Bloody Scotland

Why hello there internet! 
Long time no talk. Write? Hm. Anyway my last entry was just a descriptive essay I came across and thought I'd put up. Saves me actually having to think, y'know. But this entry, you'll be glad to hear darling readers, is going to consist entirely of me rambling about, most probably, not much at all. Yaaaaay.
Hmm well ok I guess I'd better bring you guys, whoever might read this (why are you reading this?), up to date. Last time I went in to ridiculous irrelevant details of my life, I was in the build up to the Leaving Cert- the biggest, most important and most headwrecking exams of my life. So they began in early June and ran for about three weeks. It was so much fun. Long story short anyway, they went pretty well on the whole I felt. So then two close friends of mine and I jetted off to Portugal to permanently obliterate all we'd learned in our 14 years of schooling with alcohol, in one week. With great success, I might add. My family and I also went to Greece for a month. It was quite hot, to be honest. But nice! Very beautiful.
And then, almost as soon as we got home, exam results were out! Best. Day. Ever.
I feel like I should point out my sarcasm in case there are any Sheldons reading....Maybe I should use italics? Everyone loves italics....
Anyway, turns out I did quite well, very happy. Unfortunately quite well wasn't enough to get me my first choice of Biomed in UCC. So guess where I am as I write this? You got it. Bloody Scotland. In my itsy-bitsy but cosy bedroom on campus in Stirling on a chilly November night, to be exact. But no, I actually really like it here. I'm almost glad I didn't end up going to Uni back home. Here, in Uni accommodation, away from parents etc, life is pretty damn awesome. There are downsides, naturally. Shared bathrooms, doing laundry, the fact that I can't cook anywhere near as well as my mother- but the advantages far outweigh them. Oh and it's cold here. So very,very cold. I kid you not. I've started uttering the phrase 'bloody Scotland' (or worse) on almost every night out when it nears freezing point. Hence the title. 
So yeah! I'll probably share far more inconsequential details about things here you really don't care about in the next few weeks, but that's it for tonight, I think. But I am happy here. I know right, who'd have thought it? Bloody Scotland and all.
Rosie

The City

The day begins early in the heart of the city. Commuters from all over are drawn in by the city’s first breath of the day. Streams of resigned and submissive workers pour off the subway, the buses’ passengers, decked in a unanimous grey, chug and whir their way inside the city boundaries. Office workers, shop assistants and countless other expressionless faces file to their destinations as the city unhurriedly begins to come to life.

The sun warms the pavements of the now quiet streets in the brief lull of commotion. Two black cats skulk along a window ledge and it’s in this pause that blackbirds begin to whistle and take to flight. But soon the peace is broken once again as another breath is drawn into the city. Before long, the chatter and bustle of schoolchildren echoes around the city as they flock almost mindlessly in a never ceasing rush. Seas of grey, maroon and green ebb and flow in opposite directions as school time nears.

          The bells in the tower start to chime and by the time the ninth toll sings out across the rooftops, not a uniform is in sight. And yet, movement catches the eye in every direction. The lethargic city of the earlier hours has given way to a startling, hyperactive maze of colour and cacophony of sound. The next wave of pedestrians crashes in around the ankles of the city, full of purpose, energy and vitality. Tourists, shoppers, sight seers, buskers line the rivers of blurred colour. Shop doors are opened, giving way to the pressure of hassled mothers, lost boyfriends and bright-eyed fashionistas.  Boutiques and cafes overflow, the city fills itself to breaking point. As the day wears on a few start home. Bleary-eyed toddlers clinging to weary parents, bespeckled elderly turn their lined faces towards the suburbs once again. The late afternoon brings with it an eerie silence, a sense of waiting, of foreboding. Then, all at once as if triggered by some invisible force, the quiet splinters and splits. The torrents of maroon and green shatter among the rainbows of colours in the city’s depths. But now the city has grown, tired of the seemingly pointless rush and inconsequential trivialities of the people inhabiting its limbs. As if the decision is abruptly made, the city exhales and the shops and lanes empty of people, ferried away in trains, buses or cars.

The city pauses again. Almost in contemplation, or so it would seem. A silence descends, followed soon by a curtain of darkness peppered with the flickering lights of the night sky, obscured for the most part by the beams of city lights. Encased and cushioned by the dusk, life in the city seems to slow, if only temporarily. But, again, the calm is short-liver. As the night looms, restaurants reopen as more patrons arrive to fill them. Bars glimmer and gleam, enticing in the young, the old, the trendy and the lost. Later on the night clubs open, soon crammed to capacity with heels and sequins, deafening music and high-pitched laughter. The nightlife of the city seems almost brighter than the day for a moment. The city itself seems to pulse and glitter. As the clubs and pubs empty, the energy dies down. Men, periodically breaking into alcohol-fueled and fleeting fights, women stagger home unsteadily with broken hearts and broken heels. It’s the early hours of the morning before the city achieves tranquility again. The last of the pub-goers meanders away, intoxicated. All the windows in the city are shut up and covered.

Because it’s now, in the darkest of hours before dawn, that the unseen becomes evident.  Now silent and empty, the flaws begin to show, the invisible, the overlooked, the unknown of the city.

A stray dog crouches, softly whining on the side of the road, crippled by a car that didn’t stop. An old man, once an attentive husband and adored father, cringes in a gutter, still searching for the numbness whiskey couldn’t offer him. A baby lays in an alley, wailing feebly beside his lifeless mother, the needle still in her arm. Children cower in bed, too hungry to sleep but too petrified to complain. The homeless curl in doorways, reliving the bygone, steeling themselves against the biting frost. Many slip willingly over the edge into slumber, and when they don’t wake, nobody notices, or nobody cares.

As the city sees this, the first smudge of colour brushes over the horizon and it’s with relief that the city draws in another breath. Another wave of colour and laughter. Another disguise of warmth and life to cover the cracks. Another day in the life of the city.