Muted Decadence

I must do muted decadence more often, it’s so invigorating. After meeting with Sabrina to prepare for our moot on Wednesday and exchanging mutual affirmations of the absolute direness of our case (Suicide bomber blows up airline, killing everyone. Airline’s colour monitors for screening out bombs weren’t working. We have to say YAY AIRLINE!), lunch at Spiga with Ken was looking distinctly appealing, even if I did meet John on the way and find myself unable to debunk his “Ken is Hannibal Lecter” theory.

After lunch Berwick Street yielded Summer Hymns’ A Celebratory Arm Gesture (only 99p more expensive than the tiramisu at Spiga), the latest issue of Wire and a Sonic Youth T-shirt I’ve been trying to chase down for ages.

In Virgin, the Reckless Records plastic bag and the “Old Skool Jungle Anthems” sign above my head at the listening booth seemed to attract attention from the strangest sorts of people, so after a while I pottered off to other parts of the store to see if I could listen to Fog, The Notwist or John Zorn. I didn’t manage to find any of those, but then they played Will singing Evergreen and that made me happy.

Bookhouse on the way home yielded another copy of Cryptonomicon (for Russ), but I managed to prise Denise Levertov’s collected earlier poems, Pale Fire (Nabokov) and Elmet (Ted Hughes, Fay Godwin) out of my own clammy hands before more damage to the bank balance could be done.

Nighttime revels at my hallmate’s surprise birthday party were hardly Bacchanalian given that its highlights included getting to ruffle my priest’s hair (the one with the imaginary mammaries) and ruminating on whether eating tortilla chips deviated from my Lenten sacrifice (potato chips) due to their corn-based nature. (Another weighty dilemma: If I’ve given up Coke, what about Dr Pepper?)

But muted decadence is all I can manage right now. The moot is tomorrow, my point of law absurdly impossible to argue, and the prospect of sleep tonight absurdly impossible to contemplate.