Playing dice with the universe

Bugger. I just took a first sip of lovely hot peppermint tea with honey only to find it is not, in fact, peppermint. It's Clipper Fairtrade ordinary tea, which is marvellous I'm sure but only to people who are not me. We really should label our boxes in this house.

It's been a bit of an odd day today. It sort of began last night, when I was writing an essay on the United Nations and reading long lists of Security Council resolutions and getting steadily more bored, and Ben was writing a presentation on "The Philosophical Implications of Quantum Mechanics." I claim partial credit for this - I told him he needed books rather than Wikipedia, dragged him to the Philosophy faculty library, and agreed to let him practise the end result on me. Which, in retrospect, might have been a mistake. Anyway, having finished the essay at three am, found Maria avoiding immunology revision in the kitchen and Claire happily exultant (it's her birthday), we decided, god knows why, to watch The Little Mermaid.

(Seriously. "Claire, you're twenty-one years old, what do you want to do now?" And who am I to say no to that?)

We watched Aladdin the other day as well, which was great fun - it has lots of jokes I didn't get when I was six, including the delightful line from the genie, "Wake up and smell the houmous!" - but I didn't like The Little Mermaid at all. It's not very funny and ridiculously anti-feminist. Which does matter, yes indeed it does, because it gets shown to six-year-old girls who internalise what they see, and I don't know, she loses her voice. Basically she has to make the prince fall in love with her by looking pretty and not saying anything. I find this offensive.

At about five, Ben rang to say he'd finished. Accordingly, we trooped upstairs, curled up on his bed and settled in to listen to him telling us about quantum mechanics. (This thing actually contributes to his degree, oddly enough.) I was actually enjoying it - I was! He was talking about Einstein and D.H. Lawrence, often in the same sentence! - but something bizarre happened, I don't know what; I was crazy-anxious-weird all weekend, and jittery all night, and it sort of all coalesced into a wave of weirdness and crippling, ohmygod-I'm-going-to-die stabbing pains in the head.

Claire, who is marvellous, managed to get me downstairs and home into my bed without my once having to open my eyes. And in the morning it was like it hadn't happened at all, even though I'd only had a few hours' sleep; I would have thought it was all a dream if I hadn't stumbled in for a late breakfast to find Ben pacing anxiously and telling Pat, "I got three slides in and Iona retired with a terrible headache!"

I assured him it really wasn't the quantum mechanics, and went out. Today has been one of my days for lots of admin - forms! internship forms! vac res forms! Cherwell app. forms! - and trying to be productive without doing any work. I think I needed a day off from work, because I'm suffering a bit from anxiety at the moment. I get anxious, and then I get anxious about being anxious, which is painfully meta with emphasis on "painfully", and my sleep pattern right now is getting self-destructive. Actual physical pain was almost a relief, last night; Claire tells me she gave me some codeine and it knocked me right out. I'm hoping for an early night tonight. We shall see.

Today, though, was okay on that count; I had a brief freakout in the morning, but it was entirely justified on the grounds that the sun was shining brightly when I got out of bed and went to the bathroom but there was driving rain and howling gales when I emerged two minutes later. (It did this all day. Not impressed, weather.) It seems to have been one of my days for attracting people's problems; I took quite a lot of time cooking dinner tonight because Liya was talking to me while I was doing it, and at one point she said something about how she didn't know how everyone else held it together. I merely remarked that she was the fifth person in twelve hours to have used me as a sounding-board for a wide variety of problems, which seemed to cheer her up slightly. So did the dinner I eventually produced, which was a chilli-garlic pork mince concotion with goat's cheese and balsamic vinegar leaf salad. I record this fact only because it was rather tasty and represents my actual taste, tonight being the first night in nearly two years that I've cooked only for myself. (I ended up feeding half of it to Liya regardless to cheer her up, but still, the point stands.)

One last thing. I have recently discovered that Thea Gilmore is touring at the moment, and given that I'm a recent convert and have always thought I should go to more shows, I'm very keen to go. But the best date for me is Birkenhead - Birkenhead! She's playing in Birkenhead, of all places! - on March 15th. I was going to ask if anyone feels like coming with me, but of course the people who will want to will be down here, not up in the frozen north. (Speaking of which, does anyone have any albums by her that are not Avalanche or Loft Music? I think I actually need to buy one of her CDs at some point, and can't decide between Harpo's Ghost and Rules For Jokers. Decisions, decisions.)

Anyway, I want to do something fun to celebrate term being over, so I have got two tickets regardless, and I think I'll take my mum and cheer her up, too.