I write this between "Tea and Cakes in the Buttery" and "JCR Super Parties". I have no idea how to connect to the Internet or where to get four passport sized photos in the next two days, but I have just washed some dishes for the first time in my life. I don't know how to receive a voicemail message on my mobile phone and there are eight hundred thousand pieces of paper on my desk. The junk mail I am reluctant to throw away (well, what if I suddenly have an urge to take flying lessons?) and the forms remain un(ful)filled: how am I supposed to remember the date of my Tetanus injection?

I've met various people, but can only remember approximately one name. No, I lie (on beds, usually: much more comfortable than worktops, I find). I can remember a few names, just not the people they belong to. I have been carrying the map of the college everywhere, yet am still perpetually lost.

However, it isn't all Dume and Glume. When filling in a form asking for comments about the room, I answered, "It's wonderful." It's about twice the size of my bedroom at home and the large window enables me to spy on about twenty people. Unfortunately, that also means twenty people can spy on me.

Events of the journey down yesterday:

10am: Zed and parents set off.

10.01am: Zed insists on stopping, so she can move some polystyrene which is squeaking behind her head and driving her insane.

11am: Zed and parents pass through Alston, the highest market town in England, apparently. It has a shop named "Incredibility" and two next to each other named "Absolutely" and "Crackers".

11.20am: Zed and mother have debate over whether Wine Gums have feelings or not.

12.30pm: Zed and parents have lunch in exactly the same location as Zed, Zed's father and Roe ate on the way back from Cambridge last December: on the road to John Boddy's wood shop.

2.18pm: Zed and parents pass road sign saying, "100 dog chews for £1.60."

2.57pm: Zed and parents pass turn-off to settlement named Burton Coggles, with the neighbouring town of Bitchfield.

3.40pm: Zed and parents observe nineteenth "Little Chef" of journey.

3.45pm: Zed and parents pass house named "Violet Cottage" which has the door-and window-frames painted red.

Since arriving, here are some of the activities in which I have engaged:

1. Attempted to lock door, panicked when key wouldn't turn, only to discover self was using key for bicycle lock instead of room key.

2. Went on pub crawl. "Crawl" being operative word since feet were killing self. "Pub" being other operative word as went to some pubs. During which, shop called "Rohan" and some red telephone kiosks (a rare but wonderful entity in today's society).

3. Participated in rather silly group activities such as throwing a sponge ball at people, tying selves in knots, and building boat out of straws, paper and balloons. Since selves were given cut-out animal shapes to glue on, selves made it into Noah's Ark, Noah's head being the ball decorated in glitter with a crayon for a neck. It did float, but it was quite obvious that group had lacked an engineering student.

Monday 4 October 1999

I write this in an absence of anything better to do. I can't be bothered going to the bar (the weirdness of this statement can be evidenced by the fact that I typed "car" instead of "bar"). When I tried to imitate ET by phoning home, the line was wearing a rather fetching ring, of the engagement variety, presumably due to Noj being on the Internet.

Which is more than I can say for myself. Do you realise that it's been seventy three hours since I've been online? Oddly enough I haven't died. I haven't even fainted. Still, an Internet connection would be nice. And I no longer have to feel completely pathetic for saying this, even in "real life", because The Bloke I Was Sitting Opposite At The Freshers' Dinner Who Is Also A Compsci (Computer Science Student) Whose Name I Do Recall, Amazingly Enough, And Would Mention Except For The Fact That 1) I Hardly Know Him So He Might Take Offence Or Let Fame Get To His Head For Being The First Cambridge Type Person To Be Mentioned Here, Should He Ever Read This And 2) I Have Already Referred To Two People In This Work Who Share His First Name So It Would Confuse Matters was complaining about lack of Net earlier. (You follow? No? Good good. No one should ever follow me, bearing in mind the number of times I get lost.)

The last day has been . . . I'm not sure. A day? Twenty four hours long? Something like that. But I suppose you want to know what happened. No, I lie. (I sit sometimes too.) What I really suppose you want to know when the world's going to end so you can kill the least favourite teachers you have / had at school, visit Jupiter or stay on the Net all day without worrying about the size of the phone bill. But unfortunately, I don't know when the world's going to end, so I'll stick to describing the day gone by.

The "JCR Super Parties" turned out to be various casino games, played with plastic chips. I played Pontoon, Roulette and Craps, which isn't as dodgy as the name suggests. It's impossible to not like a game which has parts of the board marked "Come" and "Don't Come", inevitably leading to the question "How do you come?" Still, I don't think I'll be a professional gambler, especially since I managed to lose not only all my own money but everyone else's as well. Seriously, a girl lost thousands of virtual pounds thanks to my advice. She wanted to, mind.

Afterwards, there was a Social Gathering Where People Drank, Sat Around And Danced, Which I Would Use The Technical Name For, Except 1) I've Forgotten It And 2) I Use Enough Weird Words Without Introducing Cambridge Terminology Into The Equation.

This morning, we had various talks on thrilling topics such as cycle safety, fire safety and the various natural science options. I also went into Cambridge with two blokes (note: despite the fact that I am already in Cambridge, the college is on one side, so I'll use "into Cambridge" in the same way that I used "into Brampton" - to denote the town centre). We intended to go to the bank, but by the time we arrived, we had to get back to college again.

In the afternoon, the freshers' photograph was taken. Then I went back into Cambridge with three blokes. After getting our timetable and stoof (I have lectures on Saturdays! Rsers! I thought that had ended five years ago!), we failed to find a photo booth (we have to acquire passport-sized photos), and headed back to college, just in time for Ye Olde Fresherres Dinnerre. I'm quite aware that "old freshers" is a paradox, but it was a cunning ploy to involve the word "paradox" in this entry, since I like it.

Wednesday 6 October 1999

I write this badly wanting the Net. It's now been a hundred and fourteen hours since I last went online, and I incessantly check my pigeon hole for information about getting myself connected. But to no avail and to no mail either.

I haven't had a single piece of post today. I'm heart-broken. I feel like such a loser. Maybe I should write to some random person and say, "Please put this note back in my pigeon hole just so it isn't empty next time I check." Naturally, it wouldn't be empty so frequently if I didn't look so often, but I'm hopelessly addicted. There's never anything particularly exciting there. So far I've had a chocolate bar, something about university library cards, a note from my tutor, one from my "mother", a thing about being gay and an invitation to play men's football. Still, anything is better than the humiliation of walking away empty-handed.

Maybe I just miss having e-mail. I can access it from one of the computer rooms, but I'm afraid there'll be so much that I'll be stuck there downloading it for approximately fifty seven days, and miss all my lectures.

Actually, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

No, I'm more afraid of not being able to use and / or breaking the computer. Which would make me, a Computer Science student, look rather silly. Nevermind the fact that I always do.

I've been thinking about moving the world again. This has been a dream of mine for quite some time, along with getting the whole population to speak Zobo Creat. If you walk forwards, you see, the earth moves backwards. Not by very much, since it's considerably heavier than you are, but what, I wondered, if everyone in the world walked in the same direction at once? I calculated that if 5.7 billion people walked a kilometre each, the earth would move about a thousandth of a micrometre. Which isn't much, but some scientist would probably be able to measure it. So I'd quite like to test that out some day. It would be an earth-moving experience.

But apart from probably inaccurate calculations, I've done some other stoof over the last two days. Yesterday, I walked into town with a bloke and paid my hefty student loan cheque into the bank and I got some passport photos. When I got back, I spoke to Will downstairs for about half an hour. That is to say, I spoke on the phone downstairs to the Will that has been mentioned multiple times in the past, not to the Will that resides downstairs. Confusing I know. Upon return to my room, I found a message (!) shoved under my door from my "mother", telling me that she would take me to the societies fair that afternoon.

I know that at the age of eighteen, you're not supposed to go to places with your parents, but I did get a much-needed lift to the fair out of the deal. We spent several years stuck in the traffic, but we avoided the queue for the fair by parking in the multi-storey car park adjacent to the room it was in.

As soon as I got in, I was besieged by the Gothic Society, on the grounds that I was wearing a Cure shirt. But I escaped without having sold my soul to the Parrot-Keeping Hang Gliders Who Like Bryan Adams And Have Pillow Fights In Stationery Shops Every Wednesday Night Society. I did emerge with a load of bumph and my name on a few mailing lists to receive even more bumph, but getting a free roll of sellotape out of the deal made it all worthwhile.

In the evening I went to a "squash". Which is an event where the various societies within college provide free drink in the hope that you'll get completely slaughtered and won't think twice about signing up for Argentinian Rabbit Cookery classes. But since the name "slaughter" sounds a bit off-putting, they call it a "squash". Or something. At any rate, I joined the women's pool society and signed up to play squash. (Yes, a squash squash.) I've never played in my life, and don't have a clue how to, but why not?

Then I sat in the bar for a while, before going to "Move", a big club-style event type thing at Fitzwilliam College, for students in its environs. Sadly, there was a distinct lack of tickets on sale and I only knew one other person who had one: everyone else I knew decided to have a protest event called "Stop: Don't Move". "Move" was otay, though: I didn't meet anyone there and it was filled with people wearing flashing horns, but there was an indie room, which was funchie.

At 11am, I set off for the Physics registration type thing, which was a deceptively long way away. On the way back, me and two blokes got totally lost and ended up walking across the cricket pitch of Emmanuel College. I went to another Physicsy thing and a Maths thing, went on a tour of the library (there were exactly two other people on it and one of them was the librarian) and played pool and table football and won at both. Unfortunately you have to pay to use them here, so if you're going to raid my bank account, do it quickly.

(Word of explanation: although I'm studying "Computer Science", for the first year, that's only half of my course. Quarter is Maths, the other quarter is Psychics.)

Thursday 7 October 1999

No. of times pigeon hole checked since last entry: 9. No. of times porters' lodge entered without a mail-check: 1. (An improvement!) No. of items in pigeon hole: 3. A leaflet about the language classes open meeting which was yesterday evening (the leaflet certainly had not arrived then and I know these things!), a letter from Mum and, finally, information about connecting to the Net. Not that it makes any sense.

This evening I was talking to a girl who mentioned that she lives in Luton. One of my penpals, someone I've written to since 1995, resides there, and I wondered if they knew each other. So I asked the girl what school she'd been to. "The sixth form college", she replied, which was, to the best of my knowledge, where my penpal had gone. So I mentioned her name and . . .

It turns out they've been best friends for years!

How bizarre is that?

Other new things I've done today?

Well, I went to my first lecture.

At 9am.

On the other side of town.

Which was fun.

It (a Maths lecture) was ok, on the grounds that we didn't do anything, and the two Computer Science lectures that followed were similar. After that, I made my own way back to Churchill for the first time, and amazingly, didn't find myself in the department of Copper Kettle Construction. I did have to consult The Map about eighty five times, but I succeeded. In the afternoon, after speaking to Smilosevic, I had another half-hour walk to get to my Computer Science practical. I took the longest-but-straightest route and arrived in good time. I actually managed to complete the practical exercise without turning the computer into a microwave, although I'm not quite sure what I did achieve. All I have to show for it is a piece of paper with some incomprehensible ML commands printed on it.

Saturday 9 October 1999

No. of tissues used during course of this entry: 803

No, I am not fine, since you ask. There is a very loud drum machine playing in my skull and although I'm not sure what my nose is trying to get away from, it's running as fast as it can.

I can't decide whether it's Freshers' 'flu or lack of Net. Despite my best efforts, I still haven't got myself connected!

Wednesday 13 October 1999

I have finally realised why people have mothers.

Or rather, why a lot of people live with their mothers for the first eighteen years of their lives.

Doing my own washing up is ok. Cooking I can also handle. If you call "inserting two slices of bread into toasting device, adorning with desired substance(s) and dividing" cooking. I can even bring myself to remove and replace the sheets on bed once a week if I put my mind to it.

But the very thought of doing any laundry makes my blood run cold.

I made an attempt on Monday, really I did. I spent about eight hours wandering around the town centre before I found Sainsbury's. I bought a box of washing powder, which I dragged back to Churchill. And then, in a fit of bravery, I stumbled to the staircase 5 laundry with all my worldly clothes.

Only to find that all the washing machines were in use.

After that, I completely lost the motivation to return. It's just nerve-wracking, ok? How can I trust an appliance with my Cure Shirt and my Acorn Shirt? Technology is aevil! I am beginning to think buying new clothes every day is would be preferable.

But that's probably not a good idea. As it is, I've spent £846.07 in the last twenty four hours! Admittedly, £800 of that was a deposit for my room, but still!

I finally went to register with a doctor on Monday afternoon. I consulted The Map, and decided to cut through New Hall College. But, in spite of the fact that I had done this twice before, I managed to get very lost. The Map was no help, so I took a ridiculously long route, yet again.

It was all worth it though. The doctor told me I'm an inch taller than I thought I was (so I'm actually 3'4"!) two pounds lighter (so I only weigh 1494682434 pounds - just wish that was my bank balance instead).

So it wasn't me who ate all the pies, but I can tell you who did: my computer. I was making my way through an Excel tutorial (I'm not a technofool, really: I just love manuals) when the computer ate my truly beautiful pie chart!

I guess if it insists on eating some sort data representation, a pie chart is the obvious dish to choose (a bar chart, for example, would be quite inappropriate, since bars are for drinking, not eating), but I was most upset and abandoned the tutorial.

I had another good reason to stop, though. The book in question says: "The appearance of the characters in a document depends on the typeface or fount (don't use American spelling which omits the 'u')".

It must be joking! How can anyone seriously expect people to say "Times New Roman is a serif fount"? (Not that even the strangest of conversationalists would ever have the need to say "Times New Roman is a serif font" either.)

"Fount". It's pronounced "fownt". It's a poetical word for spring or fountain. Use it instead of "font"? It's preposterous!

Anyway, I finally got connected to the Net on Monday afternoon, to be greeted with 239 e-mails. Most of them were mailing list bumph, but I had a couple from Craig [a bloke at school] telling me to "WATCH IT!" And one from Caroline, the form prefect I had in 1994-5, saying, "I'm in Cambridge, visit me!"

In less happy news, on getting back to college this morning, I thought I should check to see if I had any work to do for my Physics supervision this afternoon, since on the way to my lecture Yao commented that she had problems to do for hers and she has the same supervisor as me.

Arg! I did! "Do the first five questions and hand in on Tuesday night" it said on a scrap of paper. Nooooooo! Well, it was a bit late for Tuesday night, but I could still attempt the questions and redeem myself . . . but they were all really long and hard.

I managed about two, then thought, "Hrm, I guess I'll check my e-mail one last time before I die."

And I had a message from my supervisor, saying, "Since none of you seem to have handed anything in, there will be no supervision today." (Bear in mind this e-mail was addressed to six people, so I'm not the sole sinner.)

There is a God.

But does this mean that if none of us ever hand in any work, we won't have any supervisions? Hrm. Maybe I will consult my fellow rebels over this.

I didn't do too well with yesterday's supervisions either. I had a Computer Science one, for which I had to print out my answer. Even though I own the slowest printer in the world ever, I reckoned that I should manage to print it out in the two hours I had beforehand.

But my flipping monitor wouldn't work! So I couldn't print a thing. The supervisor didn't mind too much, but I was not amused. After that, I had a Maths supervision. And when I say, "after that", I mean fifteen minutes afterwards. Unfortunately, also about fifteen miles away. I rode my bike, but I was still late.

Rant of the Day: The "normal" bike sheds are booers. They're always full of bikes. I suppose it's better than them being full of Russian music stands, but the distinct lack of space is not good. However, there are also two "secure" bike sheds hardly have any bikes in them. The only thing wrong with the secure sheds, as far as I could see, was that you had to pay a five pound deposit to get the key. But it seemed worthwhile, so I enquired at the porters' lodge.

Ha. Instead of a key, I was handed an application form. Although I've written out my details more times in the last fortnight than I care to count, I could have handled that. But this form was more interested in my bike. "Position of number on frame" it wanted to know. "Wheel size. Gears - make/type". "Clip your bike photo here."

I think I'll stick with the insecure sheds.

Now I should probably do my laundry. Noooooooo!

Thursday 14 October 1999

I love my PC.

Really I do. I want to have its babies. (Power supplies? No, I know, mother boards!)

Gack. I can't understand why I was obsessed with Acorn Computers for so long. (And for the geens among you wondering, "What about Chris?", Chris who?)

You may well wonder what has caused this sudden change of heart. Well, it might have something to do with the fact that 90% of the times I turn the PC on, the monitor doesn't work, and on 90% of the occasions when it does work, the computer crashes within five minutes of initialising.

I've tried calling the machine in question a scank dodgy hempfiend of dume, but it only seems to get worse. So from now on, I intend to treat it with love and attention, care and respect.

Friday 15 October 1999

On second thoughts, forget it. After a day of frantic screwing (sadly, only the screws of the thing connecting the monitor to the computer), my thumbs are killing me and I must confess I still believe that it's a scank dodgy hempfiend of dume.

Tuesday 26 October 1999

I'm lame.

Is that supposed to be some Great Revelation? Everyone has been aware of that fact for quite some time.

Ha de ha. I mean, I can't walk.

No, I'm not drunk (although I probably should be, being a student et al). But my ankle is killing me.

It's been paining me for some days now, for no discernible reason, but I doubt this morning's expedition helped it.

Last night, after having a shower, I set my alarm clock for 7.31. [I intended to set it for 7.30, but clicked the button too many times.] I then went to sleep [getting into bed first, in case you had any doubts] and had a very strange dream in which I went to a church in Italy with some members of my extended family. I heard about a plane crash, which some blokes I knew were injured by, and my grandmother challenged me to sit on spinning chairs and see who could spin the furthest. I was about to set my chair in motion when the alarm sounded.

I spent the next twenty minutes analysing my visions. The spinning chair was obvious: the previous day my Psychics lecturer had sat on a rotating stool to demonstrate angular momentum [or something: I was too busy calculating the number of seconds of lecture remaining to pay much attention.] But the rest baffled me.

Then I realised that getting up would be a good move. I spent the next twenty minutes getting ready, then dashed to the telephone boxes, where I meet Yao every morning so we can walk to lectures together. In the weeks we've been doing this, I'm always on time and she's always been at least five minutes late, but today, I reckoned, since I was two minutes late, she would be on time.

But she wasn't. 8.20 came and went, 8.25 did likewise. On a previous occasion, I'd left without her at 8.25, but she'd only been a couple of minutes later and had still arrived in time for the lecture. So I waited until 8.30. Still no Yao.

I set off for the Porters' Lodge, defeated. I had a letter from my aunt, accompanied by a National Lottery scratch card, so I thought I'd pass some more time by scratching. I didn't win a thing, and there was still no Yao, so I set off into the night. [No one can call 8.30 day time.]

It was 8.35. The lecturer told us to be there by 8.55. The lecture was 2.9 kilometres [a mile and three quarters] away, according to The Map.

Under normal circumstances, I could have arrived a bit late. But today, we had been told, an inspector might call, so we were to be there promptly. So I ran.

I arrived just in time to get my breath back. Not that breath is a particularly useful thing to have in Maths lectures: they're slightly less boring if you're dead. Still, I missed it.

And then the lecturer had the nerve to say, "The inspector isn't here today after all. He's coming on Thursday instead." So I proceeded to spend the bulk of the lecture deriving an equation for "amount of time of lecture that seems to be remaining" (y) in terms of "length of lecture actualy left" (x). I decided y = x², but on second thoughts, y = 10^x is probably more accurate.

Afterwards, I saw Yao waiting outside. Apparently her clock had decided to daylight save five days in advance and failed to wake her up in time for the lecture.

I lent her my notes, laced with Buzzcocks lyrics and culminating in the aforementioned equation. Only when she questioned some of the terms I'd used did I realise the full extent of my geenery. I'd written "Bi-gnome-ial" [instead of "binomial"] and defined an antilog as a cross between an antelope and a catalogue without even noticing.

And she went to her Chemistry lecture and I hobbled off along Tennis Court Road, on discovering my inability to walk without extreme pain.

Saturday 30 October 1999

I've left Cambridge, due to illness. Not the aforementioned Freshers' Flu and sore ankle; on 17 October, I spent six hours bed-bound and emitting vast quantities of mucus and when I finally managed to get up, I fainted twice. I had to slither across the floor to reach the phone and call for help.

This resulted in me getting rather behind with my course, since the terms are v. short and it's impossible (especially when your computer has stopped working), and I wasn't really enyojing it anyway: especially not the "9 o'clock lectures six days a week" business. So, I'm back at home.