I just went to one of the best meetings in a long time - the final year Grad Ball impromptu discussion meeting. There have been plans to hold grad ball over 2 days, with a variety of prices and vanues, but many people were unhappy with this, so called for a meeting to discuss the different options. There was a lot of discussion, questions, and some very passionate people, and in the end we voted to move the main event to Friday.

So, on Friday 18th you will be able to buy tickets to a fun fair near the lake from 7pm til 11pm, followed by a posh ball in the University Hall Complex until 6am, followed by the survivors' photo and hopefully, breakfast! I am looking forward to it - last year was great, but a fun fair..... wow!

Today's the last day before the students start Easter holidays. I'm off to NUS Conference on Sunday for a few days (gonna miss Ben!) then I'm back to work before UniS closure week from April 8th to 15th, when I'm actually banned from coming into work! I'm going to be spending most of the time I'm not at work over Easter, supporting Ben in his revision. He has finals coming up, and is putting a massive amount of work into working for his exams cos they're worth a pretty huge amount towards his final mark. I'm sure he'll be amazing.

And I guess we also need to get thinking about next year again. A couple of months ago we were thinking a lot about next year, but have a had a bit of a pause on that front for a while. But Ben finishes his exams in 6 weeks, i finish in 3 months, so I guess we need to have something planned pretty damn soon. Scary!

barefacts is over...

yay!!!

Yay!!!!!

YAY!!!!!!!

(can you tell I'm happy?)

Well, in some ways this year barefacts has been my baby, but in other ways (probably outweighing the baby-ness) it has been the absolute bane of my life, and the cause of a hell of a lot of stress and upset. But I hope that i've done something good with the paper this year, and that i'm remembered in a vaguely positive way by the people who matter. :)

So now, I am concentrating on getting content for the new website (which has to be almost completely written from scratch, as the current one is, quite frankly, poo)! I also need to mailout all the copies of barefacts since Christmas to loads of loads of companies, individuals etc etc.... a mission and a half. Plus, I'm gonna work on some ideas for GU2 after easter, hopefully get the other sabbs trained up (apart from pete who knows his stuff 100%, obviously!) so we can all cover shows if needed after Easter, when exam-fever starts. AND I have a magazine to cost, plan, design and find content for, and annual report to do (job and a half), and then bugets and handover to plan. No rest for the wicked, I guess!

This time next week I'll be at NUS Annual Conference in Blackpool, and from 8th April I get.... a week off work! I can't wait. It sounds really cheesy, but I'm going to miss Ben so much when I'm away for 4 or 5 days at conference (we've only been apart for a total of 2 weeks in the last 9 months!) but we're looking at possibly going on holiday for the week I'm off work. We've had a gander at places in Guernsey, and although it doesn't look cheap, we may just go for it. It's all about tallying up the cheap flights with the right days for self catering accommodation though..... not easy....

This weekend was a pretty momentous one - Ben's and my families met each other for the first time ever! It was quite an extended family meeting, with Ben's mum, dad, sister Gené and her finace Paul meeting my mum, dad, 2 sisters (Emma and Rachel), uncle neil and granny! After a day with ben's family on saturday, we all came up to Croydon for a concert of my dad's orchestra, hence the grand meeting. It's funny, everyone I've told about it has asked "so, when's the wedding?" I guess that lots of families do only meet when planning the wedding..... well, we're just a little premature! ;)

Well, Ben and I have just had a scrummy meal of special pasta (cooked entirely by me - wow!) and now we're going to have a watch of the first episode of Brideshead Revisited, a fantastic drama series from 1980, which I bought my parents the box set of for Christmas, and have subsequently borrowed!

I'm off for a kiss and a cuddle and a video - bye bye!! :)

I am about 8 pages away from the end of barefacts, for me, for good. And I can't wait. I'm sure I'm going to be left with a gaping hole in my life, but I'm going to love it. Barefacts has been, as with any other VP Comms, my baby, but it's been a baby I could well have done without at many points during the year!

I have had an amazing team this year, but being the only (barely) paid full time member of staff working on the paper, I have been invariably left with a lot of responsibility for getting the paper published when people have coursework/fancy going out/want to stay at home etc etc. And it's a pretty much thankless task most of the time. There have been a lot of people moaning about barefacts on the Union Bulletin Board. I guess a lot of them don't realise how much work is actually put into it, nor acknowledge that whilst they may not like a section, other people may do. There have been a lot of sweeping, hurtful comments, and at times it has really upset me. But I've developed a pretty thick skin, and with 'wonderful ben' (as mattypoo calls him) to support me, I've got through things..... almost.

It's now 11.30pm and I still have quite a way to go with the paper. It's only Ben and me in the office, as usual, and i'm taking a rare break from layup to write this, whilst he does the lyrics quiz. Ben really has been an absolute 100% star this year. People say this a lot, but I really really believe I couldn't have got through it without him. He has stayed up late with me working on the paper every single week. That's 21 Tuesday nights since September, staying at work with me til normally gone midnight (sometimes much later), and he's in his final year of a pretty tough course. I can't imagine many people doing that, if any. I just hope I can support him through his final coursework, revision and exams as much as he's helped me over the past year.

Rightyho, I'd better get back to work, and hope my tummy ache goes away so I can concentrate on work. I have a Channie's chocolate muffin sitting on my desk, so I might just have a nibble on that! :)

Well, it's a Tuesday afternoon, and normally i'd be tearing my hair out at the fact I have about half a paper still to design in not very many hours. But for some reason I'm feeling strangely happy at the moment... but I'm nowhere near finishing the paper! Chris (Ward) popped in earlier, ran around a bit ranting about posters, then went off to get some lunch, and hasn't reappeared! Neil came in this mornng to teach Matt the wonders of laying up in InDesign, then disappeared, and Ben's been in (6 hours of) lectures all day. So, it's just little old me, but I'm happy.

Ben has no lectures on Friday, as his one lecture was moved to today (as if he didn't already have enough), so I'm thinking about taking the day off. I haven't had a day off since the beginning of January, so it'd be very welcome. I'm really looking forward to Easter - I'm quite enjoying things here at the moment, but I could definitely do with a break. But Ben has exams straight after Easter, so on my week off i'll probably be helping to motivate him to revise.... not that I mind. :)

Neil's managed to send me an email dated 8/3/2005, so it's now sitting at the front of my emails every time I get a new batch..... for the next year!! Honestly! ;)

My office is a tip.... I must have several thousand magazines and papers that I need to recycle/send off to various people asap.... so if anyone fancies writing lots of addresses on big envelopes, or driving to the recycling bins, then give me a shout!

Right, back to the paper..... funfunfun!

Congratulations to the new sabbatical team:

President Elect: Hash Alsaidi
VP Communications Elect: Catherine Lee
VP Education & Welfare Elect: Ewan Panter
VP Postgraduate Affairs: Rachel Appleyard
VP Societies & Culture: Simon Nutbrown
VP Sports: David 'Paintbrush' Glossop

Random 'exciting' facts about the above group - Catherine is a muso from Croydon (sound familiar?!) and Ewan was born on exactly the same day as me - 8th August 1981!

Well done also to everyone who stood but didn't win - there were some amazing candidates who didn't get in, but would have been stunning. You know who you are. Remember, we still love you! xx