The mindless rambling of yet another Sophie

Since I have started my fourth year of uni I have fallen catastrophically behind on writing up my lectures. In my defense I attended the majority of them and only missed them when I was unwell. Still - the end of the term hit and I am drowning in work that I need to catch up on. But Sophie - if you've attended them and made notes whilst you were there then surely you can't be behind. Oh but I can. My degree is a medical one which means a lot of content is crammed into every tiny moment that I have at uni which is very hard to cram for an exam (and believe me I've tried). So why am I telling you this? Well it is nearly new year's eve and I should be doing something productive and should have been "doing a bit of work each day to ease the strain". Have I? Well I think you can guess that one. Thanks past self - as usual you have been an absolute arse. Now you may remember earlier in the year I made a post about procrastination and foolish me for the umpte...

Dear September, You've come around quicker than I would have liked. That's not to say that I am unhappy to see you rather that I would have liked a bit more time before responsibility loomed over me again. It's hard being a semi-grown up. I've had to move out of the flat I have lived, nestled and hibernated in for the past 2 years to move on to new pastures. It's stressful but luckily with the help of a friend it was a little more bearable. Moving out was hard but moving in was harder. We had some bumps in the smooth road we expected but it's all sorted out now. All awkwardness melted away like the ridiculous amounts of ice that clung to the freezer drawers. Moving out ended a chapter in my life and as you probably know I am not good with moving on. I don't get that excited thrill but rather the urge to cling to the past and what kept me comforted. I don't like to be uncomfortable but it's something I'm going to have to get used to. I like my...

Dear August, You were incredibly hot this year. Even at my little home in the midlands I found myself running for shade when the sun was bearing down on me making sweat run like a waterfall from the peak of my nose. It got even hotter when I went to the coast to work on a dairy farm. That was quite the experience. The trains down there were terrible and exhausting but instead of the usual non-stop panic I would normally feel from travelling, regardless of whether it was going well, I had moments of just odd calm. I suppose I've started to accept that you can't control life sometimes. It's just taken me 21 years to start seeing that. The placement was hard work but it was enjoyable. I love cows and the sweet personalities they have. People often don't think that animals are that different but they are. Okay, that's generalising a bit. Most people will see that dogs and cats are different and everyone has a tale to tell regardless of whether they own a pet or not....

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I last posted and truthfully I have no other excuse but university. It would be better if I could say that I was on top of all of my lectures and other work and that was why I've neglected you... but I'm not. I'm been in a slump again creatively and although that's nothing new as the time passes I am finding it more and more frustrating. So I've decided to start this series instead. Now I cannot hold credit for the concept! I'm sure many of you have seen similar posts. What inspired me to make these was watching Carrie Hope Fletcher's " Letters to Autumn " videos. Before Carrie's "Letters to Autumn" there was "Letters to July " by Emily Diana Ruth and I'm sure there were others both before and after.  My friend Jenn has done a series of "Letters to anyone" where she reaches out to anyone and everyone from Jacqueline Wilson to Richard III . The concept isn't n...

University has been stressful to say the least but today I had a half day and found out that it was National Poetry Day. Today was also one of the few days I've had lately that a few sparks of inspiration have been igniting so here is my contribution. Enjoy!

On the 26th of August 2015 I went on an adventure and decided in a Caffe Nero, whilst shovelling cheesecake in my mouth, that now was the time to start a blog. A year on and I am still writing! I've been putting off posting for a number of reasons but then my blog's birthday came and went and I knew I needed to say something. ***Happy Birthday to yetanothersophie! ***   I am still only a little blog sailing about in the great wide ocean of the internet just letting the current guide me. But, I would just like to thank everyone who has read or supported my blog over the past year. Slowly but surely my writing confidence has been increasing and although I am no Dickens or Austen by any stretch of the imagination, and probably never will be, this blog has given me the motivation to keep writing and to keep developing ideas instead of letting them rot in my brain space. A year is a long time and for me to have committed to a project for such a long amount of time is a ...

As of the 15th of July 2016 I have officially finished and passed my third year at university. Whilst most of my friends are graduating now I still have another 3 years of my course to go. This is both exciting and terrifying. I think it's easy in life to get hung up on what other people are doing. My friends are graduating and ready to move onto full fledged adult life. The daily grind of working, saving for their own home or even settling down. A part of me feels jealous. The excitement of the next steps and of achieving that goal is exhilarating. The other part of me is relieved that I can keep myself in this semi adult life. As a semi adult student I don't have the worries of job hunting especially considering the current issues going on in the UK. I also have the joys of keeping my university friends tethered to me for just that little bit longer. No matter what the future brings I wish the very best for my friends and hope they get what they deserve. Take care...

"When I grow up I want to be like...." I'm sure we've all been asked at some point to finish that sentence. My answer was always the same. I wanted to be like my mother. It's a common trope in shows and movies where you find a woman saying 'Oh no I'm turning into my mother!' and that is a negative thing. For me it never was. My mum is an independent woman who raised two children, whilst juggling a job and a puppy. My parents separated when I was about 6 and I stopped seeing my Dad when I was 7.  I honestly don't believe I would be the person I am today without her love and support. I also wouldn't have had a dog! As I have gotten older I have found more people that inspire me. So here is my list of people who inspire me to improve. My mum - as stated above she supported and helped me in whatever way she could. She showed me it's okay to be do things alone and that you should always strive to do your best and work hard. Jenn - I...

Today I felt very inspired to write. I don't know why but ideas kept creeping up on me throughout the day. As I haven't done so in a while I thought I would share one of the poems I wrote today. Enjoy!

Today I did something. Today I posted to my instagram. The last time I posted was on the 3rd of July 2015. Why haven't I posted since then? I couldn't. I wouldn't. The last posts, the last two, had been of my dog. They had been of Fallon. They were taken before I went away on holiday, before I went on a placement, before it happened. Before she passed. A part of me never wanted to post again. To keep it stuck in time as if I could keep some part of the past still alive. It also felt as if nothing was good enough to post after her. No pretty selfie, no pretty cake or pretty landscape could compare to what I had last posted. Nothing could surpass how pretty she was. I posted today. It was spur of the moment, a thing during my procrastination, but I knew I needed to change it. It would have to happen eventually. So what did I post? A picture of her again. This time it was different though. This time I knew the picture that I chose was one of the last of her I had...

The other day I was speaking to a friend who said 'I read a 600 page novel yesterday because I didn't want to revise.'  My response was 'Ooh what was it?', our other friend responded 'why would you do that?' I find it rare these days to have the time to just sit and pour over a book for an entire day. Other parts of life get in the way and they are unavoidable such as working or studying. Our friend's reaction isn't a bad one though. Some people don't like books. Some people do like books but have never found one that they have NEEDED to read. I like reading books and I have to say that it is hit and miss with me. I have experienced that need to read, to devour a story, but the majority of books I have read haven't done that. That doesn't mean they were bad books! A lot of them I thought were amazing in many ways but they didn't trap me in their covers.  Some books grab you and wont let you go until you've read them cover to cover...

Now I am sure we have all been there when deadlines are sneaking closer and closer and we are wanting to get further and further away from doing the work. If like me you kid yourself into thinking you have plenty of time and then realise you have only a few weeks (or sometimes only a few days) you will have astronomical stress levels. Does stress = productivity? Sometimes! But usually....no. When we are stressed we want to do nice things, calming things, happy things! We want to read books, watch movies, go outside, eat lasagne and all that other good stuff. By now, having been in the education system for my whole life, you would have thought I would have realised not to procrastinate but alas I never learn. This post was going to take a different turn but funnily enough I procrastinated whilst making a blog post on procrastination. The original idea was for it to be entirely made of pictures where I would make the words 'Procrastination is an art form' however that did n...

I was inspired to do this post by a video that a youtuber named Rebecca Brown (formerly Beckie0) posted. It was a 'day in the life of' and for the day she tweeted pictures of what she did with no other context to see what people thought she was up to. It's always interesting to know what other people do in their day to day lives. All we know is only what we see. All we do is dictated by other choices in our lives. At this time of year my days generally pass with little else but revision but sometimes I do pull myself away from a textbook long enough to take a stroll somewhere. Here is a taste of my week in pictures. What do you think I did? How do you think I felt in each picture? Week - 20th - 27th May 2016

At some point most of us will feel low or unsatisfied in life and that's sad. It's easy to lose sight of what we want, what we need and what we aim for. I was thinking too much and found that I needed reminding of a few important things. None of these sentiments are original but often we forget them. This might come across as soppy to some people but I do feel that we all need to be reminded sometimes. People change Most people are constantly evolving. We are not the same person we once were a day ago, a week ago, a month ago or even a year ago. That person who you didn't like in school because they were mean to you probably doesn't remember or care any more. Neither should you. Even when you feel stunted remember how much you've grown As I left my flat I realised just how much of an adult I had become and how much my independence had grown. As a child I relied on guidance but now my life is made of my own decisions and no-one can take that from me. You ca...

I love watching book hauls. I love them because everyone has different tastes and passions and it allows you to get an idea of what is out there in lots of different genres. Take for example young adult (YA) fiction. There are so many different books and topics that it can be easy to just be swamped by the amount of choice. My haul started when amazon did a 3 books for £10 deal for January and then it all just went from there.This collection of books are the ones that I have hauled so far this year (okay technically I'll give you the sun was an Xmas present but shh). Now not all of them are visible because some I bought on my Kindle during a bit of a reading frenzy. Now I will admit I have not read all of these books yet but I plan on reviewing all of them so I will link through to those reviews via their titles. Here are the books I have hauled! I'll give you the sun by Jandy Nelson (YA) Brief overview - Twins Noah and Jude are inseparable until a tragedy drives the...

Fallon being a cutie "They always say it's weird watching it back." That was what my mother said to me when I found the video of my old dog in the snow. I hadn't heard that before but I could attest to its truth. Calling her my old dog is a strange phrase too. She was old. She was my dog. She was literally my old dog but now that has new meaning. Now she is the old dog in comparison to our new dogs. Her name was Fallon. I've said it before but I'll say it again. Fallon. She had her mother's name. We liked it so we used it. I couldn't say whether she had her mother's eyes but what I do remember is her mother was missing one eye. Her dad hung over the gate to greet us when we got her. His tongue hung out of his mouth to the side and in years to come we found that she did the same. Her paper says her name was 'Spot of bother' because of a birthmark on her nose and her boisterous behaviour. It was a pretty accurate name. When ...

David Piper has always been an outsider. His parents think he's gay. The school bully thinks he's a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth - David wants to be a girl. On the first day at his new school Leo Denton has one goal - to be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in Year 11 is definitely not part of that plan. When Leo stands up for David in a fight, an unlikely friendship forms. But things are about to get messy. Because at Eden Park School secrets have a funny habit of not staying secret for long . . . If a book has an interesting cover I will swarm to it like a moth to a flame. I love the look of the cover and how it so simply conveys the topics within the book. Pretty cover a side I had passed 'the art of being normal' a few times whilst wasting time in a Waterstone's and before that had heard the title in a book haul on YouTube. Every time I saw the book I put it off because either I had already bought a fai...

I love baking. I love baking alot. Since going to uni, and having to be a somewhat competent cook, I have found experimenting with cooking so much fun. Sometimes I use recipes and sometimes I just wing it which has yielded me varying shades of joy and disaster. Good or bad I find the act of cooking relaxing. Last year I decided I wanted to treat my mum to some home made scones. So off to the Internet I went and found a lot of recipes that just seemed ridiculously complicated. Also where on earth do you find buttermilk?? I tell my flatmate of my plight and her mum gifts me with perhaps the simplest scone recipe in the world. She didn't make this recipe herself I believe she got it from an old Mary Berry cook book. This recipe is so easy and I've made it so many times I know it pretty much by heart. If like my mother you are a fiend for scones I'm afraid to say they will be gone before tomorrow. By the way you don't have to use cherries! I've made them with mixe...

WarHorse play promo picture - Copyright of warhorseonstage.com Unlike many War Horse fans I never read the book as a child. It wasn't until I was 17/18 that I even heard about it and that was because my friends were quoting the film non stop. One of them was beyond excited that she was finally seeing the play. This was in about 2012. It sounded amazing but I didn't watch the film until at least a year later at my friend Jenn's house.  Jenn  is a War Horse fanatic. This girl knows and loves her War Horse and she finally got to see it live herself just a  few weeks ago. To say I was jealous was an understatement, All I had heard was amazing things and here was more proof that it was amazing. Maybe some of you are wondering why there has been a sudden increase in War Horse talk and that's because the play is finally coming to an end after many years. The puppets will be packed away, the horses sent out to the field and the cast will give their final bow and it wi...

I haven't posted on here in a while and the reason is my head. Now I know that doesn't really make any sense but I'll explain. Uni has been getting to me lately and has been incredibly intense leaving me with no room inside of me for creativity or at least that is how it feels. Tonight I finally managed to scramble a few thoughts together and so I wrote 'Head'. Don't worry though because writing this has cleared some of the fluff out of my brain and I can finally get round to writing some reviews I've been meaning to for a few weeks! Hope you have all been well, Sophie

Film cover Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly vicious things he says and does as he grows up. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined. "Hey want to watch a movie?" The next thing I know I'm sat watching this film that completely blows me away. I had heard 'We need to talk about Kevin' a few years ago when looking up Ezra Miller and some of his other acting roles but like with a lot of things never found the time to watch it. The film flips between the past and present showing the striking contrasts between the lives of Kevin and his mother after 'the crime'. You quickly realise what Kevin's crime is but don't see the full effect of it until the very end. However, the film did allude to his crime through the use of red imagery through food especially. With so much red you knew there had to be blood shed and lots of it. Something...

I don’t know about anyone else but I struggle to work and revise when I have music on. Well, not all music. If it has words then I can rarely concentrate however if it is wordless I tend to fair much better but even that varies. So if music causes me to struggle to concentrate then surely I should just not have any music on. However if the room is silent I will focus on every tiny sound and every tiny detail. At uni we have a silent working room which thankfully isn't truly silent. The rustling pages and scribbling pens are quiet enough to not distract but loud enough to make a nice background noise. When I am at my flat however there can be moments of absolute silence. My ears search out for every creak of a pipe or cawing of a bird. So I don’t need silence but I do need something! To prove a point I put on some music in the background as I was writing this and all I could focus on was the lyrics. I typed the first word of this sentence and my internal monologue went ...

The Diner in Camden - Sophie Brown                               Who doesn't like to try new things?  The Diner Menu - Sophie Brown As a late birthday meal my friends and I took a trip to the much talked about Diner in Camden. I can see why everyone loves it so much! The Diner serves American food with American portions. The interior and front keep with the American theme with diner booths and American inspired wall art. Red Velvet pancakes - Sophie Brown They serve an all day breakfast that meant, although it was 4pm, I could order my eagerly anticipated red velvet pancakes with cream cheese sauce and berries. I also ordered a Snickers milkshake to wash it all down. I must admit when I first saw my stack of 3 fluffy pancakes with berries and toppings I thought 'I could eat much more than this!'. Oreo milkshake - Sophie Brown No. No I could not. After my meal I was left feeling v...

Perhaps I'm just a late bloomer but until recent years I had never had a celebrity crush. However when I was in school Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt were pretty standard answers.  Now celebrity crushes can be a little controversial at times and often people can be mocked for their crush. A celebrity crush to people is a fantasy. Lovely in thought but no one expects it to come real. So why not just have a made up fantasy crush? Well that doesn't quite have the same affect. Allow me to explain why. A fantasy crush can be the most perfect person in the world. You can design them down to their very last freckle. They could have Hugh Dancy's hair,  Tom Hiddleston's mouth and Benedict Cumberbatche's eyes if you want.  They could have Channing Tatum's body and Mads Mikkelsen's humour. You can imagine as many scenarios you like in all settings and countries but there is one thing you can't imagine free will. Here's where a celebrity crush is diffe...

Today is my 21st birthday and I had a whole other post planned for today when something unexpected happened - my grandma died. Now here's the thing; I haven't spoken to her in over 10 years and she was very old so it wasn't too much of a shock. The next unexpected thing was that my Aunt who I haven't spoken  to in about 7 years decided to pay us a visit in light of the recent news. The next unexpected thing, as things whether good or bad like to come in threes, was that most of her family came to ours as well. A knock on the door means they're here but as I look outside the faces are foreign to me. Most of them don't look or sound like my memories. I was quite nervous to speak to them after all this time but I needn't have been. It was so lovely. There was laughter and love and despite the odd rocky moment it was nice to see them. It's funny how much can happen without you knowing about it and it's funny how you can lose contact with people who...

Whilst scrolling through twitter I stumbled upon a profile about primary school problems which had me in hysterics because it was all so true. Then some of my own primary school memories started flooding back. One of the tweets was about ending stories in school with 'and it had all been a dream' and that got me thinking about how I used to start and end my stories. When in school we were taught some stock ways to finish and end stories such as :- Once upon a time On a dark and stormy night And it had all been a dream And they lived happily ever after One day I was reading out my story and I was renowned for finishing them with 'and they lived happily ever after' so my exasperated teacher got the class to finish my story in a sing song voice. But, I proved her wrong and said "Nooooooo! And they lived sadly ever after!". I felt very smug about that bit of creative genius. Also, did anyone else have teachers say that your story was too short so y...

Jude and her twin Noah are close until a tragedy drives them apart. Now they are barely speaking -  and both falling for boys they can't have. Love's complicated.   Wow. Just wow. I had seen the vivid black and yellow cover of this book in passing many times but other than acknowledging how pretty it was gave it no second thought. My friend Jenn had told me how wonderful this book was but I never managed to get round to reading it. That was until this Christmas when Jenn gifted this book to me. It's taken me a few days to write this review as when finishing I just had such strong feelings that they all came rushing forward at once and all I could say was - wow. Very rarely have I felt so strongly about a book in the past. Every time I put it down I immediately wanted to snatch it back up. I had to know more, more, more! I needed to devour this book and wished it was as easy as simply eating it. The last time I felt this way was when I was in Primary school readin...