Rosé

I wish I had my camera (I forgot to bring it up this term) so I could show you all the squalor in my room. It is a total mess, but it's the good kind of squalor: the sort of mess that means lots of people had a good time and even tried to help tidy up afterwards, but weren't quite sober enough for perfect aim. It'll take me about five minutes to put right, as it mostly involves hiding stuff in cupboards and under the bed. I don't think I mind in the slightest, because I was certainly lucid enough last night to take gwynnega's excellent advice and drink lots of water, and so I don't have a hangover, the day outside is bright and beautiful and things are still good.

My birthday was, as I think I tried to say yesterday, fantastic. It was just wonderful in every single way. I had to get up in the morning and go to Intro to French Politics, which wasn't actually all that bad. Sudhir, my tutor, is also the relevant lecturer, and he has this disconcerting ability to remember everyone he meets and their names. He gave me a nod and wave as he went into the rom, and then proceeded to talk for forty-five minutes about cabinet instability and almost make it interesting. But even so, I wandered back home by way of Borders quite happily (I bought myself a couple of books, natch) and did some work half-heartedly whilst waiting for lunchtime. I found gifts in my pidge on the way back - a small, cute Babar card and something wrapped up, which turned out to be a Rilo Kiley album from chemgeek!Laura. She's always wanted me to try listening to Rilo Kiley, and I shall oblige with pleasure.

Lunchtime, according to Claire, can only mean the Covered Market, so that's where we went, and bought an abundance of sandwiches and gossiped and heard all about Sky in Grease (he's playing Roger, at which point you may ask, as so many people have done already to no avail, who the hell is Roger?) and Liya gave me a small card labelled "fount of all knowledge." I later put this somewhere for safekeeping and unwittingly chose the folder that had my essay to give to Sudhir. Well, it's safe with him for a week, I guess.

In the afternoon I went back to my pidge, and this time I found a card from wadiekin (thank you so much!) that has a teeny Crowley/Aziraphale fic actually written inside it. It is such love and I have read it about twenty times. And also a note from the porters saying please come to the lodge pronto otherwise the world will end tragically, so I went. And they had a large box for me, with a cake and a big card and a bunch of red roses, with a note from my parents. I rang them up and made noises of incoherent squee.

And then lilka arrived! She had lost Ronan, who had apparently been abducted by aliens, and she gave me a pretty wrapped-up present and lots of Revels, and I meant to do my free will and determinism but instead we sat around my room and giggled incessantly until the aliens brought Ronan back. I was thinking she should have stayed five minutes longer, because Claire and Pat and Sky marched up the stairs demanding cake and bearing gifts and, um, singing. A lot.

They can't actually sing that well, but they make up for it in rampant enthusiasm and cake-eating skills. And they claimed incredible disorganisation and the small pile of presents was installment one of two, because whatever-it-is hasn't come yet. I was busy feeling squishy and loved because of the amount of thought they'd put into everything. They gave me a large tin of jelly beans ("How did you know?" I asked, and they said: "It's the unholy light in your eyes when you steal Sky's sweet jar") and ten pounds worth of G&D's vouchers (ohmygod, so much ice-cream) and Thud. (I made further noises of Pterry squee.)

Sky said he was giving me solidarity gifts. I didn't know what he meant, until gave me a suspiciously heavy card - upon opening, it had The Little Book of New Labour Bollocks ("From one political scientist to another!") inside it, and with it, he gave me a pint of semi-skimmed milk. Ever since he found the German for the latter is "Halb und Halb", he uses it as a friendly synomyn for bisexuality. "Solidarity," he said, and grinned.

And with that, we went to Freud's. It's a quasi-Mediterranean restaurant in Jericho, opposite the OUP, and is a converted Serbo-Croat church, which makes it feel deliciously sacreligeous to drink in. I was really and honestly surprised at how many people appeared. Apart from Claire, Liya, Pat and Sky, there was jacinthsong and withiel, with chains_of_irony and a cameo by chrisvenus, and chemgeek!Laura and Sarah, and Jane and Ronan, and I was pretty sure by the end of it that the waiter wanted to kill us, or at least spit in our food. But I didn't care in the slightest. There was food and nice white wine and about half a dozen interesting conversations going on at any one moment. Of course, it is pretty obvious that when you invite all your friends to your own birthday party, that you will have lots of people you want to talk to, but for some reason the concept had escaped me until last night.

I remember vaguely Jenni and Jane getting into a long discussion about comics, and Liya finding out that she can't pronounce either "competence" or "muesli" (I asked what the hell they were talking about that needed those words together, but no-one would tell me), and Laura propositioning me again (Alex was in the room, and it was my birthday) [Edited to add: I sometimes forget you can't actually hear how I'm saying this, but for the record, Laura propositioning me is a thing of JOY AND LOVE] and, finally, Alex spending too much time doing enthusiastic impressions of K9, Four and Romana II. I threatened to cry if he didn't stop.

And so on and so forth, and we all walked fairly unsteadily back towards the colleges, and I eventually lost all but the Balliolites as the rest lurched towards Wadham and the ones with saints in. Claire and Pat said not to worry about a thing, take Liya up to the attic and they would be along shortly. So we managed to get up the stairs, retrieve Sky, and after five minutes they appeared with a Sainbury's bag full of white Inti and really rather nice rosé.

After that it all fades into a deliciously mellow blur. Claire was downloading music into my laptop, and Sky was muttering about his rehearsals, and we were all eating cake and drinking wine, and giggling over everything and nothing and teasing Liya about Marcus and I was beginning to think I'd had the best birthday ever. And I think I probably did. And in the end, they all drifted off homewards, we put a stopper into the last bottle and I drank three glass of water and drifted myself into bed. It really was a wonderful, wonderful day, and now I'm nineteen and I feel like I'm the luckiest person who ever lived.

I even got written fic: Thespianism by hathy_col, in which girl!Doctor does the Vagina Monologues. It is wonderful and everyone should read it.

Today, I have to finish off the reading for my next free will essay, and go down to New Inn Hall for my own audition for the Vagina Monologues. I'm still really nervous, but we shall see. Also, every week, round about Wednesday, Pat and I have a momentary but collective lapse in sanity where we decide to arrange to do our washing at an unearthly (read, nine) hour of the morning. Which explains why I'm up and actually feeling productive.

I hope the rest of the year is as good.