Books, books, books!

Day Eleven: Favourite Books

I love reading, always have done. I can often be found with my nose in a book. I used to go to the local library every few weeks and I would pick out some new books to read. There is nothing I love more than reading a brand new book, I don’t think that I could ever buy a Kindle to read books on, I like the feeling of reading books too much!

I think that my taste in books has changed as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, some of my favourite books were the ‘Animal Ark’ series. I also loved a book by Rolf Harris which was full of true animal stories, I still read it from time to time now. I was a big ‘Secret Seven’ fan too, I had a badge with SS on it and everything. Books that I never really enjoyed were the ‘Goosebumps’ series, I never understood why they were so popular! They were always the books that had huge waiting lists at the school library.

The Harry Potter series of books would probably be on the favourite book list of anyone my age, and I’m no different. These books really captured my imagination, even if I was a little late to the party! I started reading the books at the end of 1999, start of 2000. I went on holiday the day before the release of The Half Blood Prince, and it was like two weeks of torture, seeing everyone that turned up at the hotel had a copy of the book and I was on a constant Spoiler Alert. Luckily, I managed to evade the spoilers and the book was waiting for me to get back.

For Christmas year before last I got a book, ‘The Butterfly Isles’ which followed journalist Patrick Barkham as he travelled the country over the space of a year to see each species of British Butterfly. The book highlighted the plight of the butterfly. Their habitats are being destroyed to make way for housing developments and climate change is pushing butterflies further and further North as the South becomes warmer. Eventually they will run out of space if more is not done to protect them.

I love a ghost story, especially local ones. The 'Haunted Liverpool' series of books are firm favourites. I enjoy reading them and matching the ghost stories to the places that I’ve been to, even though it was a tad creepy to find multiple stories which took place close to my student house in Liverpool, walks home after a night out were never the same again after reading one story involving the ghost of a hanged man

Something that I now try to do now is read the book before I see the film. It annoys me when people say ‘why bother reading the book when you can just see the film?’ a phrase that I have heard a lot more of since the Harry Potter films came out. The books are a million times better than the films, so many people are missing out on so much of a fantastic story just because they won’t read the book! I don’t think that people read enough.

I’m not a fan of soppy books, I tried to read ‘The Time Travellers Wife’, after reading the blurb I thought that it would be a book that I would love, but I just never got into it, I found the characters unlikeable and the story boring. I can say the same of Nicholas Sparks books and ‘P.S I love you’, but somewhat hypocritically, I love the film. I try to avoid the genre at all costs, but I make an exception for ‘OneDay’, since David Nicholls also wrote ‘Starter for 10’, which is currently one of my favourites.

Currently, I have four books on the go. The first is the ‘Complete Sherlock Holmes’, it’s taking me much longer than I had expected to read. The next is ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, I’m dying to see the film so I’m trying to get through it as quickly as possible, but if I’m honest, I don’t really understand what’s going on! Book number three is ‘Elephants on Acid’ which is a book about bizarre science experiments. The final book is ‘Forty Years of Murder’ which is a book written by a home office pathologist.

I have a very long ‘to read list’. I want to read more of the ‘Disc World’ series, so far I have only read one and a half books in the series, so there are plenty more to keep me going! I have ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to read too, I started to read it years ago, but I don’t remember finishing it, so it will be good to read it now that I’m older, I think that I’ll appreciate reading it more.

Awkward.....

Day Ten: An awkward situation you’ve found yourself in

I have a big mouth, and I can be rather opinionated, more often than not, speaking without thinking. Of course, when that happens, its total crap and I end up retracting what I say, but there has been the odd occasion that such things have left me in somewhat awkward situations. A case point is saying how much I hate the name Patricia, when the friend that I’m telling this too tells me his Mum is called Patricia… Oops! But there is one occasion that tops that.

I went on an Identification of Bats course as part of my degree, it was a field course and I spent a long weekend in the middle of Shropshire learning about bats. The person leading the course was a tad odd, she kept dead bats in old margarine tubs, she dried out the bodies in her airing cupboard and we had a un-holy amount of tea breaks. It was the last night and we were out on another bat walk at stupid o’clock at night. By this point I had had my fair share of bats. Once the bat walk was done, she said that she would see us at about 3 in the morning at the same spot to see the bats coming in to roost. Now, in the itinerary that we were given, it said that this final bat walk would be optional, something that she didn’t dispute. We went to bed, but of course, I couldn’t sleep.

The alarm went off in the room and I got up and dressed. It was cold outside, I wasn’t feeling well, and I had less than an hour of sleep. Fair to say that I wasn’t in the best of moods to stand in the pouring rain counting bats. I tried to get her attention to ask if I could leave, but she was too into counting non-existent bats. She’ll never notice if I nip back to bed I thought to myself, and away I went.

 The next morning, I got up, well rested and ready for the day, went down to breakfast where a heated conversation was going on. I was right, she didn’t notice that one person had left, but she sure as hell noticed when about 15 people left and she was practically stood on her own. I had unintentionally started the mass migration of the group back to bed! The people that had stayed out told us that she had noticed that most of the class had disappeared and she would be docking marks from the people that had left (Not that it mattered, I made up any of the docked marks with a 71% on the essay afterwards). Everyone that had left was angry; the itinerary did say that it was optional. Anyway as we went back upstairs after breakfast, I had a conversation with my two friends, pointing out that she hadn’t even been looking at the right roost, that she was being unreasonable, that she shouldn’t have put optional on the itinerary if it wasn’t. I went on, and on about it, getting it all off my chest.

When we got into the room, my two friends were absolutely wetting themselves and I couldn’t understand why. When they eventually gained their composure, they told me that she was behind me the whole time, and she heard everything. Well, the class was a tad awkward after that. Glad that my friends had a laugh, because I was mortified. I laugh about it now though, you have to!

Feeling proud

Day Nine: Something that you’re proud of

So yesterday I wrote about my ‘What if?’, so I thought that I would lighten the mood a bit and talk about something that I’m proud of, and that something is the fact that despite all of the disappointment on A Level results day, despite all the self-doubt, I have managed to obtain a degree.

As I said in my last post, I found my A-Level results disappointing. When I saw the results on paper in front of me, I thought that was it, no University for Fiona. Luckily though, I was offered a place on a Foundation year course at my chosen University. When I say luckily, I really do mean that I was very lucky. Talking to people on the course, I think that I had some of the worst results by a mile; it must have been my personal statement that grabbed their attention because I’m certain that it wasn’t my exam results.

I worked hard for the next four years, during the Carmel College year; I had a run in with my old nemesis, Chemistry, as well as Maths, something I thought that I had escaped after my GCSE’s. A word of advice, if you decide to study Biology because it’s the Science that has no Maths in it, think again. Maths continued to haunt me every year since, whether it was forgetting how to work out percentages in my first Quantitative Biology workshop or compiling statistics for my final honours project. But I struggled on. I defeated Chemistry, I mastered differentiation. Alright, I maybe didn’t fulfil my potential, I was painfully close to getting a 2.2, if only I had picked different modules in the first semester of my final year I could have clinched it. But that doesn’t matter so much to me, because the fact is that I know that I tried my best and I think I’ve done alright, considering the 2 E’s and a D at A-level.

The day that I graduated has been one of the best days of my life so far. The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky. I had to pinch myself as I sat in the Philharmonic Hall, surrounded by my fellow graduates. I was so nervous, the thought of this day kept me going for years and years and now it had finally arrived. Walking across that stage as my name was called, shaking hands with the Dean, collecting my certificates and transcript; I can’t even describe how amazing that felt. Against the odds, I had achieved my lifelong dream; I had a degree from the University of Liverpool.

Every now and then, when I’m feeling low during this job hunt, I get down my certificate, I hold it, and I remember how proud I felt on graduation day.

Fiona McDougall BSc (Hons) Zoology

What if....

Day Eight: Something you always think ‘what if?’ about

I was very proud of the results that I got for my GCSE’s, still am, because that was the last time that I was ever truly happy with my exam results. I decided to stay on to sixth form at the school, I had 5A’s and 5B’s, why should my A-Level results be any different? All my friends were staying on at the schools sixth form and I was able to study the subjects that I wanted to, so why bother moving?

I started back at school in September, happy that I had done the right thing and excited to carry on learning, one step closer of achieving my dream of going to the University of Liverpool to study Veterinary Medicine. But then it all went very wrong. First came the French incident, an argument with the French teacher which led to me dropping out of the French class before the teacher had the chance to kick me out. Then came Chemistry. Science was always the subject that I had been good at, but all of a sudden I was struggling to grasp Chemistry, with French dropped, I had no choice but to persevere with the Chemistry as I wouldn’t be allowed to drop another subject, besides, I needed 3 A-Levels to get in to University. I slowly came to realise that the dream was slipping away from me.

I loved studying Biology and History, but I couldn’t even get decent grades in those subjects either. I decided to lower my expectations, and I applied for Zoology rather than Vet Med, but I stuck with the University of Liverpool, despite efforts from teachers to get me to apply for Universities much lower down the rankings.  A-levels results day was one of the worst of my life, I left Wallasey School with grade E’s in Biology and Chemistry and a grade D in History, and I was bitterly disappointed, even today 5 years on. It was one of the worst feelings, opening that envelope and seeing the grades in front of me on paper. The only thing that saved me from getting a U in Chemistry was good course work, I had failed every Chemistry exam that I took that summer. That leaves me with something that I have wondered about almost every day since I got my A-Level results, what if I had left Wallasey School after my GCSE’s and did my A-Levels elsewhere?

It’s something that I still think about, why didn’t I move. If I had went to a different sixth form, maybe I would have passed, I could have saved myself all that hurt, because it did hurt, it still does. It really knocked my confidence, until then I had believed that everything was possible, but now I doubt all that I do and it haunted me all through University, I couldn’t help but think that I wasn’t as good as everybody else, and I shouldn’t have done, no one should ever have to feel like that. I may have been at University now, living the dream, in my 5^th year of Vet Med.

You might me saying, ‘well if that’s what you wanted to do, why didn’t you just re-sit you’re a-Levels?’. I’m the first person in all of my family to go to University, there was no one else to talk to about it, and the school was eager to push as many people as possible through their sixth form and on to University. I was never given the options to re sit anything, and I was never told that I could move sixth form, I was just pushed through the system. Of course, I know all about that now, and there is no way that I’ll let anyone that I know go through what I went through.

On the other hand, if my A-levels had been better, I would never have went to Carmel College and had such an amazing time there, I would never have met some of my closest friends. But even that doesn’t even it out. I think that if I could, I would go back and save myself some of the pain, because I’m convinced that had I gone elsewhere, I wouldn’t have got those grades, I think I proved that to myself that I was more than capable of doing well during the foundation year when I truly grasped Chemistry, some of the highest grades that I got that year was from Chemistry assessments. I just have to live with it now, and I’ll always ask myself ‘what if?’ because that’s just the sort of person that I am, I don’t forget easily.

All grown up?

Day Seven: A quote you try to live by

‘What’s the point of being grown up, if you can’t be childish sometimes?’

The Fourth Doctor, ‘Robot’, 1975

When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to grow up, as I’m sure that many more would agree. I couldn’t wait to be able to watch whatever I wanted, drive a car, move away from home…. But now I’ve done it, and it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be if I’m honest.

I stayed at home for the first year of University, travelling to a college in St Helens for my first year after a set of disappointing A-Levels. I met a group of people at the college and in my second year I moved into a house with them. Using my student loan, I decided to delve back into the Doctor Who back catalogue and I started buying some of the older episodes that I hadn’t seen before. One of the episodes was Tom Baker’s first story, ‘Robot’. I settled down to watch, I was taking a break from my studying and a few other adult issues. Then, The Doctor said something that changed my life. ‘What’s the point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes?’

A light bulb went off in my head. What was the point of being grown up if I couldn’t still be childish sometimes? Being a grown up meant the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and what I wanted, what I really wanted was to spend some of my time doing childish things. So I went out to Asda and bought myself a paint pallet and colouring book, and I spent the rest of the evening painting. I loved every second of it.

I watch kids TV now. I LOVE Horrible Histories, then there’s Rasta Mouse, and don’t even get me started on Nuzzle and Scratch. I even still watch the odd Disney movie, something that I stopped doing when I was about 13. I listen to my old music again, something that I stopped doing years ago because it wasn’t considered cool. In fact, I’m much happier now embracing 10 year old Fiona from time to time; than I ever was pretending that I was more grown up than I was. I think that realising that it doesn’t matter what people think, I am who I am, has only helped that. It isn’t me with a problem, it’s them, and if someone can’t accept that I love Doctor Who, or I watch kids TV from time to time, so what? They’re not worth my time. I only wish that I had realised it sooner, it could have saved me years of bother.

It is still with me today, it may only be 3 years on but I know it’s something that I will always keep with me, and I’ll pass it on. Should I ever have kids of my own, I want them to know it too, because it’s important. Being a grown up is scary, so many things to think about, so much responsibility. I think it would drive me mad if I didn’t have my childish indulgences. Especially now that I’m in the not so wonderful world of unemployment. It is nice to have a little time each day to thrown away my grown up chains and watch a cartoon or listen to some music from my childhood, because for that half an hour I can be 10 years old again, without a care in the world, and I think that that’s priceless.

Pass the remote...

Day Six: Favourite TV shows

I love watching the television. There is nothing better than settling down after a hard day to watch a few hours of quality and at times a bit naff television.

By a mile my favourite thing to watch is Doctor Who. It’s something that has always been there, even if it was cancelled in November of the year that I was born. There’s a video of me somewhere, about 5 years old dancing around the room singing the Doctor Who theme tune, talking about the Daleks, even though at that point I’m sure that I had never actually seen an episode.

The first episode that I ever saw was ‘Warriors of the Deep’, a 5^th Doctor story from 1984 which I saw on UK TV Gold one Saturday morning when I was about 10. The part that stuck in my memory was the episodes monster trying to get through a metal door, and by metal I mean foam. The metal/foam door then fell on the leg of the companion, and I fell about laughing as the Doctor tries his very best to life the door from her leg. I’ve been a fan since then.

I rejoiced when the series was revived in 2005, but I had to watch upstairs on a tiny portable television on 26^th March, because heaven forbid the rest of my family missed an episode of Ant and Dec! The revival only made me love it more. My favourite episode of the series so far has been ‘Blink’ which aired on my birthday in 2007, and my Doctor is David Tennant, though Matt Smith grows closer and closer to stealing it with every passing episode.

My love of Doctor Who has led to a love of both of its spin offs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Torchwood began in 2006 and was more adult than Doctor Who, but if followed a similar formula, and the lead character was Captain Jack, he had too little time in Doctor Who and it was great to see more of his development. With more Torchwood looking unlikely, it would be great to see him in Doctor Who again. A the other end of the spectrum, ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’ aired on CBBC and stared Elisabeth Sladen reprising the role of seventies companion Sarah Jane Smith. The show was crafted with just as much quality as any other show, despite it being classed as a children’s TV show. I was upset by Elisabeth Sladen’s death, in early 2011 it came as such a shock as no one had known that she was ill, but it made watching the final three episodes even more poignant, and I’m glad that the series ended on a high and the character of Sarah Jane will live on for a long time.

Moving away from Doctor Who another of my favourite television shows may only have lasted for 14 episodes, but each one of them in a corker. Afterlife created by Stephen Volk who also gave the world the infamous Ghost Watch aired on ITV in 2006 and 2007 and centred around psychic Alison Mundy played by Lesley Sharp and a psychology lecturer who decides to write a book about her played by Andrew Lincoln. I was the first adult drama that I have really watched and I became enthralled by the relationship between Alison and Robert. It ended in 2007, and the series finale is still on that never fails to bring a tear to my eye. I won’t spoil it here, but if you haven’t seen it, I really recommend a watch.

I like my Sci Fi and Drama. I watched the first series of Heroes when it was on the Sci Fi channel, I watched it before many of my friends and raved about it, no one else caught onto it for months, but it slowly went downhill and I’ve only seen half of series 3 and none of the fourth series, but that doesn’t take away from the first series being fantastic, I still watch it. Being Human is another Sci Fi favourite, a show about a ghost, werewolf and vampire sharing a house in Bristol doesn’t sound great on paper, but it is fantastic. The second series, not so good, it seemed to get a bit bogged down with religion and a cult, but it was back on form in series three and although series four saw it loose three established characters, it was still just as good and I eagerly await series five I am also a fan of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, old and new, which has been somewhat overshadowed by the ITV juggernaut. Sherlock is another classic in the making, just when you think there is no more that can be done with the great detective, two of the greatest minds behind Doctor Who come up with this television gold. A third series really can't come quickly enough.

Then of course, there is the more unusual television. The guilty pleasures. One of my current guilty pleasures is Embarrassing Bodies where people too afraid to see a doctor in private, go on the television for millions of people to see their problems instead.  There are the gypsy weddings. I think it’s fascinating that they can have such high morals, no sex before marriage, first communion, and yet they are more than happy to have young girls dressed in next to nothing dancing provocatively. Yet, it’s compulsive viewing, and once I start to watch, I really can’t stop. The same goes for Horrible Histories, which returns tomorrow, it's daft, but it makes history fun and I wish that it had been around years ago!

There’s the television that you can watch and you don’t have to think about watching. Things like Snog,marry, avoid. Half an hour of orange madness, a make under show where tan-tastics are turned into natural beauties, again, something that I don’t think I should like, but once you get started, it gets harder and harder to stop. Celebrity Big Brother is another one, seeing celebrities fight with each other and make utter fools of themselves is always funny, though I draw the line at watching the regular Big Brother, I couldn’t care less about a bunch of nobodies wanting a fast track to fame, though you could say the same about Celebrity Big Brother!.

I do draw the line at some things though. I can’t stand the new breed of reality television, the scripted reality. The Only Way is Essex started the trend and it really has gotten out of hand, culminating in the abysmal Desperate Scousewives. Thank goodness there won’t be any more of that! Then there are things like Glee, something that I should love, all the cheese and singing, but I really can’t stand it at all, I find it too cheesy and the characters just the wrong side of annoying, with the exception of Sue, maybe if it was just about her it would be watchable. One Born Every Minute is another turn off, I don’t get why people would watch it, I don’t want to see a bunch of random women giving birth, people say the cry watching it and that it’s heart-warming, but it’s really not something that I would watch, and that is saying something!

Music, music, music

Day Five: Put your i-pod on shuffle and talk about the first 10 songs that come up

Last Friday Night (T. G. I. F.) –Katy Perry

Yeah we danced on table tops and we took too many shots…

I love this song, ridiculously catchy; I listen to it all the time, and sing and dance along (badly). It reminds me of all the good times that I’ve had on nights out with friends and it certainly seems to describe the events pretty accurately.

If I can’t have you – YvonneElliman

Am I strong enough to see it through? Go crazy is what I will do…

One of the first musicals that I went to go and see at the theatre was Saturday Night Fever when I was about 15 and I fell in love with this song. Again, one that I can’t help singing along to. It sums up how I’ve felt a few times.

Little Amy – Murray Gold

The first of much music from Doctor Who on my i-pod. This piece is so lovely; it’s a young Amelia Pond waiting for the Doctor. It makes me think and it’s often one of the songs that I listened to during NaNoWriMo when I was writing some parts that involved my main characters being children, because it does make me think about when I was younger.

Type 40 – Chameleon Circuit

Last Type 40 in the Universe, but there’s still so much to see…

More Doctor Who, Chameleon Circuit is a Trock – Time Lord Rock band and this song is about the TARDIS itself. I think that writing songs about Doctor Who is genius, and they’re so damn catchy, it’s a bit of a geeky pleasure, and it reminds me how cool it would be if there really was a TARDIS…

Somebody that I used to Know –Gotye

I don’t even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough…

This song seems to be following me about lately, every time I turn on a music channel or my i-pod, its there! I think the reason that it’s so popular is that you can relate to it, I know how he feels, it’s happened to me. When it comes on, I imagine that I’m singing it to someone, telling them how I feel, and it’s made me feel better about the situation.

Born this way – Lady Gaga

I love my life, I love this record, Mi amore vole fe yah…

I remember hearing this for the first time on the radio, I was doubting myself and feeling low, but hearing this made me realise that none of that mattered. And now, whenever I’m starting to feel like that again, I play this song.

Vienna – Ultravox

The warmth of your hand and the cold grey sky, it fades to the distance

This is a song that I first heard during the first episode of ‘Ashes to Ashes’, when Alex finds herself in 1981. Really not something that I would have expected to like, but it pulled me in and I had to download it, along with a lot of other eighties music. I don’t really know what the lyrics mean if I’m honest, but it’s sung with such feeling that I don’t think it matters.

I’m Yours – Jason Mraz

Look into your heart and you’ll find love love love love

This song always seems to be on the radio, and it cheers me up. Not much to it really!

Doomsday – Murray Gold

This is the music that plays as Rose makes her way to Bad Wolf Bay in the ‘Doomsday’ episode of Doctor Who (Also seen in my last post). Again, another piece that I love, the scene on the television wouldn’t be the same without this music and even now hearing this music still makes me tear up a little. I think it’s really powerful and some of the best music that’s appeared on the show. Doctor Who just wouldn’t be the same without Murray’s music.

Loving you Hurts – The Musgraves

Loving you hurts, loving you aches, loving you burns, loving you chaifs…

The Musgraves are an unsigned band, and I first heard about them when they appeared on the Graham Norton show a few weeks back, and since them, I can’t stop listening to them. This song is about being in love with someone, but is more about the difficulties. The Musgraves manage to take something that’s a bit dark and turn it around into such a happy tune; it just gets stuck in your head! I recommend that you go out and listen to them right now!

And that’s it, a taste of my i-pod