Heedless of the wind and weather

I came to my room with the intention of writing another section of my extended essay, but have spent most of the time faffing about putting photos on facebook. (This is always irritating cos for some reason I can't do it on Firefox and have to use Explorer.) However, festive pictures should now be there for your delectation.

Got home today after a week traipsing round England in what seems, in retrospect, like an extended wine-tasting. It started in London (after a prolific bout of work on the East Coast main line) for an exciting AV reunion, where there was much ooh-ing over Nat's new flat and Wellers's engagement (congratulations!!) and I thought how much we've grown up since we all met at the airport four years ago, untravelled and fresh out of school. We went out for a lovely meal in Chiswick and caught up and reminisced lots and pouted in lots of photos, and then unfortunately I had to leave cos it was Nik's birthday the next day and I was going to stay with him. However, due to the combined incompetence of my timekeeping, late-evening holiday period tube services, London Victoria's ticket machine provision and the slow man in front of me in the queue, I succeeded in missing the train and dragging Nik out to fetch me from Epsom at 1 a.m. in the freezing fog (I can't deal with these harsh southern climes) with the remnants of a cold. Oops.

Still, his birthday was fun - he beat me and his sisters resoundingly (twice) at his new Friends trivia DVD game (surprise, surprise) and we had a nice meal and a very competitive game of Trivial Pursuits. (Snowflakes have 6 sides. I knew that, but did they listen...?) On Christmas Eve his mum was giving a huge party which was really cool, but I had to leave after a couple of hours (and spent those gripped by train paranoia) and go to my grandparents' where we had a very traditional Christmas (turkey, flaming puddings, board games, carols). Nik came up on Boxing Day and coped admirably with my mad relatives and their perishingly cold house.

Took my brothers to London yesterday (though Davy would like it to be known that he is an adult and capable of taking care of himself) which, despite more train madness (sodding Virgin, bunch of incompetents), ended up being fun. Charlie is just young enough for it still to be rewarding when you take him to something he enjoys, even if he is old enough for you to take to Avenue Q. Which was, overall, excellent. The second half seemed like a desperate attempt to cobble together a coherent plot from the various amusing songs and characters and consequently the ending felt rather unsatisfactory, and the tunes weren't very memorable (which, considering that the words were, was disappointing) but, overall, excellent.

Back from Warwickshire in the car today, hate car journeys, esp in the back, esp with bony boys with their iPods turned up too loud. Ah well.

Soooo much work to do. Depressing. Just want to lie comatose and eat chocolate. Grr.

Still, can get a bargainous ticket to London for New Year. Carrot.

Ooh, ooh, just one more...

"Oh, come on, it's not like men have never used sex to get what they want?"
"How can we use sex to get what we want? Sex is what we want!"

------------------------

"You think my wiles are masculine?"

"They're blue... to match your... lips, when they're cold..."

I'm supposed to be working... Shh... Don't tell anyone... I'm lying on the sofa watching Frasier, MSNing Liv, sipping red wine and giggling out loud. I was meant to be reading some articles that I printed out (I'm halfway through my print quota already???!!) but I can do it on the train on Tuesday. Along with reading all the books on francophonie... and planning the damn essay... and writing an introduction... and the 12 WW1 novels (why? why? why would I do that to myself?)... You can bet this will be the one time I don't get stuck for 3 hours in Doncaster...

Gaah, sodding Windows keeps trying to restart my computer. No, I want to install updates when I'm finished, thankyou.

I have Bod-madness. I've been in that (or Rhodes House, queen of libraries) since Monday, from as soon as I can drag myself there until the tetchy librarian comes round and wrenches the books from under my pale, nervous grasp. (Is anyone else worried that the abyss below is going to swallow their books at the end of the day? I always have to expressly tell the librarians I want to see the books again tomorrow - no, I don't want to restart my sodding computer - and they all think I'm neurotic and irritating, but I just can't trust the this-side-goes-back-to-the-stack-this-side-goes-back-to-the-shelf' system.) I am suffering with the almost total lack of literature on Togo (i.e. on half my essay) except for the absurdly technical of articles in French and the thing that sounds like it's exactly what I want, but it's in German. But, there we go....

"... whose ancestors were once heard to remark, 'Oh, that's a nice wooden horse, sure I'll sign for it!'"

NO! COMPUTER! NO! STOP IT!

"I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with a guy whose favourite T-shirt reads 'Seattle Hooter inspector'."

Sorry, I will cease the Frasier-quoting.

Nik is in Manchester using big manly chemist machines, which is great because it meant I got to do my 'you're leaving me alone' eyes and make him walk all the way to Jericho to watch political documentaries! The U.S. vs John Lennon was very interesting, if rather obvious parallels. 'America has this mad president. He's curtailing civil liberties and fighting this mad war in some faraway country in the name of democracy, but it's messy and not working... hmm... Just what are we alluding to? What?!' And they kept going on about how John Lennon could make a really serious point because he was a brilliant artist, but the film itself was just a lot of old interviews and concert footage interspersed with people talking. But it made me think. We don't really have anyone like that. If the world is, as I sometimes think, doomed, there isn't really anyone who (shut up windows) has the same influence. Lennon was such a threat to the establishment because he was so famous the press jumped on anything he did. Who do we have now? Paris Hilton?

"Why is it so easy to love your family but so hard to like them?"
"Ah, Daphne, that's one of the questions that makes life so rich... and psychiatrists richer."

I've bought a cardigan. Another one. It's big and pinky-purpley and warm and snuggly and I love it and it was in the sale but I think it's mumsy and makes me look like I'm 35.

"Isn't it sad when bad things happen to good sentences?"

Ack, I have to be a soprano again tomorrow. I've been croaky all week. That doesn't bode well. Especially for the Messiah on Saturday. I got an email from someone at Oxford Phil saying Nik could have a free ticket if he agreed to sell CDs. I very nearly replied thus:

Yes, that would be fine. He hates classical music and would be thrilled not to have to part with beer money for the concert. Does he need to wear a shirt?

"She deserves a doctor... or a lawyer... someone for whom a T-shirt is an undergarment."

All right, Bill Gates, you win!

xx

Yesterday I harangued Nik for being boring and doing nothing but watch TV and dragged him to the University Parks in a boring, middle-aged couple sort of way, and I took lots of photos of leafless trees and geese. Here are some of them.

Carols, ice-cream and postcolonial language policy

Ow. I don't think I was designed to sing soprano. Not judging by the pain, and the hoarseness, and the coughing, and the croaking.

Had my arm twisted into helping out St John's for their staff carol service, as their entire soprano section has gone ski-ing, which was presented to me as general carol-type shenanigans, with a couple of choir items... except these turned out to include Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (which is lovely, but those top Gs come out of flippin' nowhere) and I Saw Three Ships (which is all pitched about half an octave above my comfort zone).

And, to top it all off, during We Three Kings, some people traipsed up to the crib with a (fake) gold crown, some frankincense and some myrrh, which was hugely exciting, as I've never seen that before, but smokey and had me hacking away!

But it was fun, and I'm doing it again next week.

Afterwards I raced to Cafe Opium to celebrate Holly's birthday, ate a funky chicken dish with mangoes in, then sat around in G & D's having peculiar conversations. When we finally dragged our weary selves away, Zhenia's bike key snapped off in the lock, which happened to me over the summer and is really irritating, and we all faffed around trying to snap it, wondering how to get the bike over the top of the sign, asking the nice man in G & D's for a pair of pliars, only to find (when he appeared, bearing said useful implement) that it actually came away quite easily in James's hands...

Entertained me, anyway!

Otherwise, have done extremely little - theoretically I'm working like a Trojan (that warrior race well-known for their vicious use of OLIS stack requests and violent assaults on unsuspecting reading rooms) but due to residual term-fatigue, have been less productive than I'd like. Though I have discovered the wonderful Rhodes House, which is by no means least among the libraries of Oxford. Massively impressive and exciting building, rotunda, huuuge wooden staircase, pictures of venerable people, calls its toilets 'cloakrooms', friendly, smiley staff... That chemistry guy Nik was talking about probably took pictures of it. I should try and find them.

Though I am tired. So not now.

I will just listen to the end of Choral Evensong (from Newcastle), and then I will sleep.

Sod Facebook.

Oh dear. Oh deary me. Deary, deary, deary me.

I've been sucked in by YouTube.

I thought it was just a conduit for amateur porn, other people's children's school plays and things that weren't funny enough to get on You've Been Framed.

How wrong, how wrong I was.

Monty Python sketches... Rowan Atkinson's Welcome to Hell... French and Saunders' Titanic... All the bits of Father Ted that Catherine and Paul have been quoting for the past three years...

It's all here, in tantalisingly short and watchable snippets - "Oh, just one more before I go to sleep!" I said, two hours ago. TWO HOURS!!!!

My soul is damned for ever. Damned.