Et In Arcadia Ego

Today I went and got myself on the blood doners list.

I've been abstractly meaning too for a while, but never had a good oppertunity until now - posters all over Hampstead, nothing to do and nobody about to point out why it might be a bad idea. And besides, when your hero is a guy who rescues planets, it's hard not to feel inferior merely throwing small change at charity boxes (you may laugh, but my flamboyant phases do tend to coincide with the swell of my Oscar Wilde worship, and the whole World Book Day and Christmas Tree stunts came at the height of my Godfather thang. If you tend towards imitating your heroes, it's nice to idolise someone who'll make you do some good)

I don't have a problem with needles, or with blood, but I was rather nervous. Probably because I know from experience what feeling powerlessly faint is. But I might not have bothered if I'd thought it would be easy. The venue didn't help - under a massive glass canopy which diffused sickly light into the room, making me feel quoozy and look pale before we started. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect - whether it was a sign up, a check up, or whether they'd actually have blood bags on hand. Turns out it was all three - don't get me wrong, all the bad things are coming out in the blog because it wasn't a nice experience, but I don't regret anything. I'd recommend it to everyone (did you know that only 5% of people who can donate actually do?), and I feel it could be very addictive.

So they signed me up, and then they checked out I didn't have anything infectious or nasty (three or four moments there I thought they'd say "sorry, no can do" - from already having cut myself yesterday, to having taken loads of neurophen recentlty, to being far too small or having a history of keeling over), and then shunted me onto a needle and bed. The atmosphere, as I've pointed out, was unpleasant - all I could see was this domed glass roof, and gave the whole thing this sickly nightmarish feel.

As soon as you register something is wrong, you're bound to feel worse - a bit like cutting your finger, and having that abstract moment when you can see there's a wound, but haven't worked out it should be working - so I looked in the other direction, and it was fine. Except that the tube (and now we're going to get icky) was laying across my arm - I didn't see it, but after a few minutes I felt it. Lazy authors trot the phrase "warm blood" out so often it's cliche, but they're right, and it's a very horrible sensation to know it's drifting out.

But my doctor was lovely - we talked horror movies and halloween (apparently, some kids stole some blood a few years back), and said some interesting things about the separation between culture and religion (much in the way halloween is basically Christian, but has been commercialised and made part of the culture; he is a Muslim, and was explaining how the veil is a cultural thing, not a religious one). He also noted how suprisingly empty it was - which struck me as weird. Giving blood is a very easy thing to do; it costs you nothing; it's directly contributing; and like how Oxfam now asks you to buy schoolbooks or camels instead of aimlessly donating, has a very human face. I've never found another form of charity that is so satisfying. According to the literature, each donation you make (a pint and a bit) can save up to 3 people- from accident victims, to people in operations, to people with the plain bad luck of a nasty lifelong genetic disorder.

It was very bizzare. When you hurt yourself, your body tells you it's unwell - and you can target the pain. So, twist yer ankle, your ankle hurts; get a headache, your temples will throb. This was distinctly unpleasant, because it was everywhere, and nowhere, and you can feel something is wrong but it's a shivering, directionless weakness that makes you feel rough all over.

Mentally I knew I was fine, I could walk, get to the tube and get into lessons, but it was the piano that cinched it. In the corner was a piano - my gosh, I miss my own piano - and would have given anything to play it. I could abstractly visualise walking out of the hospital fine; but the piano was more tangible, and I knew I could not have rattled out Firth of Fifth - anything - on it in my present state. I felt very puny with everyone paying me attention - it's not like I was properly unwell or anything, or done anything to deserve it. But they made sure I was very well hydrated and fed, and I hung around there for about 20 minutes.

Anyway, wonderful experience. OK, no, it was highly unpleasant, but I'd say yes again in an instant. And my gosh, so should you! Do I feel good about myself? Last night, Jon was loudly expounding that all human action is basically selfish. Its a view I often agree with - after all, you don't just give money so children will be fed; you give to salve your own conscience that you are able to eat. Even if it gives you pleasure to know they are better treated, there's something in there for you. Miss Geach told us once that she gives to charity, but as a direct drain from her account so she doesn't know where it's going, which is interesting - striving to be purely philanthropic, to give the aid and cut out the emotional dimension entirely. When the doctor asked why I had decided to donate, I told him it was because I wanted to help. It stemmed from a sense of powerlessness against the unpleasantness of the world, and afterwards I actually felt more embarassed than a sense of pride, and really rather stupid at putting myself into this situation in a strange city when I had travelling and lessons to concentrate on. I did take a sticker "Be nice to me - I gave blood today", but I felt like a bit of an idiot wearing it. I suppose, like Miss Geach, people who advertise their goodness have always irritated me - like that craze for bands. On the one hand, it's raising the profile of the charity - like support ribbons. On the other hand, it is a bit "look at me!". I don't like wearing poppies for the same reason. I took the sticker on the doc's orders, in case (he said) I had to have a lie down in the middle of the street or something. In actual fact, I was fine after I left. I took it easy, drunk and ate a lot (another of the hospital staff made sure I was well loaded with snacks, just in case, and they did make me feel better), and arrived in good time for my lectures.

A man gave me a ticket for the tube. He'd reach the end of his journey, and gave me his day travel pass. I don't know if it was because I looked woozy - apparently, people do it all the time - but it struck me as a beautiful thing to do, especially because the people I meet on the tube/bus are the no.1 reason this city is depressing me at the moment. It's the way they pretend they're not there, and neither is anyone else. I don't want to get back at Christmas and find the same shutters have slammed down behind my eyes, and I've turned into one of those zombies who try to sink into the shadows and ignore hobos without blinking. You know the early scenes of Shaun of the Dead, making the point that we're zombies already? It is exactly like that. To have a fellow passenger acnowledge I exist was therefore something of a treat.

I did stumble out of Latin early, feeling faint, and went for a lie down, but I've been fine ever since then. Our teacher had us singing a drinking song - which was great, but it sounded more like a funeral dirge. The lack of alcohol probably had something to do with this (I've felt like a booze up all day; which is ironic, being the only one so far at uni when I've been given medical orders not to drink). Our Latin teacher is darned cool - she rattles along in Latin half the time, even when she is defining latin words, she'll define them using other Latin words. What is phenominal is that I understand her. I suppose it makes sense - my Latin has always been a reactive, instinctive thing, and listening allows me to strip to the core of what's being said quickly without fretting about tenses. She is very enthusiastic, very keen for us to be interested and has a knack for picking fun translations - Seneca is a right bundle of laughs. At the moment we're doing his catty account of the death of Claudius. The first day, we had to write down our email address, what we'd studied and any requests. I was the only one who had one - I voted for some fiction or poetry, and to cut back on the history. The obvious response is "but the histories are interesting too", but I live in hope.

Film studies was more interesting this week - we were talking composition, and unlike the mise=en-scene last week, it's something I really haven't considered often. I'm still fuming from the seminar last week - overanalysis really gets on my nerves, and any literature/media type course will be full of it. Basically, it's treating it like individual works of art - where lines fall, how characters are divided or placed together. How much a director has thought about how he'll place the camera, or not at all. Then we watched Angst essen Seele auf - fear eats the soul. An interesting film. Set in the 70s, an older woman decides to remarry. Two problems - he's over twenty years younger than her, and he's a Moroccan foreign worker.

I discovered I was the only person who'd enjoyed it when we all trooped down for the Film Studies social evening. The plot was serious, the drama slow and weighty - but the cinematography was so beautiful. And I don't mean misty trees and sunrises. I mean grotty, garish, finding a beauty in the everyday world. Not even finding a beauty - forcing a beauty out of unwashed dishes and clashing curtains. Fassbinder makes it beautiful. I was stunned. In my book, good colour control is making a muted tone pallette, shades of blue with a dash of red; lots of white, Hero-style coordination. He manages to pull beauty out of colour chaos. For me, watching this was so incredible that it entertained me despite the kitchen-sink daytime-TV nature of the plot.

I had a wrap at the Knight's Templar - one of the nicest bars I've ever been in. I hadn't managed lunch, because I'd been at the hospital until 1 and didn't have a chance to go home, and then film went on until 7, so I'd been coping on the crisps and biscuits provided by the nurses. Everyone in my party was leaving early, so I got a bus home. My arm still stings a bit, the finger where they took the sample from is very wrinkled but I'll worry about it tomorrow, and I feel very tired. I'm leaving the other plaster on for now. It's 16 weeks until I can do it again - bring it on!

And I've turned down an invite to the Autumn Ball tomorrow. Reasoning follows:
1 - Its £20 a ticket
2 - I have no shoes
3 - While I do have people to go with, their names are not Lauren, Hannah, Jessie, Anne or Beth, thus making the whole excercise a more expensive version of what goes on nightly in out kitchen - namely people who aren't that keen on each other trying to make conversation like they are.
4 - the last ball I went to with Lauren, Hannah, Jessie, Anne and Beth was terrible anyway. This is because they call it a "ball", which conjures up unrealistic images of high school romance and waltzing, when what they actually mean is "the same parties you go to every week, only with better dresses".
5 - the last ball I went to resulted in a three day misery binge on girly weepie movies, because it didn't live up to said expectations.
6 - the music will be terrible.
7 - I want to have an early night.
8 - I'd rather go to the Geek tea in Chinatown, and while there's still time to go afterwards, I want an early night. There's no point going to a £20 ball then leaving after an hour.
8.5 If I'm getting back to Hampstead on public transport, I'd like to do it sooner rather than later, thanks. To get home at 2 in the AM requires me to leave the party at 12.
9 - I will not have fun (see all of the above).

What no one has realised is that the best bit of the ball is the dressing up. If I could dress up, then cut straight to the bit when I get to lever my heels from my aching feet and happily fall-a-dreaming then I would. I do inevitably feel bad about all this. But I can't help being a party pooper. I have realised that having good, honest fun is not something I'm very good at.

I am happy. Honestly. Writing brings out my bitterness - it's why I do it. I don't bother writing down every little thing that makes me happy, because they don't stick in the mind the way the little irritations do. I do sound very negative, but I don't mean to.

Comparing today to Androzani part 3 would, I think, be charitable. No I haven't been attacked by mud, mines, dinobeasts or robots; but I have had most of the rest of it - separated from companions, long runs, injury and blacking out on public transport. Plus, I've elected to buy and cook chicken this evening, which could provoke some interesting toxic reactions when I eat it. I'm ready to regenerate now, please. Things went downhill as soon as I woke up. I'd been dreaming about Four to Doomsday, in luxurious detail; and my version can only be better than the real thing, because the Master showed up.

It all started when I smashed my ankle on the cupboard.

I haven't exactly been limping around London, but it's been twinging all day - I brushed it off because I expected it would go away.

I didn't manage to bump into anyone at breakfast - I missed 1entirely. And I had the last of the ciabatta buns, which were all nasty and stuck heavily in my throat and stomach. I'm still reading The Quiet American, it's still brilliant and its still depressing me. It was in the middle of a particularly sore passage that our bus stopped on Oxford Street. Everyone else left the top level and didn't come back. After five minutes, I went down too - we were in a queue of solitary buses, and the driver advised us remaining not to bother. It's ten to 10. I'm going to be late for my first day, and I'm stuck in the middle of a place I can't navigate. I wasn't worried, as such - I had my A-Z, and my navigation is competant, but I was annoyed off, and on top of all the other miseries this morning, rather unfair. I ambled for a bit, trying to find a definite landmark and popped into EAT (yes, I'll start to remembering drinks in future) for a water, and a place to sit and find bearings. Oxford Street. To the Strand. In ten minutes.

I'll spare you the details of my impromptu rendition of Run, Lola, Run, but needless to say it was rough. I managed to get there in about half an hour - only 20 minutes late. I didn't seem to have missed much. My ankle didn't help - it's not broken, and its not strained, and I probably would have forgotten it had I not had the dash. Amusingly, I was stopped by a foreign woman with a Googlemap in Trafalgar Square, asking me for directions. I did manage to help.

Sense of humour failure when I realised the induction was on floor 4. It was all a bit pointless.
Compared to all that, the language exam was a doddle. We had to answer some questions about tenses on English, which was dead hard compared to the Latin - a suprisingly easy translation. I mean, i didn;t find it easy, but there were no gerunds, no participles, no subjunctives. That or my latin was rustier than I thought. The promised sandwiches didn't show.

A brief bright light was meeting the two mature students on my course, and 2 (from Japan, studying Classical Archaeology) came with me to the Freshers Fair.The promised free sandwich lunch had not materialised, and I'd decided to pop quickly to the student fair, go home via Sainsburys and have a really late lunch. That was before I saw the 20 minute queue in the sun. So when a loud bunch of sandwich makers turned up with a £3 meal deal, I couldn't resist - especially because they had plain peanut butter flavour. 2 scared most of them off, but I was still invited to about 12 booze ups I am never going to attend. I graciously took flyers.

Freshers fair was a nightmare - hot, stuffy, crowded - I signed up for Film and Geeksoc, and I'm going to get myself into the A Capella choir when auditions start. I met and exchanged numbers with a Pole called 3 in the queue. I'm gonna think about Classics - actually, I forgot at the desk. I was having an awful day. And I met a girl who speaks Quenya - there are three of us in the soc now.

And then, to get home. Bus an impossibility - ages away. So I went into the BFI building to chill out for a bit, then hit the tube. By this point I just wanted to be home - I gave 20p to a war veterans association because I was feeling so rough and needed some karma. Sainsburies for shop. Amazingly, it was cheaper than the socs had been. I got another Micro Box to salve my bad mood.

I waited for a bus for a bit, but there was a massive crowd waiting and nothing came. Nothing was coming either. So I walked home, with a bagfull of arrabiata and milk. I was night of the living dead by the top of the road, and you know that bench, mum, the one you said "what a weird place for a bench; who'd sit there?" It's an awsome place for a bench if you've got three bags of crap, and you're tired and fed up and can't face the last hill. I found some Rachmaninoff on Classic FM - gorgeous stuff, and sat through it with the light coming through the trees. Eleanor Caplin has a truly lovely bench.

Now I'm dealing with Entangled's 1328 unread emails. And this evening didn't improve - too demoralised to cook, so I had cereal. Then I got a message from 4 - she's miserable and going home. I tried to sound sympathetic. And then 5' girlfriend started moaning from being collapsed in the corridor drunk. I tried to help, ineffectually, because 6 was already talking comfortingly and providing water, but I contributed the airbed for 5 to sleep on having given up his bed. The sound didn't go away though (all selflessness is selfishness really; it wasn't as base as me wanting the noise to stop, but I did want the fact someone else was miserable to go away because it was troubling me), so I stayed up til 12 reading because I felt too unhappy to sleep. Dorian, this time, because Quiet American was depressing me terribly. I kinda like it - my opinion swoops on a paragraph basis. He's got a wonderful turn of phrase, and I like the OTT grotesqueness of it (perfectly mirrors the OTT luxury of the original). Everything seems to be dripping and foul. And Victoria is wonderfully caught. Occasionally, there's a spin on an epigram I admire. It's just when it tries too hard to shock I find myself bored, and some of his dialogue is dodgy too. I liked the casualness of Dorian's big line - it's tossed off and forgotten. And it's been written by someone who understands the original intimately.

I tried to have a lie in this morning. It was OK, and then Jessie woke me up properly with a luxurious 70 minute phone call. Things are very, very weird. And I finished the Short Trips too - quite lovely. I need to get on the web now, but no joy.

Last night 1 wouldn't turn his music down - For Your Eyes Only, Coldplay's Speed of Sound, Pink Floyd, and the heaviest Bethrock - a crazy combination! The nightmare is compounded by sleeping on a bed that makes exactly the squeak-a-squeak-a noise Hollywood uses when a couple are going for it next door.

I've just had breakfast - it's 12. Only the fire test automatically locks the kitchen doors, so I had to get 2 to open the other door from the inside. 2 is the nearest to a conventionally hot guy in our building. I did meet one of the most beautiful people last night - tall, lanky, smokes, heroin chic, lovely hair, lovely Welsh accent, watches Friends, hangs out with the girls, definitely gay. Pity, he's gorgeous.

Back from piano room two - they're awful. I've calmed down a bit now - I swore violently, loudly and long while I was there, but now I can't quite conjure the bile to spell out my anger in four letter words. I still feel it, however, a deep sense of betrayed irritation. I'm glad I didn't put this first for the piano now. Two grands - alike in dignity - one of which is completely out of tune, with sticky broken notes all over the place; the other, held up at the back by two yellow plastic tubs where the leg has come off, has a totally useless sustain pedal. I opted for the former - but again, I was reduced to the Smiths on loop. Can you believe that yesterday's piano was better than these two? It was far too tuneless for anything that requires the listener to focus on the individual beauty of the notes. Chopin was right out. And so was Firth of Fifth. It's not like playing a bad piano makes you a worse player, but you need to know your instrument has got your back. It's like your wingman - you need to know he's going to do his part, so you can focus on doing yours. No man can win a war single handedly and without backup; and there are some pianos that cannot be played, because when you crash down on them expecting them to thunder in response, and all you get is a clunk, it's like stepping on the beach and realising your platoon is still on the boat. At that point, retreating becomes the only safe option. I did sing a very pointed "Always look on the bright side of life", which succeeded in the giddy way only Spamalot can in improving my mood.

I have regretfully allowed 3 to go off and practice there (Welsh, studies music, looks like Toby from Satan Pit, can play Rhapsody in Blue on the piano and writing his own musical). He's also one of the most level headed Christians I've ever met - decus intelligensia and all. I've prepared him, but as he really did book accommodation here because of the instrument, I'm expecting him to come back as disappointed as I am.

4? Was that her name? Has been working out her finances - she reckons she has £71 a week for luxury shopping and booze. Well I'm one up on her, I've one less need to satisfy. But still:

£350 a month, which we'll say is four weeks. Of which £60 is going to go on me student railcard.
£290 a month, and if each shop costs about £40 that makes £160 for food.
£130 a month left for luxuries - I make that £32 a week.

Five cinema trips. Two Doctor Who DVDs. 65 second hand videos. 7 paperback comics, or two collected softbacks. One copy of Cold Fusion. One third of a Lungbarrow. I'm not that worried, really. 12 Micro Universe boxes. Now that is alarming...

I can save by buying cheap - I'm not much of a spender anyway. Mind you, as predicted, own-brand ribena is foul tasting. I'll get used to it.

Jessie and H have just called from a speakerphone mobile. H's passed her test.



Is it just me who matches culture to my mood? Cold days for cold music, subdued on sad days, love music when I'm feeling fuzzy. Same goes for films - if I'm feeling grim, I'll never choose something to make me feel better. Does anyone? The Quiet American is very good - Ggreene is love. He's just so painfully honest, his character' weaknesses are beautifully observed by both he and the characters themselves. But boy am I miserable now!

"From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year, Phuong would leave me. If not next year, in three years. Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity. "

Yes, it's always a barrel of laughs for Greene and co. Can he be beat for world weariness and resigned despair? 4 has decided we will call Hampstead Campus Hampus. And the Masters are causing me trouble. Tara!

1 and I are just back from a bumper book hunt. 2 next door plays his music far too loud, so I can too to block him out. At first I thought it might be prog - On the Run and the Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging, but now I think that's just wishful thinking.

First stop: Hampsted Village. I picked up Dorian by Will Self from a classy 2nd hand book store. Usual rules apply - I'll buy anything by Oscar Wilde, and consider anything old-Who-related - everything else, you must resist. Its a nice rule of thumb, because otherwise I'd go psycho in bookstores and buy the lot. Dorian is a modern updating - by which they mean "use the c-word in the first paragraph", which means it sneaks through a loophole. I was expecting to loathe it, but the first page has a nice style. A bit Bonfire of the V-sy. Violently grotesque is good. The thing I love about the original is the florid (purple?) prose, and the sense of darkness and ambiguity. Dorian has destroyed all that in the first page - it's an updating, not a retread, and it's making things which were vague ugly and obvious - but I feel doing it that way might still throw up something of the story. It's already potentially the most interesting addition to my collection. Waterstones made the mistake of trying to sell me Sixth Doctor comics, but I resisted. I've discovered that shopping in a Colin Baker phase is as dodgy an activity of promoting peace and harmony in a Fifth Doctor phase - I almost came home with a rainbow stripey scarf, rainbow floral pattern dress e.t.c. I made it unscathed through the rest of the charity shops, though I was sorely tempted by an LP "Inspired by the Lord of the Rings", with a massive dragon on the front, all written by the same Swede on his organ and Moog.

We made it to Keats' house, where one of the local libraries are - there are 10 we can use. We couldn't sign up there, because I didn't have me residence agreement. That branch is pretty shoddy, but it did have Deep Blue (5+T+T+UNIT). I'm going to walk back for that book alone sometime. So we went back for lunch, then onwards to West Hampstead. This branch was bigger, I got my card and had a dive around. Oh, and they have 4th Doc comics! There's lots of stuff in case I go on another Batman binge too. But still no Sandman.

The damage was:
Alien Bodies (DW)
The Quiet American (Graham Greene)
Short Trips: the Centenarian (DW)
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (Sinead loves it)
The Red Right Hand (Hellblazer, graphic novel, so judge me)
A Kasabian CD I've been meaning to hunt down for ages
Simple Things by Zero 7 - Sinead recommended them, they're sorta electronic. This and Kasabian were both hilariously filed in the "Pop" section.

That's WAY under the limit of what I'm allowed to take out, but a sensible set given my reading speed. I'm going to read Dorian, Short Trips and the Quiet American first. Anansi Boys will be the one I won't get around to. Access to 10 libraries will make book shopping a safer activity in the future. It also means I'll stop reading the Ribos Operation, which I acquired on Monday.

I've just read Beth's letter, which consisted of a picture of us as the Dogs. It's all strangely fitting - she's Mr Blonde, Lauren makes an awesome Mr Pink, J and I are Orange and White. I've always thought Hannah would make a great Nice Guy Eddie, but B's got her as Mr Pink and it works out OK because Anne makes a better Eddie than she would Pink. She's also sent me a lovely Oscar Wilde for my wall. She didn't tell me about Ivy; but then, I didn't tell her about Mortimer. So we're still even. There will never be a time when we both feel like talking.

This also means I can use the web on one of their computers, which I'd have jumped at a few days ago - today is Tuesday, enrollment is on Thursday, and its a very long walk.

One interesting thing I've noted is that all of my fellow students have quickly and casually admitted to internet piracy to me, a virtual stranger. It's not just that they all do it - it's the complete lack of remorse. I can understand why the suits are sweaty now.

Zero 7 turn out to be the band which Location Location Location and Property Ladder use for their slow pans at the end - y'know, "Janet and Marcus have transformed their London apartment into a modern and open living space". I don't really like it, but one or two are OK.

I started on Four to Doomsday too - my thoughts on that, see elsewhere.

Dinner was a success this evening - first night, I forgot to switch the hob on for pasta; the next I tried cooking pizza in an oven that wasn't on. But I got the pasta right this evening, so score! The Centenarian is really quite wonderful.

And I didn't mention 2 yet, the unnatural spawn of Emma Deans and Mel from the IWM. Can't stand me, although it's a flaw I can forgive. We went to the cocktail party, and I ended up in a corner with 3 the theologer whom I met on the walking tour. Girls can be so bitchy and judgemental - I suppose the response is, boys aren't picky at all, but that's not the point. Being me is really getting to me as I've never been proud of who I am, only right. I stayed until 10-ish - there's no nice way to tell someone you'd rather spend the rest of the evening with Peter Davison than you would with them. The thing is, I feel like a spoil sport not going to these things, as if I'm not socialising enough. But the flipside is, there's no point me getting friendly with the party crew. Because outside of Fresher's Week, we remain who we are - I'll never persuade them to stay in and watch movies sober, and they'll never get me boozing past midnight. So while indiscriminate socialising is a good idea, I'm not going to bleed too much that I'm out of the loop. I don't want to be in the loop, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying an early night and a clear head.

Is this what you people want to hear? Have I cleaned it up enough, or does it still sound bitter?

Dear all,

Sorry I havent written sooner - the barstools won't let us log on until we have enrolled, so this is all posted a few days late. I have nothing to say, which isn't entirely surprising.

6:00

I'm just back from the music room - so called. Actually, the overall effect is something like a broom cupboard - spiders everywhere, cracked tiles, dusty instruments. All this I could forgive if the piano was decent. No, passable - I'm not fussy. But manoman, is that an unpleasant instrument to play! The damper pedal is broken, and the notes are sticky at the higher end so my fingers slide all over them during the Firth of Fifth bridge. But the honkytonk sound means anything less complicated comes out obviously out of tune. And my dynamics are bad at the best of times, let alone a piano with that little control, so Chopin was out of the question. At one point I gave up entirely and tried the keyboard instead - one of those nasty faux-piano affairs shoved in a corner and tangled with the drum machine.

Yet all of this I could have endured if not for the lack of soundproofing on the walls. I could have done without Little Miss Mozart next door playing some of the most demoralisingly beautiful clarinet I've ever heard while I struggled and spluttered along. My playing isn't great at the best of times; and this was not the best of times.

I managed to get some tunes out - Sleep, by the Smiths sounded good with a chunky, mossy thickness. But anything requiring any intricacy - those repetitive tinkly masterpieces I'm fond of playing way too fast - were a nightmare.

And then She sat down to the piano in Music Room 1. Naturally, both she and her instrument were superior to your humble narrator's, struggling away in Music Room 2. It was to much to endure. When it comes to those who play the piano better than me, either I fall hopelessly in love, or I want to rip their fingers off one by one. This was a case of the latter. Bet she can sing too, I thought, while I rasped away to She's Electric and hoped any fellow cowboys coming into the saloon would spare the piano player if a gunfight started, with my instrument wheezing from years of beer and bullet marks.

So off I go to tea in an area where I am prepared to be bettered by everyone in the preparing, but not the eating.

I also note I still don't sound like me when I type. Tomorrow I'll try and smeg Music Room 1.

Socialised (more or less) this evening. It's funny how quickly you get used to faces. I've met another 1- well, 1- she reads Bizzare magazine, has a thing for men in tailcoats, and is into online gaming. On the other side of the kitchen there's 2- wears a flower, insanely charasmatic - and 3, and another girl whose name I've forgotten, but she's doing Classics. She looks German. 4 eats with us - she's from Bulgaria, doing European Studies - and so does 5- can't stand England, and studying Spanish for the year out in Spain. 6 keeps vanishing to watch movies. I've also had the good fortune to meet a Classics-studying, Neil Gaiman-reading, Dorian-loving McCoyFan who takes even longer in second hand book shops than I do.