Counselling, Coffee and Police Cordons

Today's blog will be a little different.

For one main reason: I will not be writing it in one sitting.

As such I will timestamp each individual section.

So ...

09:11:

I turned up in uni a little before 9 so that I could call into Students First and find out where exactly my counselling session is. Seems simple enough doesn't it? Apparently not. When I got here I discovered that the wonderful people who work in Students First have changed their opening hours on a Friday from 9 - 4 to 9:30 - 4. Not a big deal in itself, but a really big issue when you have an appointment at 9:30 and have no idea of the location of said appointment.

So now I am sitting in the computer suite trying to pass a little time before the, practically guaranteed, mad rush from Students First to my appointment. I suspect that my lateness to my first appointment will not go down too well with my counsellor ... but all shall be revealed a little later today.

11:25:

Counselling was an experience, to say the least. I was only in there for 20 minutes but I really got the impression that this will help me.

Sue, the woman I had my initial session with today explained what will happen very clearly. Basically they will provide me with a space where I will be able to talk freely and express as much or as little emotion as I like. She also seemed to understand that I will have trouble explaining my feelings about things that have happened and she says that this is completely normal and that the counsellors will help me to work through this and make it as easy as possible for me to open up and finally start to get on with my life without certain things hanging over me like a great black cloud.
My actual counselling sessions start next Friday so every Friday at 9:00 for at least the next 10 weeks I will be sitting down with a guy called Richard and pouring my heart out in the hopes of fixing my head.

After my session I took advantage of the offer in today’s Guardian … free Starbucks coffee.

I enjoyed my coffee sitting in the park where I watched squirrels burying nuts and birds eating worms. Nothing overly exciting but seeing as the sun was shining and it wasn’t overly cold it was nice.

The only thing spoiling my coffee in the park was that the park over the road was taped off with “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape. No idea why this was but judging from the fact that there was an officer every 20 yards or so, news crews all over the place and more photographers than I could count I’m going to assume it was for something pretty serious. Once the posters go up advertising for witnesses for whatever it was I will give an update.

So now I am back in the computer suite writing an essay on semiology, or as I prefer to call it, pulling apart one of the Coca Cola Christmas adverts for the sake of analysing something vaguely interesting.

This essay is proving to have an unexpected side effect though. I am now unable to go more than a couple of minutes without either thinking, humming or actually singing

“Holidays are coming, holidays are coming.”

This would be fine were I not sitting in a room with hundreds of other people … who keep looking at me oddly.

17:10:

Well the police cordon was because a woman got raped in the park at 1 this morning.

My Applied Research Project lecture was basically highlighting things while the lecturer read it. Not exactly rocket science is it?

Now I just have to read 4 more books, finish the semiology essay, start all the other essays and prepare for a presentation I never even knew I had to do.