Ashford hits the headlines!

Photo from The Independent
Info below from The Telegraph

Armed robbery at Barclays bank on Ashford High Street, about half a mile from home! This made it as 'breaking news' on Sky News, and there were reports being given every 5 or 10 minutes on the situation.

It is believed he entered the bank at 4pm brandishing a sawn-off shotgun then handcuffed the staff and customers using plastic cable ties and made them put on white boiler suits. One of the hostages said he ordered them to blackout the windows of the bank using spray paint.
When police responded to the scene and told the suspect to surrender he is understood to have shouted to them that he had “dynamite” with him inside.

Thankfully he came out and was arrested before anyone was seriously hurt. The whole thing did drag on for 3 hours though, it must have been unbelievably horrible for the poor people trapped inside.

You hear about things like this all the time on TV, yet it really hits you and feels so much worse when it's so close to home.

The reason (in part) why I've been away for so long

The chaos you see behind me is what's left of my uni room. Most of it's hidden under the desk though, but the quantity of stuff is pretty horrific. I never knew I owned so much stuff!

For the past week or so I've been busy packing up my life ready to move out of here and back home for the summer. Some of my stuff (kitchen stuff, duvet etc.) needs to be moved into the new house (and left in a corner while as someone else will be occupying my room), but the vast majority of it is coming back to Ashford with me.

To anyone who reads this blog, I'm sorry I've been absent. I'll be back soon, I promise.
(Also, why don't you leave a comment and say hello? I don't bite :P)

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Sending off the first year.

Saturday night was our end of year uni garden party. Much fun was had, including childish games of hook-a-duck, blowing bubbles, a bit too much Pimms, fireworks, and dancing. The good weather held out (just - it was miserable yesterday and has rained non-stop today, typical Britain), making the garden part of the evening lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I even enjoyed the Stannary party too, possibly because of the consumption of a bit too much alcohol, but also possibly because of the relief of one year being over and done with.

It still seems so surreal that I'm 1/3rd of the way towards completing my degree - I still feel so young and like university should be far away in the distant future, yet it's now and I've already completed a full year.
My inner child also isn't helping me come to terms with the fact that I'm less than 4 months away from hitting the big 2-0 and no longer being a teenager. Yikes!
Here's to this year, my 15th year in education, and to all the things the next two years will bring!

As I was going to St. Ives...

... I met a man with seven wives
Each wife had seven sacks
Each sack had seven cats
Each cat had seven kits
Kits, cat, sacks, wives
How many were going to St. Ives?

Now that exams are over I've got four months of doing whatever I please before uni starts again, so as the sun has been shining for the past few days I decided to take a trip to St. Ives yesterday. The train journey there was beautiful, miles of countryside alive in vibrant greens, pinks, yellows, reds, blues... just the way summer should be. As it's half term St. Ives was packed with families who flocked to the beaches, and I assumed that squealing kids and swarms of people would ruin the day slightly by making it impossible to get anywhere. Thankfully that wasn't the case, as a lot of people had set up camp on the main beaches leaving the small beaches and the shopping streets at a bearable crowd level.

I started off my day by having a wander round the shops. As well as the usual chain shops and shops selling touristy things there are lots of little gems of shops tucked away in side streets which would be easy to miss if you weren't looking out for them.
There's a fabulous shop selling handcrafted Russian items, including some beautiful matryoshkas. I may have to go back and treat myself to one if I've done well in my exams!
I found a knitting shop which also sold bear-making kits, and I bought myself a kit to make a little 7cm tall bear.
After a bit of searching I also found a bead shop (I can never go somewhere new without knowing if there's a bead shop nearby! haha). The shop's called GJ Beads and they have a huge selection of seed beads as well as other beads, and they're all sorted by colour turning the shop into a beautiful rainbow. Make sure you have a look if you're ever in town! I bought a kumihimo kit from them which I'm going to try out once I've finished this post - from simply looking at the instructions it looks a bit daunting, but hopefully, as I often find, doing it will be a lot simpler than looking at a bunch of words on paper.
After I'd finished looking round the shops I was feeling a bit peckish so bought myself a pot of crab meat. I love it and would eat it more often if it wasn't so expensive, so for now it'll just have to stay as a holiday treat. Then I went to an ice-cream parlour and got some mango sorbet in a cone (which was absolutely delicious) and took a stroll along the beach while eating it. I managed to avoid getting attacked by seagulls who were after my food, even though some swooped down scarily close to my head!
I had such a lovely day, even though I did spend it by myself. I was able to take things at my own pace, and there were no arguments or insults like those that seem to have become custom when I'm out with "friends". It made a refreshing change to go somewhere other than Falmouth of Truro, especially as it was somewhere beautiful and picturesque. I'll definitely be seeing a lot more of St. Ives this summer!