Tokens

I didn't get to the GSA Christmas party last night; instead I ended up massively over-ordering Chinese food (eleven giant dishes for seven people, plus starters and a quantity of espresso to shake us out of our MSG stupors), drinking wine at several pubs, being mocked for my snowflake-shaped reflector, which no one could see the point of at ALL ("Do cars drive on the pavement in Norway?"), and then provided with medallions to keep me safe from bears (a two-pence piece) and lions (a penny, and to be fair I was attacked by neither lions, bears nor cars on the way home), and being told by someone plunked rather heavily in my lap that I had "a silly little face", which on my protests was amended to "a nice little face".

Now I'm gazing at my almost-completed packing while drinking a cup of the tea Sarah got me, full of sodden little blue flowers that drift up to the rim of the cup. Home in twenty-four hours.

God, I miss Green Wing.

we're #1

I was wrong; it was a very cheering class. The results of the Research Assessment Exercise were published today, and York has come out as the top-rated English department in the UK, so our seminar leader - who joined the department in the seven years since the last RAE and must therefore feel at least a bit responsible for our meteoric rise - was very happy, and we had champagne. With the result that some members of the class (not me, I'm not that much of a lightweight) were slightly tipsy by ten in the morning and shouted about how Wilkie Collins doesn't understand women.

I'm oddly proud, and not the least pleased because this has a massive effect on funding for the next seven years, though I'm not sure how much of it will trickle down to Ph.Ds. BUT STILL. And then I was given back my procedural essay and had a very brief supervision consisting of the phrase "it's terrific" and a very long reading list. Whee.

Now over the next two days I need to do laundry and vacuum the floor and wrap gifts and PACK and get the very long reading list out of the library and write more of the next essay and go to two parties. And then I'm coming home.

Better late than never

So I just randomly listened to Oslo Gospel Choir doing "En stjerne skinner i natt" - it was in my iTunes Genius recommendations - and all the Christmas spirit that's completely eluded me over the past month hit me like a truck. OH GREAT, I have class in half an hour and I'm WEEPING A BIT.

and going to class isn't going to improve matters, because we're doing "George Silverman's Explanation", which is a Dickens short story that has no point other than to be sad, and not in the Little Nell sentimental-death-scene way but in the grim, quiet despair sort of way where I don't want to consider the extraordinary use of the first-person narrator but just go "ohhhhh".

At least I'm wearing a dress, because I'm going to the King's Manor Christmas lunch afterwards. That should help a bit.

shall we?

So instead of reading The Moonstone I accidentally spent the evening reading blogs by people who wish they lived in an odd sort of Past Times version of the nineteenth century, with no laudanum and a lot of highly decorated cereal boxes, and I realize that criticizing the militant-homemaker blogs is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I'll stop there.

The perfect antidote, fortunately, turns out to be the Dresden Dolls doing a four-minute intro to "Half Jack". I think it works best if you know the song already, but it's really mostly in the facial expressions.

with but a crystal parapet / between

We were walking back from the library, and he said, "The lake looks frozen."

It did, the thinnest sheen of ice over the black water. "That'll hold our weight," I said. I picked up a stone from the path, went down to the waterside and flung it out, heard it skitter over the ice's surface. "See? I said. "Safe."

"You've woken a goose." Something far out on the lake was making honking noises.

"They deserve to get woken up by me for a change."

(Title from "The Midnight Skaters", by Edmund Blunden, which is otherwise a little dark for today's mood. But lovely.)

Start your day with squids*

I do love deep-sea submersible footage. In this case of unidentified cephalopods. They have huge undulating fins that seem to be how they swim - their arms are long and thin with a sharp, elbow-like bend and look completely ineffectual - and they're beautiful in that oddly horrifying way. The Tiburon footage is the best, I think.

*I do realize that everyone else has been up for hours already. I didn't even go out last night, and yet somehow I slept for eleven hours.

down down down down.

Today there has been waking up to find snow on the ground and my iPod, which was lying by the open window, so cold its batteries had almost gone flat, chocolate tea (from Teapigs, a fine idea in theory and quite good in practice, but I think the base tea they use is too malty), "The Turn of the Screw" in bed, going for a run along the Strays in the sun and melting snow and having my path blocked by an enormous, shaggy-pelted brown cow (actually it had horns, so I suppose it was a bull, but it was placid), copyediting an essay for one of my housemates and being given cookies as a reward, four hours of queer theory, the massive cognitive disconnect brought on by having "I Kissed A Girl" by Katy Perry (yes I own that song, what of it) turn up on my iPod shuffle after four hours of queer theory, dinner comprised of avocado, egg and pasta (sort of blandly delicious mixed together), further chocolate tea in the company of my library buddy, a lot of Brideshead Revisited analogies, some actual reading aloud of Brideshead Revisited, and, now, the Florence and the Machine cover of "I'm Going Down" on repeat.

I have so much reading to do tomorrow that no mortal could possibly accomplish it. But I'm pretty happy.

s-m-r-t part 2

Oh yay, procedural essay done, or only in need of having a few internal contradictions resolved (aren't we all), some infelicitous phrases revised, 150 words pruned and a ton of references tracked down. Then there's MLA formatting (described by one of my lecturers as "a complex and difficult pleasure, like eating blue cheese"), and trying to give the impression that I've read more than one critic, and choosing a title that isn't an incredibly clichéd and inapt Shakespeare quotation. But mostly it's done. I've spoken to one Ph.D student who says the guy who's going to be marking it is ruthlessly honest and will make me cry, and one who says he's quite nice, so I think it's in the hands of fate.

Popular fallacies

Tonight I found out that the use of the word "reification" in conversation will stop a roomful of computer scientists in their tracks with delight. People started coming in from the kitchen, going "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

"I've never had such a positive response to one word before," I said. "Apart from 'sandwiches', possibly."

"Sandwiches. There's a thought."

(Semi-relatedly, it's quite late at night and I've just realized I don't really have any breakfast foods. Soup for breakfast: disgusting? Does the answer depend on what kind of soup it is, and how late I get up?)

From a study carrel in the graduate room, where I have just slagged off T.S. Eliot's opinion on Wilkie Collins's novels, Wilkie Collins's opinion on Wilkie Collins's novels, Freud's opinion on people, and psychoanalysis's opinion on literature in the space of 400 words: A LINK. This one is to the WORDCOUNT project, which tracks every English word that gets used and sorts them by popularity. It does names too; mine is very slightly more popular than "daft", and very slightly less popular than "depicted".

pop cultural briefing

Kate Beaton is being amazing lately. In the second one from the top, panel three, that's basically the facial expression I always imagine on Robin Hood.

Also, fine, whatever, I'll see it.

s-m-r-t

A point I'm actually going to make in my procedural essay, under the heading of "similarities between Miss Havisham in 'Great Expectations' and the Moonstone in 'The Moonstone'" (which isn't the topic of my essay as such but it looks like it'll come up):

- They are both yellow.

This seemed like a really incisive idea before I went for dinner, but now my blood sugar's improved I'm just not sure.

Genio loci feliciter

Yesterday afternoon I ended up in the Yorkshire Museum gardens, where I've never been before, even though they're only two minutes off the main shopping street in York. Close to the entrance was a moss-stained stone tunnel; I stepped inside and saw a little churchyard nook filled with yellow leaves on the other side. It was probably only ten metres away but took a long time to reach. I walked slowly between two rows of sarcophagi that lay against either tunnel wall like broken teeth or shipwrecked sea chests.

Beyond the churchyard was a broken archway, a lawn, a round, sloping depression in the ground and a curved, ruined wall. Five cross-shaped windows cut into it showed gleams of white light. There were more stone containers with yellowing grass growing in them. I sat down on a bench, drank coffee from a paper cup and had that feeling you're always hoping for as a tourist, the sense of not being supposed to be there.

The tunnel and archway turn out to be the undercroft and chapel ruins of the medieval St Leonard's Hospital, and the curved wall is what's left of the Multangular Tower. The whole thing was as close as I've ever gotten to the standard Romantic experience of the sublime (though I suspect for different reasons than that link suggests).

here I go again

In the library again, Sunday night, rain thundering on the skylight, wind howling, fireworks exploding far off, etc. Whispered conversation:
"...the one I really want to do as a panto, though, is Oedipus."
"Obvious choice."
"With the subtitle 'Mamma Mia!'."
And by the time we were done singing in loud whispers, everyone else had left.

Hand-eye coordination

In the college bar, a couple of hours ago. I'm losing badly at pool. My opponent is trying to encourage me, Americanly.
"Are you PLAYING TO WIN?"
"Not really."

"To dwell means to leave traces."

I'm on the lower floor of the King's Manor library, which surprisingly has wireless internet, alternately reading the Arcades Project (which I generally insist on calling "Das Passagenwerk" in an extremely German accent) and BLDGBLOG. They tesselate beautifully.

Note to my mother: I'm going to see "Death of a Salesman" tonight, so sadly won't be available for Skyping until quite late. But I'll ring you when I get in.

I love my work

Ian and I were sitting at the back of the lecture theatre, sharing a Dairy Milk (Ian has a psychological block about vending machines, so I had to be deliberately vague about the provenance of the chocolate) and waiting for Andrew Davies to show up, when Sarah came up to me with tear-tracks on her face. "I just finished "A Tale of Two Cities"," she said. "I need a hug."

In which a pretty good weekend is had

Last night I discovered that if you wear a black lace evening gown to Vodka Revolution on a Saturday night you don't look out of place at all, but small almost-empty pubs where you look ridiculously overdressed are still preferable. Also that going out with someone who's worked as a bartender is excellent because you always end up drinking the best possible thing.

Then today I discovered that the university library, which has only one copy of the Derrida book my entire class needs to read for Tuesday, has two copies of Stephen King's "It". And they don't have Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project in translation, but they do have the book he (Benjamin) wrote about smoking weed. My crush on the library is fading fast. Fortunately tonight it had the asset of containing Ian (the one I went to college with; as ever there is a wealth of people named Ian in my life), and we stayed in the conference area and talked most of the night, then did a token half-hour of work before getting thrown out.

Zeniths and nadirs

The absolutely best part of last night was discovering that John wearing round glasses (Alaina came as John Lennon but ditched the glasses quickly, so they were up for grabs) looks JUST LIKE a younger Rupert Giles. JUST LIKE. I was hyperventilating with joy and had to put my head on my knees. The worst parts were my decision to let someone put the disgusting Scottish energy drink Irn-Bru in my wine (to turn it into "Scottish wine"), and that I lost my feather fan at some point. And in between those extremes it was quite good.

It was also nice to come home to new photos of the puppy, which is still about the size of two apples but is starting to develop real ears and a proper little nose. It's interesting to see something gain mass so quickly. My dad says he thinks it's "still quite cute" in a manner that suggests this is highly controversial.

Now within the next five hours I need to do some work and bestir myself to go out again. Oh the social whirl.

And incidentally

The best thing ever happened a week ago, and I missed it.

(Just how great this is might only be apparent if you know the people involved and really want to hear them pretending to be Satan. Which I do. Fortunately podcasts are on their way.)

Thursday

Today was an early start with my Dickens/Collins seminar, and by dint of instant coffee I was able to remain awake throughout and even say one (1) thing that elicited a characteristic table-slapping reaction of approval from our tutor, in spite of having spent the previous evening partaking of Wii Sports, muddy-looking cocktails, curry and jazz. We discussed love triangles and cannibalism on Arctic explorations, and afterwards the other Victorianists and I wrestled with the photocopier and talked about going here for a class outing. Shaun and I went into town, but failed to sort out either his Halloween costume or his love life (for my part, the Halloween costume at least is DONE. Basically a mass of pink tulle and body glitter, with some fake blood thrown in). I went home and got caught up on "Little Dorrit" via BBC iPlayer - which I'm enjoying, particularly the intense social awkwardness and the ineffectual, very slightly chubby, completely un-Darcyesque Matthew Macfadyen - and then went on a bit of an iPlayer tear and realised that my policy of supporting Richard Armitage's every endeavour means I'm going to have to start watching "Spooks". Now I'm sleepy and pyjamaed and interested only in green tea, "A Tale of Two Cities", and resting up for tomorrow. Happy day-before-Halloween.

the radio alarm clock is set for soon

Not Radio, courtesy of Popjustice. Which reminds me that it's been way too long (that is, several weeks) since I listened to Dragonette's "I Get Around".

y18c

"The makers of clothes, 18 per cent in Whitechapel, become 9 1/2 per cent in St George's, and fall away to 1 per cent in Stepney. The preparers of food and tobacco, 6 1/2 per cent in Whitechapel, become 4 1/2 per cent in St George's, and drop to about 2 per cent in Stepney. On the other hand, the casual labourers, who are 11 per cent in Stepney, stand at 9 per cent in St George's, and fall away to 4 per cent in Whitechapel, and so also with the other classes of labour, except those with irregular pay..."

I am reading Victorian social exploration writing. To be fair, most of it is a lot more colourful than this, all "the white wings of Charity" and "a vast mass of moral corruption, of heartbreaking misery and absolute godlessness". I'm just afraid I'm going to involuntarily memorise the data and have the most useless bank of knowledge ever, especially as I'm doubtful of some of their methodology.

In other news, my phone's predictive text dictionary includes "Y2K", which now seems like an adorably dated concept, though apparently still one I need to be able to text very quickly.

In the York university library (which is constructed like Maslow's hierarchy of needs: arts and music at the top, then humanities on the floor below, then sciences, then vending machines and toilets). On the next desk over someone is reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", which seems to suggest that everyone else here is a highly-paid actor pretending to be a student. Either that or they're taking a break, or studying it for serious purposes. Behind me a stony-looking guy in a vest and tie kicks off his black patent-leather shoes under the desk. Next to me Victoria (another engling) impatiently highlights the title of the text she's read four times now, "What is Enlightenment?". "If I find out, I'll tell you," she promises. In front of me are my books, and above me is a skylight full of cool, white sky.

More on York soon. It's actually awesome here.

Cat person

This is live-blogged using only one hand, as Conrad, Karsten's small, teenaged black cat, is currently asleep on my right arm. From time to time he makes little human-sounding sighing noises. I will never be able to get off the bed at this rate.

Lists not to my credit, cont'd

Phrases recently Googled, with semi-explanatory comments:

- what does being a librarian actually entail [note: I'm too tired to come up with an effective search string, but I just got a temporary job as an actual librarian rather than a manual-labouring library assistant, and I'm not 100% sure what I'll be doing]

- i was a navy seal, we're good at staying dry [misquotation of The Middleman, I think]

- the world loves us and is our bitch [Mclusky song title]

- "biff og dyr champagne" [Åge Alexandersen lyric, obviously]

Lists not to my credit

Advertisements that have made me tear up very slightly:

- "Home is the most important place in the world", the IKEA print ad. (Not the TV ad, which I find unheimlich in the extreme. It reminds me of horror films.) The tearing up occurred on the London underground.

- "I love the whole world" , the Discovery Channel ad. This was just now.

Songs on my iPod whose titles start with the word "Dirty", as discovered when walking home from town on Saturday night (it should be noted that I've transferred fewer than a hundred songs to this iPod so far, so this represents a decent percentage):

- "Dirty Business", the Dresden Dolls

- "Dirty Dream No. 2", Belle and Sebastian

- "Dirty Mind", the Pipettes.

f.r.i.d.a.y.

I haven't written once since getting the new laptop (a thirteen-inch Macbook, very shiny and pristine (I'm not among the mac owners who describe their computers as "sexy", there should be limits to anthropomorphising)), mostly because it's been too hot and I'm not being paid to sit in front of a computer any more. Also now it's getting to be a negative spiral where I keep thinking of things to share with the internet at large, like "I wonder what all my zombie dreams symbolise, considering I'm only vaguely interested in zombies when I'm awake", or "I found those earrings that look like tacky music award trophies in earring form, and I have a superstition that they bring success when I wear them, but they do look quite odd", or "why does this computer emit a tinnitus-type sound when I have earphones in without listening to anything, as if to say 'LIFE IS SHORT, PUT SOME MUSIC ON'", and then not posting them.

In short, though, I'm in Trondheim and very very glad of it. I'm working at the nursing library and pretty glad of that; the sheer nine-to-fiveness appeals to me, plus Karsten's been working there for the past week (not to mention Ellen) and we've been able to do swivel chair dancing to the TIng Tings. I like the heat when it's hot and the rain when it's raining. The immediate and distant future is bright and exciting and the present is a bower of delights, excepting the zombie dreams, and I'm off now to buy ingredients for a blueberry pie to take to a cake and beer party tonight. Thank God it's Friday.

from patisserie row

It'd be ridiculous to have had wireless internet in one's holiday home for two weeks without making a single 'I am in the south of France, liveblogging by the pool' post (well, the wireless is pretty weak by the pool, actually), and yet what's finally driven me to post is the desire to whine. I've been doing comedy sneezing ever since we went canyoning today, and now it's settled into a proper cold and I'm posting boringly from bed.

Canyoning, though! We did this a couple of years ago on our adventure holiday in the Roja valley, and it was kind of fun to get back in the Neoprene. When we were driving upriver I felt on the verge of the vapours, which is much less fetching in a wetsuit than in a corset, but once we hit the water (cold enough that we tried to keep our unprotected hands over the surface as much as possible) I was fine. We swam, scrambled over rocks, leapt from ledges and slipped down waterfalls all the way downstream. And now I have a cold, but it was worth it.

It was also the most exercise I've had in weeks, apart from walking from the house to the pool, swimming a little, and walking from the car to the patisserie. It's been a good vacation. The minute I get home on Sunday, though, it's going to be the library and the gym, and listening to digibooks (little ipod-type things with just one audiobook on them), and writing an audience review for Vicky's play, and generally being useful for about four days before I go to Sweden and dissipate some more.

As for leaving Malory Towers, it was neither anticlimactic nor the reverse, really. The staff members who weren't leaving sang specially written songs to those who were. We went to the scariest-looking of the local nightclubs and discovered it wasn't that scary. I filled two suitcases with my stuff and gave away the rest, had a final coffee at the only Starbucks in town (where I'd attained "your usual?" status two days earlier, annoyingly), and got on a plane for Nice. Since then I've barely thought about it (though I keep having dramatic dreams about resident tutoring, so I think my subconscious is working something out).

This is just to say

This dress just became available again on the Oasis online store, and now it belongs to me, or will as soon as it ships. Yaaaay.

Cam.

Ten good things this weekend, chronologically:

1. When I arrived on Jesus Green it was like walking onto the set of a sitcom after a lengthy hiatus: enthusiastic shouting, getting picked up and twirled around, having beer pressed into my hand, etc. (So even better than a sitcom.)
2. The barbecue was if anything more fun than the one last year, because we had missed each other more, and had learned not to pick up the disposable barbecue and move it while it was still burning.
3. I showed up at Vicky's house the next morning to find Vicky and Bethmo giggling over washing-up; they had apparently had lots of orange juice for breakfast without remembering that they'd poured vodka into it the night before.
4. Enormous pub lunch. With quite bad sparkling wine, which was Reece's idea of a hangover cure.
5. Collective lying by the river at the Mill Pond, watching the punts roll across the lock and eating Tangfastics.
6. Everyone crammed in between the racks in the accessories department of Topman. "Did we just discover nu-rave?"
7. In the Maypole (as ever) Alex, Bethmo and I played a drinking game based on primes and numbers divisible by or ending in seven. I was forced to crush my opposition because it was suggested (nicely) that I wouldn't know primes, so we shouldn't include them in the rules. I suppose I might have had trouble if we'd ever gotten past 23.
8. The next morning I woke to an hour and a half of church bells, and showered while looking out on King's College Chapel and the Old Schools. "I'll never have a view this good again," said Becky, in whose room I was staying. It's a cheering thought that in my case, things can only get better. (My view is of the M4.)
10. Lunch in Mem Court, an afternoon flipping through the racks in Fopp, and an evening working ourselves into a sugar frenzy and watching "Constantine".

And then I woke up on Monday and realised I had to get to work by five. Which I did, and now there are ten days to go and a sea of admin to swim across. Then it's France and proper swimming.

I miss everyone now, and also the town itself; it's unlikely I'll be back for a while. But I'll have a new university town in October, and it was an excellent final weekend.

Sunday morning dream

...having gone back to bed after spending the night camping on the sports field with the upper third: I am still camping, but this time with the cast of "Zodiac", who are in full 70s costume, drinking Aqua Velva, etc. I'm explaining my idea for a musical.

"It's about this high school," I say, and one of them interrupts me: "That just sounds like 'High School Musical'."
"No no, there's a twist. Mine has ghosts in it."
"That's still JUST LIKE 'High School Musical'." Extremely disdainful. "You do know that everyone in that turns out to be a ghost?"

I think this is not-keeping-up-with-youth-culture guilt because I've never actually seen "High School Musical", as became clear when everyone was singing the soundtrack to it at the campfire on Saturday. I did, however, know a depressing amount of the lyrics to S Club 7's "Reach For The Stars".

In the category of "I can do links and I'm GOING FOR IT", these are lovely. Oddly enough, this one looks most appealing right now. It's summer, and I just want to go to sleep somewhere heavily air-conditioned.

Eight days until the Cambridge Unofficial Reunion Barbecue, the only barbecue in England with its own tagline (the tagline is "because so many things are flammable"). The barbecue is also an experiment in how much you can hype up an event before it becomes an automatic letdown. Previous casualties of such experiments include the Party On A Boat last summer, in which we all fled the boat before it left the dock. (Incidentally, in a couple of weeks I'm going to a party on a boat for school purposes, and it looks like it might be the same boat as last time, or at least the same company. I wonder if I can get out of it by pleading near-certain being sick.)

Cold.

I've just discovered yr.no and am gently fascinated. Currently watching it scroll through the weather over the next forty-eight hours at the Troll research station in Antarctica. It cycles between about minus 28 and minus 15.

(and I just realised it's the new millennium and I actually can do links.)

The week in music

- Sang "Die Fresche Lola" with Kine in various locations around London, at least the two lines or so we could remember (something something Pianola zu Hause in meine Salong).
- Became addicted to "Pon De Replay" years after everyone else, and spent a lot of time walking to and from various events in flipflops, listening to it on earphones. (Trondheim was much more summery than England is; it's chucking it down and I can in no way wear flipflops. On the upside, my hair has reacted to the moisture by becoming awesome.)
- Listened to Swedish reggae at Storås and was delighted. During a vaguely romantic song someone in the audience tossed a purple tulip up to the singer, Syster Sol; she sang the rest of the song in his direction.
- Playing Scrabble in Vegard's new apartment, we decided that if Amy Winehouse doesn't end up doing the new Bond theme (unlikely now that the Cambridge English tripos (or possibly just Eric Griffiths) has taken her into its arms), it should just be a half-speed version of "Moskau" by Dschingis Khan.
- We went to the Futureheads concert in Cambridge mostly for the support band, Operator Please. Once the Futureheads had done "Hounds of Love" we pushed our way out of the crowd, then danced for a few songs in the unaccustomed space in front of the bar before leaving. (Incidentally, the bar at the Junction is not great; the beer was terrible and they kept carding us, unwilling to believe that if Becky's identical triplet sister was over 18 then Becky must be as well. "They're the same! The same!" we shouted, pointing at Olivia and Becky in turn.)
- We got back to Old Court and sat quietly in the bar for a while, Becky and I swaying gently to "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots". "This is a joke song, right," said Vicky.

In which horses run free

Last night there was some sort of fence malfunction and the horses got out. (Malory Towers is a fairly fancy school, and among its features is a pasture with horses in it, or, as last night, out of it.) They didn't get far, it was all dealt with very professionally and was not really worrisome, but you haven't heard hysterical shrieking until you've been in a house full of eleven-year-olds witnessing Horses On The Loose. It was as if we were in Jurassic Park and the raptors had broken free.

This morning I went up to the house to wake the children and the horses were back in the pasture, looking sedate. It was a quarter to seven in the morning and sunny, the cool night air slowly warming through, dew-damp cow parsley on all sides. It does get nice here, maugre my complaining.

(I've been using the word "maugre" at a rate of .75 times a week for the past month or so, and I've only now bothered to check that it actually means "notwithstanding; in spite of".)

I should do something research-oriented, like read "Emma". Thing is, I really don't like it very much; it's probably my least favourite Austen, beating "Sense and Sensibility" (which is not nearly enough like the Emma Thompson film) and "Mansfield Park" (which I actually don't mind; I think Fanny Price is unfairly maligned by critics).

Oh, I'm becoming one of those internet people who write quite a lot about Jane Austen. I do promise, though, never to refer to her or any 19th-century female writer by her first name, all chummily. Even if, as in the case of Charlotte Brontë, she can be confused with her sisters and has a last name with a difficult-to-locate symbol in it.

"I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable."

Today was improved by this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFrFhwMQMXg

I was going to do a paragraph on how weird that part in "Persuasion" is where the narrator starts effusing about the landscape of Lyme, and how at first I thought that was because Austen's scope ("that little bit of ivory (two inches wide) on which I paint with so fine a brush") is so limited that even the slightest divergence from it stands out as odd, but now I think it has to do with the author obtruding her opinions into the narrative. Which I think is similar to what happens earlier on, when the narrator describes the Musgroves' no-good son who dies at sea, and is extremely harsh about him and his grieving mother for no obvious narrative or thematic reason. It's the sort of thing I think I might need biographical details to explain: were no-good young sailors with poor spelling skills a feature in Austen's life? Was she just upset that day? Were all the other books full of this sort of thing before she revised them? (But surely she did revise "Persuasion" before she died.)

But then I thought that might be boring. So you get a meta-paragraph instead.

Wobbly

Among the classic signs that you are due a vacation is suddenly realising that you've been making unhappy little moaning sounds while checking your email, in public. It will be okay, though. I'm glad my job doesn't normally involve a lot of overnight duties, as it does this week. My real issue with it is sort of illogical - it's not the prospect of being woken up, it's that I'm bothered by the idea of being in any sense useful to society or my workplace while I'm sleeping.

But it's just a night or two this week, and then from Saturday it's half term and London shenanigans with Kine and, Avinor strike permitting, Norway. In the meantime, I have vertigo of the body and spirit and should go and lie down.

In which patriotism surfaces

It's the 17th of May and I'm in England, feeling, as I usually do, the urge to make bitter comments to my uncaring surroundings about how I should be waving a flag and watching the russ going increasingly green and not in ENGLAND, WORKING. Which none of them will get because they all work on their own national holiday. It's one of those dull grey English days, too.

Thing is, the last 17th of May I spent in Norway was probably as good as it gets - it was the last year of high school, and I had not been particularly russish so didn't have a hangover, and I had finished all my exams but one and was wearing an amazing fifties dress, and we went about singing with uncritical enthusiasm and wore floral garlands in our hair and struck "look to the future" poses in all photographs.

Today that will be my little brother, though possibly with less flowers and more of a hangover. Which is also nice.

It's been too long since

- the last time I heard someone describe their biceps as "the gun show", as in "would you like to buy a ticket for the gun show". (Actually, it was about two weeks ago, and now that I think about it the person saying it might have been me.)
- the last time I saw Iron Man. I wish more of my nearby acquaintance found this sort of thing delightful. When I saw it before the person I was with fell asleep while Robert Downey, Jr. was supersonically paralysed and getting his nuclear-reactor heart pulled out of his chest.

The internet works, temporarily! This is really cutting down on my Wednesday Night Annoyance.

Victory, ish

I just realised I never heard anything from Warwick, and in a spirit of idle curiosity I called up to see what had happened. And apparently the English department recommended me for a place almost a month ago, and they were unhappy, but not exactly surprised, that the admissions people hadn't let me know yet. "They're having problems down there," they said. "We've definitely lost you, haven't we." "Yeah, sorry," I said.

Now I feel sort of bad for them, not specifically for missing out on me in my dubious glory, but because I imagine this happens to them a lot. Or maybe not; I would've called ages ago if Warwick had been a big priority.

I had a good touristy day in London yesterday - I occasionally have to remind myself that I am in London and it is an exciting metropolis, because otherwise I just sink into the embrace of Borders and the latest Louise Bagshawe novel or something. Instead I had lunch on Southbank, then hung around Foyles for about two hours reading a collection of gothic short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell that I hadn't realised existed, The Idler, the legendarily awesome personals section of the London Review of Books, and "The Ice Palace" by Tarjei Vesaas. Which last is terrifying even in translation and on a warm, sunny day.

Finally I bought a very cheap copy of Wuthering Heights and headed to Trafalgar Square, where I was photographed by tourists who possibly thought I was a genuine London person. ("We're bona fide! We're not from London!") Wandered about the National Gallery for a bit and was delighted by Alison Watt's Phantom paintings, then went to Covent Garden for ice cream (others had had the same idea and there was only one flavour left, so I had chocolate and chocolate).

After which I went to take the tube and through inattention ended up on the Covent Garden Station Staircase to the Underworld. This is a 191-step winding staircase that according to a sign at the bottom is only supposed to be used in emergencies; I didn't realise this until I'd been heading down for a good few minutes and couldn't hear either the street above or the trains below. The Underground is creepy enough as it is, and there's nothing like a winding staircase to make distances seem interminable. I emerged to find myself in a perfectly normal tube station rather than actually in Hades, and took myself to Oxford Circus, where I sank into the embrace of Borders and the latest Louise Bagshawe novel.

Summer!

Large amounts of tapas, whining and sangria last night, almost sleeping through a fire drill, actually getting up and going for a run this morning, supposedly non-drowsy hayfever pills, muggy heat: in the words of one of the Moomintroll books, I am almost dead beat on tired little feet. Also, and probably not coincidentally, I've become one of those young urban professionals whose coffee order in Starbucks (tall skinny extra-shot iced vanilla latte) takes longer to pronounce than to drink. Still, none of this tiredness is actually work-related, so it's all cool.

My current targeted advertisement on gmail says "Do you deserve a Ph.D?". STOP IT GMAIL.

Woo, ligatures

So I was trying to type the word "dæmon", for Philip Pullman-related reasons, and as none of these primitive keyboards have the letter æ I went to the Wikipedia article "Æ" to copy and paste one, where I learned that "Æ can be used in written communication by two people who are in love as a dual number pronoun, replacing "we" and "us"".

It's citation needed, which probably means it's rank nonsense, but still fairly cool in terms of the Future Thesis. I should read up on dual number pronouns. IT'S ALL RELATED.

(The last time I saw Vicky she narrated Joan of Arc's trial transcripts for me, then said that if it wasn't for the fact that she was doing an M.Phil about it, she would just be a crazy person obsessed with medieval witch trials. That seems to be how it works.)

[this will only make sense to] ELLEN

Flipping through dagbladet.no, I have learned that "Don't Say A Word" is on TVNorge tonight.

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY.

Yay! Ow.

Things you almost never see, unless you live where I do: two boarding school girls sitting in the sun making daisy chains while discussing whether they would be Crips or Bloods.

In spite of all my whining, this weekend is so far officially Not That Bad. I've been on house duty for six hours with two to go, and since it's a hot, sunny day I've spent most of it outside reading "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall". (I decided I ought to read some Brontë of the non-Charlotte variety and couldn't find "Wuthering Heights", so I'm stuck with the longest framing narrative in history. It's sort of charming, though.) On going inside I realised that my arms were properly sunburned. In APRIL. It's odd how difficult it is to switch into "oh no, crumbling ozone layer and prematurely aged skin" mode and out of "woohoo, tan!" mode.

Woohoo, tan!

your Thursday contrasts

Deeply bored and not a little annoyed (unreasonably perhaps) at:

- The prospect of my weekend. I've been working on this fashion show for the past two terms and now I'm not even going to see it, because I'm going to be on house duty. Well, at least I get to go to the after-party and make sure the models don't drink all the champagne. And I'm not going to be freezing in a field.

Delighted by:

- York, still. I'm in the infatuation phase and fixating on minutiae. I like the giant lake in the middle of campus and the bridges that let you cross from college to college. I like that there even is a campus. I like the long dissertations (though I might not in a year's time). I really like the Norwegian Study Centre and am going to turn up there ALL THE TIME demanding brown cheese.
- Dorothy Parker, mostly because just writing the word "champagne" above is making my brain go "Three are the things I shall never attain: envy, content, and sufficient champagne".

Leaves of Salad

In my dream last night, someone was showing me their PhD dissertation, which was written on (the subject of) Famous Brothers-in-Law in History, and written on (literally) salad leaves. You read, or I suppose experienced, the dissertation by putting a salad leaf with the name of a famous brother-in-law on it on each shoulder, like cap sleeves. There was also a short explanatory paper booklet, mostly full of unrelated quotations. "This is brilliant," I told the guy whose work it was, but in fact I was astonished at what passed for a PhD these days.

Yes yes fine I should just start a separate dream blog.

I accepted the York offer today. Am excited and ready to go for it. Psychoanalytic theory + feminist theory + Victorian poetry + Adam Phillips possibly explaining Lacan to me IN PERSON (possibly), all in a matter of months.

Amazing II

This is my hundredth post, and I'm going to spend it pointing out that they're making a film of the first Georgia Nicolson book. I am a) thrilled yet b) concerned that it will fall drastically short of my expectations. Probably "benignly indifferent" would be a more appropriate reaction for someone who is twenty-two and not fourteen, but there you have it.

After excitedly deciding last night to go on a Northern University Tour of Durham and York on my day off, I have in the cold light of day decided not to, as it will cost a hundred pounds and take ten hours on the train (five forth, five back). It wouldn't make much difference, anyway. I've basically settled on York, and I just need to drink a giant mug of coffee (massively undercaffeinated this morning), think it through one more time, and then send in the accommodation application so I can live in Wentworth College.

Amazing

This Saturday, it is literally my job to go to the cinema and see "Step Up 2: The Streets".

Concerns

I'm actually a little worried that Second Life will become a huge, all-encompassing thing, and that I'll be left out. Most of it just seems meaningless and/or pointless to me, even though it clearly has lots of meaning for others. I think it has to do with not being very visually or spatially oriented, because I'd love it if it was more or less text-only, but obviously that would defeat the point for most users.

Possibly the problem is that my computer is so slow at the moment that I can just imagine how slowly SL would run on it, and the very idea makes me shudder.

In other issues, does Olaug Nilssen's use of the basically untranslatable song lyric "Jeg vil ut! Jeg må ut! Jeg skal ut og drikke meg full!" as an epigraph for "Få meg på, for faen" qualify as the best epigraph ever? (I think picking the epigraph would be the best part of writing almost anything, though I've only had a chance to do it once, for a dissertation. The difficulty would be showing some restraint, rather than having five or six from various cultural levels like Stephen King tends to.)

&

Funding applications are done (and I'll need them, as apparently I'm paying overseas fees this year. Am not seriously considering a marriage of convenience for home status). The magazine contest entry is hopefully winging its way to the UK. I have NO OUTSTANDING PROJECTS.

Although I did go up to Dragvoll today to have lunch with Maren and Hans, breathe in some fungal spores and take advantage of the ultra-permissive lending policy. I do like it there; I'm glad they haven't dropped it all into Dødens Dal like they were planning to. I ate lunch in the sun among pine trees and clots of snow, read Gilles Deleuze and drank lots of fairtrade coffee. Then on the way home I went by H&M and bought earrings with ampersands on them. This has been such a good vacation.

maybe even a 9 and a half, in four beers' time

Tiiiiiiired. I now understand why, traditionally, one only goes out two nights in a row. But it's been worth it for the full Trondheim weekend experience. Thursday night was dedicated to brothel-esque sofas and red lighting effects in Supa. Friday night was Storås and possibly the best night of dancing I've ever had - quite a lot of the old standby where everyone dances in a circle and takes turns to go into the middle and do something exciting, but with none of the awkwardness that usually accompanies this. Also unselfconscious air guitars, unselfconscious swing dancing with friends and strangers, and unselfconscious shouting of lyrics (primarily to "Should I Stay Or Should I Go", "Hold The Line" and "Fit But You Know It"; the lyrics to the latter are apparently stored deep in my limbic system). Then yesterday we went to Samfundet, but I was pretty sleepy by midnight and went home at half-past one. The most notable event was two guys insisting that I was Silje from Pop Idol, which googling confirms was a mere ploy, as I look nothing like her. I think it would have been a more effective ploy if I had been more awake, because as it was I just went "what. Whaaaaaat? ...Excuse me" rather than playing along and maybe singing something.

Trondheim has been lovely for the past couple of weeks; I hardly want to leave. But I'm spending the weekend in Cambridge eating Italian ice cream with Becky and Vicky on Castle Hill, so that will be okay too. And on my VERY NEXT day off I'm going to York (which will take 3.5 hours by train, but whatever) to look around and plan the future.

Future plans on a micro-scale: library, coffee.

In which development is embraced

The Biggest Mall has just opened in the sleepy hamlet where I live. This is exactly the sort of town where flinging up a multi-story carpark and shining banks of high-street shops is a vast improvement. I spent an hour there this morning in pre-consumerist bliss; money can possibly not buy happiness, but the prospect of spending it is definitely cheering.

Application of the day: Warwick, where the modules turn out to be perfect for me. Going just by the course layout, that's where I should go.

Bizarre dream of the day/night: Chris Onstad stopped writing Achewood. The last thing he posted was an announcement that he was just going to end it now, without tying up any storylines. I was (possibly disproportionately) shocked and saddened.

gasp!

I woke up about forty-five minutes ago in spectacular bolt-upright-in-bed fashion, thinking "SUMMER JOB". This was after a dream in which I was working in a church, making breakfast for a group of schoolchildren by dividing giant brioches, rolls and muffins into quarters. Of course, the message to take from this dream could just as well be "BREAKFAST".

I feel a disconnected-points entry coming on.

- For the CV: I am able to tell from the slightest of clues who the romantic interest in a chick-lit novel is going to be. (Sometimes it's not very difficult. But I've only been wrong once, and that was out of wishful thinking because I found the actual romantic interest so deeply boring.)

- A shopping experience I find disproportionately delightful is when they do a No.7 giveaway at Boots. I bought some powder and blusher, and got an excellent little jewellery box full of baby-sized beauty products for "free". Yaaay pink grapefruit-coloured nails and cotton candy-flavoured lips.

- The Dublin application is underway. I'm hoping it can get to them within a week, passport photo and Electronic Funds Transfer and transcripts and proposal and references and all (the references are the limiting reagent, as they need to get to Cambridge and back). I am at the waking-up-from-stress-dreams point of the endeavour. Hate application season, but it's all over soon.

- Back to the icy wastes on Easter Sunday!

In which stimulants are available

This morning, accompanying one of the girls, I found myself in a dentist's reception that had, next to the usual coffee-maker, a full bar with high-end gin, whisky, vodka, wine and ouzo. I had, and have, absolutely no idea what to make of this. (I had three cups of coffee with no intriguing mixers; it was excellent.)

Beep.

I'm on house duty, in a different house from my usual one, where the fire alarm started malfunctioning around four this morning and hasn't been fixed yet. It goes off randomly and loudly for a few seconds or half a minute, then stops. Sometimes you can make it stop temporarily by pressing a button, but not always. I feel like I'm being experimented on. (The experiment would show that when irritated, the subject writes a blog post.)

In which plans are made

In an instance of great minds thinking about clothes too much, I spent a conservatively estimated hour last night thinking of what to wear for various events this week, without even having read Ellen's entry on conferencewear. I probably can't match my outfit to my binder, but as the conference I'm going to doesn't require me to advance my career so much as to serve tea and dispense charm, I think I can get away with it.

For charm and tea duty, I'm going to wear: my full black skirt with a black and white polka-dot scarf as a belt, white Victorian-type shirt, grey blazer, black Victorian-type shoeboots, pearl earrings.

For post-management conference drinks and dinner, I'm going to wear: a black empire-line cocktail dress, pewter-coloured heels, grey blazer, pearl cluster earrings (nothing like the other ones).

For the completely unrelated Golden Age of Hollywood ball this weekend, I'm going to wear: a different black dress with the polka-dot scarf as a sash, a little grey cardigan, black patent-leather heels, all the pearls I can find.

(As this suggests, my work wardrobe is close to being perfectly monochrome; the main elements of colour are my Hello Kitty socks, and I only wear those around the house. I'm not sure whether to amend the situation or just go with it.)

So I'm self-indulgently listing outfits because staff shortages have landed me on Guarding the Children duty for hours and hours tonight, as well as Waking the Children duty tomorrow. My other sources of amusement are reading Emily Post online, wondering whether to eat some chocolate, and working up nerves about universities.

I have become British

I care what happens to Owen on Torchwood. They should just go ahead and grant me permanent residency status.

Reasons I would not make a good teacher, part 1

I am terrible at telling off students. Actually, no, I'm quite good at telling off students who are being noisy or insubordinate; I'm only terrible if they've done something I'd be likely to do myself, such as forget/procrastinate for weeks about setting up a meeting. I just assume they feel terrible and am reluctant to add to it.

This time I could just barely bring myself not to sign off with "thanks" or "best wishes", which the recipient, not being me, may not even notice.

Slippery

Ha HA. After a lot of tweaking, editing, and telling myself sharply not to use the word "interpenetration" in a personal statement, application number 2, to King's, is IN. My eggs are officially distributed in multiple baskets. Four to go.

What's much less painful, and in fact sort of worryingly enjoyable, is the piece I'm writing for a fashion journalism contest. I'm being fairly earnest about it, tracking down historical and cultural precedents, psychologising, considering far-fetched literary references, etc. It's pleasingly similar to writing a supervision essay, except about accessories. Whee.

Met Iona in London yesterday and was, once again, the recipient of free stuff merely by trailing in her wake, in this case a hair consultation and hair products. "You have to stop me if it looks like I'm about to buy something," she said. "We should have a signal for if it looks like it's a kidnapping ring," I said, flapping my arms like chicken wings. "Like this." In the end it was not a kidnapping ring and we were not ripped off, but I was completely put off the Pantene shampoo and conditioner I usually use. Apparently "it doesn't actually improve the hair, it just coats it and makes it slippery". I can't rationally see anything wrong with that, since hair is as far as I know dead organic matter that doesn't need to be fed or nourished, but now I can't stop thinking about my hair being coated with all manner of unpleasantness. Nnngh.

In which Diet Coke disappoints

I'm in one of the houses at the top of the hill as part of my Sunday House Duty Extravaganza, and there's a cupboard full of leftover soda cans, so I'm drinking a Diet Coke. It's not at all a pleasant experience, possibly because its expiry date is coming up, and I should stop.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was surprisingly fun. I spent the interval of gymnastics/dance/synchronised swimming show opening and pouring about fifteen bottles of wine in quick succession, which is fun if only because it makes the people getting the wine so happy, then changed and went to what turned out to be a bright-pink Valentine-themed social. (My accidental concession to the theme was a belt with heart-shaped studs.) We were supposed to be an unobtrusive staff presence, which proved tricky because the staff table was on the stage and spotlit. Finally we just got them to turn off all the stage lights and sat eating coffee mints and drinking wine in the semi-gloom. Most of us also heroically refrained from dancing, which is good because I really don't think the kids like it. The boys generally get very overwrought and ask every female member of staff to dance (we firmly shake our heads), but even so there's always a sense that universes are colliding.

And today is the most springlike day so far this year; the air actually smells of flowers. Sadly, I'm spending most of it inside on House Duty Extravaganza. I can't wait until summer, when house duty will mean lying on the lawn and occasional frisbee-throwing.

In which I am what I eat

It's not so much a goal as an inevitability: one day in the not too distant future, all the food I eat will be twee. I will consume nothing that does not have a philosophy, a charity, and a blog (http://www.superjam.co.uk/blog.html, http://www.todaywasfun.com/newsletters/jan08.htm, http://innocentdrinks.typepad.com/). I will eat Dorset cereal, drink Innocent smoothies, and imbibe a splendidly ridiculous array of tea. Though I may have to go vegetarian until some company figures out a way to make meat twee.

Most of the time I quite like this development, though once last year I was hanging out in Vicky's room while she wrote a review of a Corinne Bailey Rae CD, necessitating listening to it over and over, and we couldn't figure out what was getting on our nerves until we realised that it was basically the auditory version of an Innocent smoothie.

In general, I am okay. What I'd like most at the moment is to do something nature-related and physically strenuous, like skiing or, I don't know, working on a vegetable patch. I watched a polo practice yesterday and suddenly realised that riding actually looks like fun, though I could do without the giant mallets. It's you and a random, huge animal, working in tandem!

Failing any of this, I'd like to watch some Green Wing. NONE OF MY DREAMS CAN COME TRUE.

fix my ignition

London! Iona and I got one headache apiece in various overheated department stores, got free coffees at Pret (because Iona has "a nice smile"; however on my way home the guy at the AMT stand was intensely flirtatious - "Where are you going?" "[Name of town]" "I bet they love you there" - so it all balanced out), participated in a market survey and probably made the Filofax marketing board cry by describing it as a staid brand for middle-aged people, considered the purchase of fake cherry-blossom branches where the flowers light up, and sat on the floor in Borders debating which Disney films were best (The Lion King, The Little Mermaid). When Ella got off work after an entire day of photocopying, we all went for fairly posh hamburgers and chilli fries, followed by G&Ts. The G&Ts were consumed listening to Datarock's "Fa Fa Fa", which was incongruous but delightful in a British pub.

It was very good to see them both, and reassuring in a way that going to Cambridge isn't always - they're in the same sort of situation as me, and also it somehow seems important to confirm that university people exist outside the university setting.

Cloverfield: I liked it; they could have afforded to be even more naturalistic with the script, but in general it felt like a standard-issue monster film with (most of) the annoying parts taken out. And in spite of any number of chocolate-coated brazil nuts, I didn't feel sick until I got out into the parking lot, at which point I weaved about dizzily.

In which there is no kind of atmosphere

The away game was not cancelled and I did end up in a field, watching us lose to an extremely polished international school. It was very windy, and I was reading on a metal bench, getting colder and colder (in spite of wearing the Ultra-Scarf and more or less all the other warm clothing I own). If I can't avoid being sent on outdoor sporting events until it gets slightly closer to spring, I'm going to have to either buy a little tent to sit in or, as a last resort, develop team spirit and jump up and down on the sidelines.

As for what I was reading, I've discovered a rich vein of Austenian pastiche in the library, and am loving it far too much. The one I've just finished is about Darcy and Elizabeth's five daughters, and is set in London, which I quite like (I think Northanger Abbey is one of my favourites because it's not all countryside, all the time). The plot is more or less the same as that of Pride and Prejudice, which means you have to accept that at least half of Darcy and Elizabeth's children are dumb as rocks. But once you do, it's lovely and a great comfort in near-hypothermic situations.

Going shopping in London tomorrow with Iona and possibly Ella, yay. And to see Cloverfield tonight, once I get off house duty. Will report back as to whether I throw up (I've never been to a film before that has an official motion-sickness warning).

När helvetet kom till byn

Danskar i affären: Yesterday I was on my way out of M&S in town, having gone upscale with my food shopping, when I heard two Scandinavians discussing whether some item of clothing made them look unnecessarily middle-aged (they were shopping in the wrong place if they wanted to avoid that). One woman spoke Swedish, the other spoke foreign-accented but recognisable trøndersk. I quite wanted to ask them how they'd ended up there. The idea that this town has a tourist industry unsettles me.

We had a lot of interview candidates in yesterday, and one of them came up to talk to me in the staff room, saying, "You look happy". Which in turn did make me happy. I suspect if it had happened today I would just have been annoyed, as I am tired, cabin-fevery and want nothing more than a bath. Also for tomorrow's away games to be cancelled so I don't have to take a minibus and sit in a field. And one of those warm salads from Pizza Express with the dough balls.

Norway in a week! The fact that I felt driven to reference En himla många program repeatedly in this post must mean I'm homesick.

the week in review

After the migraine on Monday I thought my head was going to be a calm sea for at least a month, so I was pretty surprised to get another one this morning. It was over in an hour, after which I had lunch and a bar of chocolate (for medicinal purposes - incidentally, I quite want to lobby to replace the school's Nestlé vending machine with a Cadbury's one; I feel we're getting subpar and morally inferior chocolate), and now I feel reasonably good. Slightly worried, though. I don't want these things to get any more frequent.

Neurological events excepted, it was a good short leave. Cambridge was lovely though brief; Sam and I found a bar we'd never been in before and had ice cream cocktails, then as we walked back the sun was setting behind King's in a rosy blaze, you know the kind of thing, and I was all "look! look!" Sam looked; I gestured at the sky. "Oh. I thought you were talking about the Mercedes." I think Cambridge inures you to it.

Vicky's plays were terrifying, although going out with the actors afterwards helped. We sat outside, without heat lamps (though heat lamps always make me want to go to sleep, which is probably dangerous outside a pub in January); we were all quite wrought-up and giggled a lot and promised ourselves that we would never throw an engagement party in the Maypole, which is what the people inside the pub were doing. The next morning I went to London, where my mother and I were unexpectedly amused by "Un Chien Andalou", ate a lot of ice cream, and failed to find the King's College library. (Upon investigation, there are tons of them, all scattered around town.) And I read "The Interpretation of Murder", which made me feel much more charitable towards Freud than I usually do. (Mostly what annoys me is how confident he always seems about his conclusions, all "ta-daaah!" I admit this is a little petty.)

Since then I've finished watching "Friday Night Lights", which makes being married to a football coach, having a child with preternaturally straight hair, and living in Texas look really, really appealing, and started rereading "Border Crossing". Pat Barker, write more books.

Application for a deus ex machina

Am suddenly struck by nerves, as if I have to hurry up and get myself sorted out RIGHT NOW, which isn't really the case, logically. The sad thing is, I think it's probably traceable to nearly having finished the final season of Gilmore Girls. I feel like if Rory is going off into the future, so should I. Actually, as yet Rory doesn't have a plan, but there's only about half an hour left and I think Christiane Amanpour is going to act as a deus ex machina and get her a job.

So I started looking at Trinity College Dublin, because apparently they have lots of Ph.D funding (I'm not actually thinking about a Ph.D at the moment, it's more of a what-if), and huh, it looks exciting. All - well, an unusual percentage of - their researchers are obsessed with horror and new gothic! I've picked out one who might be a suitable supervisor! It would have to be a research course because none of their taught courses suit me, but that might be a good thing anyway.

It is in Dublin, which is nowhere I've ever really thought about living, and which would put me even further away from people I know. I was there with Ellen on the great interrail trip, though, and I liked it, especially their beautiful Harry Potter library (possibly not its real name). It might be worth a try. Being a plane trip away or a four-hour train ride away like I would be in Durham, das ist mir egal, as Karsten would say.

I'm going to have to buy my referees so many chocolates to make up for adding another school at this point.

I'm sorry this has turned into the Further Education Weblog, but writing all this down seems to help. Also there is not much else going on. Oh, I ran for half an hour this morning, but am still no closer to beating my record of 46 minutes in hilly terrain. Maybe if I got a bigger water bottle.

Huh

Upon Googling: Iffley College actually exists. Or it used to. It was the original name of Wolfson College, an obscure (to me) graduate college in Oxford.

In which puppies are rebuffed

Last night was the ball, and I had a lovely time, although I'm not sure the weeks of practice were entirely justified - in some of the dances I thought I knew I ended up having to be flung in the right direction by my partner and assorted bystanders, and ones I'd never managed successfully, like Strip the Willow, suddenly made perfect sense. At dinner I ate my first haggis, which was spicy and not at all bad, probably because I purposely didn't stop to think about what it was made of. Around midnight the entire hall was bellowing the lyrics to "God Save the Queen", including me. I like to think I still have Norway loyalty and was merely swept up in the moment.

Most importantly I didn't have to change from my heels to my less-attractive back-up shoes, and my dress held up well, at least until I arrived at the staff after-party and two puppies of indeterminate breed launched themselves at the lacy hem. I *think* it survived. (The hem. The puppies were fine, and we spent the rest of the evening petting them and drinking g&ts.)

Today I woke up very slowly, watched Gilmore Girls in bed, had a bath, and went to seek out coffee and glossy magazines. I also took one of history's worst passport photos, which I will nevertheless have to use so I can get a new travelcard tomorrow. Never again a photobooth when I haven't had much sleep.

Everyone is finding out the results of their PGCE interviews (the postgraduate qualification for teachers); suddenly it weighs on me a little that I probably won't know anything definite about my future for months. I dreamed about interviewing at Oxford (which I won't actually have to do), but rather than either of my chosen colleges I'd ended up somewhere called "Iffley College". I had huge difficulty imprinting this in my mind, and kept thinking, God, I can't even remember the NAME of the place. Then suddenly I was at the local university in the town where I'm living now. It seemed oddly idyllic in the dream, all golden fields of wheat and bridges over streams, when in reality it is essentially a construction site.

Less than a week until Short Leave. Very much looking forward to Vicky's avant-garde play, the probably slightly less avant-garde party after the play, and Sunday and Monday in London with my mother. I should buy an overnight bag.

Keys

In the dispensary in House there is a key cupboard that holds the keys to everywhere in the house. The key cupboard is locked with a key of its own, so that no one can, for instance, get the keys to the kitchen on their own and make unauthorised toast. This uber-key is kept in one of two locations: a secret one, and one that everyone knows about because they see me remove the key from it all the time. The secret location is used for occasional added security, and when the key is removed from it, the girls have to be sent out of the room first. I did this just now.

I quite like these traditions that accumulate like coral on workplaces.

In which desires conflict

It's still raining. A good percentage of the roof area near where I'm sitting is made of glass, so it sounds like we're being attacked by the sky. However, I have about an hour until my next engagement, and I really, really want to go and get a latte. (From Costa. The new coffee shop in town, which I had such hopes for, turns out to do the worst coffee I've ever had, which might have been my own fault for ordering it "skinny", but Starbucks manages it and they're not even very good with coffee.)

I think it's easing up. I'm off. But not before warning you that if anyone ever asks you to invigilate a national exam, as I've been doing this morning, you may not want to do it. They don't let you read anything except the official instruction booklet, and you get very twitchy about being accused of endangering the exam every time your chair scrapes.

Also, I saw "P.S., I Love You" yesterday. I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan is just going to make a career out grinning adorably on film now, which is not the worst of plans. Apart from that, I would not necessarily recommend it. Everyone should see "Sweeney Todd" instead; there's no way that won't be good.

ETA: Blogroll now contains a link to Ellen's actual blog. And I got my coffee, at the cost of becoming only quite damp.

Thursday list.

No mind for connecting clauses today, hence list form. ("Hence" might be a connecting clause.)

- It's not nearly as cold as I'd anticipated here; it is, however, raining hard. I wear my red raincoat around school and feel very conspicuous in the mass of navy.
- We are allowed to pick our own titles on the new intranet system. "The", as in "The Erika Unpronounceable-Surname", was actually an option, so I picked that and spent most of the induction class giggling to myself. I am a value-added employee.
- Considering how long last term was, I am surprised to find that this term's Long Leave starts in a month. Excitingly, I'm flying to Trondheim on February 10th and staying until the 14th. Others may question the excitement factor of Trondheim in February, but I do not.
- I keep nervously checking my email to see whether any new references have been submitted to my Oxford application. Eight days to go.
- In the last week I've read two chick-lit books on the theme of infidelity without at all trying (one turned up free with a magazine, and had the distinction of having possibly the most stilted dialogue I've ever read, including that of Ayn Rand). It must be part of the zeitgeist.

People are turning up for the RT meeting. Time to go and be given tasks.

I don't actually WANT a dog, even

When I went to clear my Google search history just now (I compulsively clear my search and regular histories; my brain categorises it as clutter), the only two searches were "chuntering" and "doctor kisses". I almost wanted to keep those.

("Chuntering" was a word I wanted to use in an email to describe my research proposal, but it turned out to have overly whiny connotations, so I went with "meandering" instead. "Doctor Kisses" was my attempt at finding the Achewood strip where Ray names his 34 AIBOs. It mostly turned up lots of chuntering about Doctor Who. People should probably stop thinking so much about Doctor Who. Then again, I should stop thinking so much about dog names.)

It's been a very lovely Christmas and New Year's, particularly if I selectively edit out the part where I was ill with influenza and massively contagious: I've seen everyone I wanted to see, though not for as long as I would have liked; I've been to Gothenburg; I've watched "Demolition Man" in Ellen's basement; I've eaten two of the giant buns (one glazed cinnamon, one with raisins) at the Trondheim library café. At some bizarrely early hour on Sunday I'm flying back to England. This term, I think I will: spend a lot of time under blankets (England is colder in January than in December, and they don't insulate their houses very well), watch The Wire, get involved with the creative writing group at school, go home in Long Leave, try to get an exciting summer job, read Elizabeth Bowen, and finish my MA applications. (No, the Oxford one isn't in yet. But it will probably happen today. When Becky finishes hers as well, a massive celebration will be in order due to how stressful we've managed to make the whole process.) So at least there's a plan.

Short-term plan: walk to Dromedar and get some cheese toast, also possibly quantities of coffee.