I am inclined to say that my Allinson’s bread recipe, found on the back of the tin of yeast, with a couple of alterations, is perhaps one of the finest bread recipes ever.  And simple.  So simple that anyone, even if you’re half-addled with sleep deprivation and have suffered through a Truly Horrid Day, can make at 11pm.

My friend is coming over for coffee tomorrow, and as I’d had a fresh grocery delivery (comprising a surprising amount of strong white bread flour), I decided to make bread in some shape or form.  I was just going to go for my de-facto (but very, very good) bread rolls, to have with cheese when I remembered making these little babies in Northumberland (do you remember that ‘other’ life?  It seems a world away now…).  I found the recipe (which was so, so, so fiddly) in one of those All-Colour-Library-type cookbooks from the 1970s.  It was so dated but I loved the looks of the intricate bread plaits, cornucopias and assorted gateaux (another 70s thing!).

Fast-forward almost 6 years, I am living as a student, far away from Mr VP and my much-thumbed 1970s cookbook is in storage (with much of my life, it seems).  But I still bake, with a steely determination.  These are much simpler than the convuluted 1970s version.  Make a batch of normal bread dough, let it prove, knock it down and knead again, roll out the dough, sprinkle with butter (I used margerine, because je suis etudiante), brown sugar and a *lot* of cinnamon.  I love the stuff and when I was done, most of every surface had a light dusting of that magical scented bark powder.  It smelled, in all honesty, like a Yankee Candle (but better!).  Roll, cut, bake.

Drizzle, whilst still hot, with an icing-sugar/cinnamon/water mix and then just… enjoy.  The smell, the process and the flavour of that sweet, doughy goodness.

Amazing.  Amazing how some things never change, however much everything else does.

A not-too-long walk, in a barely familiar place, yielded a good number of photographs.  It was so windy that I was almost blown over, my hair a mess and my cheeks a ruddy, youthful pink.  Grey skies, which had been spitting and spotting rain when I set out, cleared as the weather said it would and became

The water was home to a lot of birds: swans, ducks, seagulls (both herring and black-headed) and a large colony of cormorants.  Seeing them wheel above me in the air or float serenely down the river was most magical.  Their grace and elegance at all times, however they choose to move (except, perhaps when on land), is something that few humans ever manage to emulate.

It was very much a me-walk.  I didn’t opt to take anyone, I just needed a little ‘alone time’ without being inside – I needed to think and to see.  Part of one of the modules I study is covering how we see things – and how writers, poets, lyricists and artists see ‘actively’.  I know that is true – I am the child of a very artistic mother, whose ability to ‘see’ things in the most mundane of objects, to bring out an often hidden beauty, I seem to have (thankfully) picked up too.

This term is taking a very different course from last term.  So far, we haven’t had any assignments posted, though I know that this week I will be getting a couple handed out to us.  Thankfully there are just over half of what we had last term and this term they contain two of our own-choice modules.

I am deeply enjoying getting into poetry in a more academic setting.  I have read poetry since I was a young child and I began writing them when I was young too (I continue to be surprised by the number of people who don’t read poetry – why?!).  I know that most of my poetry isn’t Keats, Thomas or Manley-Hopkins, however I have continued to write it and even if nothing gets done with them, they mark sections of my life.  I can chronicle happiness and struggles in these little dated nuggets that I keep in a series of well-loved books.

Ironically, I have found that it is my poetry that is proving to be… not ‘better’ because that is such a subjective word, but more rounded, more developed than the prose side of my writing.  I would dearly like for this to improve and I believe it will with time, particularly because I have always hoped to write prose on a far larger scale (my first fully-developed short story – 20,000 words – came last summer and ensured a love of writing long prose).

Anyway, back to the walk and learning to see actively.  I think I’ve always done it – and I believe anyone who reads Pied Beauty and says “yes, I feel just like that when I see those things!” probably does too.

The more I become enchanted by the Romantic movement, the more I think I happened a couple of hundred years too late.  Nowadays, the Romantics have been superseded by the movement du jour, which I would guess are the modern nature-poets/ eco-poets, who are very much aware of the world around them and its continual degradation by man.  I have always found the Romantic aesthetic very pleasing: Nature is at the forefront of the works and it inspires (as it always should) awe.  Caspar David Friedrich captured it best in his painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.

The idea of Nature (with a capital ‘N’) has always been a huge part of my life.   I like to experience what I believe – and have always believed – is the most obvious instance of divine perfection: the natural world.  This spills forth into every aspect of my life and has always shaped me as a person.  I think that is why I have to get out into it regularly, why I love to have the window open (however cold, just to smell that wonderful ozone smell), to hear birds and rejoice in each turning cycle of life.

Which again brings me back to the walk.  It is marvellous to be in a place where I can escape for the morning and just enjoy the wind in my hair, the smell of the ozone and the beauty of the world.  All that from the ground – I can only imagine what it is like from a birds-eye perspective…

It begins with the prickling in the back of the throat and the sneezing.  Always.  A tingle, a prickle, a cold.  It wraps its evil little tendrils around your sinuses and it pulls you down.  You can’t breathe, you wheeze (if you’re asthmatic like me, it’s a pain, because it means steroids – again) and you feel rough.  When you know it’s too late to do anything about it, you dread the next couple of days when you know you will feel awful.  Temperatures and night sweats et al, ad nauseum.

All the clear liquids, all the paracetamol-laden cold remedies in the world won’t make you feel better.  It is going to happen, just hold on for the storm.  A couple of sleepless nights await – time to do seminar work, but perhaps not good work.  Time to watch some DVDs on the laptop, but not to sleep – when sleep is the thing you want most in the world.

They say there is a relation between how bad a cold is for a person and their immune system.  The better the immune system, the worse you feel with a cold – by which logic I should have a really rather good immune system, because I usually feel atrocious.

I really dislike colds (who does?).  Here’s hoping it is short and not too bad.  I will now listen to music and do my seminar prep before nipping into town to buy lemons, honey and things to keep me sane over the next few days.

Arriving at a little Victorian train station by the sea is something that I didn’t realise still happened.  It seems like it should be found only in literature – books which tell of interesting adventures and swashbuckling stories – yet there I was, alighting at a Victorian station, in the middle of nowhere, by the sea.  There is something magical about travelling by train – as long as you don’t have to go near London, arrive on time and have plenty of money! – the places you see by rail are so different to those you see by road.  Near to the sea, close to the edge of the world, it was magical.

The natural thing to do, on a freezing January day, is to go beachcombing – so we did.  I found these beautiful clam/scallop shells.

It wasn’t a day to do anything specific, it was just myself and a friend enjoying the sea.  We had a picnic of homemade bread rolls and local cheese, with Tunnocks teacakes (oh the marshmallow!) and a flask of coffee.  It was simple but so, so good (if very, bitterly cold).

As soon as the skies brightened, we saw a whole new side to this lovely place.  Divine rays, something ethereal from above, shining down.  It was a wonderous thing.

Today: baking, tidying, cleaning and making sure I have done everything I need to do before I must re-enter the world of academia.

Quiet time to think before the onslaught begins.  I have so, so, so enjoyed this week.

I hope that I stay this optimistic and unstressed for the rest of the term as I am now. Feeling this relaxed is not usually my style, but I must admit, the prospect of spending days reading poetry (and analysing poetry and all of its verse forms – of which there are manifold varieties), reading other types of literature (and philosophical texts!), baking, chatting, drinking coffee and blogging was how I imagined university would be in the first place.  In other words: a dream come true.  That is how this week has been.  It has been so nice to spend hours just talking about anything – but usually academic in nature and in-depth – and everything.

It is late, very late indeed, yet I am blogging with abandon – having put the poetry away for today – I am waiting for the homemade bread rolls I baked just a few moments ago to cool down so that I can put them away and wrap tonight up (I have to be awake early, to wake my friend up so that she definitely won’t miss her exam tomorrow morning).

Standing in the kitchen, in the wee small hours, eating a freshly-baked, piping-hot bread roll that you made yourself: there is nothing like it in the world.  Really, there isn’t.

I like hard work, I like to always be doing something but I learn more when I am happy and content, not tearing my hair out.  So far in the last week I feel like I have learnt more than I did  in the whole of the last term.  This is why I came to university, this is who I am and I thank the heavens every day for the flatmates I have, because a girl could not wish for a nicer group of people.

So here is to these precious relatively stress-free days that I have until term begins – and here is hoping that I continue to be as happy and relaxed as I am now, once term has started.  I made a solemn vow that this term will not be as stressful as last term and I am planning to uphold this!