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First Blog – The Christmas Lights Turn On

Hey guys! For my first blog post I was going to do a bit about myself, but since I’ve just been to it, I thought I would do one on the Christmas lights switch on in Ormskirk town centre.

While Ormskirk is a pretty small town, there is usually something going on and this weekend was no exception. To be honest, I’m not one to get over-excited about Christmas, in fact I compare myself more to the Grinch then your typical Whovillian (someone who really likes christmas). But I thought it was time I actually went to a ‘switch on’ since I had never actually gone to one before, ( I know right).

Christmas Lights
Christmas Lights

Anyways, to my surprise I was actually pretty impressed by what I saw, for a small town the event sure was popular with the locals, the main square was packed, music was playing and even though it was proper Baltic (freezing) out everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. There were various stalls of food and drink, doughnuts, sweets, pizzas, pies, and Candy Floss as well as your usual christmas staples like Mince pies. To my dismay, the Gingerbread stall was already gone when I got there which I was proper gutted about considering I had recently found a new interest for the stuff, it’s got quite the history and popularity in Ormskirk.

Ice Sculpture
Ice Sculpture

As well as the various food stands there were also different knick knacks to buy if that’s your sort of thing, if you like Christmas it definitely would be. The countdown was then done by the Town Crier, who when I saw instantly made me think of Homer Simpson yelling HEAR YE HEAR YE. After some dazzling lights switching on, we were treated to a performance from the definitely legitimate Tom Jones, who did a few stone cold classics.

Finally me and my girlfriend grabbed some Candy Floss for the road to satisfy our inner child. All in all a pretty enjoyable mini trip, part of Ormskirk if any prospective students choose to come here, is it’s typical small town charm that you just don’t get in the big cities, which is one of the reasons I chose Edge Hill. Anyways I hope you enjoyed my random segment and see you soon!

Christmas Tree
Christmas Tree

Jordan

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What I really like about the Hub

One idea we’ve been given to write about in either March or April is student life at Edge Hill. This can include stuff about societies, facilities on campus we really like, the edge hill campus in general etc. So, I thought I’d talk about the hub. Finished the year before I started Edge Hill, it is one of the places I visit most often on campus aside from my departmental building (Social and Psychological Sciences building) and the Library. I’ve talked about the hub before in another blog post (http://blogs.edgehill.ac.uk/insideedge/2014/03/16/and-the-award-for-my-favourite-place-to-on-campus-goes-to/) where I named it as my favourite place on campus and this is still the case today.

What do I like about it so much? Well it’s diverse range of facilities. It boasts a shop on the ground floor (McColls) that sells a range of things, there are two eateries (Sages and Grab ‘N’ Go), there’s places you can sit and eat or just socialize with your friends, there’s computers up and downstairs, cash machines outside McColls and throughout the week there are stalls selling different things. My favourite of these is the Cakeman of Cottage Cakes who sells the most amazing cakes I have ever tasted (seriously if you end up coming to Edge Hill in University visit him when he’s in, you will definitely not regret it) and I even won one once (I had a choice of either three pieces of tray bake cakes or one big one – I opted for one big one because my family were coming up to visit me and take me out for my dad’s birthday).

The hub is also where I eat my lunch (I mainly bring my own in to help me save money) and spend some time chilling out when I’m not in the library or in lectures.

So that’s the hub in a nutshell, and if anyone wants to know anything more about student life at Edge Hill then feel free to drop me a comment.

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The Hub

2663255_8ba965e3Located in the centre of campus is the very modern-looking Hub. It’s always busy as it is the main place students use for socialising during the day because.  There’s lots of seats, sofas and tables and there are also a few eating places, including a sandwich bar and a place that serves hot food. If you live in catered halls you can buy your meals from here.

There is also a Starbucks for all your coffee needs, and McColls which is useful for picking up any last minute groceries, although it’s not as cheap as the things you find in supermarkets. As well as this, most days during the week there are also little stalls selling things, ranging from clothes to sweets (‘Cake Man’ from Cottage Cakes has become a campus legend!).  Next to McColls you can find a couple of ATMs, should you need to withdraw any money.

UniversityOfEgdeHillMain

Upstairs in the Hub is home to the SU, where you can find the President and Vice Presidents should you ever need to get in touch with them about anything. There’s also lots of computers upstairs which are always available to use, and printing from them is free.  Additionally there are a few booths which can be used for group work or even for watching a movie. There’s one giant screen which is used to broadcast big television events, such as the Superbowl, or you can just play Xbox on it!

I went to the Hub a lot during my first year as it was somewhere to relax at weekends with friends. Recently I’ve been using it as somewhere to meet friends before lectures and often grab a bite to eat there when I’m on campus. The thing I love about going in there is that, because it’s such a popular spot, I always bump in to someone I know and it’s such a nice place to stop and chat.