Norwich Pride

 The other day I was thinking about how I was a bit of a shit lesbian because I’d never been to Pride (or to gay bar) and then I realised it was actually Pride this weekend so I asked my friends Nancy and Sarah to go with me. We got there early to browse through all the stores and we got some rainbow flags.

Then we took our place on the parade route.

And then a sea of rainbows!

It was so bright and a lot of people clearly made a lot of effort with their outfits.

We weren’t really sure what to expect but it was a fun environment.

Some of the people in the parade were from companies, and I know it’s controversial because some people think they shouldn’t use it as a forum for advertising but I personally like the free things and say hurrah for stickers, pens and free half chickens!

  The parade finished outside city hall and the samba band stayed there for a while.

Even the Norwich Lions at City Hall got dressed up.

There were lots of canine supporters too who all seemed really excited to be in the parade.

We all agreed that Norwich needs a dog parade. Cute!

Moving To Great Yarmouth

 Today was moving day! I went to pick up the keys from Lowestoft yesterday. It was like visiting the land that time forgot and the lady in the estate agents tried to convince me that the reason she’d spelt my name wrong on the tenancy agreement was because I had misspelt it on my application… errr no.

But I’ve finally moved everything! Yay!

Poor Barclay was very confused as to where all the furniture went. I’m moving him tomorrow night so I hope he likes the new house.

I actually added to all my moving stuff as I picked up this nice hydrangea on the way, I thought it might be nice in the garden or out front.  Thank you Aldi!

The hardest thing to get in was the sofas I got from Gumtree. Oh my goodness. I wrestled this damn thing up the stairs with a very helpful moving man swearing profusely.

I got some drawers from Gumtree too and this old fashioned wicker chair and blanket chest I quite liked the look of. I’m planning on painting them up so hopefully next time I post a photo of them they’ll look a bit nicer and if it doesn’t… well the whole lot with the drawers only cost me £22.

The thing that took the longest was cleaning the kitchen, I hate cleaning. Look how much I used, I sprayed the hell out of the kitchen.

And then I had a little sit down and junk food. Ugh my arms ache and placement tomorrow 😦 I’m gonna be so sleepy!

Yay I Won’t Be Homeless!

We finally found a house to rent that ticked all our boxes of close to work, parking, allows pets and isn’t hideous. Hallelujah. It is three bedrooms though… I’m not really sure what we’ll do with the two spare bedrooms, usually I allocate the spare bedroom to be the junk room. I think it’s a bit extravagant to have two junk rooms… perhaps the cats could have a room each? Is that just verging into scary cat lady territory? Oh and, AND because I didn’t want a guarantor (I’m 27 this year! Isn’t that a bit over the top??) and Kim doesn’t have a UK bank account etc to be on the rental agreement  we had to pay three months rent up front (haters) so that was nice and expensive.

I go to get the keys and move in next week and then jobs a good ‘un. Let the moving box scavenger hunt commence. Oh you don’t know the scavenger hunt? Well it consists of me going into various shops near where I live (I’m a lazy scavenger) and begging for boxes whilst the employee fails to look thrilled at having to go out back and find me boxes, they just love it.

In all seriousness though I think I got too many boxes, I really don’t have that much stuff. Once I have the keys my obsessive gumtree scanning will start to populate our house with furniture I can actually afford (Yuck why is all furniture leather at the moment? What is it with leather??) and if that fails I’m totally going 90s and investing in all inflatable furniture. Remember these?  No? I try not to either…

Bargain. So that’s what I’ve been up to, that and placement which is still going good, and work. It’s been busssyyyy.

Micro-loans

I watched a great documentary today on Netflix called Living On One Dollar which was about 4 students interested in economics and poverty who go to live on one dollar a day in Guatemala and talk about the finances of the people in poverty. Something that really interested me was the use of micro-financing so after I watched it I googled micro-loans and you can actually loan people small amounts of money (or large if you want?) all over the world. They pay it back and then when you’ve been paid back you can loan it out to someone else. There’s a video here about how it works http://www.kiva.org/about/how 

I like this idea way more than just giving to charity because its personal, you get to pick who you lend your money to, and its usually a loan for something that will eventually generate more income and then will be passed on to someone else. The gift that keeps on giving!

I chose to lend to a lady called Justine from Uganda, a single mother of four, who wanted a small loan to buy a bale of used clothes which she’ll then sell. I’m assuming its the used clothes that people donate to charity shops..? Three other people loaned her money too to make up her loan and now its fully funded. Simple!