“Talking with the Porters about jazz after midnight”
(Haphazard diary entry)

They talk about the short Cambridge terms. At three of eight teaching weeks apiece they’re potentially fairly bloody terrifying. I say “potentially” because panic has yet to set in.

Things are much too busy to panic. Last week was a fairly standard social roller-coaster with a committee meeting followed by beer at the Eagle on Monday, debating coaching followed by curry on Tuesday, Halloween Grad Hall on Wednesday, a quiet recovery Thursday followed by more Halloween parties Friday, a DVD with flatmates Saturday and drinking with LLM students at the Mitre on Sunday and never quite making it to a college jazz event.

(The Eagle, by the way was the pub where Watson and Crick drank when they weren’t coming up with the double-helix model of DNA.)

Anyway, you know that you’re not perhaps taking study seriously enough when you find yourself chatting about Diana Krall covers of Nat King Cole tunes with a Porter after midnight on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Still, how can you walk away from a conversation that starts with:

“Good evening Doug. That's a very nice coat, sir.”

The Halloween parties were fun, it seems a big thing over here, but I cannot claim to have had an evening to rate with Minderella and Odalisk-Erin’s.

Today looks like being a lecture, some much-needed library time, a lunch-time play rehearsal, errands in the afternoon, yoga (if I can find the class) and a committee meeting.

The play is actually becoming a bit of a worry. They have not called the minor parts (including me) in for rehearsals in two weeks, and now with two weeks to go until the play is on I am committed to going away for debating this weekend in Oxford. I suspect this will make me most unpopular, but what’s the worst that can happen?

The flatmates are all good fun and good company – though I keep catching this mathematician talking to himself in the kitchen late at night; and the other mathematician came in rather noisily at 6 am this morning took someone up to his room, directly above mine, and conducted a loud conversation.

I left a pretty terse “not happy, Jan” kind of note for him when I left, given that I went up to politely knock on his door and got nothing but laughter through the wood for my troubles. Grrrr.

Still he did manage to go out partying for about 36 hours over the weekend and coin the phrase: “Reality is an illusion caused by the lack of alchohol.” Mathematicians. What can you do?

Still, much better than the way poor Shauny got woken up in Edinburgh recently – though rather less funny in retrospect.

Right, time to cycle to the law school and hope this morning’s wind doesn’t knock me off my bike. I definitely felt myself wobbling under the wind-pressure while crossing a park this morning.