Its got to that time in the week again when I’ve realised that I haven’t written a blog for a while. I think I last wrote around the end of last week, since then I’ve been to a house party, played some hockey, been to a footy social and flunked a pathology test.

The house party was last Saturday night. Me, Hayley, Pritchard and Paul went from my house. It wasn’t the greatest of nights. This is maybe because I’m now a boring third year or due the severe lack of alcohol at the party. Though some must have appeared after me, Hayley and Pritchard left as Paul didn’t arrive home till very late and had a severe hang-over next day.
Hockey on Sunday was an all day 7-aside tournament. The vets have so many fresher hockey players this year that we were able to enter 3teams (though non of them won it). Sunday evening Pritchard cooked us all an amazing dinner, not quite sure what it was though, I know it involved cod stuffed with something very tasty and there lots of olives… delicious!

The best work orientated thing that happened last week was that I learnt some suturing techniques on Monday, this included a couple of interrupted knots and some continuous. Also the guy taught us a hand tie knot, which was damn complicated, though I got the hang of it in the end.
The worst work orientated thing that happened last week was a pathology mini-test on Friday. I’d spent some of Wednesday and all my spare time on Thursday brushing up my knowledge of inflammation and repair and then the test included nothing I’d revised. It was all on histo-pathology (which no one was told) and I’ll be damned if I can see the difference between a plasma cell, an epithelioid cell and a lymphocyte. I hope I’ve scraped half marks, but we shall see. It ain’t a big deal really as the test is only worth 1% of pathology, I just don’t like to fail anything that counts.
Other work stuff last week included lectures on abnormal fluid balance and acid base disturbances, a microbiology practical and the finishing of housing lectures (thank god, perhaps the most tedious subject yet).

Definitely a contender for the best night out of the term was Wednesday’s football social. It started out at the Scotsman and His Pack pub were we had curry and beers and then moved onto the Wedge. It was messy night! Drinking games continued throughout the night and penalties were often and harsh. The fresher initiation was a success, all of them did well and didn’t bring back up their three fosters, though one of them didn’t make it out the pub, obviously the table he chose was a very comfortable place to go to sleep. Interesting stories of the night include Milesey poring a whole pot of pepper in his mouth for no apparent reason and then decorating the toilets with it and some lumpy stuff (the guy was already bladdered at 8:30 when I arrived) though he did do a very good job at cleaning up as he decided later on in the night to clean all the toilets and mop the floor?! The same guy will also be remembered that night for falling off a stall whilst stood on it singing Madonna “Like A Virgin” at the top of his voice.
Not funny but I feel it should be included anyhow is T.Williams senior’s bottling attempt on 4th Yr Rob. Rob was supping away harming no one when Williams launched his attack on him and broke a bottle over him. He wasn’t sure what happened or why he did it, but thankfully no one was hurt.
Once we got to the Wedge drinking continued and most of team enjoyed a night of socialable dancing. Obviously this wasn’t good enough for Big Josh though as he got thrown out for an indecent attack on a female (I did not see the incident, though sources tell me that Josh, apparently finding the girls cleavage very appealing, decided to place a saliva lubricated finger down it – shocking stuff, I’m sure he’s very ashamed!!).

Presently I’m at home in Derby. I had to bring back the car on Friday as my little bro requires it. Though I haven’t got to get the train back down tonight as Mat is giving me a lift (he lives in Stoke-On-Trent).
I’ve had a very nice relaxing weekend at home, went out for a meal with the family last night and then met up with some mates in Derby.

This coming week is awesome as far as work is concerned as we have incredibly little timetabled plus there’s no tests to revise for. Apart from a couple of band practices I haven’t got much planned, though next weekend a few people are off to Yorkshire for Greenwood’s 21st, should be a good weekend!

It’s Thursday lunch and I’ve just finished a hellish morning of pathology and pharmacology. We’ve finished off the pathological response of cells and tissues and have moved onto healing and repair. The most daunting part of pathology is that we have to actually learn the stuff before the summer as we’re tested on it at the end of each week. In pharmacology we had our second antibiotic lecture, spent most of today on the subject of penicillin. Not too bad, though the lecturer talks in monotone.

Since I last wrote the most interesting thing to have happened is that I’ve turned 21. We had a house party on Friday to celebrate and then I went home with Hayley on Sunday on my actual birthday for a meal with the family.
Our house party was pretty cool. We managed to club together 90 squid for punch which went down an absolute treat. Also after the lads had done such an excellent job in the garden we had to make use of our new found space. We built a fire and put up some fairy lights to make a grotto type area. Mat got hold of some tarpaulin to protect everyone against the Bristol rain. I can’t really remember most of the party but I think it went pretty good, it certainly looked like it the next morning, and all the punch got drunk, though birthday cake was found at the bottom.
On Sunday the family got together plus Hayley and Fran (my little bro’s girl) and Mum cooked us a grand meal. Presents on the day included a very sexy ipod, loads o cash, some engraved cuff-links and a cow bell which sounds dam cool.

This week has so far been relatively uneventful. Monday was a Langford day with meet our new clinical tutors in the evening (these will be our tutors for the next three years). Mine specialises in orthopaedics, which as I’m most interested in surgery is a stroke of luck. Perhaps I’ll be able to have a look at a few of his ops next year.
Tuesday we had band practice in the morning, didn’t go that amazing but then we’ve got another on Saturday to hopefully iron out the few probs. In the afternoon we had 2 housing lectures followed by immunology. Housing is incredibly dull and the guy gives us shockingly bad hand outs, meaning we’re forced to jot everything down.
Yesterday we only had two lectures (CNS and the first antibiotics) then footy was cancelled so we had a bit of a training sesh on the downs. In the evening the house had a hard core night playing risk in the lounge drinking hot chocolate…who says 3rd years are boring?!

As for the rest of the week things are looking good, the mini-test for tomorrow has been cancelled so it’s a free evening tonight to get on with some much needed guitar practice. At the weekend there’s a 21st birthday house party on Sat and on Sunday I think there’s vet hockey and then JP is cooking our house a meal.

Will hopefully have tinternet in our house shortly so I don’t have to write these blogs in vet school anymore. God knows what the freshers and second years think reading over my shoulder? Probably why the hell is that crazy third year writing a bloody diary.

Well I'm back for round 3 of vet school, the summer has flown past, and it seems only yesterday when I was coming here to discover whether I’d made it through round 2 or not. It’s two weeks into term at the mo. I was hoping to write some entries before now but we haven’t got tinternet yet in our new house and so I’ve had to resort to writing in the vet school library (not to bad as long as you don’t mind being surrounded by preserved anatomical parts and keen freshers getting into their new anatomy books).
I suppose the best way to do this is to talk about my summer and then give the run down on the activities over the past couple of weeks.

Well summer is pretty difficult to describe in one word, though everyone expects you to achieve this. Basically I managed to fit in my pig and cattle EMS plus a bit of travelling.
The summer started very well with a few days in Barcelona with Hayley. We managed to get return flights for only £40 and so is was quite a budget trip. We spent our time viewing Gaudi Architecture, looking round art galleries, going on a boat trip, visiting an aquarium and walking the ramblas. Would definitely recommend Barcelona.
After I had a wonderful time in Spain pig EMS was a bit of a downer. Early starts and poor working conditions weren’t ideal, though the people were pretty cool/amusing and I spent most of my time tailing and injecting newly born piglets. They also let me name a boar on the farm, so there’s now a Bevis the pig on Foston Pig farm.
Between the end of pig EMS and travelling I spent my time finishing my pig report (a 4000 word report on the pig farm, you have to five of these in total before the 3rd year, one for sheep, pigs, cattle, horses and a small animal practice). I also spent quite a bit of time with Hayley, she came down to Derby for a few days and I went up to Yorkshire. For some reason we did loads of walking, in a week we went to three different national parks (exciting stuff to read about I’m sure?!).
Well that brings me onto travelling. I spent six weeks out of the UK, though 10 days of this was on a cattle farm in NSW Australia getting my cattle EMS done. Definitely the best way to get the EMS sorted, especially when I compare it to my other option of working on a little dairy farm in my village. The farm was amazing! The area was surrounded with Australian bush and the wildlife was incredible, there were parrots flying around the farm and the surrounding land was swarming with kangaroos, I even saw an emu when the local vet took me for a drive round the area.
After ten days on the farm my mate John (in my year) came down from Sydney to meet me and then we set of travelling from the farm. Before we bussed to Melbourne we spent a day skiing in the snowy mountains (first time we’d both been skiing though we picked it up pretty quick. However John had one little accident on a j-bar lift when he fell asleep on the way up and veered off. To be fair he was well jet-lagged and the night before I’d forgotten to pick him up from the bus station in the middle of the night, so he was left for an hour in a tiny Australian town. Don’t think he was best impressed with me?!). From Melbourne we flew up to Cairns to learn to dive on the great barrier reef. Probably the best thing all holiday, as we saw sharks, turtles, clown fish and thousands of amazingly coloured tropical fish, it was like swimming in the worlds largest aquarium.
After Cairns we made our way down the East Coast back to Sydney, stopping off at the usual tourist sites i.e. Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands, Hervey Bay and Frasier Island, Brisbane and Byron Bay. Also on the way back home we did a four night stop in Tokyo. Best thing we did there was visit the tuna fish auctions, where 90% of Tokyo’s fish comes through each day. There was the most incredible amount of huge frozen tuna and the auctioneers were very amusing. John got a lot of attention in Tokyo being almost 7” tall, I think he got a bit fed up of being asked whether he was a basketball player or not though.
Despite the fact that I had an awesome time travelling it was nice to land back in the UK and get back to normality (though now I’m wishing it was vice-versa).

I had two days at home before me and my dad drove down to Bristol. I could have left it a little bit later to come back but I quite fancied seeing Hayley and making freshers week. Fresher’s week was pretty cool this year, it wasn’t ideal being jet lagged and waking up at 7:00am each day, though I had some great nights. The best night was probably the vet freshers party in Walkabout, so many people!!
My house this year is very cool. There’s six of us, all vets, and the house is massive. Each room has double beds and the living room is a good size. We’ve sorted out a nice entertainment system for the lounge so work this year could be minimal. The only down side to the house is that’s it’s a twenty minute walk to vet school, though as we’re at Langford 2days a week this year that doesn’t matter too much.

The first week back was pretty weird. Its taken me a while to settle in after getting used to the laid back travelling way of life. The subjects we study this year are Pharmacology (started last year), Pathology, Microbiology, Farm Animal Science and Basic Clinical Science. Pharmacology (drugs and how they work) would be pretty dull if it wasn’t for the cool Scottish lecturer we have at the mo. Pathology looks like it going to be the bane of my life this year, with tests every week that count to the end of year mark and a lecturer that just recites the hand-out. Microbiology has been the most fun so far, the practical in Langford last week was pretty cool and the lecture was interesting. In Farm animal science we’ve spent the lectures so far learning about housing, yesterday I learnt how to make concrete and I now know the adv and disadv to the various types of livestock flooring… fascinating hey!? Basic Clinical Science has been incredible dull so far though the week after next I get to learn about suturing so that should be good!

During the first week my little brother Rich (age 18) came down for a few days and joined us on the freshers pub crawl and one of our house meals. The pub crawl was cartoon themed so we went as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Our costumes were immense! Hayley found a bright yellow skirt and black wig so nailed the Snow White part and us dwarfs were awesome, we had hand made beards and hats and top quality dwarf clothing from the charity shops. Best efforts have to go to John and I for John’s Dopey dress and my night time bear sleepy pyjamas.
The first house meal of the term was a success at Claire’s, though we were all hung over from the pub crawl the night before. Claire cooked an excellent Spag Bog.

Last weekend I did very little. After a wicked Wedge on Friday night Saturday was very unproductive. Mat showed up some time in the afternoon, after deciding he wasn’t drinking Friday night he’d ended up in Wedge with us then finished the night off killing a bottle of Jack Daniels at the vet girls house…crazy fool!
On Sunday Levator Ani had their first jam of the term which was promising. We should have no problem getting a new set list together for our 40min slot at the Soiree in November. New songs so far include Ash Shining Light and Blur Country House. Hopefully with all the practices we’ve got booked over the next few weeks we’ll be fine.

This week has been very hectic. Monday was all day Langford with a Welfare debate on cattle lameness. Tuesday was Mat’s 22nd birthday, he got the exciting present of a dressing gown off us so he doesn’t feel left out, as all the rest of us own one. We went out to a new microbrewry bar for drinks in the evening; they make all their own crazy beers, including a mango one, which is pretty sickly.
Yesterday we had two CNS pharmacology lectures and then lost football 2-1 against the roo-bar. I played all game up-front, bit of a mad decision by captain Ian as I’ve never played upfront.
Last night it was Hugo’s birthday meal at a Chinese restaurant in the centre. Hugo got ratted and everyone sang karaoke, though only Hugo sang a solo (I’m too sexy for my shirt!).

Over the next few days there’s quite a lot on as it’s my 21st birthday on Sunday. We’re having a house party Friday night to celebrate my birthday plus Hugo’s and Mat’s then I’m going home Saturday with Hayley to see the family.

Hopefully I’ll have the net put in soon and will be able to do some shorter more regular blogs.