It's been an incredibly rough week, but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that through it all, God is good, quick to forgive, quick to pour out blessing unlooked-for. Take yesterday for an example:
Emmaline and I ate breakfast together for the first time in ages. She had bought pancakes yesterday, so we toasted one each, and after we ate ended up washing dishes and chatting. The counters were covered with dirty dishes, piled from last night. We washed them and stacked them in barely-balanced piles. After the dishes were done and the kitchen clean, I wrote in my journal and breezed out to ENG309 at ten o’clock. After class, I went to the gym to run. The day was lovely, and walking through the gardens I was struck by the beauty of bare branches against sky: smooth grey-green skin towering up against a blue so deep it was almost purple, with great white clouds moving behind. Robins, tits, and chaffinches singing in the forscythia bushes (see, mother dear, I'm putting that bird guide to good use).
I went running and then walked back to Renwick. Walking back through the gardens was delightful again, people out with their dogs, particularly a little white fluffy Snowy-type dog jogging along beside its mistress, looking very pert with its silky fur in the sunshine.
I showered in Renwick, went downstairs, and warmed up leftovers from last night for lunch. I was just curling up in a corner of the common room to eat and enjoy the banter before going upstairs to study (Naomi, Catherine, Ian, and lots of others were coming in and out) when Catherine blinked at me and said, "Oh, E--, I just sent Sarah up to your room!" Two seconds later, Sarah W. came in and said brightly, "E--, would you like to go to Cafe Renoir with us?" I stared at her, my lunch in my lap, blinked, reminded myself of a resolution I'd made to be more spontaneous (seems like a paradox, right?), and said, "Sure," with a laugh. The leftovers went right back into the fridge, to grow some unmentionable microorganisms, I'm sure, and I went upstairs to grab my jacket.
Sarah W. had one of the guys from her classes with her. The three of us walked down as far as Shaftesbury Square, where he went to a music store, and Sarah W. and I continued on to the city centre. We had a lovely time, just chatting lightly about this and that. The sun was shining and the afternoon was cool, though ahead of us the sky was a dark stormy grey: the greys and greens of the tall buildings, and the white spokes of the Belfast Eye, flashed against the clouds. As we were crossing the street by City Hall, it started to rain. Sarah W. had an umbrella, and I followed her through the maze of narrow pedestrian alleys behind Queen Street. She found the cafe, through a door, up a flight of stairs, and through another door--quiet, secluded, above the noise of the street, and mostly empty, only a few customers having early afternoon cups of tea.
She ordered a latte and a piece of cheesecake, and I (ravenous by now with the workout and long walk) ordered a vegetable wrap. We found a table in a quiet corner and talked. When the food came, it was good. The wrap was hot, full of colorful vegetables like a fiesta, and topped with fresh pesto. Sarah W. and I sat chatting away until Charlotte and Michaela joined us. They were both exhausted from having walked to the city centre with all their bags and books to carry home for the weekend. They ordered buns and drinks (buns/traybakes are the N. Irish equivalent of desserts, for those of you who don't know, and come in so many different forms and varieties that I couldn't begin to describe their deliciousness). We spent a lovely hour or so talking over silly things.
We went downstairs and back into the street. The afternoon had turned chilly. We stopped in the Faith Mission bookshop next door to see if I could find a copy of The Holiness of God. I was unsuccessful, but the other girls had great fun looking over the women's section. From there we walked through Castlecourt. A band was playing outside Castlecourt--brass, accordion, rattles, saxophone. We went down Queen Street, then ducked off into alleyways again until we found Victoria Square, the very fancy shmancy new shopping centre. One goes down a long, long flight of stairs from street level and finds oneself in a huge open atrium going up three or four stories, topped with a glass-and-metal fabric, with a dome in the middle. Shops stretch up on both sides so that one feels as though one is walking between narrow overhanging cliffs.
Sarah and Michaela had an errand to run in House of Fraser, so while they took care of that, Charlotte led me straight back to the little shop at the back of House of Fraser, Paperchase, that sells paper, cards, journals, pens, and such. On the way, we walked through gleaming glass shelves full of handbags and shoes, gasping at the prices on some of them. Charlotte showed me the journal she likes best in Paperchase, a teal journal with a red-purple-white design of flowers and birds on the front, rather like a stained glass window (in Rachel's words when she saw it later). Fine paper, beautiful lined pages. There were only two left: we bought one each.
When the other two girls returned, we went to Accessorize to look for things for the formal. Then the four of us said good-bye to each other. Charlotte and Michaela went to catch their bus, and Sarah W. and I walked back to Renwick, and we parted ways at City Hospital.
The early evening was again overcast. Just as I got into Renwick, it started to pour down rain. I found Rachel, Emmaline, and Catherine sitting in the common room, chatting, and I flopped down on the chairs next to Catherine to show her my new journal. Emmaline and Rachel were being fairly silly, keeping the four of us entertained.
Catherine and I were both getting hungry. Eventually, Emmaline said, "You know how I promised I'd make tea tonight? And you know how it's the weekend, and we're supposed to relax? And you know how I need more time to work? Can anyone else think of any more arguments?" (general laughter) "Well, I thought maybe I'd order Chinese tonight." I lay and laughed and laughed at her, and said yes of course. So we ordered Chinese, and pretty much spent the entire evening in the common room, joking around, talking, laughing, being silly. Rachel and Emmaline were funnier and funnier as the evening went on, and Catherine and I added our own spice of humor to the mix. Ian joined us to eat his tea, and sat on the chairs at the back of the room and laughed at the four of us.
When the Chinese came, Catherine split up the neatly-wrapped plastic boxes for each of us. After we finished eating our Chinese, we watched the Spider-man 3 DVD Emmaline had bought today. Ian had gone upstairs to bed. The four of us scooted chairs together, Rachel brought out blankets and pillows and sweets, and we sat in a row and watched the movie. About halfway through, we paused it, and Emmaline (whose foresight is quite amazing) brought out a tub of Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream to split between the four of us.
When the movie ended, we were all silly and hyper from the sugar, so the next natural activity for the evening was a lively pillowfight, started by Catherine tickling Emmaline, in which Catherine and Rachel whacked at Emmaline, and I whacked at them, and Emmaline whacked at everyone. After awhile, we settled down and sat and looked at pictures on Rachel's camera.
Putting her camera away, Rachel glanced around the room and moaned, "Oh, this place is a tip!" "Well, what will we do about it?" I asked, jumping up. The four of us went to work and had the room righted in a matter of minutes: pillows neatly piled, dirty dishes taken to the kitchen, chair straightened, rubbish thrown away, etc.
Quieter now, we sat in the common room chatting for awhile, though Catherine left at about half twelve. Rachel, Emmaline, and I sat on until half three.... We outstayed even the drunk people: the noises down the street from the club, the click of girls’ heels, the slurred male singing and shouts outside, all of it had died away into the eerie early morning silence.
I went to bed at last and was asleep before Emmaline came in at half four or so.
Sounds like a girl-fun day!
ReplyDeleteI try to be spontaneous when possible but sometimes I just cannot. Jonathan doesn't seem to understand that I can't just drop everything and go somewhere every night, for example :)
It helps if I know at least a day in advance because with my current schedule I've got time slots for studying specific things. Last week was very structured in that sense. This week not so much. I'm planting grass this afternoon.