How may I procrastinate? Let me count the ways.

With final exams approaching like the comet that wiped out the unsuspecting, un-revising dinosaurs (who really should have started studying earlier to be worth any sympathy), and the English Spring unfolding beyond the cucumber-frame shell of the law library, a young man’s thoughts turn to procrastination.

This weekend I managed to help a friend assemble a bookcase at her new flat, grab a few drinks, attend a play rehearsal and take photos of the budding season of cricket, beer gardens and … um … exams.

Over the Easter long-weekend I managed to take a day trip to the Goth-filled Camden markets where a small consumerist frenzy saw me acquire:

a doe-skin waistcoat (the spitting twin of one I wore as an undergrad I wore ‘til it grew thread-bare and moth-chomped),

a chocolate coloured velvet jacket missing but half-a-button and

the most amazing double-breasted herringbone, calf-length green tweed overcoat with belt.

Yes, I have spent all too much time of late wearing them in various combinations.

After my haul was distributed among various bags, I and the South African flatmate repaired to the World’s End for a pint of Guiness and a gin and tonic (respectively, not each), thus spending the money we saved on lunch through my packing us a lunchbox. After hitting the second-hand book market under Waterloo Bridge, we returned home.

I then went to a dinner, deposited my new overcoat in the hostesses chocolate cake (don’t ask) and managed to deposit the red wine I didn’t drink on my jeans and the carpet. Aye, me.

The weekend before was a movie marathon camped before our large-ish teev for a veritable free-to-air cinematic extravaganza. Saturday was a “girls night in” with one of the flatmates, red wine and ice-cream to watch that most natural of double-bills “American Beauty” and “American Werewolf in Paris”.

A wonderful thematic twinning: both featuring the word “American” in the title, and a kinda sorta militaristic, racial supremacist villain.

Okay, it’s a stretch.

“American Beauty” was sparklingly good on a re-watching. Utterly unsurprising that the writer, Alan Ball, went on to “Six Feet Under”. Still, out of so much that impressed me (especially the visual composition), Kevin Spacey’s performance is a stand-out. His transition from self-created victim to self-obsessed nouveau adolescent, to the gently compassionate man his family actually needs is an extraordinary metamorphosis.

Sunday saw me hoover up: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (swords, revenge, subtitles!), “Shadow of the Vampire” (John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, post-modern interrogations of authorship and narrative, weirdness!) and “Night of the Living Dead” (sixties suits, bad hair, bad plans, zombies!).

And now I’ve started watching Invader Zim on my laptop (“The pants command me!”), but at least I can sing the doom song on the way to my exam-like … doom.