Michaelmas is coming to an end. Somehow I never quite thought it would. I can't remember what I have been doing; days and books and tv shows and walks are all bleeding into each other. There has been Jacobean tragedy, I think, and libraries, the West Wing, and Port Meadow, and a lot of Latin. But I might have dreamt it.

It seems I am in Oxford, and have joined the college chapel choir, and signed up for the Gregorian Chant Society, the chess club and possibly something to do with role playing. Oh dear.
In other words, everything is mightily busy and very beautiful and quite lonely in its ways. Tomorrow the real work begins. I am trembling.

Just one more day. Too excited to talk much. Trust Snape.

My goodness, school is finished. This means I am now somewhere between confusion and university. How did this happen?

I broke my glasses and now I can't see very well - in fact, I am feeling much like Claude Monet circa 1922. I used to think it was quite funny that I could choose to perceive the world as a blur of colours and lights, but when I am forced to do it, it isn't that amusing. Right now I'm working a "beat-up nerd" look with taped glasses - heavy, grey ( Read more... )

Oh, snow, dancing around the lampposts, and grey skies, and fifteen degrees below zero, and the prospect of a visit to Paris on the horizon -- tisane, madeleines, the Shakespeare bookstore and Quartier Latins in the soft May light. Life is looking all right, I think; manageable for once. The derivative didn't kill me, so the exponentials ( Read more... )

The snow has disappeared, but Venus is here to make up for it. I got to do a bit of brilliant naked eye-observing the other day, which is really one of the best kinds of observing. I climbed and rambled through the forest, dressed like Amundsen, a small pair of binoculars in my pocket, while the sky turned a lovely shade of aquamarine and the birds ( Read more... )

Oh, Friday. The weather's turned cold, all of a sudden: I woke up this morning to a fine dusting of snow, roads glazed with ice and a wind that must have come straight from Antarctica. I don't find it as pleasant as I thought I would, having moaned for weeks about the lack of winter weather; but then again, there's too little snow for any serious ( Read more... )

An unconditional offer from Oxford. I have known it for a while now, but still - now it's really official. It's there. On UCAS. Oxford University, Q300, O (which apparently means Balliol), Unconditional. Unconditional! I keep wanting to burst into song; I can't really believe it... I'm going. I'm moving to England. I will wear academic dress and ( Read more... )

This is quite fascinating, idiotic and romantic. What more could you wish for?