Brew Our Own Alcohol

We haven’t graduated just yet so we have a few brief weeks to cross off as much as we can on the Bucket List before the student life is truly whipped out from under our feet.

There were a few that we crossed off weeks ago but haven’t been able to post about due to exams, celebrations and most importantly, much deserved holidays!

So we successfully brewed our own alcohol, true DIY style, with some true DIY consequences.

Personally, being renowned for my concoctions of home-brewed vodka flavours, took the lead on this one coming up with the seemingly genius idea to create Percy Pig Vodka.

Percy Pigs, being mine, and almost every other sane person in the world’s weakness seemed like the best tantalising bet. We, of course, too did the conventional skittle vodka to ensure that no disaster struck.

Brewed about a month and a half in advance the liquors were ready to be sampled at the delight of my guests at my end of uni farewell BBQ, which Sarah obviously co-hosted!

All being overly fed and half-cut by time Sarah and I actually remembered about them, the only way to consume them was of course by shots and mutual sipping. The ‘sharing is caring’ motto was largely in place here.

I must say, despite being as always the skittle vodka was successful… Mr Percy Pig, however, was less delightful. Although it wasn’t that bad, it was sooo strong and awfully thick, almost like my favourite childhood medicine calpol! (it may be that we used Smirnoff vodka for the skittles and only had Asda basics vodka for Percys).

But we are students; we drink all sorts of rare mixtures, brews and blends, so needless to say it was consumed without complaints! We also found on later inspection that Percy Vodka wasn’t all that bad with lemonade!

Antics continued throughout the evening with a few emotions running high and my drunken farewell speech at the end of the evening! 

Literally the best friends we could ask for!
Will miss them all!

 

Spray Champagne After Our Final Exam

We decided that something needed to be done to celebrate our final exam at UWE. What better way to celebrate than with a cheeky bottle of champagne! Well.. Cava actually, I mean come on, we’re students after all…

We all know that morbid feeling you get walking into an exam, waiting in the ECC for your ‘Zone’ to be summoned, waiting for impending doom, but this time for us it was different. Though we had all these feelings as standard, we also had a slight twang of pain (act the fact we were leaving… not the normal pain of your hand about to fall off from over exertion in a 3 hours exam). We realised we’ll probably never sit an exam again, we were graduating. Oh Lord.

So having sat three hours regurgitating information about the Mafia and Gangster Capitalism in America, we wondered the ‘silent’ walk out of the building and found a little patch of grass to act like idiots and spray away.

It was an occasion to mark and I feel Sarah, Abbie and I did it in some form of style. I even rocked my UWE T-shirt I brought as part of the merchandise blog to represent!

Take a look for yourselves…

 

 

We filmed it too... I struggled a bit...

Cocktail Night in Clifton

Emma and I have been desperate to go out for a classy cocktail night in Clifton, as it hosts an array of swanky bars and is the part of Bristol that we both want to end up living in.

We started this night at the SU after a last minute decision for me not to drive back to oxford. I called Emma and suggested dinner and drinks at the SU to celebrate me handing in my dissertation (Emma was handing hers in the next morning). I had tempted Emma by telling her that the SU were having a cider festival that day, however much to our disappointment we soon found out that I had got the days mixed up.

As we were now looking forward to a few drinks and were disappointed by the a) lack of cider and b) lack of people, we decided to get a bus to Clifton and start on the cocktails.

SU selfie

Emma suggested one of her favourite cocktail bars called ‘Papajis’, which offer 2 4 1, and have a casual and friendly atmosphere. Judging by the selfies/snapchats that we took at the SU, we were well on our way to being drunk before we even headed into town. At Papajis we ordered two pornstar martinis and my ‘usual’- a mojito. And after drunkenly snapchatting my mum (yes my mum does have snapchat) we headed further into town to meet a few friends.

It seems that whenever we go out for a 'quiet one' on a Wednesday night, we end up staying out till four in the morning. This was no exception, after a few more bars we headed to our favourite on a Wednesday - OMG, where we ended up watching a drag show and being held hostage by a taxi man on the way home.

The snapchat we sent my Mum *facepalm*

In the morning, a sleepy drive over to St Matts at 10am occurred, as Emma had her dissertation binding appointment. After waiting for 15 minutes for the guy to turn up, we soon forgave him as he explained how hung-over he was, having spent the previous night at OMG too.

 Proud Moments: The point these three years have been building up to.

And oh, the sigh of relief!

Emma's dissertation!



Sarah's dissertation!

Wear a Onesie to the Library...

Despite the exam pressure forcing Frenchay library to be at full capacity, we finally decided to put on our onesies and make complete and utter fools of ourselves.

Pretty self-explanatory – we thought with the huge hype of onesies and for the need to do something a little bit controversial in the library this is what we settled on! (Despite having already photo copied our body parts in there of course...).

The library makes us sleepy...

Books excite us..

 

 

 

Dragging along our friend Chloe we sheepishly changed into our onesies and took a series of photos to document the event.

 

The inevitable selfie.

The Risky One:
We had to try and sneak behind the Staff Help Desk
without being caught by the watchful eye of the Security Guards!

 We even braved it to the SU for a cheeky pint... of coke. Driver problems. We also both got a First in our final pieces of coursework for third year! Yet another crossed off!

 

Getting Creative on Clifton Suspension Bridge.

If you are a student living in Bristol and have not yet visited Clifton Suspension Bridge, then you are the worst student ever. But don’t fear, it’s fun and free, a student necessity I understand.

 
Though we have on more than one occasion visited the bridge, Sarah and I have never been together (shocking I know, as we literally live in one another’s pockets…). We decided this most likely being our last trip to the bridge we should do something a little different.

Recruiting two of our friends, Nath and Lloyd, who appreciated the much deserved revision/dissertation break, we decided to be incredibly cheesy and release a balloon each. These, however, were not just any balloons.

To increase the cheesy-ness, we thought it would be incredibly lame, yet relevant, to write on our balloon our favourite memory from each year at University. We won’t fixate on the fact that Sarah rocked up with ‘Happy Birthday’ balloons for us to use...

Sarah and I, being the scatty pair we are, both managed to pop our original balloons. Having deliberated over what to write on our balloons for a good ten minutes we were finally ready to release them. However, they merely plummeted into the road below… perhaps not the most sensible of places to have dropped them!

What we wrote on our balloons:

Emma:

1.       Getting my job at the UWE Disability Services and meeting Nathan.

2.       Going on the History Society’s Summer Trip to Paris and making some exceptional new friends.

3.       Getting a first in my Dissertation Proposal.

Sarah:

1.       Pound-a-Pint Lock-In.

2.       Paris (Copy-cat).

3.       UWE Women’s Rugby Varsity.

Going around 6pm on a sunny afternoon really provided us with some gorgeous views, in which we of course, took a million selfies.

Having worked up an appetite, the evening was concluded with Sarah and I having a romantic meal for two in the Chippy on white ladies. This was accompanied by an emotional farewell before I headed home to Oxford for Easter… (We shall ignore the fact Sarah too came home to Oxford the next day…).

Photo-copying our body parts in the library

So, we finally worked up the courage to photo-copy our body parts at Frenchay library, at 8pm on Wednesday evening. Seeing as it was a Wednesday night, we went into the library thinking it would be pretty quiet and that we might go un-noticed in the photo-copying room. But then we remembered that its exam season, and that it wouldn't matter what time we came to the library, it would be busy from now until May...

We nervously made our way to the photo copying room, put the money on our accounts and Emma nominated me to put my head into the machine first. Who knew, that photocopying your face is actually a lot harder than it seems. After realising that this was not going to work, we took some cute hand shots and a few cheeky ones too...

The start of it all...

Failed attempt at a face shot
 

Second failed attempt at a face shot



Boob shot!

 

The moment Emma mustered the courage to do the boob shot this guy walked in.

Fortunately he just laughed and commented 'Good Work'.

Cheeky encounter!

The finished results.

Have the Strongest Cider at the Cori Tap

Being a bright-eyed, 18-year-old country girl, in first year the rumours of the ‘Cori Tap’ have always stuck with me. Every year I’d vow to myself to go to the city’s local cider house and try its strongest own brewed cider.

This my friends, was finally the year.

The Coronation Tap, located just down from Clifton Suspension Bridge, sells a variety of ciders to tantalise your taste buds, the Exhibition, exclusive to the ciderhouse can only be purchased in half pints. Disgrace, I hear you say? Well, apparently not, I only had one and a half pints of this strong yet delicious cider and I well and truly felt its effects. Either that, or it was where I had to down the third half due to a coin being tossed into my glass and having to ‘God, save the Queen’.

Sarah and I decided to make a night of it and invited a selection of wonderful people to join us. With the accompaniment of delightful live soulful music to serenade our tipsy antics it was a rather sophisticated third-year night out.

A sophisticated night which, of course, can only end stuffing one of the lads in the car boot and drunken singing Snapchat videos along to Madonna’s Greatest Hits which Sarah so happened to have ‘just lying around’ in her car.

 
 
 

Sarah and I with our much anticipated half pints of the Exhibition.

  
The highlight of my night was being ridiculed all night after remembering getting with the assistant manager a few months ago in Po Na Na... He was wearing a snapback... backwards...!
 

 

 



Attend a UWE Varsity Game.

We finally made it to a UWE sports match and what better way to get involved with university sports, than to watch rugby varsity. In second year Emma had played women’s rugby and really enjoyed it, but had to stop due to a knee injury. Of course, this meant that we wanted to watch the women’s rugby to show our support for her team, and for her favourite sport. I on the other hand, embarrassingly, had to ask Emma what varsity actually meant...

On further inspection, we realised that the ticket we brought included both the women’s and the men’s game, which meant we would spend a total of five hours at the stadium. Being the classy students that we are, we decided that five hours was a long time, and that it would be fun to bring a couple of hipflasks and drinks. But, when we got to the memorial ground security was everywhere, meaning that we had to leave our hipflasks in a bush for fear of being frisked. Luckily, we saw other girls doing the same, which made us feel a tad less embarrassed...and later on, we spotted some friends who were driving, so went back for our much-loved flasks and put them safely in the car. Still, much to my dismay the security guards confiscated my foundation, which we forgot to go back for, probably because we were alcohol induced.

Women’s kick off was at 5pm, so naturally we got a pint in straight away. The first match was tough, UOB was better organised and driven; sadly Emma’s loud chanting didn’t stop UWE from loosing, but hopefully spurred them on. Unfortunately, the men lost their game too:

UOB v UWE:

Women’s: UOB 32-7 UWE

Men: UOB 31-10 UWE

However, we still had a great time; meeting lots of people we didn’t realise were going, drinking cider and trying to out-do UOB’s chants...Ending in a spontaneous night out at MBargos and a cracking headache the morning after.

Ordering Domino's To Campus.

So today Emma and I finally got around to ordering a domino’s pizza to campus, something we haven’t done since back in first year when we lived in halls. The night before we had gone out for another ‘quiet’ Wednesday at Vodka Revs-to celebrate varsity. This consisted of hijacking the UWE rugby boy’s game of giant drinking jenga and trying to get free drinks…


Me and the fitty Rugby lad I sharked.
Photoshop courtesy of Laura Davies.



We woke up Thursday morning, somehow managed to drive to Frenchay and went straight to the SU for a much-needed pint of water and a sit-down. Having ordered the pizza in the car, we then sat at the taxi rank for what seemed like a life-time, whilst carefully keeping an eye on the terrifying campus geese.

In true student style, we ordered a large pizza each, walked through campus up to Onezone whilst getting a few understanding nods and consumed both pizzas within half an hour.

 One more thing ticked off the list and one stone gained…

Standard Student Snapchat.

Buying UWE Merchandise

It was about time we admitted defeat and conformed and got fully on the university hype.

WE BROUGHT UWE T-SHIRTS AND HOODIES.

Yeah that’s right. Too cool for school or in this case, university.

It is accustom to engage and take pride in your university as an institution. UWE, or formally the University of the West of England, has been our home for the past three years, it has seen us grow from 18/19 year olds to now 20/21 year olds. It was our first home-from-home, it was our first experience in our overdraft and it was also the making of us as young, intelligent and somewhat absolutely mental adults.

People warn you that ‘the three years will fly by’ and tell you to ‘make the most of it; it’ll be over before you know it’. You respond with a laugh and a ‘I know, I will’. But they couldn’t be more right. Sarah and I met in Fresher’s week, down the SU, and now face the last days here at what we’ve loved to call our university.

Both successfully having managed to keep a tight grasp on our UWE drawstring bags that we were given on an open day, we realised our collection was larger than first thought. Sarah with her rucksack and now her T-shirt and hoody couldn’t quite compete with the UWE nerd I turned out to be.

I found my rucksack, a UWE library ‘bag for life’ that the fear of my arm dropping off had forced me to purchase in second year,  along with my new T-shirt and Hoody. However, I too remembered all of my UWE Rugby kit I’d acquired over the course of second year.

 I kindly lent Sarah my Rugby hoody for the photo, though, by her stance, you can clearly tell she’s not a rugby girl…