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One would mistake these words as those of Michelle, but alas I am not who you think I am. No. For I am Russ, the name that Michelle spatters across her blog like a 4 year old kid with a new paint set.

"What is this before my eyes?(!)" I hear your cry. Is this some form of black magick that has invaded Michelle’s World? No. There is no magick involved, this is not a trick. For She has given me the honour of sending a message on her behalf to inform you of her brief absence.

Where has She gone? She has gone to compete amongst the best of the Best at the World Debating Championships in Glasgow (sponsored by Accenture, formerly known as Andersen Consulting). Wish her and her partner luck by sending her your sentiments. She will be back in London on Thursday 4th January 2001.

Happy holidays.

Man, it’s good to be back in freezing foggy expensive London again…

Yup, we’re back from Madrid, which was enjoyable, but more because we made our own fun than because it was fun in itself. I’ll write a little more about it in the near future - right now my backpack still lies replete with unpacked clothes in my room, my mail is unread in my pigeon-hole, and my dinner is unchosen, unbought and uncooked in Tesco’s.

More notifications came from Django in my absence. And, of course, they’ve gotten snapped up now. Guess I’ll have to wait a little longer for Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump and Beck’s One Foot In The Grave.

In absolute shamelessness, maybe I should give pointers to my Django wishlist (to view it, enter my email address as found on this page) and my Amazon wishlist, just to lend a grasping helping hand to anyone who has a burning desire to buy me a Christmas present. Of course, apart from the items listed in these, anything else from someone who takes the trouble to select a gift for the specific entity that is me (as opposed to generic catch-all type gifts like chocolates or toiletries) generally earns them much love and brownie points.

Oh, I forgot to say: I got through to the next round of of the senior mooting competition. The best two from each moot go through, and I somehow managed this despite the fact that I arrived late with only half my submissions written, and wrote the rest while the person before me was speaking. Which is a lot tougher in mooting than it is in debating, because you need to be far more precise with what you’re saying when the judge can interject at any time.

In his feedback to us, the judge said my strongest point was the fact that I wouldn’t take any crap from him. This is probably due to the fact that once I finished the stuff I’d actually written down, I was pulling everything else from various orifices, and thought the best policy was to just defend the whole damn mess to the death. Seems to have worked.

The judge in this one was extremely good - he was pleasant, but obviously understood everything that was going on, and questioned all of us thoroughly. If I hadn’t gone through, I’d have accepted it, firstly, because he definitely knew his stuff, secondly, because with my dismal preparation my arguments probably had holes in them, and thirdly, because it was the highest standard moot I’ve ever been in and my competitors all seemed better prepared. This does mean, however, that I have to go through the whole damn rigmarole again in the next round. This is so ludicrous. First I whinge about having to do the moot, and it being difficult. Then I get through, and I whinge about having to do it again. If I’d lost in a way I thought was unfair, I’d whinge about that too.

Guess there’s just no satisfying some people…

My brain hurts. I’ve just spent the last six hours trying to figure out what to argue for my moot (mock trial) tomorrow, and given that it’ll entail arguing about criminal law topics we haven’t even covered yet in front of a practising barrister, I’m figuring that no matter how wretched I feel right now, the actual moot might quite possibly be worse.

So here I am, sitting in the library typing away on a stone-age computer at 9.30 pm. I haven’t had dinner. The library windows are rattling with the strength of the wind outside. It’s the last week of term.

And again I ask myself why the hell I bother doing something which I don’t actually enjoy. I detest having to sit and listen to people using too much legalese and too little brainpower blather on about things that I am incapable of finding interesting at 6 in the evening. I resent the intrusion of moot preparation into my already packed and badly managed schedule. The only part of the moot I actually find enjoyable is if the judge challenges me and tries to throw me off - that’s when it goes into the realm of the unscripted, and that’s where I most enjoy the cut and thrust of argument. Unfortunately, a fair number of judges I’ve had are either incapable or uninterested in getting involved in this.

And again I ask why I do this…I guess the answer is, simply, that I’m too damn arrogant to pass up doing something I know I’m good at, even if I don’t enjoy doing it all that much and it comes at the expense of other things. And it’s good for the CV, obviously, as sellouty and un-rock’n'roll as that may sound.

Rishi and Mickey, two other people in the moot tomorrow, have given up and gone home in disgust. We had a satisfying kvetch about our collective misery. I’ll probably venture out into the wind and rain soonish as well, go get some dinner, and hopefully find some suitably mindless TV programme or conversation to eat it over. I suppose a good frame of mind to be in now would be to think of all the poor starving children in sub-Saharan Africa etc. etc.

And on that note, I shall trudge.