After eight months of roaming around the world, admitting to being a 'student in transit' when asked for my occupation, I’m reluctantly back in the UK. From doing anything from babysitting anacondas in South Africa to Bornean jungle hut building to skinnydipping across global landmarks (does anyone really know/care what the 45th parallel is anyway?!), I've finally got my life sorted. The decision to return to home wasn’t easy - the final straw was being chatted up by a tramp in Canada (“If I followed you home would you take me in?!” has to be an all time classic!); so the call of new non-holey trousers, a bedbug-free resting place and the first bath in 35 weeks became too great to resist. All that stands in my way between a year of Yorkshire sun, fun and um...maybe occasional light reading when I take on my MRes in Ecology and Environmental Management for a year at the University of York is the small matter of hoarding some money (like a squirrel doesn’t do with cookies - as I learnt in a fruitless previous experiment for my BSc in Zoology at Nottingham!) in Essex this summer. At the moment, this involves sitting on the company’s very own saddle-shaped seat for 9 hours a day inputting typing-nightmare welsh school names (Rhosllanerchugog and Ystradgynlais really do exist) into a database. Even my £2 an hour dog poo cleaning job when I was 14 seemed more varied, exciting and glamorous.  | | It seems Sarah has a somewhat skewed expectation of Scarborough beach |
Also very far from the amazing amount of freedom I was gifted with just two months ago is living back with the 'rents. Not even the memory of mould-encrusted bathroom walls, friendly household guests (mice, roaches and the inevitable woodlouse in the shower) and toilet roll-buying stalemate can dampen my enthusiasm for moving back into a student house in October. I don’t know the first thing about my new housemates except the information I managed to obtain by stealth in my 20 minute glance around the house in Osbaldwick after seeing the ad on campus. One of them admitted that he'd just called his mum 'dad' and the other had a picture on his wall of his mate (more Johnny Vegas than lovely, lovely Iker Casillas) in just his speedos doing the BBQ. Deductions: don’t expect high standards of food hygiene and don't be upset assuming the reason I've been called Simon instead of Sarah is just because of my man voice! At least they don’t look like the kind of much loved but stingy gits that my last bunch of roomies were. We had so many ‘discussions’ about who had bought the last batch of loo roll that we decided to avoid the disruption of domestic harmony by collecting our supplies on nights out. Finding your house keys and taxi money whilst riffling through enough toilet paper to strangle a whole litter of Andrex puppies, especially after a few £1 doubles too many, all proved a bit too difficult. No, no definitely resolving not to resort to such student money saving depths second time around - including curtailing my awful habit of picking up dropped coppers from pub floors and having a sneaky feel down the back of sofas everytime I go round a mate’s house. Whilst immensely excited about getting to give the student lifestyle another shot supposedly being an older and wiser postgrad (22 still feels too young to have a real job, let alone a career), it’s moving up to gorgeous York that’s really got me counting the days until I wave the orange county goodbye. My affectionate nickname for my home county is rightly deserved - my local budget chemist actually sold out of it’s entire stock of ridiculously cheap own brand fake tan in just 4 hours! My mum, already worrying about my increased proximity to the Arctic Circle, decided to buy me a (faux) fur lined coat for those grim northern days, and bought myself some psychedelic flowery wellies so I can keep dry whilst looking cool enough to fit in! Hmmm…. Things already on my to do list: – visiting Flamingoland which I was told by a real Yorkshireman whilst travelling is the "best themepark in the world ever", aiming to be called ‘lass’ at least once a day (in Notts it was ‘ducky’) and undertaking a ‘Dale’ town name roadtrip, due to my own surname. Just have to hope that I won’t get an unstoppable nose bleed as I head up past Watford. Do you still need a passport to go through the southern fairy land to northern monkey jungle?! Sarah Dale Could you be a student diarist?
If you hail from North Yorkshire or are studying in the county and think you could squeeze out a few hundred words about once a month (more if you want to!) get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] | 
