Don't get me wrong. Bryn, Ibid and Soppygit are terrific people. If I'm feeling pants, they put on a tape of Me Aged Nine Reciting Nursery Rhymes And Singing "Wheelcar" (a stupid song by my half brother's former band) In A Ridiculously High Pitched Voice and instantly I forget my angst and die of embarrassment instead. (Note to self: hide all home videos before Bryn visits my house.)

However, there is one problem with them.

They're all flipping southerners! In my eyes, at any rate.

All right, so it's very hard to find a UKC student who isn't a southerner (or a foreign student). After all, nice as it is, it isn't the most prestigious of institutes of further education, so unless you really hate your family, you're unlikely to travel more than a hundred and fifty miles to get here. Hence, the only fellow relatively northern monkey I have discovered thus far is Vicky, who hails from Leeds, as is evident from her every word.

My accent, or lack thereof, however, blends in much more comfortably with the local dialect. However, there are certain words used here that set my teeth on edge.

Firstly: castle. Is there an 'r' in that word? No Kenneth, there isn't. Hence, it is pronounced cass-ul, to rhyme with "hassle". I should know, since I lived in one for thirteen and a half years. Yet, everyone here insists that it's car-sull to rhyme with parcel. Hmpf.

Secondly: grass. Is there an 'r' in that word? Oh, right, yes, there is one, isn't there? Ok, are there two 'r's in that word? Everyone agrees with me that "ass" rhymes with "gas" (to be a bit crass, which also rhymes), yet they believe "grass" rhymes with "arse".

Thirdly: they have "baths" that rhyme with hearths rather than Maths. The author is called Sylvia Plath, but if you fall on your arse while crossing the grarss (which I did), you should take the parth instead.

Fourthly: they come round to my rum instead of my room.

And finally, the one that really gets me: "pot plant". "Some people in East Anglia say 'pot plant'," Ibid said, rhyming "plant" with "ant".

"Well, why on earth not?" I asked. "You surely don't say 'pot plarnt', do you?"

They do! Plarnt! Whatever next? They probably worry about their exarms and listen to barnds and think I'm mard.

On Saturday 2nd, looking at books in Past Times, I discovered exactly why Soppygit turned out so much soppier than me. While I was brought up on Richard Scarry, she was educated with "The Complete Book Of Flower Fairies".

Actually, lately she's been more of a stroppygit, although that's mostly due to being turned down in favour of a herring. (Don't ask.) She redid her Sparkmatch test, and went from being a Dependent Good Love Provider to a Dependent Good Sex Taker. Exactly why the latter temperment is abbreviated to "Librarian", I'm not sure, but she was pleased . . . until she discovered she's now 15% more compatible with Bryn (and now 3% moreso than I am).

Anyway. She, Ibid and I were in Canterbury, ostensibly on a mission to buy Christmas presents, but it wasn't entirely successful. I managed to buy one and a half - two Sue Townsend books for Meaghan and another Sue Townsend book for Ibid (naturally I left my eleven-month-old W H Smith vouchers in my drawer) - as well a Spinal Tap poster for myself. This means I still need gifts for Mum, Dad, Noj, Will, Smill, Marion, Soppygit, Bryn, Twi, Ven, Sae, Liz, Helen, AevilSteve and probably other online friends. Bearing in mind I have £100, £55 of which I need for a train ticket (but I don't even *want* to go home!) an "oh dear" might be in order.

On Sunday, after spending all day in bed, Ibid and I went to the cinema to see "The Colour Of Paradise".

Hang on, that really didn't sound right.

On Sunday, after spending all day in bed due to extreme tiredness and headachery, Soppygit came round, insisted that I got up, and helped me make it to the cinema just in time to see "The Colour Of Paradise" with Ibid.

That's better.

Afterwards, I discovered Bryn had come round earlier, so foolishly, I invited him back, and he took me to Cemetery. No, that's not "a cemetery" - he might be a goth, but he's not quite that bad - but "Cemetery", an "interactive" dramatic project run by a friend of his, involving Nicky B****** (who is indeed my former penpal, weirdness).

Nevertheless, it was v. strange. The actors would approach the audience and ask things like, "Have you ever wondered what it's like to die?" or pretend to kill each other, with the victim yelling, "Yeah, stab me again! Ooh, I like that!" and leave the audience to react.

Twas v. well done, although towards the end, the performances degenerated into pub conversations / fourth form Religion debates, and Bryn started answering all the questions with vegetable names and yelling "PIKACHU!" at people in their death throes. I, although just watching at this point, started killing myself - laughing - and continued to giggle at the memory at most inappropriate times, such as in the not-v.-soundproof toilet and in a Calculus lecture. Gloops.

On Tuesday, I opened my door, intending to leave my room, and found Bryn standing outside, about to enter. This happened with Ibid a couple of weeks ago, too. Spooky!

I have found the funchiest bed covers ever. Sadly, they do not belong to me, but Matt. (Soppygit's-Friend-Matt rather than Neighbour-Matt-Who-Listens-To-Craig-David-Too-Often-For-My-Liking.) Before I started at university, I thought I had a groovay duvet (it's red with blue, yellow, green, black and white stripes and triangles on it, and I have a similar one that's blue), but since I started entering other people's rooms with more frequency, I have found myself outdone time and time again.

Matt's, however, is plain incredible. It has a map of Britain on it, with all the towns, railways and major roads marked. Heck, miniscule, unheard-of Brampton's on there! I suppose that if it were mine, I'd just stare at it all day and all of the night, but I'm still jealous.

It also caused me to make a dramatic realisation. I showed Bryn where Brampton was, and pointed out that it was on the A69. "Cool," he said.

I have travelled along the A69, quite literally, thousands of times. It was quite probably the first road I ever used in my life and have continued to utilise it ever since. For my first thirteen and a half years of existence, I lived about five hundred metres away from it, and my house isn't a great deal further away from it now.

And yet, until now, it never, ever occurred to me that its number had any dodgy connotations whatsoever. Wow.

Bryn has developed two more strange habits of late.

The first is to chase me with a pair of scissors, open them in preparation to snip, and then throw them across the room in terror at the mere sound of the blades parting. Fortunately, they have yet to hit anyone.

His fear is entirely understandable - as a person who has long hair myself, I know that the thought of losing it is worse than the prospect of losing a loved one. Nevertheless, why must he repeat this ritual so frequently, when he knows the result?

The other? Whenever I declare, "I'm going to the toilet" he says, "Can you get me a drink?" I always feel compelled to respond, "Not from the toilet!" which annoys him, but honestly! Is the can machine en route to the toilet? Do I even bother to wear shoes when I go to the toilet? Do I take money with me when I wish to use it, in case it's decided to start charging by the hour? Nosiree. Geen!

On Friday, I spent about seven hours in the company of Soppygit, and three in that of Ibid. (By contrast, I had to go for twenty four hours without seeing Bryn, but I suppose he did have to spend all day working up the courage to wear . . . a suit (and not one of armour) so he could attend the people that make Viagra's Christmas dinner.) Anyway, our production rate was stunningly high. Ibid wrote and I typed the story of her alien origins and upbringing by wild cats. The three of us wrote our third Christmas carol, "Stuart The Sexy Manager" (to the tune of "Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer"). And Soppygit and I rewrote "I Touch Myself" as "I Touch My Shelf", a rant about how inanimate objects are better than Herring-Fan. "A fool could see just how much I adore you / I get down on my knees, I do anything for you" became "A fool could see just how much I abhor you / I'd get down on my knees and painfully gnaw you" and such like. We sang it about six times (Neighbour-Matt must have got so sick of it), touching my shelves at the appropriate intervals.

I was sent one of those evil survey things, and, because a month and a half ago, Sarah Yoj declared she was craving a survey and asked me to send any I got, I sent it to her, and everyone else whose e-mail address I could remember (my university account ate my old contact list) for good measure.

Only a quarter of recipients replied, but from reading these and the answers that Soppygit got back, I have been able to establish some trends among my age group.

1) Monopoly is by far the favourite board game, although it's possible that it's the first one anyone can think of.

2) Most people write in pen.

3) Very few sleep with stuffed animals.

4) Being hugged / loved is usually classed as the best feeling, while being rejected as the worst. (Although mine were, "Finding really comfortable shoes" and "Losing a document you've worked on for hours and haven't saved." I lost the first three paragraphs of this entry, due to my computer crashing, which was bad enough.)

5) Most women prefer exotic names for their children and most men cannot spell their future children's names.

By the way, remind me not to marry Bryn. Or his brother, for that matter. They have too many middle names for me to remember at the altar.

On Saturday 9th, Soppygit, Ibid and I returned to Canterbury, for more Christmas shopping. The mission, again, was not amazingly successful, although I got some Christmas cards, a couple of books for Mum, and the collection of Douglas Adams stories for Soppygit (not sure how much she'll appreciate the title "Goodbye And Thanks For All The Fish" but oh well). Oh yes, and some balloons, since Soppygit has decided we're having a party in my room on Thursday.

I discovered the most funchie shop, though. From it, I got ten postcards of various bands for a pound, three badges (two showing The Sex Pistols, one saying "P*ss Off" - I thought the juxtaposition of this and the sticker Louise gave me that said "The Mayor Of Canterbury Thanks You For Your Kind Donation" was interesting), and the best - if the most tasteless - t-shirt in the world ever:

"Hitler European Tour 1939-1945," it says, and proceeds to list all the countries he invaded with the appropriate dates. England and Russia are marked "Cancelled". Since it's merely historical fact, I can't see anything wrong with it, except when I wear my Alice Cooper t-shirt, people assume that I like Alice Cooper. (One of Soppygit's friends is apparently most impressed by it. I was most impressed, upon reading his survey results, that his favourite magazine, like mine, is "Classic Rock". He's invited to the party, but we're probably destined to never meet.) So I just hope no one suspects me of Hitler-worship. (Nart_Z_Bopper was a joke, honest!)

Tonight (10th December) I will be able to say, "25% of my cinema trips since leaving home were to see "This Is Spinal Tap"."

That doesn't sound like a lot, if you assume I've only been to the cinema four times since then. It doesn't sound excessive if you assume I've only been eight times. But the truth is I've been twelve times. Heech!

The first time I saw it (ever) was at the cinema in town, about six weeks ago, with Bryn. However, since it was showing at the campus cinema last night, and Soppygit and Ibid hadn't seen it before, Bryn and I went along with them. (Strangely enough, when I got back to my room, I discovered my Spinal Tap poster had fallen down.) And tonight, it's showing at the campus cinema again and since viewing it is an unofficial rock society event, Bryn and I are returning.

Oh well. It's a good film.

Zed: I have the most invisible collection of aromatherapy oil ever.
Soppygit: You mean the most non-existent?
Zed: Oh no, it exists, it's just invisible and I can't remember where I put it.

Friday 15 December 2000

I write this while eating dry bread, because I forgot to buy any margarine at the campus shop and feel too daft to go back there five mere minutes after my last visit.

Yesterday was the last proper day of term. I'm not leaving until tomorrow: I have classes till three today, would need eight hours to get home at the best of times [and right now, there's still problems with the railways] and want to stay here for as long as possible anyway. However, a lot of people I know are departing at various times over the course of today. Ibid leaves at one, Mr Street went at ten, and Soppygit's cruel mother arrived at 8.30am! Bearing in mind that when Ibid and I left Soppygit's room at 2am last night, she was still very much Not Packed, she must be dead by now. Or perhaps not, since she came round to deliver my Christmas card earlier. I suppose she could have just been a disembodied voice, since I was in the shower at the time and didn't actually see her, but I heard her talking to the cleaner, so presumably she remains visible.

Anyway.

Yesterday started as all Thursdays do. I woke at 8, struggled to get up, but I made it to what was at least my sixteenth consecutive Algebra lecture. (I'm very proud of myself. With all my other subjects, I seem to miss at least one lecture a week for one reason or another.)

Afterwards, I headed for the campus shop and noticed Soppygit, Ibid and Curly-Haired-Matt (as opposed to Neighbour-Matt and Soppygit's-Friend-Matt) in the distance, so I sprinted after them, and yelled, "BOO!" It had the desired effect: Soppygit was scared to death. After a brief conversation, I went to Soppygit's room at set up her computer so she has a photo of Eric Stoltz as her background. I would sigh at such sentimental behaviour except that ever since getting my computer working, my background has been a photo of Bryn. Although I must point out that I use it not because of the subject, but because it's a cool picture that accommodates my icons nicely.

See?

(That was taken on the night of the Electric Ballroom trip in the coach station. He doesn't usually wear the corpse paint. And the sign actually just said "6", but I had to clone it, didn't I?)

I had a Probability Lecture, followed by brief visits from Bryn who sent a romantic note to someone called Line98 who is desperate to get laid (I have introduced him to the joys of Lunatix Online) and Soppygit who stole some of my blank Christmas cards, before running off to do her essay.

These poor arts and social sciences students. My only Assignment That Mattered was due in by 5pm on Thursday. It was fiendishly difficult and compelled me to spend all of Wednesday afternoon watching "South Park" episodes with Bryn. He was most disturbed by me having hysterics at the sight of underpants gnomes, but I couldn't help it. Gnomes make me laugh and pants make me laugh. How am I supposed to cope with gnomes that steal pants and sing silly songs while they're at it? Worse still, they so exist - I have them, only mine don't exactly steal pants, they just replace the black ones with pink ones with white spots, and white ones with purple flowers.

However, he left in the evening, and I managed to complete the assignment in two and a half hours. The suffering of other students was yet to reach an end though. At 3.30 on Thursday, Charlie still had an essay to type and another to write and type. Nine hours later, Catherine still had hers to type. And at 10.30 this morning, Matt was still far from finished.

My Calculus lecture ended ten minutes early, after the lecturer wrote the expression "Me^rr_y x^ma_s" on the board; after a twenty minute wait for the next one to begin, the thirty of us who had bothered to turn up in the first place (our class is one of about eighty) left. With my spare hour, I decided to find the outfit I wanted to wear to The Pit that night. (The Pit being the rock society party type thing that occurs three times a term. A gold star for working out the origin of the name.) However, after a thorough deconstruction of my room, my fishnet tights were nowhere to be seen. I was - and still am - vastly annoyed. Moreover, I don't know who to blame - the underwear gnomes or the cleaner. I hope it's the former, since they really wouldn't suit her.

I had another lecture, in which I felt far too hyper to sit still, and a computing class, where the hyperness had a more positive effect. Usually, I finish half the exercises in the class; this time, I finished all the exercises in half the class. I then completed a two-day-old e-mail to my mother, and got ready for the evening ahead.

Denied of the ability to go as genericgoth (my usual uniform), I went as grungegrrl. I wore my offensive Nirvana shirt, the short pleather skirt (although you couldn't really see it under the t-shirt) and my old school tights. (Soppygit offered me some less opaque ones, but I refused: "I don't want to look sexy, I want to look black!") Boots wise, the big fudge-off shiny ones looked a bit out of place, so I applied some sellotape to the loose heel of the normal sized leather ones, and hopped for the best. Sorry, typo, hoped for the best. I'm in two minds about getting it repaired: on one hand (well, foot), I can walk without falling over, and the shoe cost me $1.50 - to spend three times that mending the heel seems ever so slightly daft. On the other, it would be nice to be able to dance without falling over, and to spend £30 on new boots, given the amount of time I can stand to wear them for, also seems ever so slightly daft.

The most ingenious part of my appearance was my arms. (As far as I was concerned. Soppygit got rather frustrated by the amount of time I had to spend preparing them, but Ibid was so impressed with the result that she took a photo of each one.) In black felt-tip pen, I drew five-pointed stars all over them, from the elbow to the palm, then drew rings around my fingers at the joints. My arms are distressingly skinny, and look even moreso in extra large band shirts, so I probably shouldn't have drawn attention to them (if you'll excuse the pun), but I was so thrilled with them that I vowed not to shower or even wash my hands until Saturday night, so I could show them to my family (and Bryn, who was too annoyed due to the sound system being a pantsfiend to pay much attention to anything else).

However, when I woke up on Friday morning, not only did I feel sweaty and horrible, but I discovered the stars had smudged onto my upper arms; there was a line of them down the inside of both legs (I have no idea how); and my sheets were even more stained than they were to start with. (I'm talking about mud stains, ok? When Bryn broke my bed [ahem, by jumping on it], I had to leave my mattress on the floor for a couple of days. Given that I have a student room, in order to get from the door to the computer, it was necessary to walk over the mattress and shoe removal in my room is never wise, owing to the frequency with which drawing pins jump from my noticeboard.) So, I took a photo and showered.

(Naturally, it looked better the night before, and my right arm looked better still, but I couldn't operate the digital camera with my left hand. I now merely have faint smudgy green pentagrams on my arms. It looks like I have really weird veins.)

Anyway. Ibid and Soppygit appeared. We hung out in Soppygit's room for two and a half hours, while she got ready. Ibid and I played with Brendan's Online Anagram Generator while we waited, but the only satisfying one we found was "A Geen. Lie Still." for Bryn's ex. We then went Pitwards, where said ex was kind enough not to draw anything on my hand when I paid to get in.

Over the course of the next few hours, some rather interesting conversations took place. Some dodgy bloke (he got banned from the Venue for breaking in - um, why would anyone want to?) with even dodgier taste in jumpers chatted up and greatly disturbed Soppygit.

Then I saw Anna The Goth (as opposed to Anna-of-Anna-And-James and Soppygit's-Classmate-Anna) for the first time in ages.

A couple of minutes after that, a girl I'd never spoken to before came up to me and said she'd seen me at Slimelight. Coolness! It also turns out does the same subject as and knows Mr Street and Sarah (acquaintances of mine) so future communication is entirely possible.

Vice-President-Of-The-Rock-Society-Nick (as opposed to Bryn's-Housemate-Nick) saw me looking at the posters on the wall, so he said I could have them when the event was over. So I unstuck the Slipknot and Soul Fly ones. With both bands, I'm not sure if I love or hate them. It's quite possible that I love Soul Fly and hate Slipknot, but they both make me laugh, so that's good enough for me. That left a poster for The Workhorse Movement (yes, exactly: who, and what sort of name is that? It's only slightly less dodgy than the outfits of the members), which no one seemed in any hurry to steal, so I took pity on it. Nick also invited me to a party at the start of next term. Yay!

And now for the weird bit.

I'm not quite sure how I got talking to this bloke, or what we were talking about to start off with, but suddenly, he asked, "Do you have a website?" "Yes," said I, and he told me he's been visiting it for the last six months or so!

It's likely he found it due to a shared adoration for Acorn computers. The world of Acorn fans is small and highly incestuous. While he hasn't been to the IRC channel #acorn for years and therefore doesn't know Noj, Asp (Noj's friend) or Glenn (Sarah Yoj's boyfriend - yeah, strange), he does know Gerph, who Noj knows vaguely and who sent me some fan mail in October 1999.

Turns out he goes to college in Canterbury and used to go out with Fran (who I have been stalking all term, just for the heck of it). He suddenly realised I was nearby, by seeing the word "Bryn" on my updates page.

Anyway: scary! It's not quite the first time someone on the Internet has found me in real life - when I was in Cambridge, my online friend Julian spotted me in Sainsbury's on a couple of occasions, but I was half expecting that, as I knew he lived there.

This, however, makes me wonder exactly how many people are reading this site, if I can find a Pit attendee amongst them. When I had last had a hit counter, in April methinks, it told me I was getting about seventy visitors a day, but I assumed that was thirty people who I knew visiting twice and me checking my guestbook ten times. Since then, as far as I'm concerned, the site has gone majorly downhill. Back then, I was v. devoted to it; now, it's hardly ever updated; when I do update I leave out all the best stuff and introduce five thousand minor characters per entry who all have the same name; and the effects of me selling my sense of humour so I could buy more Mars Bars is evident. Yet in the last week, I've had fan mail off three complete strangers - and now this.

Anyway. After The Pit, Ibid, Soppygit and myself returned to Soppygit's room to wait until two. Shortly after the three of us met, we decided to write dodgy versions of Christmas Carols and, come December, sing them outside the Venue when it closed. We had considered doing this on Saturday, but were all too tired, so tonight was our final chance. But at about one, Ibid started whining that she was tired, which was out of character; Soppygit was feeling somewhat out of sorts anyway, due to having to pack everything before 8.30 and seeing Herring-Fan with Herring; and suddenly, at 1.45, I verbally realised, "I don't really want to do this." So we didn't.

Oh well, there's always next year.

Saturday 23 December 2000

I'm home for the Christmas holidays. Since getting back, nothing especially interesting has happened. I worked in the office of my parents' business on Monday and Tuesday, performing remarkably boring tasks. The only distraction was the progress messages on the computer screen. They used to say boring things like "Searching database" and "Locking file customers" and "Busy". Now they say, "Searching handbag", "Locking vile customers" and "Busy. Please play Patience, I'm cold."

On Tuesday, I was given a temporary reprieve from this vale terrestrial after being rescued a knight in shining armour - well, a rusty Mini, to be more accurate. Yup, twas Sir Christopher Bagot of Cricket. And I'm not really sure "rescued" is the right word either; it was more of a "out of the frying pan, into the fire" situation . . .

On Wednesday, since there was nothing for me to do at work, I stayed at home and worked on my website all day. On Thursday, I returned, and did two and a half months of end-of-month figures. And yesterday, I drove to Carlisle, took my mud-stained leather jacket to the dry cleaners (it's going to cost £31 and take four weeks to be cleaned!), met Smill, shopped a bit and saw "Charlie's Angels" at the cinema.

Carlisle has changed a scary amount since I last went there. There's new shops, a new cafe type place (I think) and a building that even Noj who still lives here doesn't recognise. There's actually a decent nightclub now (not one that I, personally, would appreciate, but it's drawing in the big names) called Freedom (a much trendier sounding name than its old one, "The Pagoda", if unimaginative - the bar in London that Marc Almond frequented in the early 90s was/is called that. [Useless piece of trivia picked up from "Tainted Life"]).

And there's suddenly freaky people! On arriving in the main shopping centre, among the first people I noticed were a girl with dyed black hair and a Slipknot shirt, a boy in those extra baggy navy blue trousers, and someone whose coat was decorated with badges, like mine. Evidence that . . . well, not exactly taste, but at least awareness of alternativity exists up here. Before, people would mention "oh, that's where all the scary goths go" or "there's a biker pub if you can't get into a normal one wearing leather", but the only "freak" I'd ever encountered was Marie, who used to turn up to Carlisle Youth Concert Band in a PVC dress.

Today, I haven't done anything much, except beat my own record at Bloxed. Until now, my best was level 59, but today I reached level 64, also surpassing the highest score of the bloke who wrote the game. Rawkin!

Oh, my January issue of Classic Rock arrived and the CD that came with it has a track by the mysterious Workhorse Movement on it! It's quite good too!