slices of life

Hello world. It's been a while ...

This evening I've been out punting with Harry's people, drifting down the Cam in the charming twilight to the overtures of the swarming flies. It was good fun. On the theme of small creatures, I found about 100 ants in the bottom of my empty blackcurrant bottle the other day.

On Monday we celebrated Lizzie McNeely's birthday by descending on Old Orleans karaoke night. There were some Renaissance MPhilistas, some Canadians and some other assorted acquaintances of Lizzie. Our party turned in some spectacular performances, several by Lizzie and Caro's deserving special mention. I made my own karaoke debut.

On Tuesday I went to grad hall and met up with Jonny and Kiersten, who I hadn't seen for a while. Afterwards we were joined by Iain and Ed in the MCR.

I had a supervision yesterday, which was fairly encouraging. I did turn up an hour late, having remembered "10 am on Thursday 11th" as "11 am on Thursday", but my supervisor reassured me that he expected this to happen. I also forgot to take a pen or other writing implement.

The other week I went to Alison's baptism at Eden. Kim from Emma was also baptised, so there were various Emma people there I knew. There I heard some exciting news from Neil and Susie, which I guess is fairly public knowledge, given that it’s on Neil’s Livejournal.

Last Sunday, I was at a service at Christ's Chapel which was broadcast live on Radio 4 - you can listen to it here. This was a really nice service on the theme of exile. The music especially was very varied and sparky. I have to mention Lottie Greenhow's (pictured in a previous post here) amazing setting of words from Paradise Lost (by John Milton, a Christ's student of the past) which starts off sounding lovelily spooky and atmospheric. Understatement of the day – Stephen Shipley (BBC man) to Lottie: "You’re obviously on a bit of a high". Afterwards we were all provided with cooked breakfast in hall.

After that I was included in Claire and Nathan and people's Sunday morning wander through Cambridge, which was very tranquil apart from the fun we had picking on Claire. I appreciated Claire pointing out the flowers to me, which I might not have noticed otherwise, though I think her names for them were slightly improvised. The weather's getting quite warm now. It takes me a while to adjust to the weather, but I don't always wear my coat when I go out now.

I'm not usually very politicised, but I thought I should mention the current industrial dispute between the lecturers' unions and the universities. I think they have a pretty good case for getting better pay.

Two Chinese brothers have made a name for themselves hosting mass hugging sessions. They recently held a mass hugging event in Nottingham for World Hug Day.

You do meet some perpetual students in Cambridge, but this article gave a new meaning to the term:
'After 12 Years As Undergrad, Wants More'