Hair New Era

Finally, here's my attempt at a bit of a summary of my first year at Warwick University, UK.

I’ve met all kinds of people from hyperhipsters to cheery goths, from transsexual to asexual to pansexual to cured gay (read: drowned himself in hardcore Christianity. And let me tell you what a normal person he turned out to be. Here are some of his beliefs: girls are not allowed to wear trousers or have short hair. Decorating yourself in any way (make-up, hair dye, nail varnish etc) is wrong, as is creating or indeed consuming anything fictional. So I’m going so deep in hell it isn’t even funny (it is a bit). Oh, and the world is definitely going to end in our lifetime).

I thought I’d do a list of things I like about my life there, or rather, a list of things that, surprisingly, are also liked by other people I’ve met this year. Quite honestly, I didn't really expect to meet other people interested in them.

1. I suppose it goes without saying, but brightly coloured hair. I’d wanted pink hair for years, but I doubt I’d have ever got round to dyeing mine if I hadn’t gone to a place where it is completely acceptable, even encouraged. In fact, on my course alone (I say alone, but really, our course has the craziest people. What else would you expect from creative writing students?) we’ve already had pink, purple, blue, yellow, orange and bright red hair. And I’m proud to say I was one of the first ones to take the leap.
2. The Midnight Beast

3. Harry Potter

In Estonia when you’re old enough to drink (at least old enough in your mind), it generally means you’re too old to be a Harry Potter fan. I've seen it happen to nearly all my friends. Sure, you’ll probably go see the films, but you’re too cool to get excited about them. That might actually be the best adjective to describe us as a nation: we’re cool. And we don’t generally lose our cool. Yeah, me might hear a great joke, see a famous person or win the lottery, but we’re not going to lose control over our emotions just because of that.

But in the UK, not only is Harry Potter cool (in a slightly different sense of the word), but it’s just so incredibly widespread. Of course everyone’s read and seen them, and they’re among the most common pop culture references. Picture from weheartit.com

We’ve had a drinking game around the names of Harry Potter characters and divided UK’s top universities into Hogwarts houses (Oxford – Gryffindor, Cambridge – Ravenclaw, St Andrew’s – Slytherin and finally Warwick – Hufflepuff. At least we’re being realistic). Every young person fancies Emma Watson (who’s doing a ‘year abroad’ at Oxford now by the way (proving our sorting skills)). Although, Matt Lewis might be taking her place now... (I still can’t believe how fit he suddenly is!)

But funnily enough, the only people to compare my ever-changing neon hair colour to the character Tonks were my brother and his flatmate. (And by the way, yes, that would be my power of choice: the ability to change my appearance to whatever I wanted. I’d be saving a fortune on hair dye alone!)

[to be continued]