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Unseen Bits // 5th - 11th August

Thursday 15 August 2019


Okay so HI. It's time for another Unseen Bits post where I tell you about all the stuff that happened in my week around what you see on social media. The week in this post (yes, I am SO aware that this was several weeks ago but life has been less than ideal recently - please forgive me) was actually spent up in Manchester hanging out with my pals there, so while I don't have a lot of pictures I do have some updates. Also, I promise I will get better at detailing this closer to the time rather than needing several months to pull it together...promise.

MONDAY 5TH AUGUST
An early(ish) start to jump on the 11.50 train up north! So very exciting. I decided to head back up just for a break, to see my friends and just to have a bit of fun before heading back to work. Monday was mostly spent travelling and then spending the night at a "friend's" house...wink wink. One of our other housemates Lewis had moved into our house at this point too so seeing him was lovely.


TUESDAY 6TH AUGUST
Was, I think, the laziest day I've had in a very long time. I spent it at my "friend's" house eating lasagna and ice cream and just being lazy, which, like I said, I haven't done in a long long time so it felt good to not have any pressure to do anything for a whole day.


WEDNESDAY 7TH AUGUST
 Wednesday started bright and early with a doctor's appointment at 8.30. I saw the doctor a while ago with symptoms of anaemia and had some blood tests so I finally managed to get an appointment to discuss the results of those tests. In short, I have folate-deficiency and iron-deficiency anaemia so am on a few months of medication for both, after which we're going to sort out a diet/nutrition plan to see if I can make the numbers up myself rather than having to stay on medication because that shit?? is expensive. £18 for a folic acid and ferrous sulphate prescription? I think not.

The work on our new floor in our student house began on Wednesday as the builders had to come and level it, so Rhiannon and I popped into town to have a gander and drop into the Waterstones cafe (our haunt) for a nice lil catchup over coffee before she caught a train to see her boyfriend and I headed home to see the same "friend".


THURSDAY 8TH AUGUST
 I'm beginning to realise what a lazy week this was...my "friend" hung out alllll day Thursday with me and stayed Thursday night too so naturally we did very little for a whole day, except cook a monster of a macaroni cheese (I'm telling you, it was insanely good).

FRIDAY 9TH AUGUST
My "friend" said goodbye to me for another month :( and I hopped back on a train down south to get ready for working at the weekend. I began reading An Edited Life which I got for my birthday and will be in a "books I read recently" post soon but for now just know that I'm definitely enjoying it and I think I'm definitely feeling like my life is in need of a good pulling together (anyone else feeling like this atm or is it just me...?)


SATURDAY 10TH AUGUST
Oh this day was fun. That was said very sarcastically as I headed back to my little farm cafe job on the 10th - I love working there so much but god it's a tiring job (I can firmly say nearly a week and a few more shifts later I'm exhausted) so Saturday called for a lot of patience and a lot of coffee.

SUNDAY 11TH AUGUST
It was this day that I realised I should not be working on a sprained ankle...I was sent home early on Saturday as it had decided to swell up again and Sunday called for an icing on the kitchen floor at about 4pm...it's gradually getting better but being on my feet every day isn't helping so much!!



What are your unseen bits recently?

Em xx

Books I've Read Recently


I haven't done a literature post in a while! I've been really enjoying getting back into reading for pleasure (English degrees teach you how not to do that) and I thought I'd give you a little run down of the books I've read recently.








































Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pierce
This was...an interesting read. I'm not going to say I totally enjoyed it, but also not that I didn't at all, I'm really on the fence about it. Set in 1941, it details the story of Emmeline Lake, who inadvertently takes a job as a typist on a women's advice magazine, and starts answering some of the letters herself, which her boss doesn't want to know about. It took me a while to get through, I have to say, and the plot felt a little fuzzy in some areas and to be honest, the ending was a bit of a let down for me. But, that being said, I enjoyed the character development a lot and I definitely got an excellent sense of being lost in the book and feeling really engrossed in their world. I do love historical fiction and I liked how funny it was but I do think the plot got very lost here and there.

Don't You Forget About Me by Mhairi MacFarlane
This is a book I can categorically say I didn't enjoy. It's the story of chaotic Georgina Horspool who gets fired from her job and finds her boyfriend cheating on her all in the same night, and the fallout from these incidences as she finds another job where her boss is her high school "love of her life". I'm going to be completely honest - I like a book where I either adamantly like or dislike the main character, and I just felt totally indifferent towards Georgina. I didn't care what happened to her, she annoyed me at times and the entire plot was just...too much. There was way too much going on in all the characters' lives and I just felt the actual story fell totally flat between them. A 2/10 for me really.

Wilde About The Girl by Louise Pentland
Okay, finally we're getting a bit more uplifting. I read the first in Louise's Wilde series, Wilde Like Me over a year ago and just never got round to reading the second when it was released, but I was looking for something new and this caught my eye as I remember really enjoying Wilde Like Me. The third and final in the trilogy has just been released, actually, so in preparation for it to come out in paperback I decided to pick up the second. And boy did it NOT disappoint - every bit as charming and funny and lighthearted as the first, except this time dealing with the hard-hitting topic of miscarriages. When I tell you I cried, I really mean it - I was sobbing while reading on one of our NCS fundraising days and my team were actually concerned for me. It's really rare that a book makes me cry - films are a different story, but books don't tend to make me cry that much but this had me.  I loved every second of it.


Still Me by Jojo Moyes
GAH. I picked this up yonks ago in Waterstones because I didn't know it was out in paperback and pretty much screamed when I saw it was. Anyway, I finally got around to sitting down and reading it and when I say I read it over three days, I seriously mean it. It's had me hooked on my work lunch breaks, before bed, in the mornings, when I get home from work. You name a time, I've been reading it. Now listen - I LOVE Jojo Moyes. I have most of her books and adored every single one, save for the second in this series. It just fell flat. But this?? Oh, this lifted the entire series and ended it on the best note possible. It details Louisa's life after she's left for New York (spoilers for the second - sorry!) and the trials and tribulations she goes through while in a completely new part of her life. Jojo Moyes' books aren't your typical romance-y chick lit - I always finish them feeling like I've had some epiphany and gained some new perspective and inner peace in my life and this was no different. Big, big recommendation if you were also disappointed by the second book.


Two good and two not so good ones this time round!! Have you read any of these books and if so, what did you think? Or, what have you been reading recently?

Em xx



Unseen Bits // 27th July - 4th August

Friday 9 August 2019


Welcome to a new thing I wanted to do on the blog - a Love Island rip off, essentially, a compilation of "Unseen Bits" from my week. Bits you wouldn't get shown on Instagram, funny bits from the week I captured on my phone, bits I would never normally put online. Since my revelation detailed in my last post that I ~really~ don't spend enough time living my present, I figured this might be a good way to do that?? It kind of worked in my head...

I also kind of wanted to scrap my monthly roundup posts. I enjoy doing them but at the same time, there's always a lot to go over and the whole "setting monthly goals" isn't that good for me and I think I just want to try something a bit different. So here goes nothing. This week's format will be a little different - it'll normally run Monday to Sunday, but given that I was on a residential with my NCS team last week I obviously couldn't take photos as a lot of them would've had young people in and I can't share them anywhere for very clear reasons. So this week will run Saturday to Sunday instead, but it will go back to normal afterwards.

SATURDAY 27TH JULY


Saturday is Parkrun and cinnamon bun day in my house and that didn't change this week. My sister and father headed out for their 5k and I headed with them to buy the cinnamon buns, rolls for bacon and also some sunflowers that I'd been eyeing up in Tesco the week before. Unfortunately there was no gypsophila left to go with them but some carnations were okay instead. My grandparents nipped in to join in with the bacon roll shenanigans - I celebrated twenty on the 16th July, and they gifted me a Swiss cheese plant, as per my list, so came over for tea and to drop it off. 

The rest of the day was holiday planning, photo-taking, editing, writing and as four o'clock rolled round, tea and cinnamon bun time.























SUNDAY 28TH JULY

Sunday was as a family day - a lie in and the smell of morning coffee always tells me it's a Sunday, and this one was also spent with some family close-by. We went for tea and a walk at Rushmere Country Park and then out for dinner at a gastro-pub nearby. Good grub and good company makes a good Sunday.

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