raven | End of Trinity

Half one in the morning and I have eleven tabs open. Do I care? Do I care I won't be in bed for hours? No. No, no, no. For it is the twenty-first of June, the longest day of the year, and I have sat - deep breath now - the First Public Examination in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. (Or PPE prelims, to the rest of us.) It's over. Oh, god, it's over. I woke up this morning feeling like death, ran down to Claire's and ate toast - it feels like years ago now - and expressed amazement at how on earth she could have got through three pairs of tights in two days. For someone who was spending six hours sat down in once place, she laddered them impressively.

Post-toast, Pat ran in with a handful of flowers. She'd been down to the post room and found that Sky, bless him, had been making phone calls from London and had pidged us our red carnations. Because I never explained this properly before - I blame the brain-falling-out issue - there are some very interesting archaic traditions tied up with taking university exams at Oxford. There is of course the sub fusc issue - "sub fusc" is Latin for "dark brown", and it's a bit of a misnomer. For women, sub fusc is a white shirt, a black shirt and tights (or trousers), black shoes, a short commoners' gown with tails, a black ribbon tied around your neck and a mortarboard. (Men wear jackets and white bowties.) You're not allowed to wear your mortarboard at any time, for fear of hefty fines; instead, you carry them around. For exams, there is the additional tradition - for your first exam, you wear a white carnation pinned to your gown; for your next exam(s), a pink one; and for your final exam, you wear a red one. Mine were a bit silly, because with three exams I simply went white, pink, red, but I was very touched by the ones I was given. Also traditionally, you can't buy the flowers yourself - they must be given. Mine were given to me by Ben, Pat and Sky respectively, who got up at unearthly hours of the morning to procure them.

The walk down to Exam Schools was through beautiful bright sunshine, and the exam, when I got in there finally, was potentially very difficult, but okay. Yesterday's exams were not okay - I remember now that

narahttbbs saw me having a proper temper tantrum in the front quad - as while the philosophy paper was doable, the economics paper included a hidden IS-LM question and a maths question that almost drove me to tears. It was hideously, horrendously difficult, and I had no time, and I ended up by leaving out three parts of a five-part question (there were only four questions on the paper). Like I said yesterday, I might potentially be a good economist - I mean, I worked so hard for that paper, I really did - and it all comes to nothing because now no-one will ever know. If I fucked up the maths - and I'm sure that I did - then I've potentially done terribly, no matter how well I did on the economics section. It was quite, quite awful.

Yes, back to this morning. The politics paper - was okay. I mean, I could do it. So I did it. And then I left Exam Schools in a hurry, and although I knew I should go out the back way because that's the way the finishers go, I got shoved out the side entrance by an officious proctor. And then I didn't know what to do, because despite running into random PPEists, and

kuteki more than once, I couldn't find anyone I knew. And in the end I tramped back towards college in a right old sulk, feeling utterly unloved in the midst of the rampant celebration. I got in the way of a flour bomb (I should mention, people wait for their friends coming out of Exam Schools and hug them and kiss them and drench them with water and cheap champagne while covering them with flour and eggs and ketchup and glitter; it's bad for prelims but when Finals let out, they have a police presence!) which I was brushing off awkwardly when I got to the Rad Cam feeling quite horrendous. (An American tourist asked me, incredulously, "Is that what you guys wear all the time?" I should just have told him that yes, yes we do, we even iron our shirts every morning at six am.)

And then - well, and then in the distance Pat appeared, and Ben, and she started running and I started running and we were both shrieking and attracting the attention of hundreds of tourists when we collided into a hug outside All Souls. She wrapped her arms round me, shrieked, "It's OVER!" and dumped a full shaker of glitter onto my head. I shrieked some more, and Sky appeared from nowhere and placed a yellow plastic garland ceremonially around my neck. And I was so pleased to see him, and so pleased that people loved me after all that I think I would probably have burst into tears right there if the tourists hadn't been there gawping at us. And now comes the photographic evidence, because I'm having trouble describing such a wonderful moment.

Sky and me outside the Rad Cam, with me covered in glitter and ribbon askew and him holding my mortarboard in gentlemanly fashion.

The whole gang, minus Claire - Sky of course doesn't take prelims for 364 days, as he delighted in telling me, and Ben, being a physicist, finished Tuesday of eighth.

Back in college, there was a consensus - alcohol, and the buying thereof! So we went to Sainsbury's, still in full sub fusc, still covered in glitter and now silly string, and bought picnic food, lemonade and Pimm's and fruit to put in it. I met

parrot_knight briefly and babbled gormlessly at him, and then repaired to the back quad, lay down on the grass under my favourite tree and began the process of getting completely sloshed. There is definitely more photographic evidence of this.

Here, I am sober. Not for long. It was wonderful, lying there in the sunshine, watching PPEists cavort debauchedly in the brightness and cover each other with flour, whilst Pat chopped up apples inexpertly with a very sharp carving knife and poured large amounts of Pimm's into the lemonade jug, which we stole from hall.

Eventually I switched the sub fusc for my ordinary clothes, but clung to my carnation with a deep and pathetic love. I earned that red carnation, dammit. I worked hard, I went to tutes, I wrote essays, I did tones of reading, I spent two weeks in the library. That red carnation represents it all. So it stayed about my person and no one dared object.

I may have said before that I get drunk incrementally. I drink, it goes to my head, it wears off, I drink more, it wears off slightly less, and so on. Here I am in the I have had just had three unmeasured glasses of Pimm's, what of it? phase. The grass was soft, the sky was beautiful, the world was also beautiful, I was absolutely content under the tree. And I reckon Ben and Liya found it rather amusing.

Later, when I was slightly more sober, Pat took this one:

"That picture is entirely my head," I complained later, but I still quite like it.

The afternoon passed very pleasantly in three empty jugs of Pimm's, Pat teaching Ben to cartwheel on the lawn and the glorious sunshine and dappled shade. Pat and I went out to ceremonially buy new copies of Brideshead Revisited at one point, and when we got back it was a quarter past five - four hours gone in blissful somnolence! - and time to run. I am impressed that it took us less than ten minutes to purchase two cans of silly string, a purple balloon, a(nother) glitter shaker, a "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR 60TH BIRTHDAY" banner, Sky and Ben (well, they were not purchased so much as retrieved off Turl Street) and sprint down to Exam Schools. At half five, almost exactly, Claire emerged, having had one more exam than I did.

There was screaming, glitter and silly string.

I think she appreciated it. And the sixtieth birthday banner remains a mystery.

And then it all starts getting complicated, what with the mathmos also returning and much more alcohol. Eventually, Claire and Pat went to a pub to watch the England match, and I demurred, popping off to an Indian restaurant off Cornmarket to say hello to

jacinthsong,

slasheuse and

cannons_at_dawn. "Saying hello" turned into "hanging around for ages and then coming with them to the Pansexual House of Love", and at the PHL I seemed to have joined an impromptu exams-are-over party and drank wine and ate cake and was tipsily happy at

sebastienne and

steerpikelet and about a million other people.

And then, and then, back into town, watching Saturday's Doctor Who (Love & Monsters - and I really liked it, more later) with

jacinthsong, and now I'm back in the attic and have just scribbled this for hours. I'm happy. I'm so happy.

And because I'm happy, the last and essential picture:

I thought I was going to bed. I'm not. Claire and Pat are back from drinking and dancing. She is not pissed, Claire says. She finds that remark hugely offensive. She is, um, whatstheword, tipsy ohyes.

Yes. I have finished my first year at Oxford. I love you all.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Coldplay; The Scientist