College Calender : Andrea Witcombe 11/03/05

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY has come and gone, and I’m slowly turning into an old lady – complaining about the cold (seriously), the lack of snow (we bought a sledge) and how far I have to walk to uni (not very).

My birthday lasted three days in the end – thankfully not all drinking! Dave, my boyfriend, and my old college mates came down to Plymouth to stay for the night and we set out on a pub crawl along Mutely Plain, which has about 10 bars. We only made it to three in the end – and KFC, but I had a great time.

Sam and I wanted to make everyone “farmer dance” in every bar, but they all chickened out because we looked so silly! The dance is a great leg waggling motion done only when tipsy – and probably has never been performed by a real farmer. But as I am an agri, and I co-invented it, it’s known as the farmer dance. I”ll have to show you some time!

The morning after, I had a microbiology test so I had to get up far earlier than I’d have liked.

I made it there on time and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, which means I either passed with flying colours or failed miserably. I think it’s probably the latter.

When I got back to the house, Sam had gone off to do a speech – hungover and 20 minutes late, poor girl – and Dave had cleaned the mess up that we made in the lounge the night before.

I took everyone to the nearest cafe for a birthday fry-up for Matt (he was also celebrating his 19th). Dave and I took the train back to Taunton – where the Land Rover had a flat tyre – how embarrassing. He’d taken it off-roading the day before and got a slow puncture. That’s twice in just a few weeks!

The third day of my birthday was the Saturday when I went home to see the family and walked around the farm.

Dad is renting out the hill to a sheep farmer over the winter, so we have lots of lambs running around.

Mum took me to get my eyelashes dyed and eyebrows waxed – not something I recommend, it’s more painful than legs! And that was my birthday weekend.

Dave recently got his shotgun licence and brought a .410, which I really like. We went stalking rabbits, but they didn’t want to play, so we settled for shooting at a piece of mud on a stick.

I’ve never been shooting before and I’d like to learn properly so I can beat him and dad at clay shooting in the summer. I did OK for a little while till my hands went numb. I’m tempted to take it up, so watch out mud, here I come.