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…

Get Mentioned in a University Publication.

I’m sat in the University Library with a million documents of my dissertation open and somehow felt the urgent need to write this entry – procrastination at its best don’t you think?

Thanks to a wonderful Miss Erica Stella Toms who writes a fantastic, Bridget-Jones-esque online column for the University’s newspaper, The Western Eye, we were able to get mentioned in a university publication. Crossing another target off the list.

With the recent NekNomiations that swept across the country and with its increasing stupidity, Erica had some very eye-opening views about this ‘Neanderthal’ behaviour, proving who is superior by their creativity to down a pint.

 I however, am not going to lie. I did partake in one of these wondrous NekNominations. The boys from Oxford came to join Sarah and I on a much deserved night out and filmed their NekNoms at our pre drinks. One of the boys felt the need to nominate me and thus the disaster began...

I shall spare the graphic details. After downing my entire alcoholic pint which consisted of: Vodka, Bacardi, Morgan’s Spiced, Cider, Wine, and who knows what else. I remember sitting in Sarah’s lounge looking up at one of the guys and saying “Are we off out then boys?” The bewildered lad replied “Emma, we’ve been out, just got back, you passed out”.

Great.

I missed the evening thanks to my ridiculous behaviour and this stupid frenzy that swept across the nation. Due to these extreme circumstances and being taken out of control, Erica read our blog and in her article suggested that people create a ‘Bucket List’ to do all those important things to get the best student experience rather than passing out and missing them. We couldn't agree more!

Erica’s Blog #15 A Barbaric Invasion… Take a read!

http://www.westerneye.net/ericatoms/2014/02/15-a-barbaric-invasion/

St Matts Campus Photography Day

The Campus was previously a teacher training college, which opened in 1853.

St Matthius campus (St Matts) is where Emma and I have spent our last three years studying, along with all the other humanities students at UWE. Unfortunately, the campus is closing down in 2014, which is gutting, but also makes us feel privileged to be the final students to have studied there.

 

 

Like most of the other students, we took the grade II listed buildings and Gothic architecture for granted and it wasn’t until we stopped to take photographs of the campus that we realised that it’s not called the ‘mini Hogwarts’ for nothing.



SU Bar

Walking through St Matts you are guaranteed to bump into everyone you know or absolutely no one at all. We are going to miss sitting in the sunken lawn, the tiny but much-loved SU bar, and believe it or not, the library (our second home). So here is a collection of the photographs we took:



 

A Cute Note We Found That Read:
'Stop. Smile. Breathe.
Life is Beautiful.'

 



We couldn’t write this post without giving a dedication to our much loved campus cat Boris, who sadly passed away this year. Boris often sat in on Sarah’s Gothic literature classes and was loved by almost everyone at St Matts. Goodbye Boris.  



Getting involved in UWE politics

As part of our vow to each other when embarking upon this Bucket List we needed to do all we could to get involved in the student experience, as sooner or later we are, like it or not, going to have to become adults.

Today, we took part in one of the most student-based activities that doesn’t involve alcohol. Covering the university in posters at a disgusting 7am on a Friday morning to help our close friend who is running for VP Societies and Communications in the University’s Student Elections.

Crawling down the Uni’s hallways at the crack of dawn frantically competing for wall space, may not seem like an entertaining activity, but it is certainly the most involved I’ve been in the Students Union (besides when down the SU’s watering hole of course!).

Student politics is something that some students throw themselves into and others avoid at all costs. Sarah and I being at each end of this spectrum, myself being the one who just nods away whilst thinking about anything else, probably some pug-related meme I saw the night before. This said, however, it was good to get an idea of what campaigning, canvassing and competing for student votes was like. To see the commitment of each of the candidates and how they have stretched themselves beyond the student life to aim to achieve goals for the student collective made me feel proud to be part of such a student community.

I must admit, it wasn’t entirely out of the goodness of Sarah and I’s hearts, we were rewarded with a well-deserved coffee after our efforts battling with blue tac, posters and the drizzling rain.