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.