"Brief" Introductions.

Hey! My name is Julia. This is what I look like: 

I live in Scotland, which, as everyone knows, is a town in the North of England. You have to be weatherproof in order to survive here. That, or own a very good jacket.

So, as it's introduction week, I thought I'd give you the basics. I am close to albino pale (due to lack of sunlight, thanks to prolonged exposure to the internet), tall, and no one can quite decide what colour my eyes are. I've been dying my hair red for just over a year, and in that time it's progressed from ginger to serious ketchup-red and then back to ginger. 

I am slightly addicted to tea, books, tweed jackets, and buying guitars. I like to pretend I'm a musician, though I can never get taken seriously in music stores. 

This is my current musical family. Far left is Yuki, the mandolin is Roy, the uke is Rawlins, the acoustic guitar is Phil, the bass is Boris, and the beautiful resonator on the far right is Kingsley. I'm also currently in the process of fixing up a ukulele banjo that's older than me, but it's proving a bit tricky to source a bridge since it's kind of an obscure instrument. 

My music taste consists mostly of Scottish indie/alternative, though I like a lot of English and American bands as well. I might be the only person for fifty miles who sorts their CDs by artist nationality rather than alphabetically, or by genre. I always win the "most obscure thing on your iPod" game with Mongolian pop (it's a thing). 

I like to use words and phrases that have fallen out of use - "For shame!" and "Forsooth" and "groovy" (yeah, you all know where that last one came from). I have a fairly large vocabulary (my friends just keep me around so I can tell them what words mean) thanks to all the books I read, and I read a lot. I've actually run out of space on my bookshelves. I don't really know what to do about it, other than stack books on the floor, and I'm clumsy so that probably wouldn't work out too well. 

OK, so best day, worst day. Um...

I guess my best day would be one day last summer. I go to an international summer camp every year, though it's less of a camp and more of a school-type thing, which sounds like a crazy thing to do with your Summer but it's always really fun! It lasts three weeks and you can choose one academic subject to do and one elective, so I usually do creative writing and film or theatre. But I really only go to meet interesting, fantastic people from all over the world. So ANYWAY, the day in question was the last day of camp or, more specifically, the last night. My friends and I had dragged our duvets and pillows out into a wide bit of corridor and built a kind of nest. Like this:

We were all kind of distressed because we knew we'd have to say goodbye to each other soon. There were buses leaving for airports every three hours starting at three AM so we all stayed awake to see people off. There were more tears and hugs and promises to write than I can count, and it was miserable and awful, but also a very dear memory. To me, it represents all those amazing people who influenced and changed me, and made me laugh and who I was sad to see go. I guess that's why it's the best day.

As for my worst day, I'm not really sure. No day is really jumping out at me as particularly bad. I suppose it's not that terrible, but Christmas day two years ago was pretty terrifying for me. I'd been really ill for a few days before and I'd had trouble sleeping that night. I woke up early and the room was spinning. It wasn't like your standard dizziness, it was like I really couldn't tell which way I was facing or what was up or down or anything. I got up to get some water from the bathroom and my vision was all foggy, and on the way back to my bedroom it got so bad that all I could see was these black dots spinning around and I ended up walking into my dressing table and falling and not being able to see to get back up. It was one of the scariest experiences I've had and I ended up staying in bed for most of the day. And it was Christmas. So yeah.

Ok, so: stuff on my floor. I have some graphic novels - the Sandman volume 3, V for Vendetta, and Maus.  I also have a copy of The Hunger Games (I was rereading it in preparation for the movie), my laptop, and the first season of Doctor Who (the one from 1963). It's tidier than it usually is. Maybe I could show you my wall instead:

I like to stick things to my walls. This probably tells you more about me than I could ever put into words. To the left are some of my posters (there are more on the other walls): Morrissey, Biffy Clyro, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, Death Cab for Cutie, and you can just see my David Bowie one reflected in the mirror. Then, on the right, is just everything else: photos, train tickets, leaflets,  festival/movie/gig/plane tickets, letters, my Biffy Clyro guitar pick collection, cards, drawings my friends did for me, that kind of thing. I love having that wall there because every time I look at it I can see all my friends and all the people who shaped my life and all the places I've been. It's nice. 

This was quite long. I do apologize, and I can't wait to read whoever-comes-next's post! 

DFTBA!