This afternoon, quite unexpectedly, I spent about an hour in A&E.  This was unexpected for two reasons: firstly, the friend of mine whom I was accompanying had the accident resulting in the injury quite late last night, subsequently went out for the evening and then spent most of today watching Prison Break before ringing her mother and deciding she should probably do something about this now; and secondly, because once we got in there I was expecting to be there for quite a lot longer.

Not quite sure how jumping off a two foot wall the night before qualifies one for "very urgent" medical care, and I felt quite sorry for the lad with the bandage over his bloodied eye sat next to us, but I suppose a possible broken bone is a possible broken bone and ours is not to reason why.  I was quite glad to be out of the place, actually, I don't like hospitals because they remind me of occasions I'd rather forget, and to be perfectly honest, deep down anyone who has the strength of mind and stomach to work in that sort of place is going to make me feel inadequate.  (I'm sure this say something not very nice about me.  But hell.  Think of it as a compliment.)

On the other hand, it was nice to get out of the house, which I otherwise wouldn't have done, as a main result of waking up utterly disorientated about ten minutes before midday, and fifteen before someone knocked on my door to see if I was going to lunch.  I don't do late mornings.  Ten o'clock makes me feel guilty.  Especially - and this is the killer - when I'd gone to bed at nine o'clock the night before.  Fifteen hours sleep and I can't even feel it.  And I know, I've been running to stand still the last few weeks, but I'm not the only one, and I've not done it nearly as much as other people have seemed to, or nearly as successfully.  And that last - that successfully bit - bothers me.  Because I shouldn't even be tired.  It genuinely, honestly makes me feel sick that I can't keep going as long as other people who have more to deal with than I do, and the Catch-22 of it all is that that is a defect too.

And so are tantrums.  Oh sodding, sodding hell.  I was going to go in a completely different direction with this post, but it's annoying me now, so I think the best policy is to leave it.

I went round to K's last night with A and R, all of whom I'm living with next year, to discuss housing.  This is all progressing very slowly and I'm starting to get worried that we'll lose the one we want - co-ordination is such at the moment that we can't find a time all four of us can get together and go and have a look (well, three out of the four, and the fourth is trusting the judgement of the three for another day until he's got an afternoon off - finally.  Maths students.  I ask you!  Just because it's a real subject...) until Wednesday.  It's a nice house.  I hope.

And then A and R went off to do whatever they do, crew Hamlet and play poker and things, and K and I sat and ate popcorn and watched Stardust.  It's the first time since I've got back that I've just sat and watched a film and not had to think about all kind of things going on... anyway, the film finished at about half past ten, and between then and my leaving at midnight, I happened to mention that I've been meaning to research the Israel-Palestine conflict, on grounds of knowing really very little about it, and feeling that it being quite important I probably ought to.  And K being a purveyor of obscure information that she is, and doing a degree in French and Arabic including a Middle Eastern Politics module, obviously was the person to ask.

It's really very interesting.  And terrible, and convoluted, and in a surprising proportion the fault of Britain.  Did you know that?  Until I looked it up yesterday morning, I could only very sketchily tell you where Israel was.  (Mind you, I have the approximate geographical awareness of a three-day-old tadpole.)  So I am on the hunt for as much information as I can lay my hands on, and anyone who's come across GoC (yes, shameless plug, it's in the links section...) had better watch out because there'll be a veritable essay coming up in a few weeks.

It's odd, especially having come across all this stuff at university, and by the sound of it at everyone else's universities, with protests and boycotts and debates and whatnot (I've been so busy recently, I haven't been able to get to any debates, which is very irritating), to think: actually, I have not a clue what this is about.  If there is a referendum on boycotting Israeli goods, what am I going to say, and more importantly why am I going to say it?  Because that's Bad.  And when it comes to a shall we/shan't we vote, there's no such thing as an abstention.  And uninformed decisions - well, let's say I like to think they're not really my style.

I love it when some of my friends are in new relationships and they start being couply.  It makes me smile so much, the careful not looking at each other too often, the surreptitious touching of fingertips or ankles, the bashful smile of a shared joke that they're not sure they should find funny.  Without fail it makes me all warm inside, and so proud for them.  There's something beautiful about the coyness of being base-over-apex smitten with someone worth the effort.  It lights me up the more people find this out from experience.

And then without fail as soon as I am alone I could cry with the lonely, 200 mile distance of it all.

I'm sorry I don't ring that often.  It only makes it worse.

It's sunny today, and a bit cold, but gloriously warm when you're not in the shade.  There's that wonderful smell of cleanliness about the place, that makes you just want to fill your lungs til you go dizzy.  If I didn't have to essay I'd be out walking.  Anywhere, but probably by the river.  It's one of those days that it just seems impossible to be sad in.  "Spring is here, suh-puh-ring is here, life is skittles and life is beer..." being an immediate thought; if someone knows of an appropriate park, let's go for it.  Any of you in current proximity to Southampton Common, this means you.

I had a nine o'clock lecture this morning, fifteen minutes away, and I woke up at 8.30 (goodbye to yet another New Year's Resolution, so far I was going to turn up to everything, and turn up on time... Guys and Dolls saw to the first half...), so maybe it wasn't too good a start to the day, but Arguably Law's Most Amusing Lecturer was in full force, and in the haberdashery in the Indoor Market I had a wonderful conversation with the lady from whom I bought two metres of very lovely ribbon, and got up to college to find that my wonderful, God-given cleaner saw her daughter this weekend, who was knitting a really lovely pair of socks, and asked her for a copy of the pattern for that girl up at college who knits socks too.

Things like that make me smile so much.

That and my water-based face paints and prosthetics wax coming through and spending all of yesterday afternoon drawing rainbows and swirls on my lower arms.  And going to K's for dinner and having toad in the hole and watching Jonathan Creek, dancing in new shoes...  Ringing up M on the way home from dancing and having the first proper conversation with him in far too long...

Also, this made me laugh uncontrollably, if immaturely: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7853564.stm

Spring is without doubt my favorite season, and optimism is my favourite state of affairs.  Here's hoping it's infectious, because there seems to be so much exam-related worry about the place at the moment and I'm certain that has to knock a few months off your life every so often.  Inevitability can be comforting, too, you know.  But anyway, good luck with it all, and smile: the apocalypse isn't til next week.

Well, the Hollingside Romeo and Juliet have taken their place in the college-related drama stakes, with East corridor and West corridor suitably pitted against each other for a total of forty-eight hours, an escapade with College Table Tennis politics and the very pressing issue of homelessness, and now all is back to normal, the bitchy Facebook statuses have stopped and I think everyone just got a bit bored and got on with life.  Anyway, it was quite exciting while it lasted, even if I only turned up for the aftermath to have the whole lot explained to me, and doesn't it just make you feel like you're at school again?  How exciting.

Guys and Dolls finished in style - all the ex-DULOGers turned up for the last show and clapped at every opportunity, and found all the worst jokes unaccountably hilarious.  Get-out was suitably speedy.  The after-show party - well, it was basically an excuse to get hammered and well done Fi, I think I've got a bit of gossip on my back now.  Unfounded, but, you know, there's always talk.

I can't work out why it's so difficult to keep face when you let your barriers down.  Which would be why I don't like it, I know I don't like it, and therefore I no longer do it very often.  But it's no excuse to say everything's so different with poetry, even though that is the case, it's not really relevant.  And now I feel guarded and a bit sick with worry.  There's no reason, of course there's no reason, but then aren't we all looking for approval, and gossip is not approval.

For my part, I'd rather be overlooked.

As I was going to print my essays off yesterday, I made a list in my head of everything I've got to do over the next few weeks, and the timings of it all, and stuff like that.  I thought about Carmen, and whether I'd want to see if they'll let me stage manage the Grey Freshers' play if the two don't clash.  I thought about the essay I'd just got back that I didn't do so well on, and all the work yet to be finished, or indeed started.

When I got to the Student Union, a boy stopped me and asked if I was okay.  He said I looked really upset.  "I've got an essay to hand in," I said.

I'd like to be able to say thank you to him, because after the initial shock that really did make it all a lot easier.

First night of G&D was excellent, although I now have a massive bruise on the bridge of my nose (as if something ridiculously huge and heavy had fallen on it from a great height... erm...), a none-too-flattering nickname, a much increased sleep debt and faith in the world.

Matinee today.  Hah!

Ten minutes of today left, and I should be in bed.  Got home maybe twenty minutes ago - which isn't bad going.  Two full run-throughs of Guys and Dolls, one smashed wine glass, carrying more tables and chairs and benches than I care to think about and my joints ache, my shoulders hurt and I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Tomorrow morning I have to get up at seven, I think, so as to prepare for a tutorial at ten (which I haven't even looked at), an essay due in at one (which still needs to be finished...), to be back in the theatre for a quarter to three... to carry more tables about.  And fix things that broke, or never worked in the first place.  Opening night, curtain-up at seven-thirty (I'm assured Gala Time means this'll be on the dot), and then it's all go-go-go til eleven at the earliest, later if we decide to reset the props tables.

I've discovered one of the good feelings, and it's this: being sat in a room with comfy chairs and ginger nut biscuits and cups of coffee, eating sandwiches for half an hour curled up on a chair with a dozen other people you know, and sharing the joke.  I don't know which joke, I don't think it matters.  But that's It.  And the opening chords of the first song, and thinking right, here we go, they're It.  And watching the face of the assistant stage manager who managed to shut himself in a cupboard onstage for an entire scene during the dress rehearsal, that's It too.  And having a story to tell about That Time We Smuggled The Assistant Producer Halfway Across A Stage Under Cover Of Strobe Lighting During A Fight Scene to counter the inevitable anecdote that starts Well During [insert name of play] Someone Accidentally Unplugged The Projector... that's It.

Incidentally, the lyrics to "Marry The Man Today" are possibly the most terrifying idea it is possible for a woman to have, especially in earshot of a man.

More stressed than I can try to quantify, and ecstatic but tired.

Wish you were here.

One day, I would love to be able to write a blog the likes of this.  Ooh, it makes me all teary just to read.

Well, I did seven hours of essay writing today, that's one 2000 word one and then a little bit...

So to celebrate I listened to this week's Mike Harding and did this, for the first time in quite a while, which cheered me up immensely.  Approximately three inches by an inch, grease paint on left forearm.  Sodding up of left foot artfully covered up, ahahaha.

And now I am slightly delirious, I think (considering today, probably the fault of this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7827761.stm) so I'm going to bed.  Goodnight.

I've just got off the phone to my family.

My dad sounded very surprised that I'd rung, and passed me almost immediately over to my mum.

My mum and I chatted away for a few minutes, but I know she was about to go to bed, it was my fault for calling so late.  So she initiated goodbyes and I said hang on a minute, can I talk to my sister please.

My sister is fifteen.  The conversation was stilted, to begin with, and we talked for a few minutes about her RE exam tomorrow before she got called away to go to bed.  It occurred to me: I have no idea what's going on in her life any more, except for the basics, and the obvious bits.  She has no idea about me, either.  We barely talk.  I send her the occasional Facebook message, and she sends me the occasional lolcat, but this is the extent of it.  I found out about the results of her last exam, about which she was really worried, via my mum four days before she told me herself tonight.

The sobering thought is this: when the hell did it get to be like that?!

Today, I think, has been a successful day.  1100 words of essay, nearly done (hurrah!), rediscovering the library (oh I've missed it so much, it's quite sad), five mugs cumulatively of miscellaneous warm beverages (coffee, chicken soup, flowery tea, and the like).  How very lovely.  This is what I've missed.

Last night is what I've missed too.  Got back about two-ish, chatted with the lovely lady at reception, generally unpacked and revelled in being home.  Went to rehearsal, watched several people entreat an invisible audience to Follow The Fold about a dozen times over.  Had dinner with K, listening to The Beautiful South and catching up on weeks and weeks.  Then off down the road to pub quiz with people who, let's face it, are grumpy bastards almost to a man, but still manage to be really, really interesting.  (By this time I was knackered so spending a lot of time staring into space... why does travelling take it out of one so much?  I wasn't even stood up, for God's sake...)

Somewhere along the evening, I agreed to do the props for Carmen at the end of next month.  It occurred to me about half past one this morning that this was probably a bit of a rash thing to do.  Apart from anything else, I know nothing about the production except that it's going to be three hours long, K is DSMing it, the technical director is strangely compelling and Wikipedia does the plot proud.  I don't know who's directing, or producing it, I've never done this on my own before...  I have the strangest sensation I'm about to let a lot of people down...

Anyway.  Rehearsals looking absolutely stunning, and we're making the placards tomorrow (arty-crafty joy!) so if you're in Durham, or you can be in Durham (subtle prods!) then I really recommend coming to see it.  But then, of course, I would say that.

Oh go on.  You love the musicals really.

On the way home, I had an idea for a story that I'm not sure would work, but I'm going to have a go at anyway.

It's a love story, which hopefully won't put you off, in a letter from a woman, which she passed to a guard at a train station with the instruction to give it to a man who gets off the ten past two train, pauses and looks around in apparent confusion.  The letter explains that she's sorry she's not there to meet him, but she doesn't think she can see him any more.  The story consists of an affair conducted on the station platform, every so often at intervals from a few days up to two months, over years, between the connections from one train to the next.  It's about twenty minutes over a cup of coffee in front of the slot machines.

I was going to discuss university campuses, which seem so sterile, and how wonderful it is to lose yourself in an essay.  Then I was going to talk about the difference between men's and women's clothes shopping habits.  But that doesn't seem particularly interesting, or relevant, any more.

Packing, at the moment, because I'm going away on Sunday, and I'll be in Durham on Tuesday and both of these I look forward to very much.

Tonight, I'm pondering people a lot.  Several people in particular, but many people otherwise, and how little we understand our own subtexts.  Or maybe that's just me.  I don't know.  For some reason I feel like I'm hanging on for dear life at the moment, but I'm not quite sure how, or why, or to what.  Oh, these things are confusing.  To be continued, if not here, then at least I'll be thinking about it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7808302.stm

Just come across this and wondered, first of all, how one goes about surveying this sort of thing.  Interested to know what you make of it.

Happy New Year to all.  First post of last year, I'd discovered I hadn't got into Cambridge and was planning, I believe, something involving living at home til I was 35 and drinking myself to an early grave.  The melodrama makes my spine shiver.  You love it.

You know, looking back, the beginning of January and I appear not to have got on particularly well.

First rant of the year, then, and it's a day overdue as well - the euro.  71% of the British public, it appears, have been whipped up into a frenzy by the Daily Mail and This Country's Glorious History and have decided that, were there a referendum on whether or not we should join the euro, they would vote against it.  Well done 71% of the British public (and the Tory party who've taken this spectacular opportunity for bandwagon-jumping - on which more in a moment) for dooming this country to economic sluggishness in the long term.

The fact is that we don't have an empire any more.  The fact is that the UK's weight, internationally, has been falling steadily for the last century, and for any economic stability and wellbeing you need some weight.  You need a strong currency, and at the present moment the pound is falling against both the dollar and the euro, which undoubtedly are the two most important currencies in the world.  The eastern Asian countries aren't going to help us.  Russia, it is perhaps obvious, is not going to help us.  Effectively this country has two options, to ally ourselves with the Americans or the Europeans, and seeing as this is an economic decision, and about half the UK's international trading overall is with Europe, and in the Eurozone we actually have a fairly substantial say as opposed to grimly returning to the lapdog analogy whenever something happens we don't like... I agree.  I'm very biased.  But there is a reason for the bias, don't you think?

And then Our Country's Glorious History... after the Second World War, the Germans' national pride was effectively summed up in the strength of their economy because it wasn't a bone of contention.  And yet they joined the euro.  And are doing relatively well out of it.

Another argument is that we would no longer have any say over interest rates.  Or rather, we'd have a much smaller say.  So we use fiscal policy instead (say what you will, monetary policy is just as blunt an instrument, it's just that fiscal policy takes a bit of forward planning) and stop complaining.  It's something to get used to.  Of course there will be some turbulence but there's turbulence at the moment and it would only be short term.

The only remaining thing I feel I have to complain about at the moment is the Conservative party, for their bandwagon jumping, which in itself is reason to complain, but add their refusal to accept the euro in the UK to their plans to abolish the Human Rights Act (and replace it with something "more British" - what's that, slip in a few anti-terrorism measures and make it illegal to add the tea before the milk?) and what you come out with... doesn't really look to be a very good government.

Please, somebody, tell me why I'm wrong/right/far too agressive about this/barking up the wrong tree etc.  Because I am really very worried about the next few years.