Musings

Ack, for the first time in four days I've checked my Webmail and only had two new emails, both from organisations I'm actually part of. Success.

For those of you not privileged enough to be on 'the List', here is the story in full.

On Friday, one of the vice-chancellors sent round an email to all the finalists in the university (in batches) asking them to complete some 'Course Experience Survey'. They left all the email addresses visible. Most people ignored this. My group didn't. Shortly afterwards, somebody commented, rather aptly, 'Oops. I bet she thought no-one would reply all. The rain today's rather depressing, isn't it.'

This did not anger me too much. I even thought it was rather witty (I was very bored), but it soon unleashed the madness that is 'the list' and more or less every time I checked my email from then on I had an average of three pages of new emails from bored, immature people who think it's really funny to regularly email 863 people. Frequent reference was made to a 'legend' named Hugo, the word 'banter' was used a lot and everyone signed off with 'way-oo', from which you can probably guess much about the calibre of the content and the main perpetrators.

Furthermore, when someone sent an email saying 'this is really annoying', 'please take me off this list' or 'dear lord, do you people have no life?' (the irony of replying all to say so notwithstanding) they were either mocked resoundingly by these humorous individuals for not seeing the funny side of having to sift through 47 emails entirely devoid of interest in order to read important communiques from their friends, family, tutors or JCR, or (and someone has now set up an anonymous email address entirely for the purpose) somebody simply hits 'reply all', often more than once, and thereby sends them another email, presumably as punishment for being so boring and fusty.

Resistance, clearly, futile. I tried blacklisting the addresses in Webmail (after carefully filtering through and removing people I actually like) but I still seemed to be getting loads. Fortunately someone has now threatened to complain to the proctors if anyone does it again, and things have been quiet for the last few hours. There was a suggestion that it was all a social experiment and in the Mail tomorrow there will be an expose about how stupid/cruel/bored Oxford students are.

In other news, my take-away paper seems to have coalesced into three questions I can answer (albeit with lots of reading) but I think I've spotted the flaw in this paper. Normally, I can manage quite a lot of reading in one go, but when it's full of people being blown apart, losing limbs, becoming alienated from their loved ones and being used as cannon fodder by insensitive, incompetent military and political leaders, it's rather difficult to concentrate for any sustained period of time, without a) getting horribly depressed and upset, or b) concluding that in comparison to all that, Finals really aren't that bad after all, and there are far more important things I could be doing. (While, in the scheme of things, this is probably true, I still wish I could harness my drive and enthusiasm and just force myself to work for the next four months, safe in the knowledge that I will never again have to read anything with a pencil poised over the page, unless I really want to.)

Had a rather exciting few days. On Friday I cycled up to Keble with Harriet and some of her friends who didn't realise I was at Queen's cos they'd never seen me before! We went to see 'Utopia Limited', cos loads of people from choir were in it, which was highly amusing (though not flawless), deeply cynical and desperately topical.

I also bought a pestle and mortar. It's yellow.

Nik and I went to Wokingham on Saturday, which is perfectly unobjectionable. It has nice bits, a Waitrose, a New Look, plenty of pubs, a market, and I've been looking at all sorts of exciting things I could do with myself: learning Italian/German, salsa, going round Berkshire planting trees... I still actually need a job, mind, or my dreams of worthy work experience, buying kitchen gadgets and soft furnishings and going to China will remain sadly unrealised.

Yesterday I spent lots of time in the Bod reading about masculinity and war. It was mostly about the public school system, the role of team sports and the Victorians, which I didn't need to read as it isn't really relevant to France, but it was so interesting I couldn't bear to skip straight to the useful chapters!! At lunchtime, Sally and I planning things we're going to do after Finals. Later, I went to DNA who were having a closing down sale.

I now feel that sort of guilt, where I'm all sad and nostalgic and furious that a small, independent retailer is closing down due to rent increases, and then remember that I never actually bought anything there. I mean, aside from a small moment of weakness in the New Look sale, all the clothes I've bought in the last few months have been from charity shops or Bonnie (sale), so my not supporting them stems more from a general unwillingness to pay upwards of £5 for a pair of jeans, rather than a marked preference for Topshop, and despite my attraction to cheap clothes I've resisted the lure of Primark. So, while I know my clothes-shopping habits leave room for improvment, I don't feel massively personally responsible for the creeping homogenisation of town centres, but I am slightly ashamed of the glee with which I still descended on the £8 skirts and £5 tops, when outwardly I would profess a preference for DNA continuing to exist, representing diversity, creativity and fairly priced goods.

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Interesting fact:
In 1884, Eton had 28 classics teachers and no scientists. (This was indirectlly a contributing factor to the outbreak of the First World War.)

Minor irritations

Friday was the last News Quiz in the series. *sigh* I feel rather bereft. Also, Sandi Toksvig was ill and someone else was running it. Meh.

Yesterday, Nik bought a Times to read on the train to Wokingham. The outside two pages of the 'Body and Soul' (my favourite section) were missing, so I was deprived of the sex problem page.

All these things that I've done...

I finished my extended essay!!!!!!!!!

Well, sort of. I have finished the first draft, which needs to be teased away from anti-neocolonial polemic and directed firmly back towards the actual question (which was something about language policy, wasn't it?) and I have to go through and reference everything properly so I don't get sentenced to death by firing squad for plagiarism. I also need to make 1 655 words disappear, and format it properly, and find out what that tribe in northern Nigeria that I wanted to talk about was. I felt briefly joyful, until I remembered the amount of work I had left to do on it. And, indeed, the amount of work I have left to do.

Went to see Spamalot last Monday, which was really, really cool. On Tuesday I went to EMS dinner and I had an absolutely riotous time, there was lots of pennying going on, and I went to the beer cellar afterwards, and then went to Babylove with a friendly medic, and didn't feel rubbish the next morning! And danced! When did I last do that?! I feel young and spontaneous and healthy again! On Wednesday, I went to see Hot Fuzz which was also good fun! I want to ride around in a police car with a swan. Otherwise I have been buried in my room with four dictionaries and a book called 'Gender', which is not about social stereotyping, but about grammar.

Ooh, iTunes just gave me one of my favourite songs. I like it when that happens.

I got the questions for my take-away paper. They're VILE!

My kitchen is full of revelling footballers eating scones.

Nik has manflu again and spent all morning skulking around my room spreading germs and stopping me achieving anything meaningful, without actually being a fun distraction. I've been dutifully making lemsips and trying to be helpful, and now he's left, without even taking the vitamin C that I offered him. Ungrateful swine! He has to go to Wokingham tomorrow to talk about becoming an actuary. I'm currently trying to decide if this is something I want to be a party to.

I'm also trying to decide if I want to be a speech therapist and if I'd actually be any good at it if did. Part of me has always thought I should do something really useful with my life. And all of the useful things I've done have been really rewarding. Part of me thinks I'm really rubbish at anything that requires good interpersonal skills and being practical and that I'm motivated more by self-flagellating white-middle-class guilt than any sort of innate aptitude.

Like most of my sudden epiphanies about my career I'll probably change my mind in a couple of weeks and go back to Plan B* of temping and seeing what happens.

Argh, help, I can't stop footnoting things!!

Best put some make-up on and go to choir methinks...

*I call it Plan B because I feel like there should be a Plan A that is preferable to data entry. Yet, there is no Plan A.

Warning: polemic ahead

Oh hurrah. That 'political-correctness-gone-mad!' idea that competitive sport is 'bad' for children, teaches them to be aggressive and is divisive, has now been debunked and schools are going to bring back team games in PE. Hockey, netball, football and cricket will once again be inflicted on generations of schoolchildren in the hope that it will teach them to 'co-operate'.

I'm sure I don't just speak for myself when I recall the hideous torment that was double games on a Wednesday afternoon. No other aspect of the school curriculum created such a divide between those who were good at it and those who weren't. For the first few weeks of secondary school, we were split into groups based on alphabetical order, or birthdays, or something random, and then at half term, once the PE teachers had got to know us, the year group was summarily split into two large sections, the sporty ones, and the not sporty ones. And thus we were condemned to years of half-heartedly running around in pleated skirts and shiny gym knickers unsuited to the northern drizzle, in the hope of winning some game we weren't really very enthusiastic about. (We didn't have any showers, and we usually wore our PE kits all day, so the motivation to exert yourself physically was minimal.)

Once a year, they brought out the 'fitness records' or whatever they were. Basically, you had to do all kinds of mind-numbing exercises and then measure our heart rates to prove that the people in the sporty group were fitter than the rest of us. Did anyone else have to do bleep tests? When you had to run back and forth across the gym, wheezing and aching, terrified your body was going to give out, but too scared to stop in case people laughed at you and classed you with the 'fat girls'? I suppose the furtive glances I shared with my friends ('I'll give up now if you will') could have been a form of co-operation. And then, those of us who were soon to be berated for being unfit and told to take more exercise, had to sit around and wait while the healthier among us finished.

And then, when we were in Year 10, something amazing happened. The drudgery of team sports was limited to half of each term and the rest of the time we went to the leisure centre in town. There, we were allowed to do six weeks of aerobics, of line-dancing, of self-defence, we could use the gym if we wanted. For the first time, I felt like I was enjoying physical activity (aside, I suppose, from all the time I spent running around outside as a child). It seemed to have a purpose: it felt like it was doing me some good and might, in the case of self-defence, be helpful at some point, or, in the case of line-dancing, allowed me for the first time to feel like I wasn't completely useless at anything involving more than a basic degree of co-ordination. Gone was the huge division between sporty and non sporty. PE became, dare I say it, fun.

And, looking back on my experience of sport in school, I can reflect that it wasn't all boring and punishing. While playing tennis 8 to a court seemed counter-productive (prioritising technique over actually running around and burning off calories), playing rounders in the summer always evoked enthusiasm for running around outdoors in even the most sedentary and high-minded of us; Swedish netball, usually reserved for an end-of-term treat, was often far more energetic and competitive than the usual variety, for the sole reason that we weren't supposed to take it so seriously; the country dances we learned for the first year Christmas party had a tangible purpose; trampolining was positively enjoyable.

Ultimately, those who have an interest in and talent for sport will pursue this outside of structured school PE lessons. They will join teams and clubs, have specialist coaching, train in their spare time and meet like-minded people. School PE should be as fun and inclusive as possible, less about refining your backhand or improving your footwork, and more about encouraging young people to take pleasure in exercise and find ways that they can look after their health on their own. It is only seven years after stopping school games that I am beginning to address the need to do this, so scarred was I by the experience. I bought a mini-trampoline and went salsa dancing. I hope to go again next week. The enforced discrimination and ritual humiliation of school PE had, on me and probably on many others, the exact opposite of the intended effect. Give primary school children an hour to run around playing games. Have school gardens that pupils are responsible for the upkeep of. Introduce aerobics, dancing and martial arts in place of hockey and rugby. Play rounders and quik cricket instead of tennis and athletics. Do not condemn the children who most need physical exercise at school to years of feeling inadequate and excluded.

Snow, power cuts and choir debauchery

Wow, updating for the second time in two days. It's snowing again!! In fact, I touch-typed all that cos I was looking out of my window ("at the only snow") and didn't make a single mistake. Ach, snow is lovely. At least before it gets all slushy and grey from the cars. It really makes me miss the countryside, actually. Not least cos we always used to get days off school when it snowed really badly. But also because you're not allowed to walk on the grass much here, and it's no fun if you can't go tearing around fields chucking snowballs. And because there are more trees, and snow on trees is one of the most beautiful things in the world, and because the snow doesn't get all trampled and driven through, and because snow makes everyone so childish and excitable. Helen had an email from her tutor saying, 'I don't care if your essays are late, if it means you get the chance to go outside and play in the snow.' Wow. All my tutor said to me was, 'Lots of excellent analysis, but I fear you have completely lost sight of the question you chose! Even the conclusion makes no reference to it...'

Oops.

I had a reprieve on my language essay. I thought I was going to have to get it in today, and as I haven't started it, this would have put a damper on the snow excitement somewhat, but I have till Monday! Hurrah! So I went to choir dinner with a clear conscience (and two pairs of tights, because it was cold). Great fun - everyone looked lovely and was pleasantly drunk. Goat's cheese tart featured on the menu, which pleased me muchly. Ditto the chocolate pots; sin in a coffee cup. Owen came up to me as we were going into hall and asked my permission to read from his hamster book ('by popular request'), assuring me it wasn't a personal reference. I wonder how he found out Catherine called me that...

I left before things got too riotous (the Irish one rolled in at 4.30, after a debauched evening of spin the bottle and drinking games involving the removal of clothing, though she claims she treated such activities with the contempt they deserve) and came home, took my make-up off and drank a glass of milk before going to bed. When did I get so grown-up? I've rediscovered the joys of writing in fountain pen and even had two people tell me this week that I'm going to make a fantastic mother! The power was off when I got back, which was enormously exciting. I had to go to bed by candlelight, feeling fabulously old-fashioned, particularly after having brought my shopping home wrapped in a paper parcel! I've made a resolution to stop using carrier bags (except for clothes shopping, somehow it seems wrong to put new clothes in a Tesco bag for life, though I don't know why this should be so) which I'm doing quite well at. When I set out to go food-shopping I usually remember, but when calling in for odd things on the way back from tutes and suchlike I keep realising I've forgotten them, and many's the time I've come back from Sainsbury's with cans of chickpeas cradled in my arms! Anyway, I was in Whittard's buying some tea (it momentarily having slipped my mind that while I have nine different varieties of tea, I have completely run out of coffee) and completely confused the shop assistant when I asked her to wrap them up! I did reflect that living in the days of candles and parcels of shopping might be quite fun, except for the fact that I wouldn't have been able to go to Oxford, or travel to Africa, or write, or do any of the other things that I enjoy...

I found a Saturday Jumbo crossword on the Times website. I am making very good progress. I am making less good progress with work.

Ooh, and Gaelle, thankyou for leaving my first comment in MONTHS! Was v excited! Also, you're being very persuasive about the whole going-to-China thing. What would be a good time of year for a visit?

Oxford in the snow

The chief nourisher in life's feast...

Hello all.

I was supposed to be watching 'A very long engagement' with my seminar group tonight but it was only going to be two of us, so we've postponed it and now I have an evening I didn't have before. The good part of my brain is saying 'do some work, then you won't have a mad essay dash tomorrow like you did last week'. The other part is saying, 'ooh, internet, bet you can have fun on that.'

I haven't really done much this term. Not as much work as I should be doing and too much cooking. Nothing seems to motivate me except shepherd's pie. I know this is a valuable life skill, but I'm competent enough to keep myself alive and healthy, and I have the entire rest of my life to make soup... I can hardly go to a job interview and say, 'Look, I know I got a third, but my risotto is really, really good.'

We came second in the Turf quiz last Tuesday, winning the princely sum of three pounds, largely thanks to the classical music round, much to the chagrin of the absent Catherine. I finally succeeded in writing something for one of my seminars and my tutor was suitably appreciative. Livvy was here at the weekend, though she was preoccupied with Rob and I was preoccupied with cottage pie and the Translation of Doom so we didn't see much of each other. Everyone else went out for lunch, but I'd eaten, so I joined them afterwards and drank more lapsang souchong than you could shake a stick at.

I've had a major insomniac patch over the last couple of weeks. Never sure how confessional I should get on here as I have absolutely no idea who's reading, but, meh, let's just say that insomnia always makes me feel sad and anxious, even when there's no real underlying cause. (Oh, and almost comically irritable in the morning. I've always been incapable of functioning without muesli, but this was epic.) And I always seem to be so tired that I can't concentrate on anything or take an interest in anything, which means I get more anxious that I'm not achieving anything and then can't sleep because of that, and then I find myself getting so worried about the insomnia itself that it just makes itself worse... It's such a disturbing experience, too, not being able to sleep, particularly after several nights. Your body knows you're tired and it knows you need sleep, and it seems strange that your body would do something that's going to be bad for it - yet for some reason you're still awake, fretting...

Have now substituted redbush tea and bananas for anything remotely enjoyable after about 4 p.m. Here's hoping.