I’ve got an hour before starting work and I’m hiding from the rain in the library. Usually I’m good and I read Ulysses like I should do for class, but I was up at 6am this morning and I really need no help to fall asleep right now. Strangely, just thinking about work (Founders Dining Hall) at the moment – it appears I’ve become quite proud?…no, not the right word, attached maybe to my job. Partially because I’m one of the two longest serving students still there at the moment so I have a special status where I tend to ‘delegate’ a little bit more now and I get special privileges with the chefs liking me like getting away with wearing perfume or they pretend they don’t notice I don’t wear my hat in the kitchen a lot (don’t get worried..I’m not flicking my hair over as massive saucepan of soup :-p) But yes emski, to the point please!

Did anyone read in the last Orbital an article by some first year about the disgrace that is Founders food? I wish it was available online so I could link it…hmm…don’t think so. Anywho, it was a scathing report moaning about chicken with a bit of blood, giving off about catering for people with particular food needs, in particular, the vegetarian section. Oh! And she managed to slip in the odd offensive comment about the staff and patronise the head of catering. Hmph! I was almost tempted to reply to her article in the Orbital…but I decided to take the mature approach…and instead studied her photograph so I can recognise her and remember to spit in her food/be particularly stingy with the portion/over charge her. MWAHAHAHA!

Now to defend my dear Founders. I won’t deny it, it’s not perfect. I lived in Williamson Halls in first year and ate there for dinner for a year (..and put on a stone come to think of it..). We all like to make little jokes about the food occasionally and slag it off in a teasing way, and I make no excuse that is the horrendous costs of eating there if you don’t get the 50% discount! But aside from that, you stick with it because you asked for catered halls, you’re getting cheap food and you don’t have to cook! Some things are just right to be sent back – something in it, not cooked through, etc. It can be gross, you take it back, you get a new one/something different/a refund – end of story! When a chef makes a chicken dish he’s cooking 50 chicken breasts at a time and then a percentage of them get temperature checked.  A pink chicken breast is not good for the tummy…a bit of blood does not hurt you…although I’m not trying to persuade that you should all eat bloody meat if that’s not your thing. This girl (and she will only be called a “girl” because her general written skills are not worthy of being deemed as anything more mature) moaned an awful lot about the vegetarian dishes – meh. Some of the dishes are good, some are a bit crap. Depends how many chefs are on and if they have functions to cook for as well, at the same time. Same with all the food really, but we’re students – who are we to be all that fussy? Cheap and chappy me thinks! Every night the chefs prepare food for general meat eaters, halal meat eaters, vegetarian food and individual dishes for wheat allergies etc. I don’t think they’re doing too badly!

Eugh…my argument isn’t as convincing/angry as it first was in my head…but the sleepiness is controlling me completely at the moment, but as a final bitchy comment about this girl and her meagre attempts at writing – she also wrote an article in the Orbital about how girls at Royal Holloway degrade themselves by dressing scantly-clad at Halloween by dressing up as bunny girls etc. and what a bad image this is portraying of us. It was gay but I thought everyone’s entitled to their opinions…what annoyed me was that she ended her article by saying that despite everything she just wrote she was getting out her bunny ears for the Halloween night at the union. **rolls eyes**

People like her make me feel like we all have that much better a chance at being successful in the world of writing, whatever direction we end up going in!