I wouldn't say a hell of a lot has happened since my last update, but what has happened has been important. I'm going to try and be as to the point as possible while conveying everything but like always, I'll end up writing a good 3,000 words.
So, let's rewind to my previous entry, which was of course filled with lots of unrequited feelings.
Since then, things have been easier simply because they have had to be. I had an obligation to actually complete my work with Alycia and Tom, along with Ralph. Unfortunately, since I'm probably the one with the most experience at building Flash websites, I was given (or rather chose to) the responsibility to create the website. The problem was that I had roughly 5 or 6 days to complete the entire website while we all had two weeks break for Easter.
The stress was compounded by the fact that while all this was happening, there was a real threat that my house in Liverpool could be repossesed and for ten days, my Mum had been fighting for it in court.
The ruling was due on a Friday and I had already said that I wanted to be there when the judge made it. I headed to Liverpool early in the morning to be at the court for the ruling to begin at 10am. I met both of my Mum's barristers and we all went into the court together. It was like being in a movie.
There was me, my Mum, her two barristers, and literally three more lots of barristers too, there on behalf of 3 companies that wanted to either sue my Mum or take her house.
My Mum and I sat at the back of the court and in the three rows of chairs/desk in front of us sat everyone else. In front of those was a raised part of the court with an empty leather chair. Behind that on the wall sat a large illustration of a shield. Some sort of justice shield. And justice was what was about to be ruled on.
There was a knock on a door just to the right of the judge's chair and everyone stood up, the judge walked in, sat down and then everyone else sat down. Like I said, it was like being in a movie. The barristers and the judge even wore those wigs you see on TV.
I thought the ruling would be a quick 30 minute thing. I thought it would be a guilty/not guilty type of thing but I was very much mistaken. For literally three hours, it was nothing but a summation of what had happened in the previous ten days and it was simply the judge reading his pages-long ruling.
It wasn't until 1pm that we finally got to the rulings. What this judge had actually decided. Whether this judge had decided that we were to keep the house or not. This was it.
He told the court that he had made a series of six or seven rulings, which he would now read out.
The first three rulings related to the money that my Mum had borrowed in the form of loans.
"These have been set aside", he said. Now, I didn't really know what that meant. I didn't know whether this was a good or bad thing and I wasn't ready for celebrating just yet.
However, ruling four related to the reposession of the house. The big ruling. The ruling that the last ten days had been about and what my Mum and I and everyone who knew about this had been worried about. Paraphrased, he said:
"With relation to the reposession of the house, this case has been dismissed". And that was all I needed to hear to let out a huge sigh of relief. My Mum broke down into tears.
The house would NOT be repossessed.
The other rulings related to the money that my Mum owed. "These are set aside", he said.
As I said, I didn't really know what "Set aside" meant, but after my Mum quickly asked her barrister "Have we won?", he said yes. He gave an extatic yes.
Seven rulings, seven wins. My Mum had won *everything*.
No more loans, no more reposession, no more anything. It was over.
The prosecution barristers looked sick. They asked to appeal the decision. "Request for appeal denied", the judge said.
As my Mum, me and her two barristers left the court, one of them literally danced with happiness. "That could not have gone better", he said. "You won!, he said, "You won everything!".
Everything.
We went to a small debriefing room where they explained everything to my Mum and they called their boss to give him the good news. Their boss was in tears on the phone.
This was a good day. Those lawyers had done an excellent job.
I returned home with my Mum. It felt nice being able to return to there without any threat of it being taken away anymore.
I ended up staying the night before returning back to Chester the next day.
It was a pretty damn stressful for the next two weeks with the amount of work I had to do. Those few days I spent on doing the website were not enjoyable at all. It wasn't so much that I encountered lots of problems, simply that it took so long to get it altogether. It didn't help that the main centrepiece of the main page of the website was being created by Ralph. Ralph had created a vortex-type of video that was to be embedded on the main page. Ralph lives about 30 minutes away by train so we communicated on MSN about the project and he'd send me stuff that way. The problem was that his connection was slower than a snail and these video files were a good 200mb. It took literally two hours for him to upload it to somewhere so I could download it in 25 minutes.
...only to tell him that it was wrong and I needed another copy.
Bah.
I wasn't really happy with the final website, but since I had to complete another flash-based website for Research Methods too, I just had to chuck everything on, make it look vaguely interesting and move on. It worked and it looked ok, but it wasn't exactly breathtaking.
One site down, another to go. This website was far less of a bitch to put together and I had to completed within about three or four days in total. Again, it wasn't anything special, but it worked in the way I wanted to and with any luck, it'll pass.
The first Monday we were back from Easter break, we submitted the workbook for the group website. The workbook wasn't particularly big, but even as a preliminary mark, I had gotten a 64%. I was very surprised by that. Hopefully with the addition of this website, I can get that up a little further.
Tuesday came and it was time for the presentation of the websites that everyone had created. We were group 11, which meant that we got to see everyone elses before ours. I wasn't looking forward to this because I was well aware that my website wasn't particularly good.
My opinion soon changed.
Out of the 10 websites that came before ours, there was only one, possibly two that came close to what I had created. Perhaps this sounds bigheaded, but it's true. Most of them were either incredibly confusing, didn't have much functionality or were lacking in other ways. When it came to present ours, I was feeling much more confident about it.
It was only a 15 minute presentation and all we had to do was give the class a tour of the site and explain what was what.
The finale of the site was a 'hidden' button on the main page which shows the four of us as zombies for two seconds before returning to the main page. It's just to make people laugh. When I clicked on the button, people liked it although they didn't really laugh like I thought they might. However, Kevin, my tutor asked to see it again. He hadn't asked to see any part of any other website. If he's asking to see something again, then in my opinion, that means I've intrigued him.
Presentation over, end of Tuesday.
Thursday was the night everyone was looking forward to. Thursday was the day when everything had finally been handed in and there was no more work to stress over. To celebrate this, it was time for a huge night out.
It was the usual horde of people out in town including me, Tom, his housemates, Alycia and her housemates. By this point, Tom and Alycia were "officially" seeing each other. As in boyfriend and girlfriend. To Tom's credit at least, he had the decency to talk to me about it before they started making it official. "Whatever mate, I'm not bothered" was my reply when he told me about it online.
Seeing the two of them together grates on me, but I'm trying hard not to let it. Surprisingly, there wasn't much affection to be had when we all went out and I think that's because Tom was having too much of a good time with his housemates and perhaps Alycia was with hers. But, I have a feeling that Alycia would have probably liked Tom to give her a bit more attention.
We headed to RBs after we'd been to a pub and a bar and that's where we spent the rest of the night. I took loads of pictures as usual and ended up just dancing on my own simply because sometimes, I really prefer being on my own, even through I might be surrounded by a dancefloor of people.
I think it was around 2am when I thought that I wanted to leave. Tom said he was leaving too with Alycia so I said I'd come out with him. I wasn't exactly drunk, but I wasn't totally sober either so I was walking a little slower. I was also texting so my head was down. I was fully aware of Tom and Alycia walking away from me though. "Fuck them", I thought to myself. I slowed down further and just let them go. It was obvious that neither of them had actually even realised I was right behind them. In the end, I saw them get into a cab together and leave town. I walked home.
"Sorry for leaving you mate, she's in a mood", Tom said in a text.
"It's fine", I replied.
The next morning when I woke up, I found it incredibly painful to move my feet even while still in bed. I was wondering what the hell had happened to them. I knew it was because of the problems I've got with the both of my heels. For some reason, because I had been dancing so much and because I had walked home, it'd just been too much for my feet to handle and now I was in lots of pain. For the rest of the day and night and the next day, I was limping pretty badly. I was just happy that I didn't have anywhere to go.
The week after was a week of rest. Nothing but rest. No work to worry about at all. Joy! It felt good being able to just kick back, talk on MSN and watch a few movies all night without having to worry about waking up in the morning.
On Sunday 13th, I went for a meal with my Mum in Liverpool for my birthday, which was the next day. But I'll save that for the next entry.
