Personal

Life right now is almost the stuff of trite summer London tourist brochures, and it’s wonderful.

Monday was meant to begin with swimming, but ULU decided to close the pool for repairs till July on the very day I’d resolved to start a fitness regimen. The afternoon was Requiem For A Dream at the Prince Charles Cinema (admittedly not quite the feelgood hit of the season, but I loved it), me dragging ever-patient Russ with his gym bag around HMV, and overpriced chai and priceless conversation at Essence.

Dinner with various hallmates was creamy pasta, chicken kievs, Savoy cabbage garnished with bacon bits, fried onions and sweetcorn (my contribution), and peaches with Neapolitan ice-cream. We washed up to the sound of other hallmates singing Gretchaninoff’s Cantate Domino, in four-part harmony. Noelia sashayed downstairs, having embarked on intensive post-exam drinking much earlier in the day and now trying to recover from a hangover at 9.30 at night. Artem the mad Russian was laughing maniacally at Running Man in the TV room.

I spent the rest of the night in my room, listening to the CDs I’d bought at HMV (Copland, orchestral works; Sibelius, Symphony No 2 and Jascha Heifetz playing the Violin Concerto in D; Yehudi Menuhin playing the Beethoven and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos) and trudging through Underworld, which is getting increasingly tedious two thirds of the way through, and eventually put me to sleep.

* * *

Tuesday was for reading. I spent three leisurely hours in the UCL library, now almost empty because everyone has either finished exams or is studying outside on the grass. I joined them there later, with my little pile of books (Steppenwolf, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Made In America, Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).

Next stop was Waterstones, when summerness had started to be a bit of a pain in the arse. I’m a Waterstones skimmer and Borders reader, so the next hour was spent without really committing myself to anything, but flitting from section to section. Sputnik Sweetheart, English Passengers, The Death Of Vishnu, poetry by Kenneth Patchen, Arthur Rimbaud (in translation), the new Seamus Heaney, Nigella Bites, a book about Francis Bacon, and after Francis Bacon I felt like going back out into the sunshine, so I did.

Back at home, we went through the draft copy of our hall yearbook, ostensibly to check for errors (we corrected “bollix” to “bollocks”), but more so that we could scribble comments like “Let’s go, grrrls!” and “Phhhhwwwwoaaaarrr” under people’s entries.

* * *

Wednesday was time for some practicality again, and the afternoon was spent with Luke trying to plan our upcoming jaunt up the UK, which involved a fire alarm at Borders, brochure hoarding at the British Tourist Office, the recently shrunken fiver lunch at Belgo’s, the grass at Soho Square, swing dancing with Jitterbugs at the Notre Dame, and the generally loony exuberance that is Luke’s company.

* * *

And today? Today is gorgeous and zingy, and it’s all gonna be great.

FREEDOM.

And now the hedonism begins. No fits yet, Mum, hedonism my style is ridiculously tame.

Friday was lots of Japanese food (girly lunch at Ikkyu with Victoria and Jolene, exorbitant dinner at Yo!Sushi with Russ, Gareth, Matt, and assorted friends of Gareth and Matt), some forgettable pub in Soho, and the ever-reliable Gallery at Turnmills, which yielded an excellent set from Anthony Pappa, and further addition to the growing body of evidence that my hair is too butch (picked up/groped by: 3 girls versus 1 guy. No fits here either, Mum, this cold bitch never reciprocates). Getting accosted and followed by Eurotrash from Tottenham Court Road to my doorstep while walking home alone around 5 am after parting with Russ and Gareth was rather unsettling, and, I suppose, more Mumfit-worthy, but thankfully he didn’t try to follow me in.

Saturday was quiet and practical. I woke up at four, did extensive grocery shopping and laundry, cooked a cabbage-dominated dinner aimed at stopping exam-related scurvy in its tracks, and spent the rest of the evening making a sprawling Things To Do, Places To Go and People To See list and reading the Hieronymous Bosch book I bought in Madrid last year and hadn’t got round to looking at yet. Incidental music: Dan the Automator hijacking Xfm, Modest Mouse, and Elgar. Some time after three, I put on Joyzipper (a band, not a sex toy), curled up with Love In The Time Of Cholera, and eventually drifted into sleep, refreshingly dreamless after a week of three nightmares.

And there you have it. Hardly hedonism.

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