India Doyle: I want to go home

I write this alone, in my kitchen, having eaten as much of the food that my flatmates left as is physically possible.  Perhaps it’s the food consumption, or perhaps it’s the weather, or perhaps it’s this creeping hangover, but I’m really tired and I just want my Mum to come and pick me up. Is that so difficult to ask? It’s only a ten hour drive. She’d bring me chocolate and sweets and I could just wallow in comfort whilst she bombed back down the motorway. Alas, I have a few more days of rolling around my house – literally, that was my morning entertainment – before I have to board the Hogwarts express and trundle back down south. 

The worst thing about being in St Andrews when no-one is here, is that you can’t even seek solace in the library. I marched in the other day, determined to find some cool kids to hang out with, or at least to laugh at, (also I do have friends, I realise I come across as really desperate) and found myself in a desolate wasteland with one depressed librarian pushing a squeaky cart of books along the top the floor. So I sadly skulked out, uncertain as to how I could procrastinate further without going back to my house.

I had a flash of inspiration and decided to renounce being ginger and try and being blonde. Off I flounced to the hairdresser. I sat awkwardly – I’m abysmal at making conversation with people I don’t know, especially when I’m very aware that if they hate me they have the power to dye my hair blue – for three hours, at least, reading about Elizabeth Hurley and Shane Warne (they’re really loved up at the moment and she’s looking forward to spending Christmas in Australia). The whole event was finished with a blow dry, I wasn’t planning on spending the extra 30 pounds on something I could do at home, but I thought fuck it, that’s what credit cards are there for. I’m not going to lie, it was money well spent; my hair was falling in all the right places. I thanked her, walked out of the door… and right into a fucking hurricane.

If my hair was made of metal I don’t think it could have retained its shape in those conditions. So that was a waste of money. Irritated and lonely, I walked in slow motion – did anyone else do that in the wind? I thought it was pretty fun – up North Street and back into my house. I had survived four hours of loneliness and now here I was again, in my sitting room, sitting next to an artificial Christmas tree in semi-darkness (the lights have broken, obviously) trying to watch a scratched version of the OC.

It’s not been a fantastic start to the festive season, but as Kanye would say “that what don’t kill you makes you stronger”. In hindsight, I hope that’s a motto applicable to food because I just accidentally ate some really mouldy bread.