Week Seven - Baking

Writing a dissertation is a very discomforting point of life, the sheer size of the task is enough to make anyone go borderline crazy, as well as the realisation that, no I will not be able to do all of this the night before. So this week I've taken up a talent that not only will help me effectively procrastinate but will also enable me to eat my feelings.

Baking.

Now, completely coincidently, one of my very good friends has also turned an age of which I am forbidden to reveal on the internet, so using my clever head, this week I am combining talent finding with birthday cake making! (Also, I'm a student with little money and big imagination)

Scouring the internet for an ideal cake, I settled on a ‘princess castle cake’ to match my friends regal personality (NAAT.)

Next, I set myself off to Sainsburys (not today Aldi!) to buy the ingredients which included food colouring of your choice, to which the 8 year old inside of me screamed in delight at, and vanilla essence, which let's face it, no-one puts in.

Top tip

- Don't rely on the 3G signal on your phone in the supermarket, go all 2002 and write the ingredients down!

As a huge Great British Bake Off fan, I set out a standard worthy of Mary Berry and her ‘no soggy bottom’ rule. So I prepped the kitchen to the cleanest standard you could possibly get a student kitchen and weighted out my ingredients to an OCD standard. 

Then it is a case of simply throwing the ingredients together in some kind of formation until it looks and tastes like raw cake mix should. 

With the base of my cake doing something in the oven and the cake mix bowl licked out, I turned to the fun part - the decorations. 

Every castle has turrets, so using ice cream cones, melted chocolate, sprinkles and a lot of patience I made turrets even Cinderella would be envious of. 

After removing all the cakes from the oven and playing the 'is it cool enough yet' game, I got to building my castle with a knife and a lotta lotta jam - that will probably be the closest I ever come to working in the manual labour trade. I then smothered it in a thick layer of bright green butter icing and put all my decorations around. 

Did it look anything like the inspired picture? In truth, absolutely not. 

Did it taste good? Abso-bloody-lutely.

Talent rating - 8/10 The whole cake was eaten in about 24 hours and only around 40% of that was a drunken food binge.

The end result? WE GOT TEARS!

Week Six - Surfing

If I've ever wanted to be good at anything, I’d say it would have to be surfing, and if you've ever watched any film that’s set in Australia then you may understand where I'm coming from here.

Whenever I go to the beach, I spend the majority of my time being irritated by the colossal amount of sand that has somehow got into various places, trying to find a shady spot to put my iPod yet keep my whole body in the sun or picking out an ice cream that won’t melt in the time it takes me to walk back to my towel.

But the surfers in these films do it so much better. Walking on the sand like it's no harder than walking on pavement and they all have this instant, all over tan that not even a bottle of 'St Tropez' and a flexible arm could achieve.  You just know when they get in the sea and onto their board, that they were born cool.

Unfortunately, as this week has showed me, I have neither the balance nor the hair to be a surfer.

We start the journey on a 6 hour mini bus ride en route to Woolacombe, North Devon. 

After starting how we meant to go on (mass amount of alcohol) and needing about 7 toilet stops and one awkward wee in a can scenario (wasn't me), we dragged out numb bums out into the fresh, countryside air. It was freezing.

Spending the night in a 'surfers cabin' with 8 lads was half the experience, and after a nights sleep in a room contending for the 'most bunk beds in one room' award, I was not as prepared to face the sea as I'd of liked.

Challenge 1 - Get into your wetsuit.

After picking from the wide selection of sizes (small or large) we were sent off to a stand of public toilets to get into our wetsuits. Yes, that says public toilets.
Two attempts later (put it on inside out) and a friend with some blistered hands, we were ready to face our next challenge...


Challenge 2 - Warm up

The trick here, was to warm up enough to face the sea which was at a temperature that would make certain people shrivel at the thought.
The only way to achieve this was to run. I don't like running.

Challenge 3 - SURF!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm not great with water. The fact that I also struggled to stand up on my board when I was on the sand, told me this was going to be a struggle.
Luckily the warm ups did the job and the water wasn't as mind numbing as expected.
After 10 minutes of pretending I was looking for the 'perfect wave', I decided to man up and get on with it. Seeing around me that other people seemed to be getting ready for a wave, I picked up my humongous board and tried to flip it around. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite quick enough and now my head knows why you shouldn't put your board horizontal in the sea.
That wasn't stopping me though.
The next wave I saw coming, I quickly turned and (I'm not sure how to put this without demeaning myself) straddled the board. I apologise to anyone who saw this, because it was one of the least ladylike things I've ever done. Once on, I paddled like my life depended on it and when I thought I was on the wave, used every bit of energy to try stand up. However, I had created some kind of suction between my boobs, the wetsuit and the board and my chest was stuck.

After an afternoon of trying my hardest, all I achieved was wrinkly skin and a desire to nap.
Oh and someone surfed over my head, that was a weird sensation!


Talent Rating - 4/10 more like whale watch than Baywatch!

Breaking news! Surfing makes your hangover go away!

Week Five - Bowling

I will start this entry by telling you the end - we got thrown out the bowling alley.

Thinking back, there was a variety of reasons as to how this happened but I’ll let you determine them for yourself as we progress.

The story starts at the Leisure Box in Birmingham, with the overwhelming smell of feet and overpriced hot dogs to greet me.  Me and a group of friends teamed up and took to our lane, with a questionable pair of bowling shoes in hand.

Now around 75% of birthday parties in the 90's were held in bowling alleys so I can assume that most of the nation knows how the game of bowling works. However, if you’re unsure, 10 skittles are set up in a triangular formation at the bottom of a lane and you must knock down as many of the skittles in a maximum of 2 throws.

There was one very important addition to this particular bowling trip - vodka (BYOB yeah?)

As a player, you are judged on your ball selection. Too heavy and your a bit cocky, too light and you might as well not bother. I personally went for the amber coloured ball, for obvious reasons.  

It is also optional to have the rails either up or down on your lane, we decided to mix it up and go for one of each (was more of a forced decision.)

As the game went on and the vodka got neater, the balls really started coming down the aisle. During the game and a half we managed to play, I only got round to scoring one spare and this was due to an extra 2 balls being thrown down the lane (thanks boys!)

Top tips for not getting kicked out

- Do not go running down the lanes to retrieve balls

- Do not kick the balls

- Don't leave your cans of M&S cosmopolitan in visible sight

Talent rating – 5/10 I need more ball control!

“Watching Amber throw a ball is the funniest thing I've ever seen” - Matthew O’Boyle

Week Four - Flip Cup

After a very active past couple of weekends, I thought I’d take it easy this time round and concentrate on something a little less energetic.

As a third year student, I find myself spending more and more time reminiscing about the past 3 years and everything I've learnt.

My specialist subject: Drinking games.

From ‘fucking the bus’ to revealing way too much about myself in ‘ I've never’, I've tried them all. For the majority, all you need is the ability to down any concoction of drink and a dab of luck, but there is one game that requires some level of talent.

Flip Cup.

Most likely started in America (they love plastic cups out there), flip cup has most definitely been played by every student alive. If you are a student and reading this having not played this game, then firstly be embarrassed of yourself and secondly get prepared to play TONIGHT (that dissertation can wait.)

Flip cup requires a minimum of 6 players, but always needs an even number of people.  When you have your players, nominate 2 team captains, who get to pick out who they want on their team (make sure they don’t go too power crazy.) Each player has a plastic cup which they must fill halfway with a drink of their choice. 

Set your teams up in a formation just like the diagram above. Upon the sound of the klaxon, or someone simply shouting GO, the first players of each team must down their drinks and place their cup upside down on the edge of the table. You must then flip the cup until it lands upside down on the table, as soon as one player does this the next player can have their go and this carries on throughout the team. The winning team is the one who finishes first - simple.

What do you win, I hear you say. Well, except from pride and the right to do the celebration dance (we all have one) , the winning team decides on a forfeit for the losing team.

Here's a list of potential forfeits for you to choose from:

- Down your drink (bit boring)

- Do 10 press ups (only worth it if it's a guy who has guns the size of cannons)

- Deduction of clothes (see above)

- Dirty pint (only good if you add mayonnaise to it)

- Making the losing team your bitches (slavery/human rights issues)

Talent rating - 7/10 and getting better with every flip

Top Tips

- Don't play this with glass cups, explains itself really

- If you're on the losing team, then don't get too down on yourself, you'll end up paying less on drinks in the club later

- Make sure you are prepared to consume one of these the next morning

Disclaimer: To cover myself legally, remember drinking is BAD!

Week Three - White Water Rafting

As a toddler, my mum would have to bath me in the sink as I was too scared of water to be allowed into a big tub of it. This arrangement was fine for the both of us as mum would sometimes do the dishes at the same time and a saucepan made a great bath time toy for me!  With this in mind, imagine the fear in my mother’s voice when I rang her up to tell her my next talent try out.

White water rafting.

Now I only managed to get to level 4 in swimming at school, so it’s fair to say I was apprehensive about trying this one out, but with the right amount of peer pressure and a drunken agreement, I found myself at Nottingham’s water sport centre. Luckily, I had a group of my best friends with me, each of us with about as much experience of WWR as a group of monkeys. 

After a briefing that consisted of what to expect on the course (falling out a lot) and what to do when you fell out the raft (hold your breath), I was strapped up in more padding than the whole of the 90s.

With my tightly secured helmet giving me more chins than I deserved and my not so waterproof mascara applied, I was ready to go. There were 6 of us in our boat accompanied by a banter-full young instructor, as well as 5 or so other boats, all full of lads apparently on a stag do.

The first run or the 'dry run' as the pros called it, was quite a pleasant albeit damp experience. No special tricks or moves, just the rafting equivalent of a stroll in the park. 

The second run, however, was quite a different experience. My first overboard fall came after the dunking of my best friend (video at the bottom) and as much as I denied it, unfortunately there is video evidence of me dragging her out the raft with me. Oops. The current of the water meant that you often got sucked under the raft after falling, luckily this sounds scarier than it actually was.

By the third and final run, I basically gave up to staying in the raft. 

I'd say the most humiliating part was the bit were I had to be roped and dragged out of the water in front of boats full of guys, who weren't even trying to contain their laughter. 

Even though this course was man-made (I probably would have died doing a natural course) I didn't have high hopes for myself being any good at this. I did however make an excellent effort at looking like a twat and got royally caravanned later that night. 

Talent Rating – 3/10 Completely terrifying, but one of the best things I've ever done!

Top Tip: If you ever wonder where the attractive men in Nottingham go, apparently it's at the water sports centre.

Week Two - Skiing

This weekend not only have I realised I have no sensible shoes to wear in the snow but I have also booked myself onto my uni's annual ski trip.

There are a few issues with this though; 

1) I have never skied before in my life

2) I have absolutely no co-ordination

3) I still have no sensible shoes

Now in order to stop myself from breaking my neck and to look exactly like the picture below I need 2 things; Ebay and Skiing lessons.

Donning my favourite tracksuit bottoms (that's a thing right?) I jumped on a train to Tamworth Snow-dome for a 2 hour beginners lesson on skiing.
The group consisted of me and 5 others, all of us with no experience of skiing.

The first hurdle I was faced with was getting myself into my snow boots which, when you eventually get them on, make your feet feel like they've been twisted backwards. After doing the most ridiculous walk from the changing room to the snow, I was immediately faced with another problem: the ski "lift". I say this ironically as it was literally just a piece of string rotating round.
Our warm ups included dancing along to head, shoulders, knees and toes whilst jumping in the air skiing down a hill. THIS WAS ON THE FIRST LESSON.
I'd love to say that after 2 hours, I had any kind of grip on skiing, but the next couple of hours consisted of me snow ploughing at about 4 MPH and crashing into groups of OAP s at the bottom, luckily they comforted me with encouraging pats on the back.
What made all of this worse, was the group of school children gliding down from the top of the hill with such ease I was convinced they had skied out of the womb.

As much as I enjoyed the lesson, I have to admit I was absolutely cacking it the whole time. There's something about potentially breaking every bone in your body that is oddly exhilarating yet completely terrifying  However, after all this, I think I will spending most of the ski trip in the bar.

Talent Rating - 2/10 - So much fun, definitely try it with a group of mates as uncoordinated as you!

Favourite moment - I genuinely saw a women lose control down the hill and go straight through the gap at the bottom. Shouldn't laugh, but did. A lot. 

Aftermath of Dodgeball

Here's a fun fact about Dodgeball:

The next day you hurt, a lot.

I'm talking, texting your house mate to come open your curtains, kind of hurt.