a lost little boy in a brand new town

I like sessions with DB a lot. I have said this before. But really Latin prose comp is the only time every fortnight that I get to check in with the other four classicists here all together, and it always makes me feel better. I get so lost in my own essay crises that I don’t realise there is a whole colony of people all around who are just the same. We all have essays that need to be done for Thursday that we’re only just starting…

And in his lovely, flippant-ironic way, he made us rate our moods as well, out of ten. I realised I was actually about an 8, that I was not excessively tired, or stressed, or ill, that I was having a pretty good day, and… that made all the difference really. I walked home thinking good thoughts.

I accidentally pickpocketed Matt last night. I hadn’t thought I’d get away with it, but I did, and then I got distracted and completely forgot about my sheer cunning until I was getting into pajamas at 2am and realised I still had his coin purse in the pocket of my jeans. I’m such a psychopath.

Anyways. Two minutes til leaving for choir and I’m still chewing. Faster! Then tonight it’s back to the essay – perhaps in the computer room so that I can’t be distracted. An essay crisis is still an essay crisis, regardless of how many other people have them.

edit: still reading.

fuuuuuck.

Herodotus, Histories, 7.11.2: “May I not be the son of Darius son of Hystaspes son of Arsames son of Ariaramnes son of Teispes son of Cyrus son of Cambyses son of Teispes son of Achaemenes, if I do not have vengeance on the Athenians…”

lol.

edit: Still reading.

7.133: “To Athens and Sparta Xerxes sent no heralds to demand earth [and water – typical symbolic gifts of surrender], and this he did for the following reason. When Darius had previously sent men with this same purpose, those who made the request were cast at the one city into the Pit and at the other into a well, and bidden to obtain their earth and water for the king from these locations.”

love is a doing word

As ever, should be working, but I kindof wanted to blog now just to record this feeling, because I realise that it doesn’t come often. I went over to Matt’s for lunch with him and Clare, and on the way back I came across Rich, Mary and Tom carrying bits of a bright red drumkit to the ADC, so I helped them.

In some funny way that kindof sums up what I love about here. I eat a really nice bacon sandwich with friends, then I leave, intending to come back here to get on with some work that I find really interesting, but on the way there I end up helping nice people doing something really odd like carrying a lot of shiny percussive things through the Cambridge streets.

Hello, nonsensical. I don’t know, really. But right now the sun is out, blue sky just visible over the roof of the Bingo hall, and I have my own room with a desk covered in paper and lots of books on Hellenocentrism that I don’t yet understand, and I’ve just been making plans for my week, Footlights and an anime evening and maybe a formal, and I’ve just stopped to realise what it means. Does this make sense? It’s what I’d like my life to be like forever.

take my weight off the ground

Emma, Matt and I just watched Torchwood. I don’t know why we bothered, really.

Have an hour now to try and finish a Latin prose comp that has lots of subclauses (yays subjunctives), then I think we’re ‘rocking on down’, as that hideous phrase goes, to the ADC to see Anthropology, which is billed as ‘the history of the world as delivered by three people and a bedsheet’, or something like that. Met up with Ev this afternoon for Costa time (we didn’t mind) and she said it’s meant to be very good.

Feeling smug today, as I seemed to be the only one who had finished this essay. Clearly essay planning over the weekend is the way to go, so I’ll be trying to do that again. Honestly I’m terrified by my next one, a history essay, because we have to give opinions based on our knowledge of the Persian Wars, and I have neither. But then again I didn’t know anything about Tacitus and Sejanus this time last week, so I just need faith that my ignorance is fixable.

Tomorrow should be a really lovely day, I hope. I have just the one lecture in the morning, on Plato’s Ion, and in the afternoon Suuz is coming to Cambridge with Jen, so I’ll take her round college and maybe a bit of town as well. Then in the evening we’re going to formal hall here, with our little college group plus Lou, Ev, two of Emma’s schoolfriends, and one of Matt’s sisters (not the stalker) who’s visiting for the weekend. Should be a jolly evening.

cautious tones

So yesterday was much as predicted, with three nice surprises. The first was finding a really nice sales dress while shopping with Lou, which is the perfect shape for me and covered in sequins, yays (but they’re brown-almost-blackish so it doesn’t look tacky). It’s slightly scratchy, but so gorgeous and swirly that I’m very willing to put up with it. We have formal here on Friday and (hopefully) one at St John’s next Friday, so I’ll soon get a chance to wear it.

The second cool thing was that DB “may or may not have messed up the rooms” and the only place left to have our Greek lang sv was the Costa in Waterstones, so we did that. David bought the drinks, which was lovely of him, and we sat around discussing whether or not participles are aspectual (they’re not).

The last nice thing was that the a capella group we went to see were even better than I’d hoped, extremely funny and talented and with some very cool arrangements of things like S Club 7 and the James Bond theme tune. We gave them a standing ovation and they gave us two encores, ahah, which was a good exchange… and, oh coincidences, one of those was the exact version of Billy Joel’s And So It Goes that happened at the Eton Choral Course this summer and that holds such memories for me. Hearing it for the first time since then, with the realisation of where I am now, and who with, and just what those words mean for me… it was especially beautiful.

Anyways. Today’s been another nice day, two lectures which were on average, average (one was excellent, however) and two useful lang supervisions and a longish choir practice. Finished my essay, though! I think I was the first by quite a long way. I need to check it tomorrow, or get Matt to proofread if he visits on the way back from badminton, but mostly it’s done, and that’s awesome. Mainly because kinky Ghislaine has told me my new singing lesson time is 9am tomorrow, ahahah, and I would be dead if I had to do that while sleep-deprived.

i’ll be cavalier

It’s been another nice normal day. I had only one lecture (!) at 12 (!) today, so I could stay up way late the night before working on Tacitus and completing the pyrammidical grid of photographs around my bed, which I’d half-done my first night back and had stopped halfway through as it was a surprising amount of work making all the different sizes fit. So that’s done now, and a great use of 2:30-4am time it was too.

And well, besides that one lecture (assigning noun genders in different languages – and actually v interesting), I have done very little. I did get some more Tacitus essay done though – 6 footnotes on the first page, and counting.

Matt went to Voices (college’s amateur choir) tonight, an inexplicable illogic on his part as it was very painful last term. He came back afterwards to confirm that it was just as painful as ever, then we… watched two HIGNFYs and otherwise whiled away time until… about ten minutes ago. Oh well, I at least don’t have to be up in the morning.

I hope that my nice unremarkable tomorrow will go something like this: me sleeping in late (hopefully being woken at… some point by Matt), going into town with Lou for a bit, having a Greek lang supervision, trying to write more essay, eating dinner alone in my room in a guilty attempt to increase productivity after failing to write more essay, having an escape to latenight Compline and then a laternight concert at the ADC.

Oh, and if Matt and I make it past 2am tomorrow without either one of us gaining doubts or a different sexuality then it will be something of a special record.

that same door always opening,

Having you care about little stuff like me getting the proper eight hours’ sleep is strange and wonderful. My family are the only ones who do that.

It won’t get me to bed earlier, but it will warm me as write my Tacitus essay plan.

There is a lesson in this
and love. Consider it.

tacitus annals 4.38

haec mihi in animis vestris templa, hae pulcherrimae effigies

“These are my temples in your hearts, these are my most beautiful statues.”

help, not just anybody

Rubbish, my translation of this Greek unseen is getting more and more unlikely. But it’s Menander, and I have no idea what it’s about, so for all I know it’s right. Heigh-ho.

Had final rehearsal for Requiem this morning, it’s sounding fantastic in King’s chapel. I’ve become really enthusiastic about this music now, and I’m gutted that none of my friends are able to come hear it, but it’s nice that we sold out quickly. I suppose with CUMS 1* playing and King’s as a venue it was bound to go quickly. And anyway, our little group is not to be deterred and we’re having a gathering in Matt’s room instead, with me just… slipping out halfway through to sing a Requiem. as you do.

I got an awesome email from mum last night asking me if I’d turned round the kitchen table because everyone else has denied it and she’s very confused. (I did, with the help of Suuz and Matt, last Thursday morning – there was a huge scratch on the visible end, so we rotated it without telling anyone to see how long it took for them to notice.)

*seriously.

Matt managed all of yesterday without getting a nosebleed, I was impressed. (Though he did narrowly miss getting kicked in the face yesterday, when he was being a knob during racing demons and I had to step over him to get to the bathroom. thank goodness I too have self-control as hard as steel.)