Londoner Forever

There are oodles of reasons I can’t wait for these damn exams to be over, but the prime one is probably that I’d rather like to be an interesting person again.

I’m not particularly fond of myself at exam time. I get whiny, and disconsolate, and I’m generally so absorbed in personal misery at the disaster I anticipate that I can’t really think of very much else. It shows the most in my inability to carry on a conversation, I think. In trying too hard to avoid talking about exams and boring people with my moaning, I somehow find myself making comments I wouldn’t normally make – usually stuff which is either too offensive or too uninteresting to share – and to make things worse, I tend to drift off while other people are talking, which means I then have no idea what they’ve just said and no means of responding intelligently.

So to all who have had the misfortune of having to talk to me recently, and especially to anyone in my hall (which I’ve hardly ventured out from over the past few weeks) who ever reads this: please believe I’m not actually a stupid, boring, dour socially dysfunctional narcissist obsessed with studying. It’s just the fallout from spending a wonderful but study-free year as an intelligent, interesting, effervescent and socially successful narcissist. :P

Two exams down, two to go.

My life over the past couple of weeks has been…uncharacteristic.

Normal sleeping hours, adopted in desperation and self-loathing after my essay debacle. Now I walk into breakfast and no one bats an eyelid.

An almost exclusively classical playlist, mostly provided by Classic FM and my new Elgar CD (Enigma Variations/Pomp And Circumstance Marches/Crown Of India Suite, Daniel Barenboim, London Phil), also kindly supplemented by two Vaughan-Williams CDs borrowed from hallmate Michael.

I haven’t got out much, apart from Saturday’s surreal excursion to Beano (regular cheese night at ULU) after taking part in (and winning!) my first ever pub quiz.

There’s a slice of Gower Street I gaze out at from my table in the library, through sterile veiled curtains and a window that needs washing. There’s people, and movement, and the flash of sunlight on car windows, but it all seems distant and not quite real, somehow. Like watching closed-circuit TV. You know it’s really happening, but the colours are flat, and however nearby you know you are, no one knows you’re watching.

Sometimes in the evenings I venture out in search of food. McDonalds. KFC. Takeaway pizza. Not much in the way of nutrition. Yesterday I got myself some spinach, which will hopefully stave off scurvy for the time being.

Everything is a bitch.

Except Russ and Nick, and Ninja Tune, with whom Thursday night was happily spent experiencing Xen at Cargo.

Except Ken, with whom Friday night was absorbingly spent exploring the terra incognita that is outer London. And Tom Stoppard, for writing the lovely Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, which I probably didn’t do justice to as a member of the audience after an entire day of studying and an incredibly tedious debate committee meeting, but enjoyed immensely nonetheless.

Except lovely people in my hall, with whom most other nights are satisfyingly whiled away with bad TV and strange conversations and Aftershock. Which is 80p at our bar. :)~

Okay. Suddenly I feel better. Back to contract law.

And once again, I am fallen. A three-day record of normal sleep patterns was broken yesterday when I woke up at one, having only gone to bed at five a.m. due to a four-hour phone conversation with Russ. The afternoon was chatted away with Tamara over caffeinated beverages and mammoth sandwiches at the happy place that is the Old Compton Street Cafe.

Attempts were made at European Community law during the night but abandoned amid screamed obscenities when, in an impressive display of clumsiness, I managed to spill peppermint tea on my desk. They say its aroma has therapeutic effects, but I must say I didn’t quite feel myself to be particularly calm while floundering around elbow-deep in soggy lecture notes.

At this point I should say that entries here might get a little sparse in the next couple of weeks, while I’m trying not to fail my second year. But do keep popping in. I promise I’ll try not to be boring.

At some point before I fail second year, my present philosophy of “self-indulgence good, studying bad” really has to change.

Saturday was lunch at Brick Lane with Russ, where we managed to add to the small but growing body of restaurant staff who hate us for taking too long over meals and talking too much (now established in Paris and London. We gotta do New York and Milan next). Then a couple of hours of conversational reading in the Borders cafe (Russ with design magazines and The Economist, me with Watchmen, Life After God, and re-giggling my way through Anthropology. Conversation: sometimes related to reading material, often completely tangential).

Somewhere around 9 pm, I was reading the copy of The Wire I’d bought for the Matador sampler CD that came with it, was thoroughly overwhelmed at the depths of my music ignorance, and fell asleep. And that was Saturday.

Sunday was Palm Sunday Mass followed by dim sum at Dong Hai in Chinatown (it has an English name that’s so completely different from its Chinese name that I’ve forgotten it, but it’s very good) with Shoop and Esther, where we talked about usual girlie stuff like gossip, hair, and the fundamental theological disagreements between Catholicism and Protestantism.

And then home, and ineffectual attempts at studying, and sleep, and panicked awakening at 9.05, and headlong rushing down the stairs only to find out that The X-Files had been usurped by golf, and then grudging acceptance of the need to study, so contract law and Elgar and Don DeLillo till 3 am. And that was Sunday.

And tomorrow is Yo La Tengo. And Wednesday is a preview screening of Bridget Jones’ Diary. And Thursday is Stephen Malkmus. And May 8 the exams begin.