We found out why the Official Person was so annoyed with the state of Keynes, post-Pit. Someone was giving out stickers advertising the release of Lost Prophets' "Fake Sound Of Progress" (which, for a nu-metal band, sounds remarkably like The Cure in places) and someone had stuck some of them up around the Food 2 Go outlet. They peeled off easily (I discovered, when I attempted to pick one off a table when I was feeling fidgetty), but to pollute such a trendy entity with rock chique? Blasphemy!

Since then, Keynes seems to have gone super-bolshy. The notice boards are currently falling off the walls, laden down with "Vote Ruth for Women's Officer" type o posters. ("You can't have someone called Ruth in the SU," Bryn said. "Why not?" I asked, working it out as soon as I spoke. Yep: "They've got to be Ruthless!") Naturally, some people have added more humorous creations amid the promises to introduce more drinks promotions at The Venue (yeah, how about some music that isn't commercial dance?) and stop the campus shop from being such a rip off. (Huh? Did your Geography teacher actually tell you where places are, instead of explaining that if a shop is convenient, it can and will charge as much as it likes, without loss of custom, especially if very few of the customers have cars.) In Rutherford on Tuesday, I came across, "Vote [someone] for nipple hair officer". But better, on Wednesday, Ibid pointed out, "Vote Palpatine!" I was going to borrow it, so I could copy it into an entry, but yesterday it was gone, and a "Do not abuse the noticeboards" poster was in its place. Also, the work of modern art I helped to create has been entirely removed.

That said, we've convinced them to let us have the metal night tonight! Yay!

Saturday 2 March 2002

Well, it's a good thing I didn't go and see The Mission yesterday (as I was thinking about doing, since tickets were still on sale on Thursday), because I was absolutely knackered. Nevertheless, I had quite a good time at ze live metal night. Bryn was very pleased with it: "When I became president of the rock society three years ago," he said, "I had two aims. To have a free rock night and put on a live metal night." "And you've done them both in the space of two days," I said. "Although it took three years."

The bands playing were described as grindcore or noisecore or death metal. If none of those terms mean anything to you, just think very noisy, very fast and very screamy. Not exactly my cup o orange squash, but hey, if it's metal, and it's in Canterbury, especially if it's at UKC, I'm there.

The turn out was incredible. There was a smattering of UKC attendees present - mostly rock society devotees like myself, rather than people who were particularly into the stuff. "I don't even like death metal," quoth Simon and Fav said it was "w***", driving away Dale, who had only come to Keynes so he could phone his mother: he and Stef were spending the evening playing "The Curse Of Monkey Island" instead.

But there were about 23470234234 people there! Despite paying three pounds for the pleasure, I only actually set foot in Keynes JCR for about ten seconds. It was so packed I couldn't see the bands, never mind find space to dance, so I just hung around outside, where I could hear the music perfectly but talk at the same time. There were fliers for this event at the Beercart Arms on Monday, so I thought the mysterious attendees might have come from there, but seemingly not. Apparently, the bands have fans who follow them around all over Kent, and here they were. Coolness!

Soppygit's friend Ollie was there, since he's part o this scene. I hadn't seen him since Monday 27th November 2000 (yes, my memory scares me sometimes), so that was nice. I proceeded to spend most of the evening chatting to some people I'd never spoken to before called Kathy, who wants to revolutionise museums, and another Ian who offered me cheap entry to The Electric Ballroom.

I am now absolutely terrified about where I might end up living next year. At the end of this academic year, Bryn leaves UKC, so I can't take up unofficial residence in his room again. He's going to live with his parents, as it's the cheapest option. Well, technically speaking, I could live there too, and come into Canterbury by train every day, but I'd hate to. Despite seventeen months of living together, actually and virtually, we're very much against the idea of "getting a place together" at this stage (never mind what my parents, who'd be paying the rent, would say). Me and current my housemates aren't going to live in the same house, either. Ibid is going to Finland for a year, Soppygit has applied to live in Becket Court again, and Jo has applied to live in Park Wood, as have I. I accept the possibility that I probably won't get in: for every four or five second and third year applicants who live in the UK, only one gets a place. The only thing in my favour seems to be that I live further away from UKC than quite a few foreign students, who are guaranteed places.

Though, scared as I am about the prospect of seeking off-campus accommodation, and much as I don't look forward to long treks to campus each day and endless streams of bills, I can see it has its advantages. If I'm to live in Park Wood next year, I'll be able to live in my current house until the end of June, but won't be able to return to Canterbury until mid-September. This will be Rather Annoying, since Bryn and I loathe to be at opposite ends of the country for three weeks, never mind two and a half months, and he probably won't be able to visit me, due to his need to find a job. (Although we are planning to go to Eurorock in early August, which will break up the apartness nicely.) If, however, I get another house in Canterbury, I can probably spend those two and a half months living there.

But my fear is over who I might end up living with. In Park Wood, it'll definitely be strangers, unless, by some miracle I end up with Jo, and elsewhere in Canterbury, it'll probably be strangers too. If Soppygit and Jo don't get places on campus, they're going to seek another house together, which I'm welcome to join them in, but I'm doubtful of their chances. Also, Fran from rock society said a while ago she was looking for a housemate, but the place is probably gone now. And everyone else I know seemingly has next year's accommodation sorted.

Now I lived with strangers in first year. And, for all intents and purposes, I live with strangers this year. But they've all been harmless strangers. Some more friendly than others, some more moody than others, some foreign students, some mature students, some that were neither foreign nor mature. My neighbour last year listened to Craig David repetitively, sometimes at two in the morning, and Simon and Tasha were dodgy mere inches from where I was lying, if on the other side of a wall.

But they were all people I could cope with, who did stuff I could cope with. For the most part, I had very little to do with them, and they were fine with that. But when I asked Kathy what her experience with living in Park Wood had been like, she told me that one of her housemates had stuck German proverbs up all over the house (he was English) and tried to kill the rest of them, by turning all the gas taps on. And another of them had committed suicide. The rest of them had been offered counselling, but the counselling service didn't get back to them until the last day of the academic year. Heech!

Monday 4 March 2002

Gah. My appplication to live in Park Wood next year was unsuccessful, so off-campus accomodation must be sought. Plentiful hassle awaits me and I shall be bankrupt by June 2003.

In "happier" news, I voted for next year's Student Union officers. Only because one of them's a friend of mine and he will give budgets to the rock and Anime societies next year. Everyone else seemed to be promising much the same unlikeliness, but I fear that my votes for the people who spread most graffiti around the campus today will doubtless result in Extreme Fascism. However, I was given a free ticket to a cheesy party at The Venue on Wednesday for my pains. Usually I avoid the place at all costs, but I've been cheeseless for several months, due to 80s night ending, so it might be worth making a brief appearance at.

Now I face another exhausting Monday-Wednesday-Friday combination of nights out. (Tis Fright Night at The Beercart Arms tonight, and Indie Glo on Friday.) I am not terribly caught up with my sleep. On Saturday night, I hallucinated about meeting strangers on Livejournal and them trying to have sex with me, and also that Bryn was a 3x3 matrix and I was a component of a vector. It was scary. I then dreamed that my brother was overthrowing the government, Robert Cormier was in hospital, and Lecturer With Weird Accent told us to get LaTeX to produce a picture of a little creature. Last night, Bryn and I went to bed at seven, but TV proved too good (amazingly enough) for an early night. First we watched the first two episodes of "3x3 Eyes" which we'd borrowed from Animesoc; then some comedy programme; then "The Life Of Brian", then "Never Mind The Buzzcocks", then "Room 101". Then some weird programme featuring a woman sitting on a bed and moving her head from side to side very rapidly came on, so we finally listened to some more of "The Two Towers" and I dozed off. This morning, I had a nine o'clock lecture. Yawn.

Tuesday 5 March 2002

Yesterday, I went into Canterbury, met Bryn, and acquired: 1. A new watch battery. 2. A new button for my coat (to replace one that got cracked when I accidentally stood on it, since I had to leave my coat on the floor of the bathroom at the medical centre as there weren't any hooks). 3. Orange squash and cheese. 4. The black fishnet/lacy/mesh top from 3rd Eye 2000 I tried on last week. 5. A BACKPACK! Woohoo!

Bryn is v. good at finding stoof in Canterbury. He took me to two camping shops I hadn't been to before, and in one of them, I found The Backpack Of My Dreams. It was thirty pounds, but: 1. It was big enough to contain ringbinders. (You wouldn't believe how many backpacks there are around these days that aren't.) 2. It was completely blaaaaaack! 3. The logo is small, does not include the word "sport" or a brand name immediately associated with that activity, and can be picked off without difficulty. 4. It looks strong. 5. It has three billion pockets! Also it looks strangely familiar. So a happy Zed I am. Also, now I get to decorate it: its fabric looks suitable for attaching badges to too. Yoj!

As per usual, I went to The Beercart Arms last night. Bryn and I suspected only annoying people would turn up in Keynes Bar beforehand, so we went along very late. Indeed, they were the only ones there, although I later discovered AJ and Iain had been there earlier and got sick of waiting. Oh well, we managed to lose the annoying ones while they used the cash machine outside The Venue. Since we stopped at my house on the way down (to try and collect Ibid, although she wasn't there), we had to double back on ourselves and take a different route to avoid them, but we managed it. Also, we passed a furniture shop with a highly cool fake Olympic-style flame on display. We want some for The Pit.

I took along "Live Through This" by Hole, since they used to play "Violet" every indie night at The Venue, but I hadn't heard it in a club since then. Unfortunately, it was the third song the DJ played, so only me, Bryn and Sleeve danced to it. After that, they played more or less the same stoof as usual, so next week Bryn and myself are going to request a bit more variety in the set list. Twas an undistinctive night, characterised only by a return of the total lack of toilet roll, meeting a girl who was wearing a Really Big Spiky, and being offered a copy of the new NIN album plus a bonus CD. Funchie!

Thursday 7 March 2002

Last night Bryn, Sleeve and I went to see "Metropolis" (the Anime version) at Cinema 3. It was très good and in it, Bryn and I found our newest obsession as far as musical genres go: industrial improvisational jazz. It makes perfect sense: the problem with industrial that it's all rhythm and no tune; the problem with improvisational jazz is it's all tune and no rhythm. (Strangely, for someone who spent nine years learning to play classical and jazz pieces up to a standard where she could have gone to music college, I find the former intensely preferable.) But, put together, they make a perfect combination.

Then Bryn and I watched a couple of episodes of "Ulysses" we'd borrowed from Anime Society. Yay! It has a ridiculously cool and head sticky theme tune and features the cutest robot ever.

Then I went to the "big cheesy party" at The Venue. When I got there, the election results were being announced and everyone cheered their lungs out whenever the number of votes for RON (not Harry Potter's best friend, Re-Open Nominations) was declared. Since none of my friends were foolish enough to turn up, I texted Bryn and played Snake. Then the music started. First it was "Celllll-eeee-bray-shun time, come on!" Ahhhh, cheese, thought I. Then, "Things Can Only Get Better" which I don't think is strictly cheese, since I bought the single at the time of release. But it's one of the few songs I acquired in 1994 that I still like, so I was pleased.

But the rest of the night? Well, it was cheese in that I was familiar with most of the music from eight years of enforced radio listening during lifts home from school and work. It wasn't cheese in that it was late 90s commercial dance. As they play every other night of the week. Urgh. Luckily, most of it was of the heavier relatively wordless variety, so I enyojed the bassy power of The Venue's PA without cringing at "Move your bodee" type o lyrics. However, I was the only one dancing, and no matter how industrial the tunes sounded, they just don't work as well in The Trendy Venue as they do at Slimelight. So I left after an hour of music and watched more Uuu-lee-see-eee-eee-eee-ees! Oh well, you get what you pay for.

Friday 8 March 2002

Yojjley yojjley yoj! I have a house! Due to lack of success with individual house-hunting efforts, Soppygit, Jo and I decided to join forces. Today, the list of university-owned off-campus properties came out. The accommodation office was due to open at nine; I woke at 7.30, but since I'll have to stay up till one tonight, cleaning up after Indie Night, I decided to have some more sleep. Nevertheless, I arrived at the accommodation office at 8.40. There were already about a hundred people waiting there. The bloke in front of me wondered out loud why he'd forgotten to bring the Molotov cocktail with which he was planning to kill everyone in front of him.

Soppygit and Jo arrived and we weren't too hopeful. Last year, the list had only had about fifteen properties on it, many of them quite some distance from campus. Nevertheless, we collected our lists and examined them. The first few properties were on a road near campus, the road on which Bryn lived last academic year, all with the same guy as a landlord. So we phoned him - the line was busy. But we called him again a couple of minutes later, and he told us to come and look at the houses as soon as possible.

The first one was being re-decorated. Soppygit had her doubts over the smallness of some of the rooms, despite Jo and I assuring her that 1) most student houses have this problem and 2) all the houses on Said Road were identical in design. By the time she'd had a second look around, a group of blokes had asked for it. However, the landlord took us to the second house. While he was talking to me and Jo and another group, Soppygit sneaked off to look upstairs, and when she got back, she agreed to take the house.

So. It shall be ours! It's not perfect. The contract is from 1 September 2002, which means I'll have nowhere to stay in Canterbury for two months of the summer. I'll be Brynless, and getting to Eurorock and meeting my online friend Dina will be a hassle. But at least I won't be on the streets next year.

Saturday 9 March 2002

Indie night, last night, was somewhat gute and somewhat bad. For a lot of it, I had no one to talk to; at the end, I was talking to all sorts of people I barely knew. Methinks I got passively stoned again. Sarah The Vice Goth was soppily rambling about how wonderful it was that Soppygit and Sleeve were back together (as of last night, although this may not still be the case). I, on the other hand, didn't say anything too embarrassing for once. Instead, I started giving impassioned speeches about the evilness of the student union (hereafter referred to as the stupid union) and Why Soppygit And Sleeve Getting Back Together Is A Seriously Bad Idea (for reasons I'm not going to go into here). Everyone was quite impressed.

The music was fairly gute. I'm not really into indie these days, I need something more energetic and thumpy, but for the first time ever I heard some original punk at such an event besides The Sex Pistols and "Teenage Kicks". "Babylon's Burning"! "London Calling"! "Sheena Is! A Punk Rocker!"! They also played "Along Comes Mary" by The Bloodhound Gang, a song I thought no one else had realised the brilliance of.

Unfortunately, yet again, the PA wasn't working properly. Last Pit, we only had three speaker cables out of four. This time, we only had two, which meant bits of songs ended up missing. Unfortunately, I'd heard most of the music so many times that I noticed every absent effect, since I don't just sing along with a song's words, but with backing vocals, guitar solos and drum rolls, and I add a treble counter-melody if I get bored.

At eleven thirty, half an hour before the event was due to end, a horribly housey song came on. (It turned out it was "No Good (Start The Dance)" by The Prodigy. Ah. Well, it's the moronic sampled lyrics I object to, but I maintain that indie kids didn't start liking the Prodge until "Fat Of The Land" came out three years later. They also bought The Chemical Brothers and Fat Boy Slim albums. Then they either turned into trance-loving geens or returned to shoe-gazing and angsty nu-metal. I didn't like The Prodigy until I got into industrial four years later and consequently I have far superior music taste to every other ex-indie kid. That's my theory anyway.)

Then the music stopped. What? thought I. They can't end now, with this! It turned out the CD player in The Lighthouse (the restaurant above The Venue) had broken, so the Stupid Union were reclaiming the one they'd lent us. &*£#ers! Now if it was the one in The Venue that had broken, I could understand, since Friday night there is both well-attended and expensive, but what's on in The Lighthouse on a Friday night? Jazzy R'n'B hiphoppy stuff, I believe. Maybe it's popular - I wouldn't go near the place - but it's free to get in, it's on every single week - surely the people there wouldn't mind waiting half an hour before our event, which has only happened twice a year and caters for a section of the student population that isn't granted any pleasing music by the Stupid Union, had finished? Besides, they lent the CD player to us fair and square - can they suddenly demand it back when it takes their fancy? We're going to find out.

Plus, this is further evidence that their equipment is poo! The first indie night, the system they lent us didn't work at all, this time there weren't enough cables, and now another of their CD players is brocken! Gah!

Later

Yup, Soppygit and Sleeve split up again last night. Yay, I think.

Later Still

Argh! Sleeve came round this afternoon, and convinced Soppygit to get back together with him, on a very casual temporary basis. They're like a child who's just grown tall enough to reach light switches: on, off, on, off! Frankly, I don't care if they're together or not, as long as they're happy, but I only foresee more troubles ahead. I know it's their lives, but they both insist on telling me of their woes and asking advice! I'm sure it would be best if they just moved on . . .

Wednesday 13 March 2002

On Monday night, the extent of my dancing consisted of nodding my head a bit while sitting down, and yelling, "Beep you, I won't do what you told me!" at Tiggs a few times.

The reason? Twas a typical Monday. Had lectures, went online and supervised ickle firsties. Lecturer With The Weird Accent was there again. Quotes: "I think Michael-" (another lecturer) "-is so artistic. He wears sunglasses and ties and always has stuff in his pocket." *takes something out of his own pocket which looks for all the world like a packet of birth control pills, despite Lecturer With The Weird Accent being male* "Most of your class look like they're fifteen or sixteen. Should I tell them this?"

Luckily for my more youthful-looking classmates, he's not teaching us anymore. Instead we have Sleep-Inducing Lecturer With The Byutiful Scorttish Accent again. Yay, since I'm not sleeping very well at the moment.

Went into toon, met Bryn, sent off mix CD to online friend Flink and bought food. Noot interesting, except I kept stumbling on uneven bits of pavement. I can go for about a month without this happening at all, but when it's happened once, it occurs several times over the next few days. Sort of like a period that brings clumsiness rather than blod. We took the scenic and geenic route back to campus, which involved walking up a grassy slope (and consequently having a big debate on how "grass" was pronounced). I continued to yell "Argh!" as I nearly lost my balance at regular intervals.

Bryn wished to go that way again when we went to The Beercart Arms, but I protested that since I was stumbling so much as it was, and it was now too dark to see the bumps in the ground, it would be unwise. So we took the normal-ish route, and the problem persisted. At The Beercart, I talked to AJ for about ten minutes, then went upstairs to the toilets. I was on my way down and was nearly at the bottom when- I was suddenly sitting on the floor at the bottom of the steps, howling in agony. I don't know how I landed, but the only body parts that experienced any pain whatsoever were my left elbow which had been bashed, and my left foot: the toes had been slammed towards the leg.

The elbow pain disappeared almost immediately, and I anticipated the foot pain would take the same course of action. I talked to Bryn, Sleeve, AJ and some bloke wearing a badge that said "I love *picture of a cat*" for a bit; then Soppygit arrived and I suggested we went somewhere a bit quieter since she had a sore throat. So we set off and argh! Paaaaane! It didn't get any easier, so I wrote off dancing for the night and managed to acquire a lift home with John's Dad.

It wasn't a bad night, though: they didn't play much that I particularly wanted to dance to, or I was so deep in conversation I wasn't aware of it. Talked to the usual suspects, plus Tall John who offered to make me a copy of something (can't remember what now, but it'll be a nice surprise when I get it next week) and some girl about hair. Unfortunately, due to my sitting in a corner for most of the night, I didn't see the bloke who offered to burn me the new NIN album (grr, since I actually remembered to bring some blank CDs with me) and Laura (from a Cure-inspired writing mailing list I used to be on - yes, it's a very small world) didn't see me (or perhaps was just too scared to approach).

At the end of the night, I managed to walk to the car park without difficulty. But once I'd got back to Bryn's and taken my boots off, I could hardly stand. While in bed, I was able to forget about the pain, but the next morning, every step was torture. However, it got easier as the day wore on. I went to sick bay, and was told it was just a sprain, and I should be back on my feet - literally - in about a week's time. Gute, because I wouldn't want to be walking around Nodnol or at Slimelight (where I'll be in ten days' time) like this.

Unfortunately, it isn't in my best interest to keep wear my platformed New Rock boots this week, so I'm stuck in my hideously unfunchie and hideously unplatformed white trainers. It's so terrible being 5'2" again! Also, cold, because my coat tends to trail on the ground when I'm wearing my New Rocks, never mind when I'm not, so I'm just wearing a hoodie.

Oh well. Life's not all bad. "Jubilee" (Derek Jarman's punk film), "Prick Up Your Ears" (which is as dodgy as it sounds - it's about Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton) and "Teenage Kicks" (a film about The Undertones) are all showing at Cinema 3 on Saturday. Also Anime Soc last night was superb. They showed the final episode of "I! Me! My! Strawberry Eggs", a series that is both incredibly dodgy and totally heart-warming (and, unlike nearly every Anime series with more than ten episodes, it had a good ending); the final episode of "Read Or Die" (sort of James Bond, only twice as unrealistic); and three shorts by the bloke responsible for "Akira". Yoj!

Thursday 14 March 2002

The person sitting at the computer opposite mine is listening to "The Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson far too loudly on their headphones. Excellent, since the only music I have with me is a CD from the radio station - mopey nu metal, judging by the press release.

I seem to have a knack of acquiring best friends who fall head over heels with Superman. Katrina was obsessed with Dean Cain; now Soppygit is with Tom Welling. Bryn says, "Well, that's no surprise since he's amazing in every way." But also totally boring, if you ask me. Seriously, whose favourite Harry Potter character is Harry? Some people have a thing for villains; mine seems to be for slightly shadowy good guys (male or female) with long black hair. My favourite HP character is Sirius, my favourite Simpsons character is Otto, my favourite "Love Hina" character is Motoko, my favourite "Saint Seiya" character is Shiryu, and so it goes on.

Played Warhammer yesterday, with a thousand point army for the first time. My forces ended up being almost completely decimated as usual, due to ridiculously bad dice rolls at inopportune moments. Watched some Anime film whose title I've forgotten, found out you can buy unabridged copies of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy on tape (oh, for money!); and happened to glimpse Alice Cooper and his snake while channel hopping.

Turned out to be a documentary called "When Rock Ruled The World". It, well, rocked! As well as Alice (and his performance on "The Muppet Show"), it featured Motorhead, Motley Crue, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Spinal Tap, Judas Priest and plentiful cliches, including huge hairy blokes diligently sewing patches onto their denim, drummer jokes and spandex. It was highly amusing, and ended with the voice over: "Next week: when shoulder pads ruled the world!" Bryn's limbs went into spasms that lasted several minutes.

Lecturer With Monotonous Voice: "In the zoo of convergent sequences, this one's just inside the gate and round the corner." Woah, getting a bit overimaginative there, aren't we?"

Satuday 16 March 2002

Yesterday, my Assignment Of Dume completely failed to get done. I refrained from beating myself up since I knew Bryn could do so much more effectively, I'd done a zillion tons of work the previous day, and I'd have quite a bit of time at the weekend.

At 3.30, I met Jo outside Eliot College, so we could meet a girl who had expressed an interest in living with us the following year. Soppygit would have joined us, except she was at work. (Yes, you read that right. Ms Soppygit has temporarily ceased her studies and entered the so-called "real world". She'll be repeating second year come September, providing her mother doesn't crucify her.) A few minute later, we spotted the unmistakable garishly-coloured figure of Ibid, who waited with us. But the girl was nowhere to be seen. Jo phoned and texted her, but by four o'clock, there was still no sign of her. So Jo said she'd e-mail someone else who wanted to live with us (at the moment - she probably won't when she witnesses our collective insanity) and Ibid, since the alternative was getting on with her essay, decided to join me in suffocating the campus with posters for the next Pit.

Nick gave Bryn the task of distributing or finding someone to distribute them, so foolishly I volunteered. I'm just too doormatty for my own good. In all likelihood I'm going to be on the rock society committee next year. I might even be president, since neither of the other feasible options, Sleeve and John, want the position. But the operative phrase is "next year". Not this year. I already clean up after events and spend hours making sure no one steals the equipment. What am I on? (Apart from a chair, and the computer.)

Oh well, it was good exercise, and far less terrifying than my other option for the afternoon, which was to go to the gym. And it was good fun. Ibid gleefully tore down and stole the drawing pins from the outdated "Popstars Night" (cringe!) posters. Although she did get very sore thumbs from attempting to drive pins into the plastic bins around campus. (In a style that befits a president, I let her do the dirty work.)

We stuck our posters on all the noticeboards we could find. At first I thought we were overdoing it a bit, but the pile of posters I was carrying never failed to decrease. I think the Stupid Union gave me a hundred instead of sixty, not that I'm complaining - my main gripe with the organisation is that it now has something in common with America - it cannot hold an election, hence the huge trucks of Viagra the Chinese have sent over blocking all the roads on campus.

Also, no matter how many posters we stuck up, there were always more around saying, "Who cares? 20/3/02." Most odd - it didn't even say where the event was, much less when it was or what it was. And someone must have cared plenty. When we went to Park Wood, these posters adorned even the most bramble-blocked trees. In Park Wood, Ibid apologised to every tree we punctured. I protested that the trees had had so many staples and pins stuck into them over the years, they were probably immune to the pain now. They might actually enyoj it. But she wasn't convinced.

We also ran into Deaf and Stale. Dale's first words were, "I'm &*£#ing losing it." "Don't &*£# Losing It!" I protested. "&*£# Stef instead!" They were both quite scared. Dale's misery stemmed from the fact that 1) he'd been #£$% on by a bird and 2) he and Stef were stuck with the last section of "The Curse Of Monkey Island" and getting really flipping sick of the rollercoaster. I put them out of their misery with the latter problem. Stef informed us she was in danger of getting expelled due to a &@£#@% called David in her project group. One of those of the opinion: "I'll do everything, you'll spoil it. Hmpf! You're not flipping doing anything!"

We spent a few minutes coming up with ways to torture him. It was revealed unto Ibid and I that the Banana Cult God of Drawing Pins is named after him. Ibid went to an open lecture about the birth of stars. (The astronomical sort, not celebrities.) I went to Bryn's, where he made me read a "really cool" asstr.org story he'd come across. It was the standard asstr affair, in both senses of the word affair. Narrator's girlfriend is away for the weekend, her roommate suggests to narrator that they &*£# each other's brains out. They do. Roommate is totally sadistic. Girlfriend comes back, expecting this to have happened, and they set up a kinky menage à trois. Bryn thought I'd like it because it's the woman being powerful. Uh. Yes, I like strong female characters, such as Motoko from "Love Hina" who brandishes her sword every time the protagonist annoys her. She over-reacts, yes, but she doesn't take any %*&#. You go, girl! But being cruel just for the sake of it? Blech. Anyway, it included the guy being put in "the piledriver position", where you roll backwards so your feet are touching the ground behind your head (which is painful enough, we discovered) and then an, um, object is rammed into his, well, yes.

Bryn is absolutely pants when it comes to nouns. He's always saying, "Can you pass me the . . . ?" and I never have a clue what he's talking about. He compensates by being good with verbs. He's always making suggestions which he knows I'll hate. "Paint Zed green!" "Microwave the Zed!" "Pickle the Zed!" He now has a new favourite verb: to piledrive. Argh.

We watched "Robot Wars", Ibid came round, we surfed the net and Bryn tried, as he often does, to write a decent tune with the drum machine program on his computer, and failed miserably. Went to campus shop, watched "Black Books", "Have I Got News For You?" and "Little Nemo", which put me to sleep. Luckily, my dreams weren't as terrifying as Nemo's became. Unfortunately, my waking life was worse. At 1.30, there came a knocking on Bryn's window. It was the boyfriend of one of his housemates. She'd misplaced her keys; could Bryn let them into the house? He did so. She was very, very drunk (judging by the excessive amount of mail she received the previous morning, it could well have been her birthday) and was sick in a variety of places. Bryn phoned for someone to bring a copy of the key to her room; they left her with her head in the toilet bowl. Quite amusing, since someone had put a notice on the kitchen door saying, "My mother is coming round tomorrow. Mess up the house under penalty of death!" What was less amusing was that for the next two hours or so, shouting in the kitchen kept us awake.

Today, I spent the morning doing Analysis notes; then I went to Eliot College while Bryn went horse riding. Most of the "Who Cares?" posters have been replaced with ones that say "Do you?" These actually give a time and a place of the event, but still no idea as to what it is. Annoyingly, they obliterated or altogether replaced several of the Pit posters. Huh! Oh well, I've still got some left over, so I'll put them up over the next few days. I don't actually know if posters entice people to come to The Pit - I'd imagine everyone who's interested is on the rock society mailing list - but je suis trop digilente.

Except when it comes to doing Assignments Of Dume.

Sunday 17 March 2002

Saw "Prick Up Your Ears" last night, then went to Bryn's. I was there for about ten minutes before he suggested we went to the Park Wood vending machines. Unfortunately, in those ten minutes, it had started to rain viciously. We set off the grassy way, but the ground was squelchy, so I insisted we stuck to the paths. (Since I'd doubtless fall over, and have no wish to spend over £30 getting my coat dry cleaned.) Consequently, we got very soaked. Watched "Vampire Hunter D" (well, Bryn did, I fell asleep instantly).

I have always considered Bryn's housemates entirely harmless and considerate. Three of them are in their final year and the other is a foreign student. Apart from Friday night, their noise has only kept me awake once in the six months I've lived with them, and that was because one of them had friends visiting. But in the middle of last night, I was partially awake when someone walked into Bryn's room. I hadn't a clue what was going on; my only concern was that I was not even remotely under the covers, and amended this as quickly as possible. Bryn, luckily, was awaker, and said, "I think you've got the wrong room, mate."

It was the guy from the room next to his. He moved closer to us. "You've got the wrong room," Bryn repeated. "Come on, I'll take you back to yours." Bryn nakedly escorted him away, then returned, locking the door behind him. Creepy. What if he'd come in when we'd been asleep? Also, whatever state he was in, surely he'd realise he wasn't in his own room? His room is tidy; in Bryn's you can't move an inch without an ominous crunch sounding beneath your feet.

Monday 18 March 2002

Ack. Despite not being human, my supply of milk o' the human kindness runneth over. While supervising today, one of the ickle firsties (who I speak to socially as well as assistively) asked me if I could give her a private tutoring session on Minitab. I was wary at first - would the Maths department pay me for this? Then I remembered that I'd offered to teach a friend about matrices, free o charge, and agreed.

But when my brother was doing his GCSE and AO Level Maths (we're talking about a period of two years), he asked me for help every single night. After that, I decided I had well and truly had enough with explaining Maths. What was I thinking?

Tuesday 19 March 2002

Eek! Anna The Goth is wearing colour today! Her skirt is a decidedly grey shade of black and she's wearing a red t-shirt under a partially see-through black jumper. She claims she's allowed to - I've got a red A-for-anarchy on my shirt, she pointed out - but I wear some degree of colour quite often. I've known her for a year and a half, and the most colour I've seen on her has been a partially purple corset! What is the world coming to?

It being a Monday, I went to The Beercart Arms last night. The music wasn't terribly gute, although they played an obscure Motorhead song shortly after I arrived, as well as "Starbeepers", "Links 2-3-4" et autre coolness. Place was a bit dead, due, in all likeliness, to imminent deadlines for most of the university attendees. It got invaded by some trouble-causing geens in army uniform, but they got thrown out.

Mainly talked to Soppygit and this complete geen called Chris. Actually, he's really nice, but he's seeing Iron Maiden tonight and I'm not. He's seen them twice before too. Mimph. Matt suddenly came up to me, to let me know that some girl wanted to know my opinion on who had the cooler shoes. I'd seen her at the metal night at UKC a few weeks ago, and thought then that she had highly funchie shoes: just like mine, only shiny and blue. (Made me wonder if they make them in PINK!) We had an entirely insane conversation about BROWN! She and her friend (who decided she had the best shoes of all of us, since they only cost £4) had decided that Bryn was called "Man In Brown", and that even I must address him as this. They were also rather pleased to find his name was Bryn, due to the novelty of yelling "Bryn Brown!" I told them he didn't always wear brown and that I don't like brown much. I was wearing my "I hate slogans" t-shirt; we decided I should make an "I hate brown" t-shirt, with the slogan written in brown tippex, if such a thing exists.

I also talked to a girl in the toilets, who knows where I live. Her boyfriend saw me leaving my house one day over the summer dressed entirely in PVC, and mentioned this to her. She was quite put out.

Has anyone else ever found it highly pleasing that there are celebrities called both Gary Oldman and Gary Numan?

After my Regression lecture today, I ran into Anna The Goth for the third time in twenty seven hours. She was annoyed because the girl she's supposed to be doing a presentation with had disappeared. We talked for a while; then, in parting, she said, "I'd better try and find Janan." "Janan that used to have pink hair?" asked I. "I've got her phone number." Tis a small world. Unfortunately, when Anna tried to call, Janan's phone was switched off, but I gave Anna her entirely funchie e-mail address: jjj1.

Thursday 21 March 2002

Last night, me and Bryn played Warhammer and rented "Scary Movie 2". The latter contained far too much bodily fluid - I wouldn't have minded blood, that would have been appropriate, but no, it had to be all the other sorts. Nevertheless, it was superior to the original. The fact that it parodied rather more serious horror flicks instead of being a cross between "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer", which were somewhat self-mocking themselves, probably helped.

Although why "Dude, Where's My Car?" counts as a film scary enough to make fun of, I don't know. Well, I suppose losing your car must be somewhat frightening. But why was a "Titanic" reference included? Well, I suppose "Titanic" was scarily bad . . . (actually, I liked it, but only for the effects, the love story was ick).

I should probably lay down some rules as my career as a Maths tutor. I helped my tutee out for an hour on Tuesday morning, and two hours yesterday afternoon, probably giving her more help than I should have done. And then she phoned me at 11.45 last night! I was still awake, but I'd got into bed, so I didn't answer. That's just taking liberties!

Friday 22 March 2002

The most freaky thing is happening. When I put up Pit posters, they do not have a Student Union logo in the bottom right hand corner. Yet when I walk past them a bit later, some of them do. What the motivation for the SU putting them there is, I do not know. We are not sure whether to be annoyed or glad: we don't really like the SU, not after what they did to us on indie night, but perhaps the presence of their logo prevents the posters from being taken down. But how is the logo getting there? It's not a sticker, it's an integral part of the page. They appear to be taking the posters down in order to put it there, because the drawing pin arrangement changes, but they're not replacing them with different posters, because the old holes are still in the corners. You can't scratch off the ink of unsullied posters to reveal an SU logo. I just don't understand.

Spent disproportionate amount of time going to Darwin College yesterday. Usually, I don't go there at all, but yesterday I was putting up posters there; then, when I met up with Bryn, he decided he wanted to eat in Origins (the cleverly named bar); then I went to see a play in The Missing Link (the cleverly named separate bit of the college). I mainly went because Ibid was responsible for the costumes. Twas called "Our Day Out" and concerned a group of backward kids from 1978 Liverpool going on a school trip. Twas q. cool.

Oddly enough, earlier on that day I received an e-mail from a bloke called Steve. Last term, Soppygit's friend Ian tried to set up a scriptwriting society. I joined, and we had one meeting, but after that, we never heard from him again. But Steve said one was going to be established as part of the drama society, and there was to be a meeting on Sunday afternoon. I wrote back, saying I probably wasn't going to be able to make it, since A Weekend Of Excessive Energy Expenditure awaits me (descriptions of clothes included for stalking purposes): This afternoon: Go into Canterbury to renew Young Person's Railcard. Tonight: The Pit (starts at 7, is in Keynes College, and is free!) Tomorrow: Set off into Canterbury at 9am, go to Nodnol, meet online friends Sofie and Sae, go to Slimelight, get back at 10am on Sunday. Monday: Probably another trip into Canterbury, followed by The Beercart Arms.

At the play, we couldn't go in straight away, since things were still being sorted out. The bloke who sold my (non-existent) ticket asked what my name was so he could write it down. "Oh, did you e-mail me earlier?" he said. It was Steve!

Sunday 24 March 2002

This weekend, a miracle occurred.

Two groups of three swans [former residents of swansongs.net and their friends] united, entirely coincidentally.

Sae (who hails from Austria) was in Nodnol (on holiday with her family), so Melle (also known as Sofie) and I, being not too far away in Antwerp and Canterbury respectively, decided to meet her there and introduce her to the delights of Camden and Slimelight. (Thus making her the third person whose Slimelight virginity I've taken, whereas Bryn's only had mine, bwahaha!) And, at exactly the same time, Safti travelled to Vancouver. Since Syl and Zarya both live there, they decided to meet up too!

Unfortunately, there were a few complications:

1. On Friday, I suddenly realised that my trusty Young Person's Rail Card had expired.

2. On Friday night, it was not just The Pit, but after three years of being on the rock society committee, Bryn and Nick's last Pit. (In all likelihood, they'll continue to attend for the next couple of years, but after running it for what seemed like forever, they won't be next time.)

I decided I'd better get the card sorted out before the trip, since I couldn't remember quite what was required. Last time, the bloke at the station had said I could keep the same photo, unless I had one of me in a bikini; this time, they might have objected to the change in hair colour, change in glasses and change in fringe ownership I've undergone since I was eighteen.

So after my singular lecture on Friday (well, it was a computing session, which I left early and mostly spent dissing Probability with my classmate Kitty), I went into Canterbury and to the station. Since I didn't have to do anything else there, and I hadn't bought a new CD in ages, I went into HMV and ended up buying the Alkaline Trio CD. Which was somewhat foolish, because I knew perfectly well that Noj owns it and would happily burn me a copy, and I don't even like much of their stuff beside "Private Eye". Besides, I'm already listening to a scary amount of nu metally stuff by choice. However, it was only £8 and apparently it came with a free "playlist CD". And I had to find out what that was. One of the new albums they were currently playing in the shop? Mint!

Alas not. Merely a compilation of eight tracks by recent, presumably indie, artists I've never heard of. What's more, they didn't have any copies left, and told me to come back the following day.

It was an unseasonably hot day; I walked around town in just my Motorhead t-shirt. Well, and jeans. And New Rocks. And underwear, socks and jewellery. Which doesn't sound terribly dramatic, but I generally never go coatless. However, I wanted to wear my coat the following day (as Melle has one like it, and we could be the trenchcoat mafia), so I put it on when I staggered up the hill back to campus.

On my way up, I encountered two chavs. For those of you not familiar with British slang, chavs wear more Adidas labels at a time than they have brain cells. I've previously referred to them as "townies", "trendies" and "scallies", but only to refer to the thirteen-year-old variety. These guys were only a couple of years younger than me.

"Have you got a fag?" one of them asked. (That's a cigarette, not a gay man.)

"No," I said.

"Oh, come on, you're dead sexy." Muh? I was wearing blue jeans and a baggy white Hitler European tour t-shirt.

"Why thank you, but I don't smoke."

They then went on to:

1. Admire my boots endlessly.

2. Go through a list of all the drugs I'd ever heard of, and then some, and ask whether I did them or not.

3. Invite me to a grunge night one of their friends was putting on at The Dolphin, which, according to Iain, is The Ultimate Chav Pub, and they probably used the word "grunge" to mean "commercial pop". In any case, it was on Saturday night, and Slimelight somehow took priority.

Most odd.

Went to Bryn's house, got ready for The Pit, and took stuff (smoke machine, lights, cables and CDs) over to Keynes JCR. Once again, the student union had %$&ed us over; we couldn't use one of the big speakers and one of the cables was actually two that were rather badly joined together. Nevertheless, we got sound more readily than usual and Nick started playing the most fantastic industrial set. And all the goff contingent, except Iain, missed it! Bwahaha! Unfortunately, since I couldn't stop dancing, my feet were killing me afterwards.

Other events o the night: some of Darren's songs got played, and people danced, which is quite impressive, since the room's so hot most people won't dance to stuff they don't know.

A girl asked me if I had a lighter. What is it about me that makes me look like a smoker? I'm a flipping nerd! Nerds don't need cigarettes - we've got Angband! A dodgy bloke rambled to me about the brilliance of The Smashing Pumpkins and appeared to fancy Ibid. I repetitively pretended to smack bloke in Iron Maiden t-shirt, since he'd seen Iron Maiden two days earlier and I hadn't. The president of the pagan society at Christchurch University spoke to me a bit, about being colour blind and motorbikes and how old people looked. I was informed of Tiggs' intention to steal my boots, although she never did, fortunately.

And I probably got passively stoned, as usual. I'm inclined to believe it really was the smoke machine this time - Bryn appeared to be trying to limit everyone's range of vision to two inches. The most obvious examples of my insanity were running off to the computer room to see if Mace supermarkets have a website (they do! www.mace.ie and it goes into a scary level of detail!) and repetitively lifting up my skirt so people could see my creative use of a Kerrang badge. One of my legs was black-and-purple-striped, the other black and blue. (Although not through falling over - I'd been very careful not to fall over since my last accident, in fear of having to hobble around Nodnol.) I'd put on the black-and-blue tights first, then put one leg into the purple, stuffed the other leg down the blue tights, and held the two pairs together with a Kerrang badge. Niftay, thought everyone.

At the end, Bryn had wanted to finish with "God Gave Rock And Roll To You", followed by, "And now for the heavy-style ending!" thus parodying the two stupidest rock films of our generation. For the heavy style ending, I suggested "Du Hast". Unfortunately, I'd left my Kiss greatest hits CD in Brampton, so he just said, "If next year's committee aren't us good as us, it'll be sad but true" and played the song in question.

Then "Du Hast". I was doing my "Du Hast" dance, which involves sticking all your fingers, except your left pinky in the air when it says "nein!" (Nein, nine fingers, geddit?) when Bryn came up and said, "We're just going to keep going until they chuck us out."

So they played sommat else, then "Bullet In The Head". Me, Ibid and Iain left the room for that, since we've heard it too many times, and we saw a security guard going in. But at the end of the song, he left and "Smells Like Geen Spirit" started playing regardless.

And so forth. There was nothing else I didn't like, so my feet were blistered all over. Quite a lot of the rock soc left at "No Good (Start The Dance)" by The Prodigy, although it kept the goff contingent, who were heading for a techno party in Darwin College, present for another song. But the music didn't stop until 12.45, forty five minutes after we were meant to finish, and there were still about twenty people on the dance floor. The security guard hadn't minded, it turned out - he liked our music. Amazink!

I went round singing "Shinobi Vs. Dragon Ninja" for a bit (the instrumental part, not the words), then talked to Amy (John's girlfriend) about being ill (we'd run into each other in the waiting room at the medical centre a few days earlier, but felt too uncomfortable to ask "So, what are you here for?" lest it was regarding pregnancy tests or something equally embarrassing), while the males present took the equipment back to The Venue, from whence it had came. Got a lift home with John, but afterwards the removal of my shoes was positively orgasmic.

Unfortunately, the extra forty five minutes had not only caused pain, but eaten into my time to sleep. I had less than seven hours before I'd have to get up again - for a twenty six hour day - so I was desperate to sleep. Naturally, because of this, I couldn't get any.

The following morning, I rose, dressed, went into Canterbury with Bryn. He wanted something to wake him up before a long day of working on the write up of the project he'd been doing all term. He also wanted to ask in Games Workshop if forces were allowed to back away without turning round. I went into HMV, to try and get my free CD, but they still didn't have it in stock. Bah.

Caught train, after the usual sort o aggro from the chavs on the platform, as you can only expect if you wear platforms, stripey tights and PVC. The train got delayed by half an hour, and when I got to Nodnol, I spent five minutes standing in a huge line, waiting to use the tube ticket machine, only for it to break. Fortunately, there was another machine that hardly had anyone waiting for it, and when I reached Borders on Oxford Street (the starting point of all my Nodnol-based meetings), Sae and Melle hadn't left to check the Internet for the date of my funeral.

We went to Camden, and did our usual "Oh"ing and "Aah"ing over the clothes and "Woe!"ing and "Wah!"ing over the prices. Neither Melle nor I had much money at all, and although Sae needed something to wear to Slimelight, she had to be cautious. In the end, Melle got some badges and a postcard; Sae got a wuvly dress after Melle and I convinced her that she looked wonderful in it (she did) and it could serve as a Basic Black Dress, the likes of which she did not own (it could). And what did I get? Wo-oe! What did I get? Absolutely nothing! Which was very saintly of me, but oh, the frustration! All that wondrous stoof, and none of it mine. I didn't find out whether New Rocks are available in pink or not either, because shoe shops were just too painful for all of us.

Anyway, we found a gay porn bookshop, and us being us, we went in. We probably really bemused the guy working there, because although there was a little lesbian erotica, those interested in it probably tend to be pervy old people (of either gender). Sae and Melle both bought books from the items on sale section; I concentrated on keeping my eyes off the display of three-foot-long dildos and pointed out the more worrying magazine titles. "****sucking footballers?" I asked. (And yes, I mean people men who kick leather spheroids around fields, not men who use their feet to play with each other's . . . yeah.) The next day, when I told Bryn and Dale, I started coming up with titles of my own. "You could have a fishing magazine called 'Men With Big Rods'. And 'Do It Yourself' would be about sticking drills up your own-" Bryn and Dale insisted we terminated the conversation at that point. They were too disturbed, bless them.

After that, we went to Starbucks and discussed, as usual, slash, the universe and everything for about five hours. We also came up with a theory: the more menacing you attempt to make yourself look, the more readily strangers feel they can talk to you.

Then we headed back to the hotel where Sae was staying, so she and Melle could get changed. On the way, we passed a pub called The Swan. We bought a disposable camera, and took it in turns to take slashy photos of the others.

I haven't explained swanslash yet, have I? Well, the idea's been kicking around for years - back in April 1999, when Twi and I met, AevilSteve (her boyfriend at the time) demanded a full account of our activities, nudge nudge wink wink. We've discussed it every now and again since then; Bryn also suggested it, without any provocation.

But a while ago, we realised that out of fifteen of us, only two of us identified as straight (and one of them is still on triple figures in The Spark's purity test, and the other of them (me) turned out to be gayer than 90% of the straight and bi women taking the gay test there). Upon this realisation, Sam's like, "Good God, people will be writing swanslash soon." And the rest of us are like, "Yeah! Me and her! Her and her! Someone must write some!" Very little has been created so far, but enthusiasm for it hasn't waned.

Anyway, we got Sae's mother to take photos of all of us, and she probably got really confused as to why we couldn't stop giggling. We goffied ourselves. I wore my pink feather boa. To prevent it from flying apart in the wind, I did up my coat over it. Part of it was still visible beneath the buttons, though: a whole new answer was given to, "What's pink and fluffy and between your legs?"

On our way back to the tube station, we got someone at The Swan to take a photo of us all under the sign. Unfortunately, it was pub-closing time, and we got hit on by men in the lift at Lancaster Gate station.

At Slimelight, for the first time, I had the sense to keep my coat on, and consequently did not freeze to death for the first time, although I did get a bit hot when I danced at the end of the night. We all danced for a bit, but it wasn't long before Melle's Evil Shoes Of Dume ^TM got the better of her. Then Sae's tiredness took control. Then the three layers of blisters on my feet proved too much. Sae and Melle danced a bit more, but I decided to try and catch some of my clones, so as not to fall asleep on the train back, and they sooned others joined me in death again. (Melle had been up since 4.30am, and it was Sae's first Slime.) We were quite content to watch cute touchy-feely boys in skirts walking past, though. I resisted the temptation to get up for songs I liked, in case my seat was taken before I got back. The music wasn't fantastic - a lot of classics seemed to be missing from the sets, and either there was enough pot in the air to make me aurally hallucinate, or a lot of inferior remixes got played.

Interesting things: a bloke sitting opposite signalled to me, so I spoke to him. "Where will you be on Monday night?" he asked. "Oh, Canterbury," I said. "I bet you were at The Pit last night," he said, "was the industrial hour any good?" Meep! Turned out he works at UKC and goes to The Pit and Beercart now and again. The world is too small.

Also, there's this song that I always hear at goffic events. Bryn and I used to think it went "Adam! Apple!" repetitively, but he decided it was actually saying, "Achtung! Adolf!" When it played, I asked the bloke's girlfriend (I presume) if she knew what it was; she thinks it's by Ultraviolence. Unfortunately, I still can't work out what the song's called. I did, however, manage to remember some more lyrics to that "getting the bastard, getting the bastard" song, and discovered, by the power of Goooooooogle! that it's called "Vengeance" and by New Model Army.

Bryn has assured me that Slimelight security is very good; that night, I got to see it in action. A bloke kept sticking his tongue out at Sae, making "smile!" gestures, saying "smile!" and trying to tickle her. Good Mykos: as someone who doesn't smile naturally and have had people telling me to smile all my life, I thought becoming goth was the way to get out of this predicament - goths are meant to be miserable all the time, aren't they? Apparently not. Anyway, a plain clothes security guy appeared from out of the woodwork (well, the cavernous walls) and said, "He's not causing any trouble, is he? He's all right, it's just his way." And that was the end of it. (You would have thought someone in plain clothes would stand out at Slimelight, but seemingly not.)

I danced off and on for the last hour and a half. We were among the first people to leave (the other attendees being more familiar with tube station opening times than we were). In the short walk to the tube station, some guy said, "You are the weirdest people I've ever seen." If we'd still been in hyper slash-crazed mood, the comment might have justified, but we were more of the "Urgh! Argh!" frame of mind. He must have led a sheltered life - and obviously he hadn't been in the area at this time of day before, or he'd have seen far weirder folk.

And some other guy said (I don't know who to) "I'll give you £5 for a shag." £5! Cheek! A normal rate for a prostitute is about £30, I believe. Add £10 to that, since it's London. Then double it, because we're not prostitutes. Then Melle and Sae's figures should be doubled because they're foreign hottiez. And then again because they're virgins. Yes, £320, that would be more like it. Not that any of us would agree at any price. Well, if it was £10000, it might be more debatable, if Bryn agreed. But who on earth would want to pay that much to have sex with me when you can get someone who's both better looking and better at it for £30?

Anyway. Sae and Melle got the southbound tube, and I waited for the northbound one. Unfortunately, there was a delay. I spent the time trying to undo the knot in my feather boa. This took about seven minutes, and about half the feathers blew down the tracks. Me and some Slimelight bloke who had approximately the same amount of metal attached to his jacket as the amount that makes up The Eiffel Tower decided feathers on the line was the cause of the delay.

I arrived at Victoria Station five minutes after the train I'd wanted to catch had left, and fifty five minutes before the next one would depart. (Although I wasn't as badly off as Melle, who missed her flight and had to wait eight hours for another.) The station was flipping freezing so I decided to pass the time in WH Smith. Unfortunately, my literary fortunes had chosen that day to change. Up until then, every tome I examined would get the verdict, "Nah" or "I'll wait till it comes out in paperback." That day, I picked up treasure after treasure. Unsure if the shop took debit card, I limited myself to all I could purchase with the money I had with me. Unfortunately, that amounted to two volumes, which proved both painfully few and extravagant, and didn't leave enough money for me to get a taxi back to my house, once in Canterbury. I soon saw the benefit in standing in the entirely less-pleasing Our Price.

I fell asleep twice on the train, but thought to set the alarm on my phone and got off in Canterbury. By that stage, my feet were so battered they'd ceased to hurt. The skin on their soles was now as callused as that on the fingers of a world famous guitarist who doesn't believe in plectrums. Also, by the time I got home, I wasn't tired anymore, and started rewriting "Faithless" by Revolution By Night as "Faith-less" - a song about someone who lost their Cure albums.

A funchie weekend. Safti, Syl and Zarya enyojed themselves too.

Monday 25 March 2002

You know you haven't caught up with missed sleep yet, when instead of typing "www" into an address bar, you type "mmm".

Tuesday 26 March 2002

I need a baby. I don't want a baby, but I have to get rid of all of this milk o the human kindness somehow. Maybe I could become a chocolate factory instead.

See, now I am doing Bryn's final year project! Well, I'm correcting his spelling and grammar, since he's dyslexic and Word is a foolface. But I didn't have to. Yes, it's beneficial to me, because his Mummy will love me forever for doing this and he will consequently get a higher grade. Even if it's only by 0.000000001%, it could make a difference in his overall result, and therefore he could get a better job and have more money to spend on meeeeeee! The fact remains though is that I've done beeploads of work this year, and now the term is nearly over, I should finally be relaxing. But nooooooo.

Speaking of chocolate factories, something horrific has happened! Mars Bars are no longer being made by Mars, but by Masterfoods. They seem to taste the same, but their packaging has radically changed. It is most distressing. It's still black with red writing and a cream label, but the lettering has gone from being chunky and reassuring to thin, curly and utterly wrong-looking. A script that would better befit an insubstantial item of confectionary, like a Curly Wurly, than a solid Mars Bar. I don't know how long Mars Bars have had the design I'm familiar with, but I can't remember it being any different, and I've been frequenting sweet shops for seventeen years. Angst! How dare they make such an alteration?

Yesterday, I had lectures, filled in myriad feedback forms and supervised ickle firsties but only about six of them turned up. Unfortunately, I had to remain there for most of the session, since getting the lecturer to reveal the information I needed to fill in my employment form took about half an hour. I foresee myself catching up with my sleep in his lectures next year.

In the evening, I set off for The Beercart Arms on my own, since Bryn was still working. Mum phoned me shortly after I left his house. I was glad of the conversation, although it caused a delay: I wanted to buy a Mars Bar from Keynes (yesterday being the last of those halycon days when they still came in funchie wrappers) and discovered I couldn't operate the vending machine with a phone in one hand and an issue of Drek (what I call "Kred", the student magazine, which I found lying around) in the other. Also, stopped off at home, because all the orange squash I'd been knocking back to soothe my sore throat had weakened my bladder. Soppygit was nearly ready to go to the Beercart aussi (she just had to shout at some people on "Eastenders" first), so I waited and we went together. I was about half an hour late, but I probably didn't miss much.

The place was so dead that all its flesh had been eaten away by worms and its bones were on the verge of dsntgrtn. Due to essays and projects, naturally. Although Ibid and I had a bit of trouble finding seats, hardly anyone danced. "Black And White", played twenty minutes before closing time and usually a floor-filler, had only me and Ibid dancing to it. The DJ quickly changed his tune to "Du Hast", but even then, only Bryn (who turned up later) and a goffic bloke joined us. There was no moshpit whatsoever. Oh well, I was wearing my long skirt, and had fun spinning round and making it swirly.

I wasn't bored, but it was nevertheless quite boring. The only vaguely interesting events were:

1. Katie (her with the blue New Rocks, who is now somehow involved with Matt) being most distressed that Bryn wasn't wearing any brown.

2. Finally speaking to Nine Inch Nails bloke again. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to bring my blank CDs with me, so still no copy of the new album.

Back at Bryn's, he decided that he wanted to get up at nine the following morning, so he could make an early start on his work. "I'll be awake then, no trouble, and I'll make sure you get up," I said. He switched off the light, and images started running around before my eyes - but just before I could get to sleep each time, he would say something. Then we started talking. We started off talking about Warhammer. Then about the friends we'd had as children. Bryn got carried away though and talked about his right up until he met me. Then we started trying to name all the members of the rock society. Then we had a long discussion about the changing popular form of metal over the last thirty years. Then Bryn looked at his watch and saw it was 3.20. We couldn't believe it, and we weren't even remotely sleepy. He switched on the TV to get us to nod off, but it didn't work, so we started asking each other "What's your favourite ____?" questions, from "What's your favourite film?" to "What's your favourite battle?" It must have been four o'clock before we got to sleep. I woke at 7.45, got up and went to the loo, but I was still incredibly tired, so I went back to bed and I didn't wake until eleven. Oops.

Saturday 30 March 2002

Things With Which There Is Something Fundamentally Wrong

1. Sugar-free jelly. (By which I mean jello, if you're American.) I don't have a problem with diet versions of other commodities. As far as I'm concerned, low fat cheese spread tastes fine and sugar-free orange squash is nicer than the calorific stuff. But jelly? It's a dessert! It should be sugary! If you're on a diet, don't eat dessert! May your weight-consciousness not pollute luscious last courses!

2. "Punk" t-shirts and bags that come with badges already on them. Don't you want to have your own say in what messages go on your clothes? Show your own opinions, express appreciation for your own favourite bands and arrange them in your own style? The fact that the badges in question seem to have been designed by someone who overheard someone talking about punk once doesn't help matters.

In other news, I'm sure my shower head will kill me before the Easter holidays are over. On the whole, I avoid showering at my place. Once, when Bryn was away for the weekend, I ended up going for six days without a shower, just because I couldn't face using my own. The fact that the entire house is colder than it is outside (in Siberia) doesn't enamour me to the prospect of stripping; however, it's the fact that the shower head refuses to stay in its slippery holder in a way that doesn't leave you climbing up the sides of the bath to get wet that really bothers me.

Tonight, I thought I'd got it sorted. I had my shower; then, when I turned off the water, the shower head fell from its perch, narrowly avoiding hitting me on the head. Since I'm short, if it had succeeded, it could have been fatal. Meep! So if I don't update for a couple of days, would someone call the police? I don't want my housemates coming back to find my decomposing naked corpse in the bath.

I went to the cinema with Bryn on Wednesday to see "Ice Age", where we got served by Nine Inch Nails bloke! Even more shocking, he was waring a name tag, and it didn't say "Nine Inch Nails bloke" on it! He is leading a double life!

On 11th January 2002, one of my lecturers cancelled the lecture that day on the grounds that he was attending Stephen Hawking's sixtieth birthday celebration. When I mentioned this to Bryn, he said, "Cool! Can he get me his autograph?" I asked the lecturer and he agreed: he'd get me a thumb-printed copy of the new book. Stephen Hawking, being rather seriously invalid, does not in fact have an autograph, but he signs things with his thumb print. He's also my tutor (the lecturer, not Stephen Hawking - I think I'd have mentioned it before if the former was the case), so all term, whenever I communicated with him, at lectures and in tutorish circumstances (like to ask whether taking six modules in one term [you do eight in a year, and doing four and two thirds in my first term of this year was bad enough] is going to kill me or not - he said no), he's given me an update on the autograph situation. "Stephen Hawking's assistants are very slow," he kept apologising. On Thursday, however, the last day of term, I got an e-mail at midday saying the book had finally arrived. So I went and collected it. But didn't have a thumbprint, since he doesn't like to do them, just a label with a photocopied version of his old signature on!

In the end, Bryn and I didn't end up having a romantic three-day mini-break in Sittingbourne. (Not that Sittingbourne can ever be romantic.) We didn't leave on Thursday, since my lecture didn't finish until three. Then it took us four hours to tidy Bryn's room, by which stage in the day, his mother wasn't prepared to come and pick us up. Since we'd disconnected his TV and computer and everything, we went to my place and played "Starship Titanic", a point-and-click computer game, for about six hours. Bryn's mother collected us at 10am the following day. In the end, the huge room tidying operation turned out to be in vain, since she didn't enter the building. Oh well, it'll mean I won't have to spend half an hour every day searching for my hair brush next term - for the first two days, anyway.

We spent the day watching Buffy and Simpsons reruns, since Sky One was doing a rather unimaginative Easter schedule. This morning, we went to Chatham, because Bryn's brother's girlfriend had to have an operation done on her teeth. The only particularly interesting place we discovered in our time there was a shop that had a whole section given over to goth CDs, even though this only consisted of CDs by about six bands and some Red Lorry Yellow Lorry dominated compilations. They were all too expensive for my meagre budget too. It also sold typical metaller / Kerrang-terminology-goth clothes, of the sort available in 3rd Eye (they've finally got rid of the cheesy 2000 in their name, albeit over a year late) - hoodies, mesh tops with "Nosferatu" on - but they had some good slogan t-shirts: "Grow Your Own Dope - Plant A Man". After that, Bryn's mother took me to Sittingbourne station, cutting my stay a day short, since Bryn's stepsister and fiancé were to stay there tonight. Oh well; since I kept having horrendous stomach cramps, it was certainly not proving romantic.

Too much information alert: it's now been nine days since the last time we did the dodgy, and I won't be getting any for at least two more weeks. Peeling labels is apparently a sign of sexual frustration; while we waited to be served in Wilkinson's today, I started peeling a label off the cash desk. Heech: in two week's time, my keyboard won't have any letters left on it.