come back and haunt me

There is no Doctor Who review post from me tonight - there will be one eventually - because foulds and I are still a note-perfect Doctor/tin dog team and thus get lost a lot. Well, we didn't get lost, but we arrived at John's only to find some people camped out watching tennis, and they refused to move; by the time we'd found jacinthsong and got to Wadham it was quarter past seven. On the way we gave up the pretence at nonchalance and ran through the quad as though it were a corridor. foulds still thinks I would make a good Doctor. I am flattered by this. I have the hat. It is a metre-wide brim red polka dot hat and it is the best hat ever.

But as I was saying, I missed the first fifteen minutes, and on the way I got a text from hathy_col to say she'd missed the beginning too, so in conclusion we are all rubbish. But what I did see, I absolutely adored. It was deliciously sinister and creepy and if I'd been five, or maybe older, I would have been abjectly terrified. Proper review once the first ten minutes or so has appeared on YouTube, or I get to see it anywhere else, or whatever. But yes - good. Very good.

In fact, the whole day was good. I worked today. I got up after four hours of sleep and went with Pat to Social Sciences, and whilst the day was quite stunningly beautiful and the trees were in bright green leaf, I was strong, I resisted. At least, I did a bit. I worked for two hours at a time, went out with Pat and ate chocolate under the sun, went back in and worked, came out again... it's a routine. It's a routine I strongly suspect I will get used to, or at least I hope so; because right now I know very little, but I know more than I did yesterday, and I sort of think that's how revision is supposed to work. Yay for Marxism. And yay for having dinner on the lawn in the sunshine, too, and choking on one's cheese because one is late for Doctor Who. Yes, I mentioned that bit already. I should have taken my hat.

Walking back from Wadham, I had the usual disagreement with Jon about Doctor Who villains all being hypnotised staring people - we have been having this argument for oh, god, nearly five weeks now - and he talked me into coming to the cast party for The Importance of Being Earnest at the Pansexual House of Love. Note - I am not a cast member. I did not even have time to see the play. But I watched the dying light reading about Marxism on the grass, and then I went out and helped clear up after the play and was treated to the sight of withiel in suit and top hat (which had a bottle in it, naturally). He was carrying a trellis, which amused me quite a lot, and talking about the phallic symbolism of Exeter's chapel. Also about the phallic symnbolism of everything. The problem is that he explains everything so reasonably and rationally that I always end up agreeing with him, no matter how crack-addled the theory - on the way to the PHL he managed to convince me that the Master and the Time Lords are all going to come back, and then later sebastienne explained his theory that Withnail and Marwood are in fact both incarnations of the Doctor, with Withnail earlier and Marwood later, which explains how nervy the latter is, because he knows they can't shag, they're the same person!

Explain anything rationally enough, and I'll believe it. The alcohol helped.

The alcohol did not help my head, however. Four hours of sleep - and I have to be up at the crack of dawn (well, ten) for another day of joyous revision, but still, I think I'd rather have the painful head. It was a good night - evening, really, and I should stop using the dashes, they're even annoying me - and I don't even mind the fact that foulds has some dreadful pictures in his possession of me attempting to kiss jacinthsong under a lightbulb. There were lots and lots of people I didn't know, who were in their turn surprised at all these people at a cast party who had absolutely nothing to do with the cast, and I kept being introduced to people as "the eleventh Doctor", which clearly did not help matters (one guy, by the look in his eyes, clearly believed it). Also something else happened that was one of those things that you know, intellectually, is cringemakingly awful but you can't fight the urge to laugh until you cry because it's just that ludicrous. (And much as I am the most indiscreet person ever, I can't tell you all about it here, because it's just so potentially incriminating, quite apart from being very embarrassing. Yes, I know that it's annoying to even mention it, but I am still cringing. And laughing. But mostly cringing.)

Anyway, I ended up telling Claire all about my night in the college reading room, which is a tiny little room you're supposed to use for late-night studying but we ended up using just to gossip in, and we went downstairs just in time to see Liya leaving. She's decided she's had enough, and she's going home. She'll be back for prelims and that's all. I'm not entirely sure what I think about this. I do know that I don't think it's a good idea; it's a short-term fix and in the long run it's not going to help. She's going away to escape this place, but she can't escape this place; she's got to come back here in October, she's got to live two years of her life here. I don't know. I'm tired and a little drunk so probably this is not the time for detailed reflection, but I reckon it does deserve the thinking about. It's an odd situation all round.

I helped her with her luggage - she's not taking clothes, only books! - and her family thanked me and wanted to know what I was doing up so late. Some time in the the last year I stopped thinking of half two in the morning as late. I don't know. I don't know, actually, why I am making this entry - I only meant to say there would be no Doctor Who review, which isn't all that momentous anyway, and suddenly I seem to have gone on for paragraphs and paragraphs about a day in which nothing very much happened but I was happy in.

Bedtime. Jesus. I've had twelve hours' sleep in the last seventy-two.