain-that fine stuff that soaks you even before you've had a chance to notice it's really raining! (the first is that large, sudden down pour stuff, that makes you look like a drowned rat.) So we cut the shopping trip short and headed for Waterstones.

Where we met Darren Shan! It worked out okay, because we had time for hot chocolates and cake, before we brought the book and hurried into the already growing queue. We stood for 4o minutes there, chatting and poking the books that were on display around us and then talking to random people in front and behind us. Then at 5pm, he started sighing books and the queue moved up. It took us 20 minutes to get there and then he was mega happy to sign books and meet his fans.

Also it seems he has a weird thing about strangling people and writing strange notes in the books.....but still I guess every message is different and he seemed to be enjoying himself!

I got him to sign a book for my brother too, because it was only fair....

We ended up coming back home after that, the rain was getting heavier and though we got vouchers for Burger King, we had food at home. Now though, I need to go off and do some more work and then I'll finish Pieaces of Eight, which has taken me awhile to get through because I've been busy reading other stuff and writing about it! But I have like 2 chapters left and then tomorrrow, I can start my new book!