Sunday morning

Oh god I am so ill. It is ridiculous. I am snuffling and sniffling and I have the usual brass band practising Jerusalem inside my head. I am not hungover; I barely drank anything last night, despite ending up behind the bar of the LGB bop. It was possibly more bearable from behind there, as at least I could hear myself think, and all the cool people ended up there eventually. That was the plan, anyway, although Maria dragged me out to dance in the end. This was something of a failure, as I made a break for the night and stood outside where it was cooler. Whilst I was there, I got to talking to a Smurf. Well, he was dressed as a Smurf. He had the blue skin - blue chalk, apparently - and the white skirt-thing and funny hat. I asked him what was the relevance of Smurfs to an LGB bop (for which the fancy dress theme was the Wizard of Oz), and he asked me if I'd ever seen the television show, and why was there only one Smurfette to about a million male Smurfs. I conceded.

And this Smurf was quite fun to talk to, although I lost him after I got in the way of a pair of brawling rugby players who landed, all twenty stone of them, on one of my feet. I was too busy screaming in pain to get very annoyed with them, although to be fair to them, they came back and apologised quite nicely. Huh. I think I went down to the toilets after that in a huff. And I got a bit of a pleasant surprise. Back in Hilary, I was in a similar huff in one of the JCR toilet cubicles, and was sitting moping and reading the grafitti on the back of the door. It is very interesting graffiti. There is abuse of Trinity, people quoting Kipling, scribbled lyrics from Nat King Cole. The back of that toilet door is a work of art. I got out my biro and carefully scrawled, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."

And last night, back in the same cubicle, I had another look. In three different sets of handwriting, the sonnet has been continued, line by line to: "Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken." I added, "Love's not Time's fool", and returned to the bop in a slightly better frame of mind. Even so I still stomped off about one-ish, because I was in a bad mood and feeling like a recurrent guest star in my own life again, and I went to bed and didn't wake up. At about half eleven Liya called and woke me out of the soundest sleep of my life. I said, blearily, "I'll call you back," and went back to sleep. Many hours later, I wandered into Claire's room - where she was lying, hungover, in the dark - and she asked, sans greeting, "Did you shag that Smurf last night?"

"If only," I said. "Why?"

"Liya thought you weren't alone and that's why you wouldn't talk to her!"

I curled up in a chair and started making mint tea by the light from the window. It wasn't a good day. Feeling stupidly ill has not helped anything, and my brain-in-vat essay wasn't going well, and I went back to Starbucks across the road to try and do maths, which didn't work either. When I was making the tea, Sky came in, and Claire said to him, "Tell her."

Sky's leaving in a week. I can't believe it. He's really, really leaving. I thought he'd at least stay until the end of this term, sit his prelims and then take the next year out, because he's been suffering lately and the general opinion was that it would be for the best. But it was contingent on his passing his collections, and he walked out of them last week, and resitting them this week has been fairly fucked-up. He went to two of them, but he was supposed to go to one this morning and didn't. He said that when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Bob sitting on the end of his bed.

I said he should have locked his door. (Although, Bob on the end of your bed would be fairly horrifying; he is my former Logic tutor, old, scary and very very bearded.)

But that's that, apparently. His Bod card is being deactivated tomorrow. It feels very official and very sudden. I'm going to miss him. Everyone is. Damn it. Just... yeah. This place isn't going to be the same without him. He's in London for two weeks and then travelling around the world. He's promised to send postcards and letters from everywhere he goes, and he'll be back to sit his prelims in Trinity 2007. But yes, I'm going to miss him so much.

At this point, he disappeared, and Maria came over to make May Day morning plans. I'm still really looking forward to it, and we are leaving college at five once I've woken everyone up, and off to somehow find a place below Magdalen in the seething crowds. The bridge is closed this year, so not only are the inhabitants of Cowley cut off from the rest of the world, but we'll have to find somewhere else to stand. I also want to see Balliol college choir - featuring Pat, but not annikah any more - on the roof of the SCR, and I also plan to go and see foreverdirt dancing in Radcliffe Square.

And. AND. I just rang julianelupin (and said, in tones of utmost surprise, "You're AMERICAN!", but we shall move on past that). She and thieving_gypsy are here in Oxford and will be around for May Day, and there will be squee.

Sigh. Brass band still there. Paracetamol now, and going to wake up Claire, I think.