Hall Chronicles: ABBA Priest /Jurisprudence Choices

Tiny glittery stars are strewn along the floors of my hall, incredibly well dispersed from their original places on the tables at our Christmas dinner party by getting caught and carried in clothes and under shoes, or unstuck from noses and cheeks and foreheads. It’s rather nice.

The Christmas party had highs and lows, lows being the mediocre cuisine and people who couldn’t sing particularly well deciding they’d sing for what felt like particularly long, but of course we all clapped and squealed and hollered “Encore!” because that’s what this hall is like, highs being Mark’s unfailing ability to choose the exact moment a priest is walking by to be saying PUBES!!!, giggling with Tay about him getting his guitar out and leading everyone in a rousing chorus of “FEEEEEEEED THE WOOOOOORLD”, and a brief period in the bar where a small number of people were going absolutely apeshit dancing until everyone promptly decided they were far too drunk to continue and went off to vomit/attempt to pull/sleep.

Neither high nor low but just in a whole other dimension was Father J dressing up as the Queen (complete with handbag) and giving his version of the Queen’s speech (tailored for the hall), which included statements like a new pricing system for showers which would involve “50p for a 30 second spurt”, and then dancing to, unsurprisingly but terrifyingly, Dancing Queen.

Life was somewhat back to normal yesterday, or at least it seemed normal by the time I’d woken up at 2 pm. Have been grappling with a morass of practical really-must-do’s since then – Conflict of Laws reading, choosing my Big Jurisprudence Book option for next term (see below if interested), badgering NatWest about the Switch card they’re supposed to send me but haven’t.

[I’m going for Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates as first choice and Machiavelli’s The Prince as second. Discarded Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship and Montesquieu’s The Spirit Of The Laws early on because they take a more sociological approach to the law than I’m interested in, decided against Finnis’s Natural Law and Natural Rights, Dworkin’s Life’s Dominion and Mill’s On Liberty despite their legendary status because they felt like ground a little too well trodden, and finally eliminated Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic rather reluctantly later on because they sounded a little less fun than my final two choices, and also because, as Alec pointed out, it might ultimately feel unfulfilling and difficult to take them on without a wider grounding in philosophy.]

Pleasant distractions abound, though. Amazing dinner at Alec’s, cooked by Larry (home-made bread, tortellini, duck, The Mother Of All Chocolate Cakes, wine, some other alcoholic beverage that tasted of lemons). Excitement about Friday’s Tori Amos gig, and Saturday’s outing to Rent. Slight consternation as to how to avoid nudity and freezing in Andorra in a few weeks, note to self: find out about renting skiing clothes.