May morning and more about summer in Oxford

My day today, in easy bitesize chunks. Get up, feel unaccountably depressed. Get dressed at speed of snail because getting out of bed makes me feel even worse. Wander around hating world and everything in it. Cheer up slightly at sunshine outside, but resolutely back into depression at size of economics reading list and the fact I have done none of it due to the aforementioned depression and the fact I never seem to get out of bed before lunchtime these days. Do econcomics, Try to. Stare at page and make mental lists of many millions of things would rather be doing. One of these is go to Queerglish. Go to Queerglish, get fed doughnuts by steerpikelet, feel much better. Return to college to be met by Claire, who looks very, very happy.

Actually, that was quite odd. "I have a SINK PLUNGER!" she yelled, with the sort of exultation usually reserved for essay-finishing and holy resurrection. "I can unblock my sink!"

Claire's sink has been blocked since Saturday. It is now filled with an appetising mixture of beer, mint tea and toothpaste. However, she bought that sink plunger and verily she plunged with it. The taps are running because they can.

Yes, screw the bitesize chunks. I'm now more in the mood for proper prose. Plunging over, she asked if I wanted to go for a wander. I left Queerglish to do some work. Never mind. We retrieved Sky from the grass on the quad and went down Christ Church Meadow to sit on the grass and smoke and watch the boat crews drift past on the Isis. I'm trying - trying! - to have a new philosophy of life. I'm dividing everything into two categories - things I will regret in six weeks and five days, i.e., June 21st in Exam Schools, and things I will regret round about 2067, when I'm eighty. Because when I sit my prelims, I'm pretty sure I will regret not having spent every waking minute in the library peering at my various set texts, but I have a feeling that when I'm eighty I won't remember the library at all, but will remember the idyllic summer days lying by the river in Oxford, and wish I'd spent more of my undergraduate years doing that.

I'm trying to keep a balance between the two. I'm trying, and it doesn't seem to be easy. Worst of all, I can't find reasons to get out of bed. My friends cheer me up like nothing else, and it's got to be really bleak, really grey, before they can't; but they're not there all the time, and the early morning is the worst time. I can't face that, most days. It's got to be afternoon before I'll venture out, and the venturing out is hard, too. I'm nursing a summer cold, and all I want to do is cough myself into oblivion.

I suppose I'm digressing. Back on the grass by the water, we were passing cigarettes from hand to hand and feeling juvenile. Sky has decided to take up smoking. He's asthmatic, but thinks it will give him street-cred on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I think he took it up and gave it all up in the same day. When we'd got sick of acting like we were twelve, I started eating strawberry sherbets and feeding them to the ducks. The boat crews were slapping through the water and making me feel almost guilty about being so lazy on the bank, but only almost. Friends, and sweeties, and ducks, and sunshine - and I was wearing summery clothes, for the first time this year - sandals and the Skirt O'Amazingness - and it was idyllic and beautiful. And then it was time for dinner, time to get the others and their books and their Pimm's off the garden quad, and that was perfect, too.

After that I went to Starbucks, sat there for two hours with my economics, got some work done. So the day was productive, I guess; I could be doing more work than I'm doing, but that's always true. I suppose I'm okay. I'm still here.

And while I'm here, I never even managed to talk about May Day, and it was wonderful. I went out the night before it, post the mint tea incident, to go and get pizza. Whose bright idea was it to get pizza at half eleven on a Sunday night? Probably mine. But no one was bright enough to notice, so I assert collective responsibility. Sky and Ben did a duet of "Goodnight Sweetheart" as we walked through the front quad, which almost made the entire trip worth it. Almost but not quite, because I in my infinite intelligence and newly-threatening cold decided to go out into the pouring rain wearing minimalist leather sandals. I sneezed a lot, later. We got Chinese food instead of pizza, camped out in Sky's room and worked our way through it with the studied nonchalance of six people who had twenty minutes earlier declared themselves not that hungry, really, not at all.

Claire decided at that point that staying up all night was a good idea. Other people apparently disagreed, because the porter came up to complain about the noise, and eventually, I joined in the chorus of disagreement and took a nap. It definitely qualified as a nap, as I was woken up two hours later by Maria bouncing into the attic, telling me it was five o'clock, get up, get up, and I groaned, got up, and phoned everyone I knew to share round the misery. We were out on the High Street by half five, joining the throngs of people, umbrellas and empty bottles making their way up to Magdalden Bridge. The bridge itself was closed, as expected - I found out later that five people still jumped in (twenty-five feet drop into water not quite three feet deep; some people just can't be reasoned with) - but the crowds weren't as awful as expected in front of Magdalen. It was a decidedly odd experience, standing there at six in the morning, half-asleep and headachey in the cold and grey and pouring rain, but with a sense of anticipation.

And I had a go at fighting through the crowd, avoiding having my eyes poked out by Pat's umbrella, and finally managed to find thieving_gypsy and julianelupin. I'm just glad it was them, and I wasn't accosting two random strangers. But it was them, and they did not kill me for having dragged them out at the (literal) crack of dawn in the rain. After a bit I fought my way back through the crowd to my friends and their umbrellas, and the choir started to sing.

I haven't been able to find out much about the tradition, excepting of course the fact that it's old. It's just something that happens, that the choir climb to the top of the tower at six am on May morning and sing the Hymnus Eucharisticus, and the whole city turns up to listen. It was lovely. Their voices weren't attached to anything - the choir themselves weren't visible in the grey - so it was just a matter of drifting, ethereal Latin floating out of the sky.

And then it was time for breakfast. Maria fed us all a delicious array of food, and I went out to see Balliol college choir sing the madrigals, and then went back to bed. I got up at eleven fifteen, having arranged to meet thecapitalc at eleven twenty, and wasn't that late. Not really. I went with her for a lovely, chatty picnic in the University Parks, before coming back into town for a lovely afternoon spent with thieving_gypsy and julianelupin doing the touristy-type things, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. There was much squee.

( Photos! )

Now I think I need to go to bed, or something. My only lecture of the week is tomorrow morning.

Punting down the Cherwell

Perfect, idyllic day. I'm sorry, you must all be getting thoroughly sick of these posts. But it was. It was the hottest day of the year so far, and I celebrated it by sleeping through my only lecture of the week. Pat rang me at about midday and sang cheerful summer songs at me to make me get out of bed. Having got out of bed, I noticed that the attic is an oven. The debate has been raging through the year whether it would be an oven or a freezer in Trinity - definite vote in favour of the former. I dug through the debris on the end of my bed in search of a) the Skirt O'Amazingness and b) my polling card, and went out to vote. I voted Green, unsurprisingly. I'm not sure whether I'd have rather voted at home or in Carfax, but we didn't get back to college until after the postal vote deadline, so I didn't actually have much choice in the matter.

And on the way there and back, I was marvelling at the sunlight and rampant pretty. I always admire the trenchant denial that comes along with British summertime - it is hot, damn you, we will wear next to nothing - but today was the first day where there wasn't actually any denial in the equation. Even now, when the night air has cooled things off a bit, it's still warm enough to be sticky. It's rather nice. I don't usually like hot weather, but that's because I sit and stew and think the rest of the world is having a better time than me, but no one in the world had a better time than me today (if anyone did, they should invest the money wisely, yes). I should have done more work, of course. Having voted, I came back into college to find a stack of collections papers in my pidge. I don't know if I mentioned it, but I got my philosopy back a week ago and got a 2:1, which made my day. I'd have done better if I hadn't managed to write a four-side essay about the problem of induction without once mentioning David Hume, who is, I don't know, the key thinker on the subject? (Bob wrote in the margin, "Sensible argument, but rather like Hamlet without the prince.")

Political theory was also surprising. Again a 2:1, across the two essays, but one of them was very bad and the other much better. I was surprised because the essay I wrote about Mill, which I thought was better, was actually rather atrocious, and the one on Rousseau I did with too little time to spare skimmed a first. I was bemused. And this morning in the sunshine I got back institutional politics - 2:1 again - and I was thrilled, because I did not revise for that paper. The time I was supposed to revise for it, I used to have a mini-meltdown and go off wandering to Jericho. So I'm pleased.

And economics deserves a mention, I suppose. Overall, I skimmed the 2:2/2:1 borderline, which again I am thrilled by, because I am rubbish at economics. I didn't drop Logic because I was shit, but because I didn't like it, and ideally I'd like the same to be true for economics; if I can do better in the real thing, then it will hopefully prove I hate economics for itself, and not because I can't do it. Because that would just be sad. I haven't got my maths question back. Other than that I have all my collections papers back, and I haven't bombed any of them. This just makes me happy, because it means I have no risk of failing outright even if I don't have more than five days or so to revise in eighth week. The only flies in the ointment - I have a fifteen-minute meeting with Forder to discuss my collections, out of which only one of us will come out alive, and secondly, I passed my economics. I owe Pedar £30.

So I went skipping happily across the grass of the quad, dodging the people sprawled and the people playing croquet, and settled in the shade with my micro and a lolly ice Sky had just handed me. And I was supposed to be doing maths, and I was, but lazily, beneath a cloudless sky, drinking Pimms and watching a rehearsal of Agamemnon on the grass. After a bit I went running off to a tutorial, whilst Pat, Sky and Claire went down to Magdalen Bridge to secure a punt. An hour later they appeared beneath the bridge to get me, very wet and laughing hysterically. Apparently for the first ten minutes they went round in circles. I clambered in and off we went.

( row, row, row your boat merrily into a tree )

We arrived back at the jetty, reclaimed Bod cards and wandered unsteadily back to college, where there was finally a proper jug of Pimm's, with apple and lemon, and dinner. And then work, still in Starbucks, where I decided I need to do more work than I'm doing at the moment, but I will. I will. I'm not going to fail, either my exams or at being a happy person in a beautiful world.