The return from Rome.

Well I have returned from Rome. From the verdant, warm climes of Italy to the damp and cold English autumn. Although I was aware of the Mediterranean climate, I was unprepared for the shock of being able to stroll along Vias needing nothing more than a T-shirt. Would be nice to bring the weather back with me, though of course then I'd be complaining about the terrible Architecture around here.

What I AM most thoroughly complaining about, however, is the fact that a wonderful café is now several hundred miles away. It's most disappointing, yet it'll inevitably serve as a source of temptation to return very soon. Not that I needed another source of course, Rome as a whole is simply enchanting.

Paris keeps cropping up. It's an omnipresent light in the background, tempting wary students astray like some sort of urban will'O'the'wisp. What choice do we have in such circumstances but to give in!

In preparation, I'm supposed to be learning French, but the pressing matter of essays has already overshadowed these attempts. In the next month, I have four essays to write, one of which, on Roman socio-political conflict in the late Roman republic is going to take fucking ages to write simply because of the number of books I'll have to wade through to be able to form a few paragraphs. It's vaguely ridiculous. I should enjoy this, I love the classics, and yet being forced to write an essay that's worth such a large proportion of your final module grade is somewhat numbing. As you can tell (whomsoever you are, ethereal reader), I do not deal with stress well. What I do do well however, is hide is from those I need to hide it from. Yay.

It would have been nice, I suppose to have had a short break between Italy and Essays, instead this break was a horrific bad chest that made me wonder if I'd caught swine flu from somewhere. But from where? Rome? No. Such a thought would denigrate such a wonderful place. Must have been from those swine at easyjet.