Do they know it's Christmas?

( Merry Christmas, everybody... )

That's Claire in the Rudolph mask, Pat in the orange, me in the hat and Sky with his hands stuck to the bottle. They really are stuck - Claire did it with double-sided sellotape, which wasn't a good idea in retrospect; it was about ten when that picture was taken and he'd been drinking since lunchtime and getting steadily more depressed. Several people tried to put him to bed - he kept getting up again - until Claire did it finally by going up there and scaring him to death.

But, as always, I get ahead of myself. Last night, being December 1st, was the Balliol Christmas dinner and bop. The dinner was good fun, if not worth the batteling; there was much silliness involving paper hats, balloons flying over the place and surreptitious pennying. I managed to get through the whole night without being pennyed (pennied? penny-ed?) once; Sky, however, managed to do it to everyone and when the World Aids Day people came round, he was so reluctant to give up his pennies that he gave them ten pounds in notes instead.

At the end of the dinner, a second-year I know slightly came over to have a chat. He talked aimlessly for about ten minutes before wandering off again. Slightly bumbling flirtation was a nice note to end on, and we staggered out and ambled to the bar. It was quiet when we got in there, so there was vodka and table football and the sudden appearance of Sky, who was very, very drunk at that point. (As mentioned before, he had a bottle of red wine stuck to him.) Very drunk. Very, very drunk. And correspondingly depressed and inclined to speak his mind; therefore, when Phillip, dressed like an archangel, came along, Sky wrapped his arms round him and whispered, "Philip, oh, how I loathe thee."

Philip blinked. "You love me?"

"No," said Sky. "You're a wanker."

(Later on he went up to Dhruv and said, "I really want to hurt you now." He was very drunk.)

A short time later, the party moved to go to Sainsbury's, buy wine and put Sky to bed, not in that order. Sky would not be put to bed. Instead he came up to Claire's room, where we all cracked upon the red wine and began the long, long slide down towards oblivion. The red wine bottles were from some obscure province of Chile and quite, quite awful. It was what I called bracing. We did go to the bop for a bit, but missed the Gordouli and went to Po Na Na instead. There was much vodka, and being more or less sober (I only had the red wine), I was witness to much drunken emotion. Because yesterday and today are our last days in college for six weeks, and the end-of-term mood is firmly upon us.

At two in the morning, they played "Do They Know It's Christmas?" as the last song, and Claire, Pat and I wandered out onto Cormarket, resplendent with Christmas lights, and went off to propose marriage to Hassan the kebab van man. He gave us chips with cheese, and we ate them with the last of the wine, running across the quads in the rain. Later on, Claire went up to see Sky was asleep, found he wasn't, told him she was leaving but actually sat down on his floor and made scary noises. She says that in her defence she was very drunk.

She also says she remembers having a conversation with Wisconsin Sam at four in the morning, during which she was very keen to point out that she and I live in the poorest county in England and he must come and see it sometime.

I missed that. I was safely in bed by four. Of course, I got out of bed again at eight to be sure of getting books from the library, so I rather think I will fall asleep in this afternoon's tutorial. But after it's over, then that really is it. My packing is almost done, and none of us can face going out again tonight. The plan is for DVDs and ice-cream and cookies from Ben's Cookies and general vegetation, and a pantry breakfast at seven.

I'm going home. I'm going home!