Home

I am home. Sigh. It feels rather wonderful to be back at my own kitchen table, where it smells of incense and every surface is covered in books and papers and there are crumbs all over the floor. There are two differences that I can see, one good, one surreal; the good news is that we have wireless internet, and not only that, wireless that works - I literally opened up my laptop and it connected, which is extraordinary considering the difficulty we've always had getting any kind of internet to work for long - while the surreal news is, well, we don't have a kitchen tap any more. We have a sink, and a large hole in the ceramic through which you can see the pipes. Explanations concerning this from my parents have been quite entertainingly vague, although I suspect some connection with that phone conversation I had with Pedar several weeks ago that began, "Say, hypothetically speaking, you had two inches of water on the kitchen floor..."

In short, it's absolutely delightful to be home again, though I have a slight pang of missing college. I'm a little amused that my life now consists of being in one place and missing another, especially as I've home five months out of the year, but really I think it's cool that I've got so many places that I have loved. I have decided to take this next week off. I am going to spend a lot of time online, read and read and read all the novels I have piled up, write fic, write letters to newspapers and my MP, take a lot of baths, go to Manchester (I hope) to see clareyperson and purplerainbow, go to school to visit quackaquacka, eternalwings and cathick, go and watch stupid films with Claire, once she gets back, and go a-wandering down through the pinewoods and by the shore. It shall be bliss. There will be no academic reading, no wine, no dancing and no sleep-deprivation. (Not that those things are not fun, but I rather think I'm due a nervous breakdown pretty soon if I don't have some sort of rest.) So yes, I am looking forward to that, and I'm going to start work the week after. My collections are in nougth week, and they're mock prelims. I am not remotely confident about that, but we shall see.

Um, what else? My last couple of days in college were something of a whirlwind. I went to have coffee with annikah, whom I met through minttown1, which was very much fun, and I did do a lot of wandering around Oxford, but mostly I had the flu. The last couple of nights were general celebration, and last night we got through six bottles of wine and hit a termly total of thirty-eight bottles of wine and two bottles of vodka. After playing Pirates of the Caribbean drinking games and getting fairly pissed, there was dancing and then singing the Gordouli loudly and tunelessly over the back wall. Claire fell into bed at this point, Pat and I attempted to watch Futurama, but we all fell asleep. It later transpired that Claire got up again and went to Oriel to meet a CAAH friend, and promptly got stoned. In the morning she lurched into the room with meringue hair. It was hysterically funny at the time, but she did not appreciate it. Anyway, moving on, I finally went to breakfast at the Buttery with my friends. We ate chocolate croissants and bemoaned hangovers, and then, the loss of each other. Claire and Sky are staying, till tomorrow and Tuesday respectively, but I'm glad to be home today.

In a final bit of fannish news, I caved and am downloading the first episode of Life On Mars. It had be better be good, all you people who have got my hopes up. And now I leave you to go and pass out somewhere comfortable.