JOIN ME

No, I mean it. Seriously. Join me. They’re going to stop making it again if you don’t join me and I CANNOT TAKE THAT AGAIN.

See, when I was in England, one of my most regular meals was frozen chicken & chips, and I would also steam some broccoli to prevent myself from feeling guilty about how unhealthy this was. I would eat the broccoli first and then get on to the chicken & chips, and I would put cheese on the chips, and I would dip them in chili ketchup. God, it was good. I got the chili ketchup because I was dying for something spicy, and because if I got chili ketchup, my entire meal (apart from the broccoli which didn’t count) would begin with ch.

And then they stopped making it. They just, they just stopped. It was just gone. One day I went to Tesco and found no chili ketchup. I thought it was a one-time aberration, but when I went on the website for Heinz, it became clear that they had discontinued the chili ketchup. My chili ketchup. I never recovered from the blow. I bought some stuff that claimed to be spicy ketchup, but it just wasn’t the same. (My mouth is watering, thinking about chili ketchup.)

But! Recently! They have started it again! They are no longer calling it chili ketchup, which is fine because I say chicken and fries now, as I am back in America, so my ch-meal was already shot to hell. They call it Hot ‘n’ Spicy Ketchup, or something like that, but anyway, nobody seems to know about it. And I wish they would know! I’m afraid Heinz will realize nobody knows about it, and just stop making it. I lost it once and I do not want to lose it again! Every time I buy it at the store, the cashier examines it suspiciously, and I assure him or her of its wondrous merits. I wish I could launch a joyous PR campaign about how joyously delicious the spicy ketchup is. MUCH MORE JOYOUS THAN NORMAL BLAH BORING KETCHUP.

Like a proud mama

Tony Kushner won a shiny prize! He won a big prize for being a good playwright! I read about this today at work, and I felt extremely proud of him. I feel possessive of Tony Kushner, not only because he wrote Angels in America which is one of my favorite films of all time and if I could see the play I would die of glee (it started playing in London the week after I left), but also because he is from my home state, and there are not enough kick-ass Louisianians out there. Hooray for Tony Kushner!

When I was in England, I went to see Caroline, or Change at the National, and it’s all about this woman who lives in Lake Charles in the 1960s, and the family she works for has a little half-basement. And she sings “There ain’t no underground in Louisiana”. At intermission, all the British people were talking about how palpably untrue that was, because of course there was underground in Louisiana, otherwise where did they have their basements? And they chuckled.

One of the side effects of transatlantic travel

Or just travel, I guess? Anyway, being away from here.

Because in England, as I mentioned once or twice, it never rained that hard, and it never thundered. Ever. There were three minutes of thundering the entire time I was in England. Here, of course, it rains a lot, so I should have adjusted by now, considering I've been back in America for an entire year. And lately, the rain's been a great big pain in the ass, and I've been not able to swim because of all the raining that's been happening, which means that I am just being a lazy lazy bum.

Anyway, because of that time I was in England for nine months with no rain, every time it rains now, I feel this tremendous urge to look at it and tell someone. I mean it. Every time it rains at all hard. The rain starts pouring down, I spot it out the window and I'm like "WOW. WOW. WOW" and then I have to repress the urge to call everyone I know and be like, "Oh my God you will never guess what has happened! ... No, nothing about Bush ... No, my family's fine ... NO! STOP GUESSING! I WILL TELL YOU! IT IS RAINING!"

(I do miss England, though.)

Museums (or, I write to keep myself from weeping, for I am greatly missful of England)

Oh, England, I miss you. And your cider and blacks and your day travel passes and oh my God, your trains and my young person's travel card and your theatres and your libraries where I HAD READING CARDS and looked at manuscripts (well, one), and your museums. Oh. I miss England.

Sorry about that. I was planning on writing about museums. I just got distracted when I wrote that about England in the title line, because it reminded me of all England's manifold charms and how vastly, vastly, vastly I miss it. I really miss trains. Thinking about trains right now is making me cry, especially because I remember that last train trip I made from Cambridge to Ely to Colchester, and it was the best train trip I have ever had and it seemed like it went on for ever and ever, and every time I was on a train I just never wanted to get off again. (And I stuck my tongue out at Ely because of John Rubbish Morton.)

Ahem.

Yes. Museums.

I was reading this book the other day called Faking It, which is all about how people feel like they're faking things, and the guy was talking about museums and how it's hard when you're in a museum because you know what the things are that you're supposed to want to look at, and you're never sure if you're looking at them long enough and how can you leave without feeling like you're totally turning your back on the Grand Work Of Art. And whatnot.

This got me thinking about my own experience of museums, and I was trying to remember if this is how I respond to museums too. I don't think it is. Maybe partly because I don't know anything about art and have no pretensions to knowing anything about art, so I don't feel like I have anything to prove? Although I'd like to know more about art, in a casual way so I would still not have anything to prove. Of course, on the down side, if I knew all about art, there would be fewer surprises for me in art museums, and I love surprises.

(Real ones that nobody warns you about ahead of time.)

And in a nutshell, that is why I love museums with all my being. They are full of surprising things. I'm often unimpressed by the things I know are coming, but then there will be something that I never anticipated in the slightest and it is miraculous.

Here is a perfect example. The Tate Modern. I always go to the Tate Modern with the intention of seeing the super-duper famous things. Jackson Pollock and Monet, you know. Those guys. I am filled with good intentions about improving my mind. But seriously, the Water Lilies? Hugest letdown ever.

This is how it went down: I got lost.

I know. Shocking. But see, basically, I had a little map, and I had invented a path for myself to follow that would lead me to the Water Lilies, which would be very improving for me, as I have never seen a real live Monet painting. And because I had marked the path out in my mind, and organized my thoughts by each room I would have to walk through, I didn't bother going back for it when I realized I had left my map at the top of the escalator after setting it down to put on some Blistex. I figured I was pretty safe. There would be a lobster phone, then some other stuff, then Monet. Plan.

(P.S. I wanted more Dali. I know the Saatchi Art Gallery is right close by and they are hogging all the Dali paintings, but grrr, stupid Tate Modern. You are Modern! Be Modern! More Dali paintings!)

Not very surprising I got lost, all mapless in a massive museum like the Tate Modern. And I eventually did find the Water Lilies, but by that time I was still going Wow. WOW. about Cy Twombly, whose four seasons paintings are humongous and greatly impressive; so I did not care much about Monet and his Water Lilies and indeed I found it a great big letdown and liked the painting across from it much better. Which gave rise to my generally good policy about museums; i.e., have things in mind that you want to see but then get lost. And something profound about the journey being an end in itself.

I except the National Portrait Gallery from this policy, by the way, on account of how I can just see no reason not to look at every individual object in the National Portrait Gallery (apart from some of the bronze busts maybe). The National Portrait Gallery and me are tight. We're like this (I am crossing my forefinger and middle finger very tightly, which is impairing my typing more than just eliminating the use of those two fingers would). The National Portrait Gallery loves me and sometimes gives me little surprises like that sexy-ass portrait of John Donne, or that fabulous vast one of Lady Colin Campbell in all her fabulousness.

I miss London.

You know what I discovered yesterday that filled me with sadness? This summer, the Globe Theatre is doing (Timon of Athens, The Merry Wives of Windsor,) A Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear. Now I plainly don't care about the parenthetical two, although I would go see Merry Wives in a hot second if I happened to be in England (I don't know if I mentioned this, but groundling tickets, they are five pounds). But when I discovered they were doing Dream and Lear, there was a brief moment in which I contemplated blowing all my savings and probably losing my job by taking vacation time to which I am not entitled, all so that I could fly to England and see these two plays at the Globe.

Seriously though.

Because I have seen several productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream (one touring one that came through my high school, one college play, and one by the Royal Shakespeare Company when we were in Stratford), and I have always felt terribly let-down by them. The Globe, however, has never let me down, and I have high high hopes for their production of Dream, and even though it's probably perfect and brilliant beyond the dreams of men, I can't see it. Rrrr.

And King Lear? King Lear, man. King Lear is one of those plays like Merchant of Venice that I have always been greatly disinclined to read. I know that this disinclination is causing me to miss cultural references left and right, and still I continue to not read it. In order to make myself feel like less of a Philistine, I have been telling myself that this is because I demand to see it performed. Because King Lear is reportedly such a magnificent masterpiece, I have made the decision to experience it only as it was intended to be experienced, as a play. And although this is only partly true, it is definitely partly true, and I would love, love, love, love to see it at the Globe.

Okay. This is the most depressing blog post I've ever written, except for that one on my birthday last year when I maybe drove a cute little toad to suicide. I feel really sad now and I keep picturing the concourse at London Liverpool Street and remembering all the times I hunted for the Norwich trains that went through Colchester and I am just so very, very sad.

Don't be sad, England

Disclaimer: This really isn't to say that I don't love, love, love England. I completely do. I miss it terribly, darling England, darling England and its lovely public transportation systems and its beautiful daffodils (Wordsworth was not interesting but he had a point) and its yummy pasties and its London, London, London, London, London, and my uni and my flat and my lovely flatmates. All of these things I missed.

But, in spite of the truce I declared with English rain, I was never entirely reconciled to the loss of the magnificent thunderstorms that England never had (but I was only there for nine months and I was only in one spot of England and I'm sure that elsewhere they have massive thunderstorms but I never saw any, that's all). I am a sucker for extravagant weather. Today when I was walking through the quad I felt exactly like Dorothy trying to get back to the farm in the middle of the tornado. Except rainier. It was so great. I mean, okay, I was really cold, and I was absolutely drenched, but it was so cool. The wind was tremendous, and the rain was coming down in sheets, and it was very, very, very amazing.

The lady at the cafeteria today said "Louisiana sure knows how to do rain". Damn straight. (She was nice and offered me a plastic bag to shield myself from the rain, but it was way beyond the point where that would be helpful in any non-psychological way.)

The only thing, though, the only thing about these humongous thunderstorms that are so very amazingly wondrous (apart from the fact that sometimes in the autumn they are hurricanes) is that they always show up on a Tuesday, my free day for watching Guiding Light. And then the weather people want to be all "Let's interrupt the show (never the commercials) to tell you a really long bunch of information about the weather in towns where you don't live". I mean, one second Beth is screaming in agony and the next second we're being given a tornado watch for a parish in which we do not reside.

Countdown to my Advent calendar!

Today I got given an Advent calendar by my lovely aunt and uncle. Um, how much do I love Advent calendars? SO MUCH.

Example: Last year (most depressing Christmas ever because I was away from my family whom I love), as December drew nigh, my mother very unexpectedly mailed me an Advent calendar! In the mail! Allllllll the way to England! And it arrived in a week when I had four papers due. That's one, two, three, four, in order to meet the departmental deadline because of the totally vile idea that all papers in the English department should be due on the same day. (Cf. Satan works in unmysterious ways.) But when I got it, although I still had four papers due after I received it, I was completely and utterly (if briefly) cheered up! And every day that I got to open up a little door, every day that happened, it was an exciting day.

Well, so it's already thrilling to open Advent calendars anyway. Because you have to hunt for the little flap with that day's number on it, and then you open it up and inside is a little picture and a wee seasonal Bible verse. And every day you get to repeat the whole process. !!!

But this Advent calendar, this particular one that I have right now, it has chocolate inside. Inside the flaps. Not kidding. You open the little doors, and behind them are Bible verses PLUS CHOCOLATE.

*squeal of girlish delight*

I wish it were December already. Four more days!

Another symptom of my tragic inability to cope without books

I went into London today, right, my last day trip to London for the time being, and I decided not to bring a book.

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: IMPOSSIBLE LUNACY. And in a way I was thinking that too, as I made the decision. Never have I ever been able to go for an entire day without some reading material. However, I cunningly made concessions for myself: I read some stuff before I left; I arranged my schedule for the day so that it was very full; and I brought my mp3 player to listen to on the train.

As it turns out, not even remotely enough steps taken. I got tired of listening to all that music without any reading breaks about twenty minutes into the train journey. I started doing that thing with my mp3 player that I do when I don't get reading breaks and just have uninterrupted music (I love music but it does not require enough of my brain to be a proper past-time), the thing where a song starts and I get cranky because I don't KNOW that song and I can't sing ALONG with it in my BRAIN so how can I even remotely be bothered with it? and so I skip to the next song and I get cranky because I ALREADY KNOW this song, and for God's sake, I didn't get a whole bunch of new music just so I could listen to songs like this that are OLD NEWS. Which leads to my skipping 98 songs out of a hundred, and the remaining two I basically listen to half of and then get angry because I know how they're going to end and I can't be bothered waiting around for it.

(Me = not a hardcore music girl.)

It all came to a head when I I decided to have one last meal at Wagamama, for I realized as I was walking towards it that there was just no way that I could eat my meal alone and have nothing to read. It would just spoil it. I would just get cranky at the food and that would be a shame, given that it was going to be my last chicken katsu curry for quite some time. Luckily there are those book stalls by the National Theatre, so I toddled over there and spent thirty minutes looking for a book that I could buy and read during lunch and on the train home (and on the train to and from Cambridge tomorrow! I rationalized to myself). This is the same thing as the tooth-brushing incident but on a larger scale -- again, my meal took only very little over thirty minutes, so I really did spend as much time looking for the book as I did reading it.

It's Middlemarch. So far not bad. It's kind of like if Jane Eyre were much less fun and married St. John Rivers before she met Mr. Rochester. This is an optimistic assessment. I'm kind of still waiting for Mr. Rochester to show up, and I don't know George Eliot well enough to assume that he will.

In case you're wondering: yes, sometimes I do find myself a little tragic.

Oh! (This will in no way make me seem less tragic.) The book stalls in question continue with their bizarre excellence as a resource for Oscar Wilde. In the past I have seen loads of books on Oscar Wilde: H. Montgomery Hyde's biography, Richard Ellmann's, Philippe Julian's, and Vyvyan Holland's memoirs. Today Richard Ellmann's one was there again, and they had a paperback copy of Frank Harris's Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. I really cannot understand where they get all these (now) obscure books about Oscar Wilde. It is uncanny.

Overheard in London

Furious Scottish guy: It's tantamount to ethnic cleansing!
Friend #1: What's that, mate?
Furious Scottish guy: I SAID THE WHOLE APPALLING AFFAIR IS TANTAMOUNT TO ETHNIC CLEANSING!
Friend #2, quietly: True dat.

Further research

I went to Cambridge again yesterday, in a better frame of mind than previously because I discovered before I left that I have a place to live next year. Apparently all you have to do is moan to the accommodation office, and then, when they tell you not to worry about it, assure them that you are indeed worrying about it. Because voila, I followed this strategy, and now I have a room where before I was roomless.

I have decided that the gap between Oxford and Cambridge is not such a big one as I first supposed. Before I thought that Oxford was in an entirely different galaxy of excellence to Cambridge. I mean, a better galaxy. Not like in Star Wars where the other galaxy is like full of technology that we don't have and weird intelligent species that hang out with human beings and stuff, but more like some, um, other sci-fi show with a different galaxy, in which one of the galaxies is not even remotely comparable to another one because the other one is light-years more advanced and superb. Whatever. I thought Cambridge was like the slums of the Bronx and Oxford was Manhattan.

Upon reflection, though, Cambridge is really not the slums of the Bronx. I was being cranky when I thought that. Actually, not having been to the other boroughs of New York City, I can't really say what Cambridge is. But it's not the slums of the Bronx. That was just mean. When I went back to Cambridge yesterday, I spent a very peaceful and relaxing day copying this manuscript to relatively good success, though it turns out (oops) that I was copying all the wrong things. On the walk back I observed the city with a kinder eye, and it had some nice buildings after all, made of stone and everything, just like Oxford has. (But fewer, and less good.) I observed the nice buildings and appreciated the green spaces and the existence of the punts. And they were charming and aesthetically pleasing, even though Oxford is better.

To put it another way, Oxford was sort of everything I imagined it would be, like someone had taken a picture out of my imagination of what a really old English university would look like and used it to create Oxford. Cambridge was more like someone had eavesdropped on my imagination, missing lots of crucial bits, and used that to create Cambridge. So it's exactly right, in bits, but then a lot of it is catastrophically wrong.

I also switched trains at Ely yesterday, rather than at Stowmarket or Ipswich, and I realized as I was pulling into the station that it was Ely! (It rhymes with "really", by the way, and is apparently a reference to all the eels that lived in the waters by Ely.) Ely like as in John Morton the Bishop of! I was glad I had remembered in time to express my displeasure with the city for being bishopped by a nasty slandering meanie head. (Who, in case you're interested, attended the same college as Lord Peter Wimsey.) Of course I was only there for about four minutes while I waited for the connecting train, but that was plenty of time for me to stick out my tongue at the city. I would have liked to spend more time walking around and finding fault with everything but I had to get to Cambridge.

N.B. I would not really have done that. Ely is supposed to be very beautiful, and I'm sure that if I visited it properly I would be completely won over and would remember that it is not the city's fault that they had an asshole for a bishop for six years half a millennium ago. But I did really stick out my tongue. More at John Morton than at Ely itself.

Getting ready to leave

So only a week and a half left in this country. I wish I'd gone to London more; there's a small part of me that wishes I'd travelled around Europe, but then most of me thinks that if I had money and time enough to go somewhere, I would rather go to London, whose infinite possibilities I haven't yet begun to exhaust.

It's so strange walking around campus and seeing the things I've seen every day for the past eight and a half months, and knowing that I'm not going to see them again maybe ever. Everything feels weird because I keep telling myself, This is the last time you will ever do this. This is the last time you will moan because the Lithuanians had some friends over and didn't do any washing-up; this is the last time you will hear that particular flat joke; this is the last time everyone will start singing along with that song that comes on the radio every twenty minutes; this is the last time you will hide in your room to escape Yvonne's rage about the mess the kitchen is in. It is inexpressibly bizarre. I've been living with the people in my flat for ages, and it feels normal, and after next Friday I might see them again once or twice in my life.

For some reason, my feelings about leaving England have resolved themselves in a deep reluctance to get off of trains. No matter where I'm travelling to or how crowded the train is or how urgent it is that I get where I'm going in a timely manner, it's all I can do to force myself to get up out of my seat and exit the train. I mean, even if I'm going to London to do something really exciting like see a play at the Globe (which I haven't done yet, curse it!), or to Cambridge to look at a manuscript; even then I just want to sit on the train and stay going back and forth forever. It is peaceful on trains and I am not really anywhere so I do not have to worry about anything.

I have very deep feelings of love for London these days. At first I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to choose what university to go to based on its proximity to London, but in retrospect it was a genius idea, and the only bad thing was that coursework got in the way of my being in London all the time. I love London so much that I might live in it one day when I am rich, like get a flat in South Kensington and spend my mornings reading and my afternoons writing the incredibly successful books that will, of course, support me in the style to which I intend to become accustomed. And I will go to film festivals and plays, and I will be in London so often that nothing unpleasant will happen like--

Let me break off here to say that Angels in America, which may be the play I would most like to see live that I have never seen live, is coming to London for a short time just after I leave. I mean, it really starts playing like the day after I leave or something absurd like that. Both parts. On successive days. And it is a mighty good play. And I am going to miss it, because for some reason I thought it would be a clever idea to come back in mid-June even though my housing contract continues until the end of June.

(Actually that was a good idea because otherwise I wouldn't have my fantastic job this summer.)

Well, anyway, if I live in London, nothing unpleasant like my missing of excellent plays will ever happen, because I will be right there, and I will keep good track of all the plays that are going on, and I will never miss anything that I really want to see. Whenever I feel like going to see a play, I will just go. And that will be the way my life works.

But even without all the richness and the flat in London and the play-seeing, I don't want to leave England. I love it here. I love how you can get on a train and just go anywhere. I love the way people talk, and I love the fact that there are bars on campus so you can just go out whenever you like and not have to worry about driving home. I love my Young Person's Railcard, which makes it possible for me to get to London or Cambridge or Oxford for under twenty pounds. I love chocolate digestive biscuits, and the miniature chocolate muffins that I buy every week for 99p. I love that it's sunny and cool in the summer, and the way that people here say it's pouring down rain if five drops hit them in the space of a minute. I love how much more considerate restaurants here are about diet choices and allergies than they are in America. I love the free museums. I love how easy it is to make day trips. I really love this country. I always thought I would, and I do.

I am very not ready to leave yet. England is good and I haven't had enough time here yet.

Overheard by me in London

This lady aged like 60, on her cell phone: So-and-so is having a party soon that we'll probably want to boycott....Yes, his parties are always a little tame.

Jenny's First Manuscript

It was a commonplace book containing lots of copies of speeches and letters to and from King Charles and his Parliament, and actually the whole thing was rather chillingly topical, what with the king completely ignoring the wishes of his legislative body and demanding more money for war and trying to slither out of making promises about anything that the said legislative body wanted and reminding the legislative body that he could dissolve them if they wanted to and they had better just behave (which Bush hasn't done of course, but I bet he would if he could). And there's some other stuff in there too that I haven't gotten to yet because I read slowly and the person whose commonplace this was writes small, albeit in a blessedly clear and tidy secretary hand that I have almost no problem deciphering.

I have heard so much about how beautiful Cambridge was that I guess I was expecting too much, or maybe I was just in the wrong section of Cambridge, but I was mainly unimpressed by it. I was also a little bit lost now and then, but nothing catastrophic and I had cleverly left myself plenty of wiggle room in which to get lost and then found again.

I tried to console myself for this disappointment of the aesthetics of the campus by assuring myself that those occasional beautiful buildings were the only relevant (to me) buildings at Cambridge and thus I need not worry about any of the other buildings. I was actually right about King's College, so well done me and I can go back there because now I know where it is and darling Robbie's letters are just waiting for me; but I was sadly wrong about the University Library and when I found the real University Library it crushed my soul a little bit. Cause it was all brick. (Not stone.) And inside it was institutiony, with those blue institutiony doors. (Not cool and elegant and stony.) Having been inside the Radcliffe Camera, which is everything a reading room should be, I felt totally let down; and the Manuscript Room at CUL is exactly like the rare books and manuscripts room at the Hill Memorial Library, which if I wanted to see them I could have stayed home.

However, rather against my gloomy expectations, I was issued a reader's card (hooray! even though I am sorry to say it only lasts until next Thursday) and actually given a manuscript, and that was like the most exciting thing ever. I mean, it would have been more exciting if the manuscript had been a hair more interesting, because although the bits with speeches were good, I then got on to all this fussing about the Duke of Buckingham (and yes, nobody's mentioning it, but, Charlie honey, WE ALL KNOW that he was doing your "father of blessed and most sacred memory"), and eventually a monumentally boring bit about the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham. Plus I felt sad because I wanted to believe I would be able to copy the whole thing before I left England, and it turns out that there is no way that will happen. Not even close. Maybe a third of it, if I get really good at reading the secretary hand and figure out how to type an ampersand without looking at the keyboard.

But hey, whatever. It was a manuscript in secretary hand and I got to read the whole thing. As I was sitting there reading it, I developed this vague notion that wherever I end up living I should be sure it's somewhere with some manuscripts in secretary hand for me to amuse myself with in my free hours. It's like Latin, except obviously less fun because it is easier to figure out than Latin.

Tragically, however, I had sour creamy stuffed potatoes last night, and to my shock and horror, they disagreed with me. (Or something did. But sour cream seems to be the most likely candidate.) And I'm not talking like the kind of disagreement where Janet thinks Leonardo DiCaprio is good-looking and I don't; I'm talking like the kind of disagreement that starts wars. I'm talking like the sour cream is Henry VIII and I'm Sir Thomas More, and we just can't both exist at once, and in the end one of us is going to have to be sacrificed, and it is going to be the one who lacks the power to stop it. So I felt as sick as I could be and kept being very much afraid that I was going to puke on the manuscript. And I had, you know, feminine problems. I had both of these things.

Well, I'm going back on Thursday. At which point the cramps will be gone, and I won't eat any sour cream on Wednesday night, so presumably I won't be being made sick by those either. And I won't be all worried about whether they're going to let me in, and I won't get lost on the way to the library because I know my way now. In general all circumstances will be drastically more favorable. And then I can decide, totally free of preconceived prejudice, that I love Oxford more.

(Even though Hugh Laurie went to Cambridge and he is an absolute legend. Cause he only went there for the rowing.)

(And even though Robbie Ross went there. Cause he left early cause everyone there was rubbish.)

Heehee.

My flatmate said today 1) that he was wearing a top tank; and 2) that on a previous occasion he had been given several cocktails including a Long Beach Tea Island.

So there's that.

My city-related epiphany

So I don't like big cities (they tire me out), and I try to avoid them if I can. Except for Manhattan and London.

People do not tend to understand this. They tend to say, "Those are big cities! Those are huge cities! You don't make any sense, you enormous crazy!" Or something along those lines. And you see, until today I could not defend myself against the charge of insanity, except of course by saying that I am not crazy because London and Manhattan, they are just better than other big cities, and that's why. Only I didn't really feel good about saying that, because lots of people are totally crazy about other big cities like San Francisco and Atlanta and Chicago, and they can't possibly all be off their heads.

But today, you see, there was this epiphany that I had. I think what I actually don't like is carful big cities. I think the thing about New York and London is that it's way not handy to have a car there, and you are much better off walking around on your feet and taking the Tube, which will get you everywhere good that you need to go. Or, in emergency situations, maybe a bus, though I have never found this necessary and London buses frighten me.

In other cities, it is helpful to have a car. That is why they are scary. No matter what city I am in, I will inevitably get lost, and I'd far rather not get lost while zooming along at high speeds in the midst of a lot of other people zooming along at high speeds. If I get lost in London, I do not have to freak out, and there is never an occasion where someone says, "Oh wait! I recognize this! Turn left, turn left!", and I panic because there is too much being-lost stress and I forget which one is left and I'm terrified of missing the turn and then I do miss the turn and then I have no idea how to get back again. Which has never happened because I have never driven around any big cities, but I'm sure it would happen because I have no sense of direction and my sense of left and right isn't great and in times of crisis has been known to desert me entirely. If I am walking, I have plenty of time to contemplate my choices, and it is much easier to turn around and go back the way I came if I am on foot.

It is also possible that I like New York because the streets are helpfully numbered, and London because I was shown around it for a month once and consequently know where lots of things are. Today, for instance, I got lost trying to walk from Holborn to Covent Garden, and before I had even begun to approach despair, I spotted Nelson's column way off in the distance and made for it because I knew that there was Charing Cross Station, and from there I could get the Tube to Leicester Square and walk to Covent Garden (though I am not brilliant at getting to Covent Garden from Leicester Square.) But in the event I found a sign saying Covent Garden this way and I followed it and it was that way, so I did not have to go all the way to Trafalgar Square in order to reorient myself.

Today was also notable in that I got to show off London to my darling cousin, who was there for a few days. I love showing off London, and she was an appreciative audience. We ate at Wagamama (yum! but I must stop relying on the one at Southbank, because it's always crowded and also makes me anxious because all the white people are servers there and all the black people are cooks and I can't work out any explanation as to why it should have been arranged that way. There is one at Covent Garden, one on Bloomsbury Street, and one at the Tower of London. Must remember that.), and then we went to Covent Garden and saw the markets and some street performers (who persisted in trying to throw things onto their head using only one foot while balancing precariously on ladders and unicycles). And I showed her the Globe, also. I love the Globe. I LOVE THE GLOBE.

P.S. Percy the fatous imbecile from Black Adder is playing Iago in Othello right now. Go figure. I will definitely be hitting that up. Alone, sadly, because nobody wants to see it with me, due apparently to the fact that Othello overreacts to his suspicions of Desdemona's unfaithfulness. I'm not pointing fingers or anything, but one of the people who has said this to me watches One Tree Hill. So you know. Whatever. I mean, one might argue that Dan kills Keith for no reason, in an overreacty fashion, but hey, it's none of my business, I don't pay no nevermind, I don't say a word, not one single word.

I overheard a man in London saying, "I don't want to watch Mormon TV!" in a very angry voice. I would have thought that I misheard him, but then he said it again. What is Mormon TV? Or perhaps, why is Mormon TV? I wanted to ask him but even more I wanted to get in line to eat chicken katsu curry at Wagamama, so I did that instead. But now that I'm no longer starving, I kind of regret it.

Trivial things

The other day Raksha and I went to Wivenhoe, and we were walking along the road when this ambulance started to back up, and it beeped to signal its intent, so we got out of the way, and as we were getting the way a pleasant voice came out of the ambulance and said, "This vehicle is backing up. Please stand well clear. This vehicle is backing up. Please stand well clear." Because I guess it would look bad if the ambulance backed into you and killed you dead.

And another day that wasn't that one, we went to Colchester and we explored the town, but I completely failed to find all the thrift shops (seriously! where did they go? why can't I find them from the Odeon?) and Raksha's shoestring broke and we got really hungry and around 3:00 decided it was time to eat, and we went to La Tasca to get food but we tugged on the door and it wouldn't open so we figured we'd go sit across the street in the shade until it did open, but no one came and no one came and we got impatient around 3:30 and went and tugged on the other door, and that one did open. Er. I'm a big dummy, because actually I've been to La Tasca before and probably I have tried to open the right-hand door and found it unwilling.

I tried to find a hat as well. My godmother gave me money for my birthday, and I decided that it was money to buy myself a vast and beautiful hat like I've always wanted, so I shopped at a bunch of different stores looking for a hat. Unfortunately Raksha is not a big fan of large extravagant hats, so I was never sure what hats were suitable, and the one hat I found that was the right color and the right style was £150, which is in any situation an unjustifiable expense. At Marks and Spencer's I found a really excellent hat that suited me and was beautiful, but it was the wrong color, so I could not get it. But it suited me so much that when Raksha and I went to the toilet, the cleaner guy asked me "Where is the hat?" and I said it wasn't mine, it was the shop's, and I wasn't getting that one, and he said, "Is good. You buy that one, eh? Looksa good." (Though I already knew that it did.)

So our town trip was mainly unproductive. Raksha got a new book to read, and I got Saffy's Angel to read to her, because it is so excellent and charming, and Raksha also got a new shoelace for her boot because the old one broke (hurrah!), but still no hats for me. (Yet.)

And I have two exams yet to do, but thank GOD, I am done with Wretched Wallace Stevens. I had to write about him in two essay questions, and I did not appreciate it. I hope I never encounter that wretched, wretched man again. I hope this is the last time I will ever use my I Hate Wallace Stevens label.

Furthermore, I burned myself the other day when I picked up a tray that had just come out of the oven but because it was not in the oven when I picked it up I assumed that it was cold. I cleverly dropped it quickly and ran cold water over my fingers for a while, and then my flatmate Elliot explained to me how to proceed (not to put ice on it because it would cause trauma to my skin, and to wrap the burned places up in cling wrap in order to keep the moisture in), so I mainly escaped serious scarring.

For the past few days, however, I've had a blister on my middle finger that was white and puffy and looked sort of the way I imagine bubonic plague. And I can't even remember the last time I had a blister, so I didn't know how to proceed. Today I bit it delicately with my teeth (yes, that was unhygienic, but I washed it afterwards and it wasn't as unhygienic as poking it with a dirty needle would have been), and a tiny, tiny bit of water dripped out (which is bizarre!), and now there is pink skin underneath where the blister was, and a circle of white skin around it that has jagged edges because I bit the middle part, and it looks sort of like I have an eye with teeth living in my middle finger.

(Like the Corinthian.)

(So that's cool.)

Am I killing time so that I don't have to prepare to write an essay tomorrow on whether The Tempest is a capitalist and colonialist parable? Yes. Yes, I am.

This old guy I saw in Gatwick Airport today

Today I was standing at the South Terminals arrivals place at Gatwick Airport, and this old guy came hobbling out of the doors feebly pushing a trolley of luggage, and he walked about two feet away from the doors and stood there looking up at the signs that would direct him where to go, and he looked a little bit lost for a minute and then he went, "EMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Like, so, so, so loudly. There was so much loudness. And you have to understand that most of the people who were there didn't even shout at the people they were meeting but just waved to alert them to their presence and then celebrated together when they reached each other, in a subdued and decorous fashion. The lady next to me called, "Janice!" when her party arrived, in what would hardly even be categorized as an outdoor voice, and after she had done it she looked at me all embarrassed and explained, "We haven't seen her for twelve years," because yes, she really had to justify the bizarre outburst I had just witnessed.

So everyone kinda looked at him, but Emma did not come to claim him, and he went, "EMMAAAAAAAAA!" again, and she still did not appear, so he tottered a few steps and then a few steps again, and after he'd gone about halfway down the walkway he stopped again, looking extremely disgruntled, and hollered, "EMMAAAAAAA!" one more time. And then I guess he decided that Emma really had ditched him, or else possibly the Gatwick Airport Polite Volume Maintenance staff was ordered in to suppress him, because that was the last I heard of him.

Me and English rain

After a long adjustment period, me and the rain in England have finally come to an understanding. When I first got here, I confess that I was inclined to scoff at English rain. It would start to drizzle the tiniest bit, and everyone would shriek and run away and be completely horrified by the incredibly heavy rain that was raining down, while I was like, Dude. It is drizzling. This hardly even qualifies as rain. The clouds are not splitting. They are hardly even spitting. Do not get your umbrellas out for this.

Even when it is quite rainy, there is never quite the same magnificence to it that there is at home, because there is no dramatic thunderstorming. So I sneered at English rain, and it, in return, got me extremely wet while I was still thinking that it did not have the capacity to do that.

But now we are good friends, the English rain and I. Every time it starts to rain, I agree to go to my window and lean out and get drizzled on, and the rain agrees to also drizzle on people who think the rain is a much bigger catastrophe than I think it is, for my viewing pleasure. I like to watch them put on their hoods and scurry along the sidewalks in order to escape. In an obvious way this should be schadenfreude, but I like to think that it is also my abiding love for humanity. I like to people-watch. It's just that it's more fun (at least when you're high up and can't hear what they're saying) if I can watch them trying to get out of the drizzly English rain.

Now the English rain likes me so much that it waited for me to get back from town before it began raining, presumably so that I would be safe and dry and in my tower ready to amuse myself by watching other people get wet. (Cause our deal wouldn't work if I couldn't watch from the tower, and if I were in town, I obviously couldn't watch from the tower.)

Speaking of which, the other night I totally couldn't get to sleep because this guy was puking outside my window for like a half an hour! I'd start to doze off and then I'd hear BWWWW (that is my onomatopoeic approximation of the sound), followed by twenty seconds of spitting noises. At first I was just frustrated because the guy was loud, but then he kept on puking, endlessly, and I began to be concerned that he might be gagging up an organ or plasma or something, so I went to the window to see if he was going to survive. Of course I couldn't really see him, just a blur of white beside a tree, but having thought the thought that he might be dying, I couldn't fall asleep, and every time I heard BWWWW (spit spit spit) I thought, OMG he's going to die because I'm too lazy to call the medical people. But eventually someone came up to him and said, Ruh ruh ruh right? Bruh ruh ruh ruh ruh ruh, and he said, Ruh ruh ruh. Ruh fine. Ruh ruh ruh ruh ruh ruh., so I figured there was nothing to worry about and went to sleep. (I was up high and could not hear them very well, so this is an approximate description of how the conversation went.)

Well, that has nothing to do with English rain, and the rain has stopped now in any case, which means that I can no longer watch Frisbee players and such run for cover. I suppose I had better start studying Jane Austen, which is just my virtuous way of procrastinating for studying Wallace Stevens and Yeats. Why is there so much Wallace Stevens in the world?

There may be no lengths AT ALL to which I will not go in order to avoid studying

Though in my defense, I am studying the most genuine load of crap: Moby Dick, Beloved, The Grapes of Wrath, Robert Frost (he's the only one I like), and Wallace Stevens, for whom my deep distaste is well-documented (and in fact deserves its own category). You'd be procrastinating too.

Aside: New categories entertain me but are not ultimately helpful because I am obsessive enough that I have to go through my old posts and mark them appropriately with the new label that applies to them but did not exist when I wrote them. I should really just limit myself.

Right now I am supposed to be studying for my American lit final. I have virtually nothing in my study guide about Robert Frost, and I have this book checked out of the library called The Major Themes of Robert Frost that would probably assist me in adding material to my study guide, but I cannot bring myself to do it. Instead (this is true), I am making labels for all of my books, so that when my dearest darling friend Rakeesha comes to visit me she will know what every one of my books is about, and thus will be able to choose which (if any) of them she wishes to read.

I swear. I am cutting up pieces of green paper, writing descriptions of each of the books on them, and sticking them painstakingly on the shelf in front of each of the books. With tape. The only reason I am pausing to write this blog post at all is that I can't think how to describe A Hundred Years of Solitude because I haven't read it yet because I am saving it for the plane flight home. And it is possible that when I have finished doing this I will go crazy with it and just start labelling everything: Lotion. Mascara. Toothpaste. Hats., just in case my dearest darling friend Rakeesha gets confused and loses her ability to identify everyday objects.

Shattered Silk: A trashy but good novel with interesting things about old clothes in it. Lorna Doone: A completely ridiculous book set in the time of the Monmouth Rebellion. May be swashbuckling but I never got that far because it was so silly. The Moonstone: A mystery about the theft of a cursed Indian diamond, most delightfully written from multiple points of view. The Grapes of Wrath: Amazingly boring though well-written book about the Great Depression, my least favorite period of American history apart from Reconstruction.

Ah, how usefully I do fill my days.

George Bush on Tony Blair

President George W. Bush described Blair as "a man who kept his word, which sometimes is rare in the political circles I run in."

Well, yes.

Cleaning up (or, the lengths I will go to in avoiding reading Wallace Stevens)

I cleaned my room today. I have not cleaned my room for several months, so there was a lot to do. It's still a bit messy, but at least now I have gotten rid of all the boxes people sent me things in at Christmas. I've been hanging on to them in case I needed to use them to mail stuff home in at the end of the year, but I've decided to be a wild optimist and assume that I will be able to get everything into my suitcase plus my duffel bag. Hopefully just all into my suitcase, because there are few things less fun than hauling tons and tons of luggage from here to Gatwick Airport. Or from any airport to anywhere, or from anywhere to any airport. I hate the process of getting onto planes, though I love to fly. WHOOSH.

But anyway. I performed an intensive cleaning project today after I got through reading all the Romantic theorists, because I did not want (and do not want) to read the Modernists. I put all of my books on the bookshelf, and it turns out that I own 26 books in England, of which I am only taking three, or possibly four or five, back to my home. The rest I am abandoning to charity shops, because apparently the charity shops come round and hang out in the squares so that students can give them all the crap they don't want anymore. I hope that's true; it will be an impossible nuisance to bring all my crap into town.

I also found some exciting things that I didn't realize I had, including

a) two spare socks that do not belong to me (I have disposed of one because it was yucky, and the other one I believe I accidentally stole from home when I was there over Easter)
b) a little water gun that came out of a Christmas cracker and somehow found its way into my room
c) SO MUCH PAPER. It is ridiculous. I am going to take it into the squares where there is a place to recycle paper, but I have a grave concern that I will fill up the receptacle, and also that once I have done so it will turn out that I am not allowed to put cardboard in
d) a Sunday crossword puzzle that my mother gave me to do on the plane flight to the UK in October. Still undone. I think that on the flight in question I was too busy wishing that baby would just stop crying, or that the chatty guy with children would stop chatting and let me sleep, to do a crossword.
e) the bubble bath that I bought by mistake because I thought it was body wash when I first got here. It is enormous, and shames me because it proves that in a tired state I lose the ability to read.
f) a red bracelet thing that I paid a dollar for to support AIDS a year and a half ago, and a glow-in-the-dark wrist band that I think I stole from someone in England at some point
g) my Slinkie!

And back to Wallace Stevens. DAMN IT. I will have to indulge in frequent imaginative reconstructions of his brutal beating at the hands of Ernest Hemingway (whom, I want to stress, I do not like EITHER).