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.