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.

I know I should feel Christmassy, but....

The brain fog lifted at the weekend and the return to normal life would have been blissful, had it not been accompanied by a massive backlog of work. Consequently, we have two days left till the end of term, and I still have two essays to write. Which means I have to spend my last Christmas dinner with Symbolist poetry nagging annoyingly at me. (Oxford has surpassed itself, and achieved what it has been attempting for three years: this year, Christmas comes before Advent.) Fortunately, Nik will be there, and has an interview tomorrow morning, so with any luck he'll drag me home in time for him to get an early night, and therefore I'll be able to tease my inchoate thoughts on Mallarme into something resembling a structured argument of 2000 words, unimpeded by hangover and tiredness.

I had thought Christmas would be doubly exciting and magical, having been away last year and missed out on carols, mulled wine, tinsel and the like last year, but aside from the choir festivities, it feels rather like a party for the first and second years. The theme is 'Oscars' and there are Queen's 'Academy Awards', where you vote for the fittest people, the lewdest public display of affaction, the best sportspeople etc, and when I got it in my pidge I immediately thought, "Ooh, that'll be so-and-so... oh no, he's left..." It really just made me feel old. And boring. And like I've done nothing but work all term. Socially, I feel like I've left already.

Have decided to put postgrad plans on hold, partly cos I don't know whether I want to do literature or linguistics, and partly cos the AHRC form scares me. In a way, I'm really just postponing the decision, which is rather cowardly and probably ultimately unproductive, but it is possible that another term, finals and results will indicate if I have a strong inclination or ability for one or the other.

Annoyingly, while I'm quite happy to wander through life without any fixed purpose (so long as I don't actually starve), I would quite like to know, materially, what I'm going to be doing next September, when the student loan and subsidised accommodation are no more. I'm twitchy like that. I thought about doing something dictionary-related (and got all enthused by meeting a real-life lexicographer last week) but then I would either have to stay in Oxford or move to Glasgow, neither of which I really want to do. Applying for any corporate graduate scheme makes me want to gnaw my arm off, so I'm really down to scouring Guardian jobs for something that takes my fancy, probably something arts or heritage related. There was a gorgeous job at English Heritage, but unfortunately they probably aren't looking for someone to start in several months time. Same goes for anything else I'd have to apply for on a job-by-job basis. Dammit.

I made roast dinner for the first time ever on Saturday, and didn't poison anyone, which made it in my eyes a triumph. I know feel ready to take on knitting, parents' evenings and all the other trappings of domesticity. Emboldened by last week's success, Nik and I have now decided to make chicken in beer, which I had on Christmas Eve last year and remember being nice, and appealed to him for... some reason... can't work out what...

Conversation in the linguists' kitchen a while ago:

"How is it lunchtime already?"
"How is it sixth week already?"
"How is it fourth year?"

"It is dainty to be sick..."

"... if you have leisure and convenience for it." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Bah. I don't like being ill. It makes me cross. I feel all frustrated and useless. However, as my brain is a fog and I feel like I might fall asleep at any given moment, I have little choice but to... wallow indulgently in my fate, retreat to bed with excess Blackadder, get people to do things for me and keep whining on about how it might be something really serious.

Not much has happened lately. Nik had a particularly comic bout of manflu last week, but in my current state I can't really mock him for that. We went and saw 'The Blue Room' which was really good in places, though not in others, and aside from the full frontal nudity wasn't as shocking as it claimed to be. I wanted to be scandalised, dammit. I did a timed essay in French, where I tried to situate feminism in the context of 19th century human rights discourse, but really just ended up with polemical ranting. Though I managed to write the right amount of words in the right amount of time, which was hugely empowering (till the brain fog kicked in). Choir has been much improved of late. This might be because Tom now gives everyone tea before Sunday rehearsals.

I battled the brain fog on Monday and Tuesday to write an essay which my tutor said was "good" and led to an actual, interesting discussion, where I made suggestions and comments and allsorts. Hurrah. Then I went to buy some vegetables, and now I'm trying to file things, but not very successful. In fact, I just have a pile of files (miles of files) on my carpet as well as a pile of paper on my desk. So, probably not a productive endeavour as yet. Ah well.

Last night someone left a mysterious offering of Lockets and chocolates outside my door, with a note attached to it written in orange highlighter. I wonder who that could have been...

Symbolism hurts. I'm going to go and make a pasta bake.

"They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm
But with the sea at your feet and the phoney false alarm
And the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms"

Poetry, or just plain bollocks?

Frenetic

Yesterday, I woke up with a hangover, and a sinking feeling that I had rambled somewhat in front of my tutor the night before. I couldn't decide whether to go to lectures or to go back to bed, and regretted choosing the former when existentialism and phenomenology did not combine well with the residual wine fog in my brain. So I skipped Gide.

Last week I was mostly writing essays. Some of them seemed okay. But they tried to kill me, which wasn't nice. Having recovered from the tension headaches and the sleep deprivation, I now feel I should be all organised and planning-in-advance-y to avoid situation repeating, but instead I spent all of yesterday afternoon engaged in girly faffage.

After years of traipsing up the SCR stairs to sing grace, before being banished to the OTR with some salmon and a stale bread roll, it was finally my turn to go to the All Saints' gaudy which very nearly made up for all the phonetics revision I did in first year! The food was excellent and the wine plentiful, which was just as well because I spent most of the time discussing porn films and legalising prostitution with the chaplain, who was very keen to stress that nowhere in the New Testament is sex before marriage forbidden. Then we all went outside, shivered, came back in and I got to sit at high table where a combination of relief and wine meant I talked far, far too much and fomented discord within the Modern Languages faculty. Oops.

Afterwards, some of us went to the MCR and drank a bottle of wine, which we then had to finish in Pippa and Zhenia's room because we got kicked out, and we had a great evening, even if I did get end up singing (to the accompaniment of my very out of practice and uncoordinated guitar playing). Ooh, and Zhenia treated us to a beautiful Russian song, and she can actually play the guitar properly, and it was lovely. Then I brought Sally home in the dead of night down some dark alleys (sorry) and woke up at 6.30 in the morning, gasping for water. I drank about half a litre, then was just dropping off to sleep when I needed the loo, so I abandoned the lie-in and bounced rather feverishly round my room until it was time for some nice calming Sartre.

And now Livvy's here! Hurrah! Rob abandoned her to watch the football, so we had a gloriously girly evening in the kitchen, eating enormous quantities of Belgian chocolate and shepherd's pie, enjoying the spectacle of Catherine's rather anxious baking, enjoying the results of said baking, and then conducting a washing up marathon. And there are shopping/choir/formal/Scrabble plans. Hurrah!

This made me and Holly giggle/cringe.

I'm not sure I like Norton. It's like one of those malign servants who deluded their slightly dopey masters by saying they'd 'take care of everything' and then spread evil without them noticing. I don't really know what it's doing, but it says it's fixing my computer and I'm too ignorant to know if it's telling me the truth, and I daren't disbelieve it, in case I get casinos and porn everywhere. It's sort of malevolently too good to be true.

Ooh, no, my basil plant's all droopy and spotty.

My nutritional intake today (barring my usual healthy breakfast) has thus far consisted of a cafetiere of strong, black coffee and half a chocolate orange.

Previous to this I was so tired I fell asleep on my books.

Yesterday, I wrote an essay.

On Thursday, I wrote an essay until 3 a.m.

Today, I have to write another essay.


Please, please, please can I sleep now????

Procrastination rocks!

I've visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

"Neil is an actor, comedian and and master of improvisation who was once responsible for the shortest ever run of a Beckett play, when he improvised the opening line, 'Hello, Godot, what are you doing here?'"

Musing...

I think I might become addicted to cocaine.

Then I wouldn't need to sleep.

It would make life easier.

In some ways.

I've had more bike locks than you've had hot meals...

Well, perhaps I haven't. But sometimes it feels like it. I'm on my fourth since June.

Actually, the latest thing to have gone wrong with my bike, is the rusty chain. While this has, I admit, been a problem roughly since I got the thing in first year, recently it has started to make clunking noises and threaten to snap if I go uphill. Or even flat. Or indeed anything other than quite steeply downhill. I did buy some oil, but I promptly left it in the changing rooms at New Look and couldn't go back to claim it till Tuesday. And it comes in a spray can and has one of those funny, tiny plastic straws that I don't know where to put and... meh. I just can't be bothered. So, I've been walking everywhere, which is good to do once in a while cos it uses different muscles, and enables you to carry an umbrella and hence not get soaked in the rain.

Incidentally, we were promised rain and floods of Biblical proportions on Monday, and none have materialised.

This is brought to you from the computer room, which I feel bad using for non-work things, except that a vast proportion of people seem to be checking Facebook, so perhaps I'm being too harsh on myself. I did say earlier that my twitchiness and disinclination to work were solely a result of my anxiety about getting my extended essay form in and promised myself (and Holly, who is my conscience incarnate) that after taking that fateful piece of paper to Wellington Square, I would sit in the library (or the OTR, which is cosier) with my old friend Mr Carnie and get reacquainted with the advantages of X-bar theory. However, I am still feeling restless and scared of syntax, and totally unmotivated by the fact that my tute is in less than 48 hours and I've read about 10 pages on the (rather complicated) subject, so clearly that was just an excuse to play Tetris.

But, hey, how cool does, "Language planning and language policy: a comparative study of East Africa and Togo" sound?!

Oxford is much the same as it ever was - busy and meteorologically dubious - except for the fact that I have a kitchen, and only know about 4 people. In fact, I spend a lot of my time sitting in said kitchen with other linguists, bemoaning the fact that I have so much work and know so few people. I have been to the pub a total of twice, and drunk two halves of Kronenbourg. (And a lot of wine at Liz's party on Saturday.)

I've also been struck by the urge to do an MA in something other than linguistics. After a suggestion of African Literature from my tutor, I browsed the SOAS website and am now sooooo tempted by the Anthropology of Food. I did want to do French, and have switched to an option in WW1 literature (which will doubtless be a far cry from A-Level Eng Lit with Ms Clare, but probably fun nonetheless) instead of Semantics, on the basis that Semantics fills me with fear and panic. And I love literature and I don't want to stop studying it. And I love linguistics (most of the time) and don't want to stop studying that either. Aargh! It's like UCAS all over again. So, yes, my tutor suggested African Literature or African Studies, which sounds exciting, but rather like the sort of thing my parents would think was mad... The more I think about it, and the more I think about other options, the more attractive an option I find academia, but, meh - host of choices, little time to decide. I suppose whatever I choose I'll have some regrets, and if I do do linguistics (as I've planned for, what, a year?) it's not like I'll never read a book again, and if I do something literary, it's not like I can't learn Swahili on the side, but I was so lucky to find a degree that allowed me to do both, it's rather a shock having to choose now.

Bah.

Making hot drinks, Hannah-style

1. Infuse caffeinated substance in hot water.
2. Leave to brew for twice as long as anyone else would.
3. Do not adulterate with milk or sugar. Slices of lemon are acceptable in Earl Grey.

Jesus, this essay malarky is a lot tougher than I remember it. I don't have the stamina I had in first and second year, either. I worked till 12 last night, and it's totally knocked me out today!

I am not a fresher and I don't want their evil flu.

Some photos from home...

Si j'ai toujours raison
Je suis pas un mec sympa

Too right, my friend, too right......

YES!! WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!!!!

Firstly, everyone should eat Tyrrells crisps. Not least because they are delicious, for I agree this is an important incentive to purchase foodstuffs, but also because they stopped Tesco marching all over them, just because they're a big supermarket and Tyrrells are an independent producer.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1875532,00.html
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1874707,00.html

I've been at home for a couple of days now. It's still at the stage where it's wonderfully relaxing to be looked after and have all my books around me, but I can feel the 'I'm a grown-up, I can do my own damn laundry' complex simmering away inside somewhere. I suppose the most irritating thing is the excitement of having a decent-sized kitchen, sufficient equipment and someone else to pay for the ingredients, only to remember that my dad has very rigid (carnivorous-British hybrid) ideas of what constitutes a meal, my mum is on the Atkins diet and my brother is twelve, and fussy. So far I have made a vat of ratatouille.

However, as I feel increasingly demographically abnormal (drastically lowering average age of Radio 4 listener, too many operas on iTunes, shopping at markets), it is nice to know that there is some reason for it, whether genetic or due to the mad atmosphere I grew up in.

I've almost finished Qu'est-ce que la litterature? which is a relief as it's taken me the entire summer. I've been rather academically disillusioned since I found out I couldn't do my project, and now don't even know exactly what papers I'm doing this term, and I don't seem to get on with Sartre. My mum asked me earlier, 'Was there a Betty Muriel?' After leaving me baffled for a while, she explained this was his wife in a Monty Python sketch. 'Umm, well, Beauvoir, kind of... never mind...'

Nik interrupted a very interesting debate on The World Tonight (last night) about Richard Branson's pledge to research ways of cutting carbon emissions and corporate social responsibility and whether we should all be taxed for the bad things we do to the environment, when he rang me up to tell me he was researching hydrogen fuels. I've already forgotten what this entails, but I think it's something along the lines of combining water and sand in order to create something other than sludge and thereby to power cars. This requires reading 1920s research papers and buying silicone from catalogues. I didn't even know you could do that, but the project sounds very useful and topical, and I approve. And it means no more people saying, 'Ooh, your boyfriend's working with diamonds, lucky you!' and me having to explain that these aren't the interesting sort that you can, like, wear, and see with the naked eye and stuff.

Dammit, after the end of the Leeds Piano Competition, which I was listening to, I skipped forwards five minutes to see why there was an extra hour and a half of Performance on 3 which hadn't been there when I'd caught the end live, and have now found some interesting choral music, which I'm having to listen to in order to find out what it is. And I foolishly told my mother to wake me up at a sensible time tomorrow morning so I could have a vaguely productive day. I must get back into a routine of working, or I'll never get anything like enough reading done before term starts. This apathy doesn't sit well with the smiley version of me that has to tell all my parents' friends I intend to do this MA. Maybe I should become a teacher instead. They get paid. Students don't. And I'd also be morally obliged to read the Guardian, drink lots of wine and be cynical and irritable - which is fun. Except I don't want to teach French. And you generally need two languages and ich habe fast alle mein Deutsch vergessen.

Hopefully when L'Invitee wings its way to me in the next few days, I should get some enthusiasm back.