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.