I have shopped.

Yesterday was my last chance to get to London - there's no time off between now and the end of term, and once we finish on Wednesday I'm going straight to Cambridge, feeding dinner to Vicky who has a deadline the next day, hanging out with Becky and her giant bottle of mead, then taking the train to Stansted in the morning. So I went to Carnaby Street and ended up in a kind of card-wielding fugue state in Kingly Court, doing practically all my Christmas shopping in an hour. Though on getting home and looking through my parcels I noticed at least one complete lapse of judgment, so I'm hoping the ones that are already wrapped are okay. I'm still looking for a couple of boy-type things - always the trickiest - but I can always get them when I go to Gothenburg.

Then I went to the Sacred Café, and they did a little flower in the foam on my latte.

Nationalities I was mistaken for yesterday:
- American (by the proprietor of a just-opened tea shop, who apologised for the abundance of decorative fake reeds)
- Spanish (by a mildly insistent guy on the tube)
- Swedish (by a Swedish guy in a men's clothes store)

I hit Cambridge like a hurricane.

Somewhat unexpectedly, I was relieved of my duties yesterday at four, was at the station by four-thirty and curled up in Becky's room in Cambridge by seven. I managed to see everyone I wanted to - Becky (she had shiny new ankle boots that looked like dachshunds, and was still in the habit of innuendo after writing Macbeth: The Panto), Sam (a lot of contemptuous though nonsensical referring to each other as "college boy"; I beat him at Mario Kart), and the entire house of Vicky (Tom, slightly drunk, spoke in a Scottish accent and was slighting about Vicky's eyebrows; Vicky covered her face with her hair and did a poll of what everyone else thought of them; Alex reenacted conversations I had missed using her hands as puppets; everyone ate mince pies). Having had coffee so strong Sam could barely push down the cafetiere filter, as well as pints of tea at Vicky's, I was delightedly awake until the early hours and then scrambled onto a rail replacement bus just after seven. And now I'm here, and should perhaps have a nap.

Free-Association Graduate Studies Thought of the Day: wouldn't London be nice? Why doesn't UCL, which is probably technically better than KCL, have courses any sane person would want to take? Still, though, wouldn't London be nice?

Nap; I should have a nap.

Over lunch, panic strikes.

I have to pick an Oxford college. I don't know how much difference it'll make even if I get in, but I am suddenly properly worried. I don't feel like I can go with the technique I used for picking Clare (it was pretty and did not have a huge Natural Sciences/sports contingent), even though that turned out extremely well. I am at a loss in the world of postgraduate degrees, with my pockets full of sand.

Even their names are obscurely worrying. I think I'll start by ruling out the most threateningly-named ones.

In which I put the R in RT

Due to everyone being off sick with something I've become a temporary live-in Resident Tutor, as opposed to my usual role as Resident Tutor who sleeps in a different building from any actual students and does not have to confront anyone in her pyjamas at midnight. So last night I was sort of frantically awake until the early hours for no good reason, and then fell asleep on the drawing room sofa, only to startle awake again when the cleaners came in at a quarter to seven. At least this proves my innate skill at Guarding The Children. Also I'm getting quite a lot of goodwill today, which is nice, and I'm hoping to parlay it into getting out of school and into Cambridge sometime over the weekend. I want to see people and need to do some Christmas shopping, or possibly I need to see people and want to do some Christmas shopping.

There's about a week and a half left of term, and everyone is getting a final burst of yay-we're-almost-there energy. The last week looks set to be a riot of carol services, Christmas plays (I'm going to be helping out on this and am hoping for a straight-up Nativity play with tinsel halos etc, but I expect at eleven they're a little old for it) and staff parties. Then on the 13th, I go home for a delicious three weeks, to be reunited with any and all readers of this blog. This is going to be the first Christmas holiday in years where I don't have any work to do, apart from the MA applications, which could yet prove a huge hassle. Still, the main ingredient will be Starbucks-advertisement-esque cheer.

I stopped writing because I knew my life this year was going to be subsumed by Malory Towers (for those following at home, my Louisa-coined pseudonym for the boarding school currently employing me). Now I'm starting again, because while I live here and work here and often don't leave the grounds for days - though I will once I get off house duty in fifteen minutes' time, because I'm all out of milk - I find it doesn't subsume me, quite. There's stuff to write about besides the nitty-gritty of school, fascinating though I occasionally find it. And it's probably good for me to get back into the narrative habit.

That said, my eyes are fried from too much screen time today and the milk is calling me. So, as catching up the last three months (three months! a quarter-year! God) is probably impossible at the moment, I'm going to leave it at a brief snapshot of my situation right now:
- an empty box of dark chocolate-flavour chips (chips as in chocolate-chips, not crisps, ew) on the desk, which I have had no part in emptying
- red brick, wet grass, red berries in the trees outside
- loud ticking noises
- hospital standby phone, not ringing
- mild headache, to be resolved shortly with fresh, though rainy, air.

I have moments of "how did I get here, exactly?" pretty often, and I think they're salutary; it makes you appreciate things. The last time was on my birthday, a cold Armistice Sunday, standing in the middle of a hedgerow. You start to retrace your steps and realize how extremely unlikely it is that you should be here now.

incredibly easy

At the nursing library, tidying the shelves.

"I'm trying to figure out what this Dewey number stands for, exactly. It looks like it's just generally 'How to deal with difficult things'."
"As opposed to ''How to deal with incredibly easy things'."
"That would make a good series."
"'How to deal with getting change from a cashier," Karsten says. "'Just put it in your pocket.'"

Films I currently have on my camera

- Shrew afterparty. Pan around the room as everyone sings "Wonderwall", accompanied by Tom "Petruchio" H. on guitar. Vicky and Iona swaying gently back and forth.

- Brief, unintentional film of Sam halfway up a tree, the tree trunk, grass.

- Three Legged night. Close shot of Tom "Not Petruchio" T. and Bethmo going "nyuh nyuh nyuh nyuh" for quite some time, never becoming aware that I'm not taking a picture, but rather filming them.

- Graduation dinner. Close shot of Alex the boy singing the words "There's only a certain amount of philosophy one person can absorb in a lifetime", then saying, "Wait, wait, I did it wrong...start again". "No, go on!" I cry, off-camera.

- Graduation dinner, moments later. Close shot of Alex the boy singing John 1:1 to the tune of that bit from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet (TAM taramta TAM taramta TAM taramta TAM TAM). My delighted laughter.

- The Anchor, last night in Cambridge. Dark, orangey light. Pan around the crowded table.

- Braeside kitchen, last night in Cambridge. Reece is trying to eat five cream crackers in one minute, and has so far only managed one mouthful. General cries of encouragement and countdowns around the room. Iona fetches a glass of water.

- The man known only as "DDR Hans" due to his Dance Dance Revolution proficiency and his name being Hans gets a perfect score on Dance Dance Revolution. "Have you ever seen anything like it?" says Eivind.

A theme of "people doing stuff somewhat against their better judgment, but to my immense delight" emerges, apart from the Anchor film, which was pure pre-nostalgia.

All over (almost)

The month of freedom has slipped away without being logged (although it has been extensively photographed), and this is the day before graduation, and I'm lying in bed with just the bedside light on and the surprisingly cool morning light coming in from the window. In the past few days things have concluded themselves one after another: our grades were posted dramatically on the Senate House boards on Friday, with a good 2.1 for me - 2.1s for every one of my friends thus far, in fact, bringing disappointment for some, blissful relief for others, and gentle contentment for me. We went on the Three-Legged Pub Crawl on Monday night, using the sashes from the play to tie our legs together, and when Tom and Ben started counting to keep in rhythm, Vicky was convinced they were going "two one! two one! [Notes for Non-Brits: the most common of two possible pronunciations of "2.1", the other being "upper second"], and we all started chanting similarly.

The other battle-cry of the month has been "shrew-shrew-shrew-shrew-shrew-SHREW!", chanted with increasing volume and rapidity at the successful conclusion of The Taming of the Shrew on Saturday, widely agreed to be a finer May Week show even than last year's. A video I took at the after-party shows everyone singing "Can't Take my Eyes Off Of You", replacing all the "oo"-sound words with "shrew" ("I love shrew, baby, and if it's quite all right, I need shrew, baby, to warm the lonely nights"). I almost understand why some people have something against actors.

Most prominent among these people (I love my transitions today) being Sam, who along with all the other non-graduands left college on Sunday. We'd spent Saturday afternoon going for a walk in what after a while turned into a rain storm. I had an umbrella in my bag, but we decided that we would just enjoy it in a Garden State manner, with the result that we were more thoroughly soaked than I've ever been outside of a shower. Pre-storm, we found ourselves in a tiny suburban park, and Sam climbed a tree. "Aren't you afraid of falling down," I asked when he had ascended metres above my head, mostly to give him a chance to profess his fearlessness. "I am now," he said, as if it had literally only just occurred to him.

Sad goodbye on Sunday, then yesterday while I was buying graduation-wear with Iona and Vicky in the Grafton centre (regulations for graduation-wear are very strict and involve looking as catering-staffish as possible in white shirt and dark trousers or skirt, and while I'm almost sure I can get away with my black dress, I thought I'd get a white shirt to be on the safe side), he called and said he was in town again. He came over, and we sat on a bench and talked. Another sad goodbye by the wig stall (the Grafton centre has a wig stall).

Grades gotten, play ended, second-years gone, and now all that's left is to graduate. (And finish packing, obviously.) The next couple of days will probably be kind of sleep-deprived. We're meeting in our DOS's room at 6:30 tonight for a champagne reception (I love it when you get an e-mail from your DOS with the subject line "champagne"), then it's graduation dinner, which is one of the three free meals the College gives you (the others are matriculation dinner and Halfway Hall). My parents and Axel arrive around ten, at which point I'll probably be at a post-dinner after-party. The next morning will feature some more frenzied packing once my parents turn up with empty suitcases, and then we'll head down to Old Court around ten to start the graduating. The actual ceremony will be around two, after which my father and Axel will fly back home. I'll have dinner with my mother and then a final party with my friends, which may or may not go on until I have to get up for my eight o'clock flight on Friday morning. And I guess I'll be home around midday, local time.

Really, it's almost too weird, but fortunately only almost.

In which exams end

Hey, it's Wednesday morning, and I'm done. My mother wrote in an email that this is the first time since I was four that I haven't been part of an educational establishment, but really I don't consider my obligations to the university discharged until I've handed in all my library books. Which is why I'm going to the library today to get out some more stuff.

The Victorian exam was okay, although I was nervous about it beforehand, mostly because it started at nine and I kept thinking I was going to oversleep. I didn't, and I was able to write both of my prepared essays (yes, I prepared the exact number of essays I needed: living on the edge), though one of those only by stretching the term "domestic interior" quite a bit. I hope they'll be understanding. Did the detailed commentary/historical knowledge bit last, and showed reasonable historical knowledge but no detailed commentary whatsoever. Had no use for either the Contagious Diseases Act or the finding of the first archaeopteryx fossil, sadly.

Afterwards I met Vicky, Iona and Reece, the latter wearing bermuda shorts, in Reece's room, and went to lunch at Indigos with Iona. Went celebratory shopping ( I got new sandals at Faith), had rumtinis in the kitchen, and in keeping with the rum theme went to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean. Annoyingly, it suffered even more than the other two from having about six plotlines too many, and halfway through I realised that Orlando Bloom with his tunic-type shirt and necklaces really reminded me of a German backpacker. Also, much like the second one, it started out very atmospheric and moody and full of nice simple visuals, and then it all got sort of lost in a riot of fish slime. (Towards the end I started feeling really sympathetic towards the navy because their boats and uniforms were so shiny and not covered in fish slime.) There were parts I really liked, though, and altogether it was an extremely satisfying thing to watch right after exams, particularly because we also had Cookie Dough ice cream.

I think I'll go for a run now.

In which I am surprised by Sunday.

It was only when I went to check the online comics at Dagbladet that I realised today is Sunday. I have prejudices against Sunday; it is a day of guilt, putting off work, and shops closing disconcertingly early. And it's cold and raining, after a ridiculously sultry Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I feel kind of sorry for the British public who have a Bank Holiday and are supposed to be at the seaside in Cornwall, or something.

I do not have a Bank Holiday and am trying to work myself into the mode of "this [the Victorian exam on Tuesday] is the last exam I'll ever revise for, so I should ENJOY IT", but that's proving detrimental to my "don't get nostalgic until exams are over" policy. The last exam! Maybe if I do an M.Phil I can ask the faculty to examinate me, just for kicks. It's not even that I like exams; I hate them, and while I don't think they're academically useless - the standard procedure of already having an essay in mind, then cleverly twisting it to suit the exam questions, seems kind of dishonest but is a good mental exercise and teaches you to see an argument from several angles - I think they should make up a much smaller part of our assessment. And I really, really don't like taking them. The worst part is about halfway through the second question, when you've spent way too much time on the first one (all the Cambridge English exams are tripartite) and are starting to worry that you'll never get around to the third one, and your arm hurts, and the guy behind you is typing distractingly loudly.

Still, I'm slightly upset by the idea of never taking another exam. I think I just don't like doing things for the last time.

It hasn't been that traumatic this time around, actually - Prac Crit on Thursday was uninspiring but not awful; Tragedy on Friday was one potentially awesome answer and two okay ones. No freakouts or tears, at least not on my part. I've been chilling (and not revising) by watching quite a lot of old TV on what I think is the Japanese version of YouTube, with Japanese subtitles. You'd think this would be educational, but so far all I can recognise is the logogram (ideogram?) for "no". It looks like a tripod with a horizontal line on top.

Trying to think what I want to do between Tuesday and Friday, by which point Vicky, Reece, Alex the boy and Iona will all be done (Iona's done on Monday, but is going home for a few days after that). I shot down Sam's suggestion of "buy a crate of beer, go to Jesus Green, and be the most popular girl there". Maybe I'll clean out my laptop keyboard.

nuisances

Oh, and: I.A. Richards, in a letter quoted in "Practical Criticism", describes the first Prac Crit examination in Cambridge in 1923, which is the exam I'm taking, in a slightly different form, on Thursday.

"Beneath at the table are the victims. Beginning to show signs of desperation. Some of them horribly haggard. Some writing like nuisances, what a lot of rot. I shall have to read through this. Oh Alack! Woe's me. *I* now am depressed [...] I *couldn't* make up my mind about anything *ever* in this place or such a place. It smells of dead thoughts, a hellish stink. [...] I think I shall tell Magdalene that I won't coach any people any more for the English Tripos. It's iniquitous, profanation, to expect people to use literature for such purposes. It does more harm than good. [...] This is a dull stream of dry reflections, but this place is really filled with a numbing, dumbing devil. Oh poor people before me, you don't know how I pity you!"

in which I have a plan

I have now drawn up a plan for all the days until the end of exams. There are ten. Quite a lot of them are devoted to doing The Mid-Victorian Timeline, which is my quixotic attempt to learn the dates of every published text and important event in England between 1847 and 1872. This is actually useful, because it's a period paper and the examiners do not take kindly to being told that some of "Little Dorrit" seems like a parody of Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies" (because "Little Dorrit" was serialised between 1855 and 1857 and the Ruskin lectures were given in 1865, obv), but mostly I like doing it because it reminds me nostalgically of studying for tests in high school. It is playing havoc with my social skills though, particularly with Vicky's college son, whom I constantly find myself lecturing on mid-Victorian social life. Last week I told him about Chartism, and yesterday it was the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864. I don't know why I feel he needs to know these things; he has his own exams to worry about, none of which have anything to do with 19th-century government initiatives against STDs.

Vicky herself has become superstitious of learning things that are unrelated to her exams, and will tell people to "stop saying information". This didn't stop her from telling us about the black hole generator that Scientists have hidden somewhere in Oxfordshire, and which they're planning to turn on in a year's time, potentially destroying the known universe. I cannot find this anywhere on the internet (searching for "black hole generator oxfordshire") and thus believe she's gotten mixed up somewhere. Hopefully, anyway. Any information on the black hole generator gratefully received.

I've ended up having seven cups of tea today (one for breakfast, two watching Peep Show with a gently hungover Sam, a three-cup pot at First Class Teas while reading Sophocles' Electra, and one with Vicky, vets, Tom and Iona just now) and am now going for a run to work off the caffeine. Then we're going to go to Nando's and have giant basketfuls of chicken, as no one can be bothered to cook. Exam term is, weirdly, so much nicer this year.

in which I find gainful employment

I just (well, I just got in to check it; I imagine it arrived a few hours ago) got a job offer by e-mail from the school that interviewed me on Friday and Saturday. I proceeded to wake up the entire house, as well as my parents, by phone. "You're going to work in MALORY TOWERS," said Louisa. WHY YES, APPARENTLY I AM.

This, combined with the Greek coffee we all had at post-Tragedy class dinner tonight, basically ensures that I will not get any sleep. But whatever, for I am going to have a job (an awesome job!) after graduation!

heavy heavy fuel.

When I left the house this morning, there was an asbestos removal truck parked outside the porter's lodge. Huh.

Though I'm now wondering whether someone filled in an online maintenance form about asbestos while they were drunk, as apparently they take those really seriously. The stair handrail in the house where Sam lives is now reinforced with plastic bars because he filled in a maintenance form all "STAIRS ARE WOBBLY, DANGEROUS".

I'm trying to make my "I just realised I'm no good at English or indeed ANYTHING, ANYTHING" funk go away by listening to the Dire Straits. It's working. Also I've got new classy black trousers that in and of themselves will ensure that I get a job. Somewhere. Yeah!

(The last paragraph brought to you by me having become British. "Realised", "I've got", "trousers". I must move to Vancouver immediately to practise damage limitation. Agh, "practise".)

"I just don't patronize any artificial systems that create needless suffering, that's all."

"Well, then I guess we won't be playing much Twister."

I went from mild curiosity as to where that line was from to certain knowledge (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04122007) in a matter of seconds. Such is the internet.

Today has been a stupid day. I was late for Computers for the Incompetent, had to run and ended up almost fainting in front of the whale skeleton (there is a whale skeleton - in fact, several - in the building where I have my exams, but I haven't been able to turn this into any kind of threatening or comforting metaphor), then again as I was buying ice cream to get my blood sugar up (and because I wanted ice cream). But at least I had ice cream. And will not be shouted at by the college for missing the computer session.

Exam talk time. I wonder if it will make me more or less stressed.

there's something in the cellar / and i don't think it's wine

The adapter plug came! I have a functioning laptop, and the internet!

Unfortunately I can only use it to go on VictorianWeb for the time being because I literally have to write four (small) essays today. And go to the I Am Incompetent And Need A Computer To Do Exams registration session and the Help We Have Exams talk. Tomorrow though I will swim in the sea of connected computers.

Dissertation progress

- occurrence of "subversive" and "dangerous": frequently enough that it sounds as though I am talking about Lord Byron rather than a literary motif
- occurrence of "the male gaze": once, which is too often
- quotations from Freud: legion
- generalizations about the Victorian era: all packed into one intense paragraph
- references to a character as 'Whatshername': one
- plot: almost completely lost

I'm very slightly enjoying myself by now, though. And it's fun to whisper "quitter" at people sitting next to me when they go for buttery dinner, even though I did just go for a two-hour coffee break.

Back.

In the computer room, where I've been on and off since this morning. I type very slowly while seeing people wander in and out, often greeting each other for the first time since the Easter break. Have noticed that whenever someone asks "How was your vacation", no one will admit to having had a nice one. They either say "it wasn't much of a vacation, really", suggesting that they did a lot of work, or "nnnngh", suggesting that they feel guilty about not having done enough work. I was an "nnnngh".

Outside there is sunshine and daisies. I might just go and roll in them for a second.

and we dance, dance! and we move a little closer

Turns out I'm not a prodigy of phone fundraising after all! Yesterday I hit answer machines for three straight hours and spoke at length to only one human being (who was a Ph.D student, and lovely, but penniless). Oh well, only two more days and then it's LONDON TIME.

I am super-excited for some reason. May ball gown shopping with Vicky! Dodging Sam's parents! A city that IS NOT CAMBRIDGE! It might be mostly the latter, actually; travel fever, though I'm not particularly unhappy with post-term Cambridge at the moment, as I somewhat was before Christmas. I also look forward to going home; everyone in Norway suddenly bursting onto Facebook has been a bonding experience that I hope will be continued in real life. Also, I've been fruitlessly trying to shop for two and a half months (I've become weirdly fashion-conscious this term, which is either my brain trying to protect itself from thinkier thoughts or just my brain being a bit shallow and reading a lot of Grazia), and I'm hoping to be more successful in Trondheim. And I want to dissertate in cafés while drinking very expensive coffee (my new plan for getting dissertating done).

Of course, before any of this can come to pass, I must:
- Write something exciting for the supervision on Friday (HAH)
- Hand in very overdue books at the UL, get out new, shiny ones
- Open a UK bank account so I can get paid (and you wouldn't believe how tricky that is; you'd think they'd be falling over themselves)
- Break into Sam's room and get the minidisc player and trousers he left behind (or possibly ask porter for key)
- Do one more load of laundry
- Do two more shifts at the campaign
- Pack

Doable!

I've taken to singing softly into my headset microphone after (not before) hanging up a call; generally the Pipettes' "It's Not Love (But It's Still A Feeling)". I also sometimes sing a little self-penned song called "That Guy" when a name pops up that I've tried several times before: "That guy! That guy, that guy, that guuuuuuy!" This is why being employed is not safe for me.

Drama in the last ten minutes of calling as Sam showed up with Mary Ellen, who had broken her arm while they were rollerblading in Asda. (She seemed quite cheerful, though, and Asda seems like a good place to break your arm; they have first aid people and everything.) Calum, who is Mary Ellen's boyfriend, emerged palely from the call room. "If you blame me, it's like you don't consider her a responsible human being," Sam said very quickly. "You use that line a lot," I said.

I finished up my shift (which went well; I exceeded my target for the day and brought in a couple of thousand pounds, though I was also called "uncivilized" by someone with an Order of the British Empire. My call supervisor, who has a sixth sense for bad calls, was at my side with a box of chocolates when I hung up), gradually shook off my reflexive politeness and stopped responding "I perfectly understand" and "That's so kind of you" to everything, and went home. Vicky, Iona, Tom and Zofia were in the kitchen having rumbletinis, and I proceeded into the special squiffiness brought on by many glasses of dark rum and ginger beer on an empty stomach. Strangely enough, I feel fine today; possibly it's the revitalizing properties of the ginger beer.

Next week the Longest Journey begins, as I go to London to get supervised on the doubles dissertation. I am a pretty dedicated supervisee. (I may also be anticipating a day of London Frolics. Out-of-town Frolics are just better.)

These days, I am...

(or, Notes towards a definitive Facebook Status)

- cold. The radiator only heats half the room, and even that's iffy. It was spring! I know it was! I had a spring jacket and everything!
- allowing each snooze cycle to last forty minutes. Fortunately, I set my alarm an hour and a half before I need to get up.
- being informed by people I've campaign-called that I am young, beautiful (conjecture on their part) and have no problems (also conjecture, but I'll take it).
- rereading The Neverending Story, and realizing that I'm missing out on a lot because my reading speed has increased. Perilin the Night Forest is much more awesome when you don't get through it in five minutes.
- listening extensively to P.J. Harvey's "One Line" and The Smiths' "Hand in Glove", and thus being a little more sentimental than necessary.
- still as far as ever from figuring out the bus route to Homerton College.
- getting texts at one in the morning, all "Hey! Hey how are you? How are are you?" It is as though a puppy has learned how to text. I reply semi-coherently and smile and go back to sleep.
- without a May Ball gown. I should've bought one before Christmas, when they had those amazing red-satin fishtail dresses at Karen Millen; now it's all metallic shifts and I'm sorry, but I'm not wearing a smock to my last May Ball. What I'd really like is something in gold, with an actual waist, and kind of drapey and Grecian. Or the same sort of thing in black.
- watching the lichen grow on the roofstones outside my window.
- unable to admit that term is over.
- feeling competent. How about that.

Gainful employment

The payment is coming through for the article I did for Tapestry to illustrate stylistic registers, and it is enough to buy several things at H&M, or innumerable cups of even quite expensive coffee. I'm being Paid for Writing! It's exciting. So exciting in fact that I agreed to write a short story for them, mostly because I'm sure there's at least one short story in the telephone campaign.

Though I'll have to tread quite carefully in order not to make it sound critical of the campaign, because I'm not, really. It genuinely is for a good cause, and people generally seem happy to talk to us, and one guy I spoke to was at Clare when John Northam, the Ibsen critic, was teaching there, and told me about how he used to walk around in sandals. The tiring part is getting your facts straight on whoever you're calling, thinking of things you have in common, events you want to invite them to, etc, and then getting an answerphone and having to start all over again. This happens surprisingly often - it's estimated that we make a hundred calls a night, but only a fraction of those actually end with talking to someone. I was very hyper afterwards, but I expect by the end of the week I'll be drained and will probably get lots of pledges based on sympathy.

It feels later than Wednesday.

Our projects are coming to fruition: Muse, the Poetry Magazine, was launched on Monday with a very nice launch party at which no one threatened any Directors of Studies with a wine bottle (which is what usually happens at engling-heavy parties), and the Miscellaneous Theatre Festival began tonight, and will continue for another two days. Quitter is on tomorrow, and I've been told to be very good because Vicky and Alex's chances of getting to direct the May Week show hang on this. By Friday I plan to be very tired of short plays and will put on fairy wings and go to the bop. The theme is Musicals, to Vicky's horror; for circularity purposes we're going as the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz, which is what we went as for our very first Freshers' Bop. We're hoping to look far more impressive this time.

Then I have to get up at ten on Saturday to get trained for the calling-up-alumni job. And then there's the end-of-festival party, and then I have to get up at ten again to get trained some more. At the moment my head is all fuzzy and the very idea of this seems extremely complicated and strenuous, and so I think it may actually be time for bed.

Spring

A ladybird on my computer keyboard!

It's bright red and black against the white, and big - three spots on either wing. It's doing that hapless thing of flaring its thin grey under-wings, then being unable to quite fold them in again neatly. Of course we're quite randomly societally conditioned to be delighted by some insects and repulsed by others, but it's delightful all the same.

It's now moved on to my books, and seems to have a particular interest in "Forbidden Journeys", a collection of Victorian fairy tales.

Last night, after a discussion of whether Oxford would be a better place to do a graduate degree than Cambridge, because you could go "MA Cantab, MA Oxon!" like a great twerp, or whether it would be worse because it's not as pretty a town, Sam and I both voted to go on a day-trip to determine whether it really was less pretty. This turned out to be economically unfeasible - why isn't there a direct Cambridge-Oxford train link? it would foster cooperation - but now I do quite want to go day-tripping. Tom is getting his car after term ends, so if we can fit it in with my call-centre work we might all drive to Norfolk for a day or two. In the meantime I'll have to content myself with ladybirds, and lunch from the cheese shop.

hon vet hur man ater / en kronartskocka / hon har inga finnar

The Lunar Eclipse Party (which we didn't actually realize was going to be a Lunar Eclipse Party until we emerged from the short film screening and saw the earth's shadow slowly obscuring the moon over the Downing spires) was excellent, and today has been a reasonably good post-party day. Even if it did start with remembering I had a rehearsal for Quitter, and having to throw myself into and out of the shower at great speed. That particular role, though, is only improved by having just woken up; it lends credibility to the "do you have to SHOUT ALL THE TIME" wincing.

The short films were surprisingly fun; Reece's was beautifully shot on grainy Super 8 and even featured me briefly, which was nice. My favourite, though, was one of the professional ones they showed towards the end, "The Delicious" (http://astateof.com/films/delicious/). Needless to say, much of the party was spent doing The Delicious, excitedly referring to red objects in the room as The Delicious, etc. Also playing with balloons (our every hope and dream was fulfilled as regarded the presence of balloons) and shouting at the moon to just eclipse already. Photo-odyssey here: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2091010&l=16a40&id=36904377

At the moment I'm just kind of tired, and would like to be less busy. A few days at home would set me up nicely; sometimes I wish I lived in London and could dash home whenever I wanted. That's what you get for going to Fancy Universities Abroad, I suppose.

Off to continue writing my prac crit essay on a page of Peter Manson's Adjunct: An Undigest. Prac-critting a text that may well have been written using a random number generator feels like trying to catch fish with rubber gloves: weird.

Slow motion.

Supervision today in which it became increasingly likely that "threesomes" will be a theme of my dissertation. Apparently semi-involuntary menages à trois were something of a thing in Victorian England - you couldn't just get a divorce, so men would occasionally just move their mistresses into their homes. Or have parallell families, like Wilkie Collins. I don't know why I ever thought new historicism was boring. Also I get to write about His Dark Materials! I said something incoherent about daimons, and my supervisor was all "YES! Pullman in relation to Paradise Lost!"

So I'll have to reread that, as well as a ton of fairy tales. I have no idea why I'm reading Northanger Abbey instead of anything useful, but it's the most soothing book ever. More so at least than Forster's "The Longest Journey", which Sam got me to read and which is basically about how your life will never again be as good as it was at Cambridge, especially if you go to work at a public school.

Things are at least good at the moment; I'm spending a lot of time in the faculty library and in rehearsals, and being very tired in the evenings. Yesterday we became exasperated with our sedentary lives and went to Samba at the Kambar, where Becky and Ollie went into whirling-dervish mode and the rest of us wished we had such a dance-tastic relationship with our college spouses. The live music was so loud that everyone wore earplugs, and drifted about in speechless cocoons. I danced until the early hours, actually got to sleep at the slightly later hours, and am now tired as a sock. Tomorrow is a glamorous day: the premiere of Reece's film at the short film festival, and then an Old Court attic party, for which we are all elevating our expectations unreasonably. Vicky, Reece and Alex have promised roomfuls of balloons that we will dance among in slow motion.

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever."

Yes, please, that sounds nice. (Although Kingsley later changed it to "let who can be clever". Which is possibly still applicable to my situation.)

Unfortunately there are no degrees for being good. Off to the library.

"The first sentence is never told to anyone personally, but the second can be."

The word of the day is "saudade": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade

This article will also inform you of the existence of the Finnish tango. It is, you will find, "distinguished from other forms by its almost exclusive performance in minor keys and themes reflecting established conventions in Finnish folklore". You will wonder why Norway doesn't have any damn tango.

Formal was very good, though full of first-year girls in formal shorts (which are not so named because it would be an excellent idea to wear them at formal), and Vicky tried to convince all of our male friends except Tom the vet that they should be in her play. (This is another play, "Song", rather than the one I'm in; this one requires men, which turn out to be difficult to come by, at least in an acting capacity.) She didn't try to convince Tom the vet because she feels the role would involve "descending into squalor". "All my other male friends can descend into squalor," she said, "but if Tom descends into squalor, the world will spin off its axis." I see her point.

Since formal is an excellently compact way of going out, I had quite the evening and yet was in bed before midnight, which is a good thing considering I'm writing my essay on reading today. Ironically, in order to do this I will have to fake having read "Aurora Leigh". Ngh.

My mother reminds me that I actually have relatives in London and that it should be possible to work something out. Also Iona tells me that her sister may be out of town for the summer and Iona might be staying in her apartment and needing a flatmate. Maybe. So publishing internships are looking like a thrilling possibility. Possibly. Whee.

Semi-sunny Wednesday afternoon.

We were a tiny but amiable gathering at poetry, fifth week having apparently fried everyone's poetic circuits, and read our stuff over the clinks of someone playing snooker at the back of the bar. It always surprises me how much I like this (with the exception of the snooker players, whom we all wanted to kill), and how it actually works; it makes you want to write. One girl, who we hadn't seen before and who was very reminiscent of the Laura character in "Brick", sang two awesome self-penned songs in a strong, clear voice and then scarpered. And apparently she'd never sung in public before. Where stars are born!

Anyway, I read the stuff I haven't read before, and got probably the best response on "Overdetermination", which is sort of my favourite as well. Afterwards we went up to Vicky's room and talked about The Conflict Between Art And Happiness, which is worrying Vicky, who feels quite content but creatively dried up. I suppose the problem is that you have to be very conscious of things in order to write, but once you become conscious of being happy, you stop being happy and become poignantly aware of the fleeting nature of happiness, etc, instead. And then you can write. (But then having written something makes you happy again, and so the cycle goes.)

What makes me happy in a wholly non-poetic way, at the moment, is that Maggie Gyllenhaal is rumored to have taken over Katie Holmes's character for the next Batman film. YES THAT WILL BE AN IMPROVEMENT, I THINK. And also honey-oatmeal cookies, and going to formal tonight. What makes me less happy is that I do not have an apartment in central London from which I can take glamorous internship positions in publishing companies over the summer. And that all the summer jobs start on July 1st. I'd like to have more than one day of vacation.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

Reading CV advice makes you really, really aware of yourself as a bundle of skills, qualifications and abilities.

"Negative traits: unable to turn head fully to the right, due to shoulders being too tense."

(Note: you would not put this on a real CV, where you are supposed to skim over your personal failings. You would put "able to turn head successfully and almost painlessly to the left".)

Note to parents: if all goes well, I am graduating on July 21st. The ceremony (here: http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/degrees/ceremony) is quite cool, if you like that kind of thing. First the Regent House expresses its approval or disapproval of you by saying "Placet" ("it pleases") or "Non placet"; then the person presenting you says you are "suitable as much by character as by learning" to proceed to your degree (though they say it in Latin), then you kneel and the Vice Chancellor admits you to the degree. Then you get up and go and get your certificate, and the whole process is repeated for tons of other graduates. "After the last graduand has been admitted, one of the Esquire Bedells calls the Congregation to order with the word 'Magistri' (Masters)".

(This, for one thing, suddenly makes sense of the end of "Gaudy Night", where Peter proposes to Harriet:
"With a gesture of submission he bared his head and stood gravely, the square cap dangling in his hand.
"'Placetne, magistra?'
"'Placet.'")

Matriculation was nowhere NEAR this formal. I don't remember any dress code, we were mostly extremely hungover, and some of us were still wearing traces of green face paint.

Poetry reading tonight. Time to take some ibuprofen, I think.

Last night.

"I have a plan, you know. It's pretty dastardly, you're not going to like it."
"Really."
"It'll take...an estimated fifteen years to complete."
"It had better be spectacular if it's going to take fifteen years."
"Fifteen years. You'll be thirty-six then."
"Your plan is to call me up and say 'ha ha, you're thirty-six', isn't it."
"'And I'm only thirty-five and eight months!'"

"Like a Roman Polanski film...only worse. Worse, so much worse."

So I am going to be in Vicky's play, "Quitter", which is by now a quite heavily reworked version of a tape-recorded conversation she had with two of our guy friends while one of them was trying to quit smoking. Due to a severe lack of male actors it's now become an all-female play, which does interesting things to the dynamic - the tone of it is sort of flippant with a strong undertone of aggression, and it becomes very different when it's three girls rather than two boys and a girl. The most extroverted and loud part will have to be played pretty carefully, but it might be better done by someone who doesn't know who it's based on. Or maybe anyone who doesn't know will just be utterly confused. We shall see; we're having a reading on Friday and they're assigning the parts then.

Have spent the afternoon essaying pleasantly and effectively (need to do as much as I can of the next Victorian essay so I can actually enjoy formal on Wednesday rather than having to rush home and write), and tonight I'm going to drop off the money for my May Ball ticket and go and see "The Science of Sleep" with divers like-minded people. The May Ball money plus the shoes I bought yesterday (from Topshop, sort of aquamarine round-toe pumps with little eyelets, a mary-jane strap, chunkyish wood heels) is making me feel unpleasantly spendthrifty. But they're both necessities in their own ways, I suppose.

The start of the weekend

Last night I auditioned for Vicky's and Reece's short plays, which are being put on at the Miscellaneous Theatre Festival at the end of term. The auditions were being held in Reece's room, and Vicky's room was the waiting room. By the time I arrived there were three or four strangers there, reading over speeches silently and filling out forms. I spend about 20% of my time in Vicky's room, and I needed to blow my nose, so I went and sat on her bed and took some of her tissues before starting to read. Everyone stared at me. I was the most fearless auditioner.

"At least you didn't go on my computer," Vicky said later.

Afterwards we went to the ent (or "dance party", as it may more comprehensibly and cheerfully be termed) in the Cellars, and had a much-needed awesome time. I was slightly feeling the lack of a male person to dance with, as neither Bethmo, Alex nor Andrew were there, but then Sam, who I hadn't seen for some days and who has in the interrim gotten his hair cut almost unrecognizably short (well, it's still chin-length), showed up. We went out behind the chapel and worried mutually about me leaving Cambridge at the end of the year. Finally I started shivering and went back inside to the hot, damp dance-floor in time for the final song. Walked home with the vets, feeling happy.

Justin, you are a little creepy to me now.

Much as I enjoy Justin Timberlake's new video featuring Scarlett Johansson (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFS7g5p6BFk) - I'm theoretically very much in favor of Justin's actorly crossovers, and also of Scarlett's musical crossovers, although she doesn't sing on this, sadly - I am a little concerned that apparently, if you cheat on Justin Timberlake, YOU GET KILLED IN A CAR CRASH.

It's also weird how the lyrics imply that Scarlett Johansson's character will be cheated on by her next boyfriend, and that the karmic cycle will thus be completed (until her boyfriend, in turn, gets cheated on by his next girlfriend, I suppose), but the video clearly implies that she actually gets killed. At least in "Cry Me A River" the girl was just kind of upset rather than DEAD.

Justin, you are a little creepy to me now.

But you're still probably doing well with the ladies.

Further Victoriana

A cold, wet, bleak day in Cambridge, which I spent reading up on female immurement in the UL (that is, I was in the UL reading up on female immurement rather than reading up on women being walled up in the UL, although in a sense I myself was an example of the latter, the irony of which was not lost on me, oh no). I only thought of this idea the day I had to write the essay, but fortunately my supervisor is very much an ideas woman - I apologized for my essay being kind of short, and she just said "oh, as long as there's a lot *in it*, it's fine", and then gave me enough new reading to furnish a dissertation. So I was stuck today with "Little Dorrit", which will be very useful - I can see why academics like Dickens, he fits into arguments so neatly - but is so depressing you could just cry, all horrible funereal houses and people being born among swarms of flies in debtors' prisons. Then I followed it up with a study about single women in Victorian England, which made me feel very sorry for women in Victorian England, single or otherwise. I went home and self-medicated with crumpets and raspberry jam.

But at least it's all interesting (well, to me). Oddly enough, becoming immersed (immured, possibly) in the Victorian period doesn't make me feel like I'm lucky to not be Victorian and to be able to blog and drink and own property - well, it does, but what I seem to see is not the contrast so much as the continuity. Much of it really isn't very foreign. And I wonder if this is because a century and a bit actually isn't that long, or whether I'd feel the same way if I was working with the Medieval period.

I will now go and read another book about Victorian women, called "Suffer and be Still". Wooooo!

In which we go out

Try listening to "Sympathy for the Devil" and focusing on the "whoo, whoo!" bits in the background, imagining that you are one of the people who have to sing them. It's actually making my throat and brain feel tired just thinking about it, like doing too many French pronunciation exercises involving the letter "r".

Then again, my brain might just be tired. I went to formal tonight not planning to make a night of it but rather to go home and get some work done on my essay once I'd eaten, and so far I've at least successfully accomplished the going home part. This is making me feel almost too mature. Although dinner was nice - they gave us profiteroles, which is the legendary formal dessert that you hardly ever get, although whispers of "profiteroles!" always circulate towards the end of the meal. We re-discovered that profiteroles are in fact just pastry shells full of cream, and that you can't have more than two without feeling sick. It's never good seeing legends up close.

Today was chiefly spent in dissecting last night's Blind Date, which in spite of what Hans suggests is a perfectly innocent event, and For Charity. Vicky's and Becky's dates did not work out brilliantly, but mine was surprisingly nice and a Very Good Date, which is quite a specific quality, I think. We even managed to get into Cindies without anyone getting punched. Once we were there, we barely knew what to do with ourselves and settled for mocking the Grease medley from the bar area. I got far too little sleep and barely managed to wake up and arrange lunch with Vicky before falling asleep again until said lunch. Becky and I ran into Bethmo, who told us that after he and his date had gotten amiably drunk in the Anchor she had decided to get back together with her ex-boyfriend. He took her to find him, and once they started making out he left quietly, rather pleased with his evening. The main effect of all this seeing new people seems to be to make you appreciate old people (old in acquaintance rather than age) more.

Aw yeah!

The RAG forms have arrived, in a shower of pink and blue. I got someone from Churchill. Cue bitter laughter. But he seems reasonable, by which I mean he is either madly confident, or kind of funny, or had someone else fill out his form for him. I'm hoping for a hybrid between the first two.

The prospect of going to Cindies, which is what people do on the Blind Date, is thrilling to me. Oh, Cindies, it's been too long since I was held in your smoky embrace, breathing the fug of bad music and worse decisions. I am not too cool for you!

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi

Tonight is a night for listening to the version of "I Want Candy" off the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, very loudly, while calmly considering the several essays in front of one.

The RAG blind date forms (the ones from our dates, that is) haven't arrived in the Colony yet. Everyone here is freakin' out. Though the people in Old Court, who do have theirs, don't seem much happier.

I was looking up a reference for my Prac Crit essay (having dropped the g in the word "freakin'", I now want to just drop it consistently: "lookin' up a reference") and found it in the last scene of Dr Faustus, in Faustus' final speech starting "Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, / And then thou must be damned perpetually". I like Marlowe only middlingly, but I sort of love this monologue:

"...Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
O soul, be chang’d into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean—ne’er be found.
My God! my God! look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books!—Ah Mephistophilis! [Exeunt DEVILS, with FAUSTUS.]"

(The reference, from a Tony Harrison poem, was "I'll burn my books". And now I must go and actually write on it.)

each to their very little own

I have, since yesterday, been listening to The Feeling. I know they make Belle and Sebastian sound deeply hardcore (well, Belle and Sebastian are a *little* hardcore), but whatever, I want to go around listening to them on my iPod in the lovely sunshine and humming "...got some sugar for your bowl, got some lemon for your soul". (I initially thought I was persistently mishearing "some loving for your soul" as "some lemon for your soul", but am now convinced that "lemon" is in fact right. AW BRITISH.)

It's sunny outside. I did my laundry. Dissertation is go, as is RAG Blind Date, even after we all swore up and down we'd never do it again. After dinner last night Alex and I procrastinated (well, I was just there; he was procrastinating) by hitting the random word button on OED.com as a method of divining how our dates would go (both him and his girlfriend are participating, separately, for reasons that are unclear to me). Alex got "repair". His girlfriend got "air guitar". Vicky got "auricle". I, most encouragingly, got "morris dancing". A little later, as I was leaving, I heard him cry out joyously that "bootylicious" was in the OED.

Now, if I only had plans for tonight, all would be perfect. Someone should take me to see "Black Book", seeing as how the trailer for it prominently features, as almost its only spoken line, the word "AUSGEZEICHNET". This means "excellent", and is one of the few things I can say in German, apart from such classics as "ich will keine möbel kaufen; ich bin Beelzebub" and "HALLO ICH BIN GOTT".

Hmm.

You know what, I think Poe might have waited for eight damn years to write "William Wilson". That way it would fall under the aegis of the Victorian paper, and I would be justified in writing excitedly about it in my Doubles essay. I'm sure he thinks it's very funny to mess with my academic plans from beyond the grave.

The annoying thing is, I like my Doubles idea. I like it a lot. I want to put in stuff about Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, social themes, the Male Gaze, coincidence and fate, the uncanny (obviously), Freud's essay on the three caskets. I want not to be hampered by Victorian paper restrictions as to what I can write about. I want to go around for weeks going "DOUBLES!" at everything I read. Basically, I want to write my second dissertation on it. It has a dissertationy feel to it. (And I don't have any better ideas, either.)

The problem being that I've already told my Victorian supervisor I'm writing an essay on it for her paper, and it's due tomorrow at five. Also, quite a lot of the texts I'd like to use are squarely mid-Victorian, and if they go in the dissertation they can't go in the Victorian paper. However, maybe it'd be possible to drop the Victorian focus and do more later stuff instead. (The Portrait of Dorian Gray! And I bet Sinclair and Bowen are full of doubles.)

Dammit. I'm going to e-mail both my supervisors and be Troublesome.

ETA: Victorian supervisor is on board with this. \o/

Realization

Even though the Adam and Joe podcasts are, in general, awesome, the part I find by far the funniest is the in-between-clips bit where someone goes "this is XFM, and it's in LONDON, LONDON, LONDON!!" in a silly voice. I actually just like silly voices.

On the balance

- All seven of the sets at the comedy night yesterday were male. However,

- three out of the four candidates for college president are female.

So I think we are doing okay. It should be mentioned that I myself am doing neither of these worthy activities, because I am a) scared and b) lazy. I'm glad I went last night, though; it cheered me up. Sam was the most consistently good of the six student sets - there was one first-year who was clearly talented as well, but a little too depressing - which was nice as it means I don't have to disown him. Stand-up comedy is such a weird genre; it's so contrived it's amazing it works at all, and yet surprisingly often it does. One thing I've learned is that if I am ever forced at gunpoint to do stand-up, I will not conclude my set with "well, I'm running out of jokes", which two people actually did.

Had an intermittently inspiring lecture about Victorian detective fiction today, and came out with an odd but powerful desire to buy "V for Vendetta", which I did. SEE HANS I DO LIKE IT.

Think I will go for a run (second day in a row omg!), while listening to Poe. And I have to decide if I have time to go to a panto reunion down the pub. Well, apparently I have time to blog, so.

mildly troubled

We (vets, Iona, Reece, me; Vicky is in London at a bar mitzvah) went to the party in the Wilflete flat yesterday and found that it was full of people we had never quite gotten to know, and so, antisocially, we got hold of Ben and played "The Worst Thing". This is a game Reece and Iona made up, in which we take it in turns to describe the worst thing that could happen to a given one of our friends. Even though this is basically an awful game, it somehow has an affectionate tone to it; it requires sympathy. "Ella is in an underground bunker during a nuclear war," I said. "When the war is over, she emerges, and she's the only person left alive." Iona said, "Tom has to go on Big Brother and is on the cover of HEAT every week. It's in his contract that he has to marry Jade Goody. And he's forever known as 'Big Brother Tom'." Interestingly, when we switched to describing our own worst things, they were very different from the worst things other people had come up with for us, much less specific. (Tom was one of the few with a very specific fear of his own: later said he would be okay with marrying Jade Goody if he got a lot of money out of it and didn't have to spend much time with her; the worst thing would be something happening to his viola.)

If it turns out that goat's cheese, like tuna, can be harmful when consumed in very large quantities, I'm probably one of the few people in the world who's in trouble.

I am extremely tempted to chuck it all in (by which I mean "get the degree first", obviously) and try for the one-year trainee position at the Oxford Union Library (not a wholly random caprice; it's advertised in the Careers Service listings). Advantages: it's one of the few areas I actually have experience in; it would be peaceful enough for me to do M.Phil thinking at the same time; it's very unlikely to burn me out; it might be fun; the salary is okay (about twice my student loan). Disadvantages: it isn't the start of a career path I really want; I would be all alone in Oxford and not necessarily in a position to make a lot of new friends; Oxford might suck.

Nngh. Ngh? I really don't know. Today I woke up worried sick about what to do with my stuff after next term. (I suppose I'll give as much as I can spare to Oxfam and have my family help transport the rest in suitcases when they come up for the graduation. Yes, it will be fine.)

where is: my coffee

Today, I am...the woman who COULD NOT WAKE UP. At least not enough to do anything properly. I'm reading Daniel Deronda and enjoying it massively (and apparently I will have to try to see the miniseries, as it seems to be awesomely cast), but I keep falling asleep, which is impeding my progress.

At any rate, a pictorial journey through the term so far, with highlights like the Bop Where Everyone Wore a TV, the Best Formal, and the Clare Bar Chalkboard Message that Tells You It's Definitely Lent Term ("drink the pain away"), can be found here: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2091010&l=16a40&id=36904377

*slaps self around repeatedly* wake UP.

bullet points

...or, as my Uncanny book puts it, "why bullet points? who is being shot? by whom?"

- iTunes shuffle just started to play Maroon 5, "Tangled" (yes yes the shame). OMG FIRST YEAR. Everyone had a) Maroon 5's only CD and b) the first OC soundtrack, and we would play them to each other in our little rooms.

- Vicky wants to make a film version of the morality play "Everyman", starring all our friends, once we're done with our exams. I think this may be awesome.

- Watched "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" with Becky last night, while eating honey and oatmeal biscuits. Then we sat around for a couple of hours talking volubly about the Relation Between Art and Life. Sam showed up after his table football match with Girton and was the sleepiest boy in the world. "If I weren't leaning against something," he said, leaning against my wardrobe, "I would fall over."

- Sam, we learned, has been asked by the tutorial office to be in a photo shoot for the new college prospectus. Because they're illustrating the college nurse section and they need a photo of someone capable of "looking ill".

- Things I need to do today include a) going to the UL to think about my Victorian essay, b) buying Reece's birthday present with Alex, c) getting stuff from Boots and wine for the multiple birthday formal tonight, d) going to my GP to confirm that I still have tendonitis, e) handing in said confirmation to the exam authorities, f) doing more work on the Victorian essay, g) going to formal. Also calling my family, to whom I have not spoken for ages. That will probably happen somewhere between f) and g).

- I wish I didn't look forward to "Becoming Jane", the so-called biopic of Jane Austen starring Anne Hathaway, but I am not made of stone. Still, the whole project seemed more awesome when I believed, as I quite seriously did at first, that it was about a modern young American woman (Hathaway) who is transported through time and space to 1800s England, where she finds that she has...BECOME JANE AUSTEN.

You would see that film. Yes, you would.

Someone keeps taking erotic literature out of the "Erotic Literature" section in Borders, and putting it in the "Literary Criticism" section. I believe this is either a) an attempt to shock browsing English students or b) someone wanting to stand in the stacks reading erotic literature, yet appear as though they are reading Harold Bloom (which I'm convinced would be worse for you, anyway). Either way, it's kind of sweet.

Bought a book-length study on the uncanny for fifteen quid, partly because it looks awesome and will probably be useful, partly because I still haven't spent enough on books this year to get the full book grant. Am now going to burrow and read. It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere, etc.

I've now got my Victorian supervisions arranged for Friday mornings, which means my weekend will coincide with the actual weekend for possibly the first time ever. And the Vanity Fair seminar was great, everyone contributing interesting things and a nice, non-show-offy feel to it, which usually takes much longer to develop. It may well be a good term after all.

Walked home from my Victorian seminar at half-past five, after the sun had set, and it was pitch dark; no one seems to have thought to light the Sidgwick site. The University Library was like a lantern, light streaming from the barred windows. For almost the first time it's cold enough to see your breath, and I've reluctantly turned on the radiator in my room.

I was the only person in the seminar besides the lecturer who talked - I think my college makes us used to class participation - and that of course made me feel like a jerk, but I seem to have made an ally anyway, a girl who asked me when the (other, this one compulsory) seminar was tomorrow and then talked after class about how difficult it is to feel as though you're doing anything even vaguely original with the Victorian paper. I said I would have to cultivate an interest in mesmerism; she said she'd try Calvinism.

There are interesting things to say, though, I think, though having just four big essays rather than seven smaller ones means I can't just snatch randomly at any idea that occurs to me. The lecturer mentioned the relation between hair colour and character traits in descriptions of women in Victorian fiction (and I guess more interesting than the "flimsy blonde, rational brunette" setup - which is reversed, anyway, with Becky and Amelia in "Vanity Fair", Becky being blonde and Amelia having light-brown hair - is the fact that women seem to occur in contrasting pairs so often: Becky and Amelia, Dorothea and Rosamund in "Middlemarch", Lucy and Ginevra in "Villette", Mary and Margaret, I suppose, in "Mary Barton". More thinking on this later), which was fortuitous because I'd just been thinking today about how revealing girls' attitudes to their hair are. But my laundry's probably getting soggy so I must go out in the cold and fetch it.

(AND. Caroline and Shirley in "Shirley", obviously. It's interesting how there's no contrast for Jane in "Jane Eyre"; I don't think Adele counts, and there are two Rivers sisters so that doesn't work. Helen is a potential contrast but, interestingly, she dies early on. I wonder if it has something to do with Jane being so self-actualized (horrible word, but I'm in a hurry and can think of nothing better) that she is in a way complete in herself. I remember in the tragedy paper we talked about how the sister of the heroine in Greek tragedy was often a kind of 'alternative', showing how the heroine could've acted but didn't. This is of interest to no one but me at this point, but I'm totally going to write an essay about this.)

LAUNDRY

(I CAN QUOTE VIRGINIA WOOLF, THAT THING ABOUT "CHLOE LIKED OLIVIA", ALTHOUGH IT IS OUT OF PERIOD)

LAUNDRY.

wednesdaylicious

During the "any questions?" part of the DOS meeting, James asked for general advice about the Lent term. Our DOS was quiet for a moment and then said that people generally start to look very pale quite early on, and are sinking fast by week five. "But by week six, they've usually attained clarity and are standing in the light."

It's funny how the course attracts religious imagery, especially the Catholic kind. Supervisions are like catechisms, or sometimes like confession (followed by absolution if you're lucky). Exams are the refining fire, I suppose. The analogy breaks down at graduation, unless you think of the real world as heaven, which I'm not quite prepared to. Of course we're all drama queens and therefore find the idea of being practically encouraged to stress out about work exciting. We stood around in Old Court afterwards discussing it. "Look at us, we're well hard," said Ian. "Hanging outside the chapel."

What I Am Going to Eat Next: raspberries.

How Mary Barton is Going: slightly better than expected. I'm mostly glad I don't have to work as as dressmaker's apprentice for two years for no money in order to be allowed to work for a very small amount of money afterwards. "It just seems like a bad deal," Vicky said. "But it's RESPECTABLE," said Iona, more au fait with the Victorian frame of mind.

What The Weather is Like: sunny. Go, Britain!

I have the world's biggest cup of hot chocolate. The cup is the pink one I'm using for everything - noodles, breakfast cereal, tea - which makes me feel self-sufficient and like a person of few, but vital possessions (I'm not). The hot chocolate is Green and Black's. The chocolate has settled a little, so as I drink it it gets increasingly dark and rich.

And now it's all drunk. ("What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water.")

It's been a nice week, though I'm having difficulty wrapping my mind around term actually starting, which technically I think it did today - but our DOS meeting is tomorrow, and lectures start Thursday, and we Victorianistas don't have our first seminar for another week. Tomorrow is also an informal Engling dinner (as opposed to the formal ones with all the supervisors, which generally end with Will breaking world records for drunk), with just the third-years and some new grad students, and I hope it will be an evening of affectionate light banter rather than (which is perhaps more likely) twitchiness over dissertations and grad-school applications. I'll be making affectionate light banter, even if into thin air. Then Saturday is the "twentieth century" bop, for which I'm being Edwardian: silk camisole, Vicky's lace skirt, pink and black corset. Also, though wearing feather boas for bops is very overdone, it might actually be historically accurate; Elizabeth Robins wore one to play Hedda Gabler. Hmm.

I don't know why, but I wake up almost every night around four - three last night, but then I'd gone to bed a little earlier than usual. It doesn't particularly bother me because I fall asleep again almost right away, but it gives me a little glimpse of that most jarring time of the night. (In Sarah Kane's play "4:48 Psychosis" the main character wakes up every night at 4:48, but that seems too close to morning to be really worrying.) Tonight I woke up sharply after a nightmare about being at a New Year's party, discovering a girl lying in a snowdrift outside, and having to think how to save her. I dropped off again after a little Thackeray (my eyes were so sleep-dry that I had to close one to focus on the text), and had another dream about failing a job interview. Then when I got up in the morning and checked my email, I found that I'd gotten the alumni phone campaign job! I am assuming this means I will NOT find a girl in a snowdrift?

This is becoming Too Long because I am Avoiding Work. The next book up now I've finished Vanity Fair is Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell, which is going to be an orgy of industrialism and labour relations, all set in Manchester of all places. I will be lucky if there's any love story whatever to enliven it.

Off, off -

In which I return to Cambridge.

So. Arrived in town having, on the plane, sat next to two women who were obviously heading for a party weekend in London and were drinking heavily and expensively in anticipation. Unpacked at top speed and went to Vicky's to have dinner with her, Alex and Soleil, then we all went to Ta Bouche for drinks (turns out one of the bartenders makes excellent mojitos, the other one makes very mediocre ones), then I went home in the pouring rain and said good night to Tom and Louisa, who were watching a film and mocked my bedraggled appearance mildly. At least they offered me breakfast cereal in the morning, as I have not been shopping yet.

I am now sleepy. And my hair is still wet. It's one-thirty in Norway; I'm going to bed.

Get out of my subconscious, Bjorn.

I feel like I'm coming down with something - even repeated singing along to 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' isn't perking me up - which would be annoying considering I'm going to Cambridge tomorrow and have been in the bloom of health so far this vacation. Being ill in Cambridge sucks; my room is either too cold (when I've had the window open at some point in the past week) or eye-dryingly warm (when I turn on the heater, which is directly behind the head of my bed), and getting food requires a major active effort. Still, I'm looking forward to going; a change of air and a few Innocent smoothies will do wonders.

I do wonder, tangentially, why bed technology hasn't progressed further; beds are amazing, but frankly they're still suboptimal. I want one with head- and footrests that tilt up and down (I know Hans has a hospital-issue one, but why aren't all of them like that?), and I should be able to set its temperature without having to resort to barbarisms like adding or subtracting blankets. Possibly there should be a massage feature.

Dream in the early hours of the morning: I am on a school trip that never seems to get out of the airport. We have been given an assignment to write a poem about Björn Borg, and I'm taking it quite seriously. The poem I finally write is very good, but our teacher doesn't ask us to hand them in; instead we have to pick one (mine doesn't get picked) and do it as a song and dance. The musical performance turns out great too, but it's still a bitter disappointment.

OKAY, STOP PRESS.

Through an interview with Jan Erik Vold in Dagens Næringsliv (what, I only read it on Saturdays), I have discovered this piece of information: there is a typewriter called the Erika.



It was first produced by Seidel & Naumann, in 1937. I have no reason to believe I was named after it, but I sort of wish I was.

In which the weblog is launched amidst explanations.

So I'm moving the operation from LJ to here, because fundamentally I'm one of those people who compulsively acquires fresh notebooks (which is something else I've done today - a five-subject one with crisp plastic dividers and decent line spacing, oh joy) at the start of a new school term to savour the sense of a new start and infinite possibility. The old Tinsel of Futility is staying up, being as it is a record of the past three years and I might suddenly conceive a hatred of Blogger and have NO WAY OF COMMUNICATING IN MONOLOGUE FORM except going on msn and talking to people who are away. But at the moment I value novelty more than continuity, and I think the new-notebook feeling will make me write more. And thus I become a member of the blogosphere (as I see it, Livejournal is well outside the blogosphere). I find this mildly uncomfortable but clearly I have only myself to blame.

Am going to Kine Henny's musical thingy at Ni Muser and must do something Victorian theatre-related before that rather than just sitting here reading Alice in Wonderland, which is also work, but much less imperative. (As on LJ, I imagine all my posts will end with exhortations to myself to do some work.)