I Hadn’t Forgotten About This…Honest…

It’s been 8 weeks since my last blog, but as all of you hopefully know I’ve been busy with all my college work, but what’s that I hear you ask? How did all my college work go? Did I get it all finished in the end? Did I pass? How can I tell what your going to ask?

I have a special super power that allows me to look into the future and use my telepathy skills to tell what you’ll think, but enough on that as I sense it’s boring you and you don’t believe me.

Now, regarding the college work, I did it…well I did some of it, but I have a valid excuse. It was getting into the final few weeks of the course, I wanted to take time off college to catch up with written work but we had our end of year show to sort out (more on that later), so stress levels were at an all new high and I got to the point where I didn’t care if I pass or fail, just as long as I finish.

It was about a week before the final deadline and I noticed I had toothache, actually I say toothache I really mean REALLY FUCKING BAD TOOTHACHE!!! It was the first time I’d had toothache in years so I thought it seemed pretty strange, what seemed even more strange though was how I could still eat on the tooth and how my teeth all looked fine, no swelling or rotting bits or anything like that.

I decided to make an appointment at a dentist, I asked my mum if she had a number for a dentist and she told me to try a doctor instead because it seemed more like neuralgia.

…New what now?

This put the fear of god into me, what was this mystery illness? I went on Google to find out what it was, typed in ‘newralga’

Did you mean: neuralgia

…yes.

This didn’t help at all, it said it can affect the whole face and in some cases people have to suffer with it for the rest of their life, I had visions of myself at 83 sucking on Werther’s Original while complaining of the pain and STILL having to finish my college work. Another website referred to it as the “suicide disease” and said it “is universally considered to be the most painful affliction known to medical practice”. I went to bed that night hoping it was just toothache.

I couldn’t sleep that night due to the pain and the next morning one side of my face was in absolute agony, now when I say ‘absolute agony’ I don’t just mean a slight pain, I mean the worst pain you could possibly ever imagine multiplied by a hundred million trillion…squillion! And you think that isn’t even a number, well neither did I until I got this.

I didn’t know what to do, everyone was out and talking made it hurt even more, in fact just thinking about it made it worse. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t phone for help and yet I was in the worst pain ever, all I could do was wait for my mum to get home from work.

5 hours later she got home and we headed off to the doctors, he had a good look at me and even complimented me on my ears which was rather random, he told me I had Trigeminal Neuralgia and put me on Dihydrocodeine, he also told me that it was bought on by stress and I had to have complete rest for a week, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that my work had to be all handed in the same week and I had loads to do.

Now these painkillers were really strong, but I didn’t care just as long as I could sleep, I took my first 2 while I was eating my tea, I’d been sat down about half an hour and when I got back up I staggered around the lounge and collided with the table.

I went for about 5 nights without any sleep in the end, only 2 away from insanity. I ended up missing my deadline too so I went into college and had a word with my tutor, I now have until the beginning of September to complete my work.

The whole neuralgia thing is more or less gone now, I still get the occasional twinge but I still have plenty of painkillers left so I can get back on with things again now.

As I was saying about the end of year show…

We had a week to prepare for it, which sounds like we left it too late but what with our deadline nearby, we all had enough on our plates. We were all given our own space to put our work up and an equal number of frames to display it in, mine was on a crappy little wall by a window, whereas some people had 3 walls and someone even used 10 frames leaving me with 4 and others having to use foam board.

I had to choose 4 photos to put up, I avoided the film noir ones because I’m always putting those up, instead I chose the one of Big John’s, my Selfridges one with the grass in the discs, my panorama of Poole, and my Waitrose wine bottle.

We were all given 4 sheets of paper to print on too, I had just enough, I printed my panorama and then as I was printing my Selfridges one I noticed all these stripes on the photo, this was no good, I couldn’t put my photos up all stripy like this. I showed my tutor and he cleaned the printer and tried again, it came out just as stripy so he decided it was because of the cartridge and nobody else could print for that day which was an annoyance because it was 2 days before the exhibition opened.

I came in the next day, luckily we were given some more paper and more cartridges. Other people had printed and the printer was fine so I printed my Selfridges picture off again…

…MORE STRIPES!!!!!

It wasn’t making sense now, the photo looked fine on the screen so there was no reason for any stripes. I decided that I’d put it up anyway, it will go by the window where hopefully the light will reflect on the glass covering all the stripes and nobody would know, even if they did I’d make up some bullshit about what they represent.

After printing out my other 2 photos it was time to put them in frames, but that would be too easy for me, something would have to go wrong. I’d set everything out perfectly and all I had to do was place the glass into the frame and attach the back, nothing could go wrong with that, it all sounded too easy.

I tried putting the glass in and it went in a bit tight at one end, when I got to the other end I found the glass had been cut really badly and was about an inch too wide, so as I tried taking the glass out it cut into my thumb resulting in blood spillage all over my lovely white card, luckily it was all over the back of it and nobody would ever notice.

I decided it would be a better idea to just use Perspex instead of glass, I’m less likely to lose a limb that way and it would be a better fit too. Now all I had to do was attach my frames to the wall.

This all had to be done without the aid of a spirit level, but with some very careful measuring we got them perfectly straight, I tried screwing one of the screws into the wall but due to them being cheap crappy screws they just wore away and got stuck halfway in the wall. The screw wouldn’t come out and the college was locking up so I had to leave it how it was until the next day.

Now you can understand why I was so stressed, it was the day of the end of year show and my frames were still yet to go up. I did some asking round and got an electric screwdriver off a technician, to my surprise I got all my frames up hassle free.

I was shocked because I was half expecting the wall to fall down, or for someone to tell me they weren’t straight, or maybe even for the electric screwdriver to explode. A sudden wave of relief came over me as I stood back and looked at it, I put my name thing up (it wasn’t straight but I didn’t care) and set off to Wolverhampton.

The plan was for me to get home after Wolverhampton, get changed and head off to college where I would show everyone my work, enjoy the free food and drink and then go to the pub and get rat arsed.

…However, that was not the case. On the way back from Wolverhampton I fell into a deep sleep on the metro and started to head back to Wolverhampton from Snow Hill. I got off and got on the bus home where I also fell into a deep sleep, when I got home I went to my room to get changed only to collapse in a big pile of tiredness and fall into yet another deep sleep, hence missing the end of year show.

Hopefully that has answered your question about the end of year show, but another question remains…

Why was I going to Wolverhampton?

Lets go back a few weeks, remember how I told you about the tea leaves? Well they were right! Not the bit about the pram thank god but something came up about passion and a Pisces. At the time I thought nothing of it, I didn’t even know anybody who was a Pisces, that was until a week later when I met someone who lives in Wolverhampton called Chloe (or Toey Chloe, for anyone on my MSN list). She’s really nice and we get on really well, we started seeing a lot of each other and for the past month we’ve been going out. Everything’s been going really well and I’m really happy. Although tomorrow I’m staying over at her house and meeting her parents for the first time which I’m a bit nervous about but hopefully it’ll all go well...providing I dont drink.

That’s pretty much the past couple of months summed up for you, although in other news:

I’m looking for work again, well meant to be at least. Been so tied up with college work that it’s all been put aside but next week I’m having a proper look…I promise!

Mothra invaded our kitchen last Monday, it was like some sort of flying dog, it has to be the biggest moth like…ever. I didn’t have the heart to kill it because it was big enough to fight back and it would just make a gooey mess all over the lino.



All my clothes are falling apart, every pair of jeans I own is full of holes, maybe Mothra is to blame, but I keep getting nagged by my mum and friends to get them sorted because I look a mess, although today I was walking down the road and 2 girls asked me where I got my jeans from because they really liked them, mind you they were Chavs so maybe I should get new ones.

I was woken up the other day to the sound of someone sawing a caravan in half…seriously!

Back to the college work now I guess…