June '11

I have been telling myself for the past few months that, come summer, I shall do something productive. What this is has variously been learning languages for Graduate school in America, working on business ideas or starting writing again. However, now that it is ACTUALLY summer, I'm being the lazy lazy person that I naturally am.

So. Needless to say something needs to be done about this, but what, exactly? Well, I'm continuing with the anki flash cards to improve my French and Latin vocab, have started noting down more ideas for longer fiction and continue to think up design ideas. I also think it prurient to get into blogging a bit more, so I've been considering buying a domain name so I can present it all a bit more professionally.

Exams.

Exams again soon. Though I haven't updated here much, I hope to in the near future. Didn't I post something similar before? Perhaps, though typing is so tiring. A shame. More books are due to come tomorrow, I hope to read a few before the summer as I have quite the list to get through during the holidays.

Pasta and freedom.

Sat here eating pasta salad, listening to belle and sebastian whilst sipping earl grey while trying to track down 300 year old editions of the Spectator. Why, you may ask. Well, Steele in issue 251 of The Spectator argued that the character of Dorimant is 'more of a coxcomb ... than Fopling' and that he was wholly unsuitable for the role of a comic leading figure as he lacked the qualities of a 'fine gentleman'. Obviously I want to use this as part of my essay tomorrow, but I'd like a bit more background information than the reference in the book I read provided. Nothing turned up on jstor, but I don't really have the time to go through the electronic resources of the library, nor visit there. Hopefully the internet'll provide something.

Setting up a non partisan liberty league up here with Becky from the lib dem group. Very excited about it, it's a contentious issue and one that deserves more than almost anything to be fought over. Hopefully we'll get some support up here, and I'll be able to make a difference before I move back down south for postgraduate study in 18 month's time.

flu

As the title hints, I've finally been struck down with Fresher's flu. It's ridiculously annoying because it's affected me just when my CFS has been playing up, so it's a double whammy. I'd at least like to be able to read, you know? So I could do some sort of work while being knocked for six.

University

Well I haven't blogged here for quite a while, mostly due to laziness and internet trouble cursing me for the last two weeks.

So, in the last two months I've arrived at University in Liverpool, spent three weeks in Halls and have started to get into the swing of University life. Been out a few times, done the obligatory early morning tutorial hungover and read an awful lot. Mostly university reading, which means I don't have time to read the smallish stack of books I brought up here to read recreationally. At the moment I'm having to get through about 2 plays, 2/3 secondary texts for Drama and I'm aiming for 2 books a week on Philosophy of Language.

The largest shock here has, I suppose, been living in Halls. The noise and the constant demand to socialise has been the most difficult to accommodate as although I'm usually reasonably sociable, I do enjoy peace and quiet. It's generally quiet in the mornings though, the compulsory student hangover kills any early birds that may be lurking within the halls.

Talking of birds, there's a lovely stream visible out of the kitchen and my bedroom's window that's populated by a few moorhen and duck families. As the path going by our block doesn't get used much (ours being the furthest in this direction) they often come up to right under the window. It's a lovely sight to see.

As I've mentioned before, I was without internet for 10 days. Internet being rather essential to the modern student, with all our tutorial, timetable, lecture and workshop materials being on VITAL (the student blackboard system) this necessitated frequent trips to the University Library. The Library being a 15minute bus ride away, my cfs kicked in with the frequency of the trips. Not fun. Not fun at all. It seems to be mostly fixed now, there's just the occasional outage.

Back.

Back from London and Great Missenden. I'll give a short overview.

Cocktails, Alex James nearly running me over, meteors, ridiculous amounts of wine, SaTC, Tapas and Harvey Nics.

I miss it all already.

Oh golly gosh

Do you think by starting like that I sound like a massive pretentious arse? I do, you say? Excellent! It's always good to keep in character.

I noticed I hadn't updated this in around 20 days, and that seemed a bit bad considering that when I started this, I had the intention of keeping it fairly updated. Such a gap can't be tolerated. In my defence, nothing that exciting has been going on in my day to day life. I think I've updated you all on the medical 'OH GOD THERE'S SOMETHING PRESSING ON MY EYE' problems that're going to be checked out. I should probably be terrified about that, but it doesn't seem particularly real.

On a more positive note, I'm off to London and the country in just under a week. Exciting stuff!