just take a good look, and heads will roll

So, I am not crazy. This is new. (To start with, I'm listening to Cher. Although that's really not my fault, there are extenuating circumstances which can be summed up by "narahttbbs".)

Ah, shit. Yesterday was a long and difficult day. (Seriously, at one point I was convinced it had been Monday for weeks.) But today's another day. As usual. As usual today's better than yesterday, which was not better than the day before, but if you strike yesterday from the record, it's been an upward trend. So yay for that, etc.

I gathered a few opinions, anyway, and the results were varied. The college nurse, when I asked sincerely if I was crazy, gave me a long hard look and said, "Of course you are. You're a Balliol PPEist." Apparently, her considered opinion is that the tutors select a crop of mentally unbalanced people, throw them into a confined environment together and use them as a social experiment in Bedlam.

I asked my friends if I'm crazy. They said of course I wasn't. Maria said, again sincerely, "You're the sanest person I've ever met." I asked what she meant by that, and she explained that I don't, as far as she knows, exhibit any type of inconsistent behaviour. I'm not sure if this is true, but I was touched regardless.

Finally, I asked Pedar. I hadn't told him any of this, and I ended up telling him all of it tonight in one quasi-hysterical go. He listened very patiently, and then said, "As you are well aware, I am a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, and I hold several post-graduate degrees..."

"Yes?"

"...in various specialities of clinical medicine, and in education, and..."

"Is there a point to this?" I asked.

"...and in reproductive ethics," he continued indomitably, "and furthermore, in addition to that, you have been my only daughter for twenty years. If you were crazy, don't you think I would have noticed by now?"

"Right," I said. "Yeah, okay."

And that's that, I guess. Although I spent most of yesterday quite spectacularly unhinged, I am a sane human being. And I apologise for babbling about it, but this is my life right now: piecing together the fact that I'm still here, and able to write about it. Because I am, so there. Today I got out of bed, wandered around the city, went to assure the usual people that my mental health has survived another week, and then, well, did something entirely sane and went for a picnic in the University Parks.

"You do know it's January?" Claire wanted to know. "You do know it's really cold? Are you mad?"

In which case, I said, it was a folie a deux, because I went with thecapitalc and enjoyed myself thoroughly. We went through the Keble entrance to the Parks and walked down to the river to eat bread and cookies and watch the ducks engage in complicated mating rituals.

And though it was a great deal of fun catching up, we have agreed that next time we should probably meet in a coffee shop or some such location with modern amenities, for example central heating.

I was supposed to read some of Locke and Berkeley this afternoon, but that didn't quite happen. Instead I kept falling asleep, which is I believe the last symptom that I am yet to shake from this episode, but I managed to write an essay I started yesterday and couldn't finish. It's an essay about the validity of globalisation as a theoretical concept - at least, I think it is; I have no idea, really - and bears the marks of having been started by a crazy person and finished off by someone slightly saner. God, yesterday was awful. I'm reluctant to write about why, because I'd rather not think about it, but it's probably sufficient to say it featured my being quite almost, but not quite, unjustifiably irrational, and horribly upset and frightened, but I'm more or less over it now, by virtue of a night and a better day. You see, I'm still here? I'm still here. I'm always going to still be here.

I finished off the essay. It's rubbish, but it's done, and Claire, Ben and I went to Jericho G&D's for reasons of celebration of essay-finishing - my essay is about 1000 words too short, and Claire's equally long - and for making Ben feel better, as he is ill again and being shamelessly blackmailed into drinking Lemsip. (Claire is still of the opinion that he genuinely doesn't know it has paracetamol in it, and that's the only reason he drinks it; I pointed out that this might be because we buy it, keep it, make it up for him and feed it to him, and he's never once seen the box it comes in.) Having slept on my bed and also on Claire's for most of the evening, he perked up on the way to Jericho and we were talking about our now infamous planned roadtrip across the United States to see the World's Largest Ball of Twine.

Speaking of which, my housing arrangements are sorted for next year. After spending this year being the Schrodinger's flatmate, Ben is actually living with us next year properly - we're hoping to stay in this flat or get one very similar, and it will be the same set of people plus one more, a girl called Laura whom I don't know very well. By all accounts it looks like it'll be a good set-up, and I've liked my living arrangements this year very much, so all should be well.

(This morning the scout came in to have a word with Claire, or so she related to me later. Clare said she thought she must be in some kind of trouble, but instead, the scout came in and whispered, "There's a strange boy in the kitchen! He's made himself a cup of coffee!"

Somewhat amused, Claire wandered into the kitchen to find a very sleepy Ben demanding "someone make that woman stop shouting at me."

Poor boy. He's not having a good day.)

We got in from G&D's about half twelve, to find the rest of the flat in the kitchen talking about, of all things, how Vulcans have sex.

"Every seven years," James and I said simultaneously into a dead silence. "Pon farr."

To stunned laughter from the rest of the contingent, and Maria buried her head in her hands. James is that rare thing, a non-fannish geek. Despite being quite adamant that he is not a fangirl (I'm sorry, but "fanboy" is no fun to say and James dislikes binary gender distinctions), he knows far too much about HP fic, BSG continuity, and Enterprise schematics: within a few seconds, he'd come up with a decent account of every Vulcan in the franchise who has ever succumbed to the condition. At which point we got to arguing about which of the series is the best and worst, and Maria was looking like a stunned observer at a tennis match. Apparently before I came along, he didn't expose his geeky side.

Tomorrow I need to help him work out a primer in Star Trek for the beginner - poor, poor Maria - dose Ben with some more Lemsip and talk him out of going to rehearsal, read three chapters of Locke and return my library books. I'm okay, I'm managing.