How cool are we? The highlight was bumping into some genuinely street-cool skateboarders showing off, and atttempting not to get stabbed. Also, a bystander described the first stunt of mine as "the most courageous thing he has ever seen", but we didn't catch it on camera.

To be honest, the video is a failure on both counts. It features some very poor free running, yet is still not quite crap enough to be wholly hilarious. Still, I love my scarf, and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to see it soaring through the air.

The evening went a bit downhill from there. When I say "downhill", I don't necessarily mean worse, I just mean crazier. Calypso, Iacomus and I headed back to Hampstead for nutella crepes, and Spirita departed to go home to Luton. It was only when we hit Dudin Brown we remembered she'd left her bank card at home, had no change, had barely anything on her Oyster, had only 15 minutes to get to the bank before it closed - and we had her mobile phone. Wherever she was, she was completely stranded.

We made quite an intimidating strike force. In no time, we had a command center rigged up in Dudin Brown kitchen - Calypso manned the telephones, both ours and Spirita's, and dealt both with her when she managed to call from a call box, and her mother when she got through. Iacomus was in charge of the PC, tracking the call box and contacting various student receptions.

Finding ourselves a bit useless, Vapila and I ultimately decided to head back into central London to actually try and find her, bail her out financially, get her home, return her phone or, if necessary, beat her kidnappers to death with toothpicks. A pointlessly noble gesture, but it gave us something to do other than fret; and while we were unsuccessful, it ultimately turned out we were correct in most of our hunches - Holborn Station and the Strand campus was the first port of call for both of us. Plus, dashing off into the London night to rescue a friend gave me a creepy sense of Naked Flame-related deja vu

By the time we arrived at the Strand, Calypso phoned us to say she'd been found and we were all to meet at - where else? - a pub at King's Cross. Here's a picture of John Betjeman's statue, looking quite as bemused as I was to find myself there.

So that was that. Here we were, in St Pancras station, sitting in the "outdoor garden" of the Betjeman Arms, in fake summer chairs by fake summer umbrellas, just out of range of the heaters and freezing in the dark under the massive Victorian warehouse roof. And ordering some of the most expensive food and drink for the privilege. It was perfectly charming, in a surreal way. And 90 minutes later, Spirita arrived as if nothing had happened. We returned the mobile phone.

These things are meant to be character building, and I learnt something knew about Spirita - she is a mean storyteller. With only a few embellishments, she explained what she had been up to while we'd been worrying; and like all the best stories, I can't remember a word of it. Apart from the embellishments. The bit where she ended up signing her name with the stub end of an eye pencil - or was it her own blood? Or someone else's blood...?

There's still something in the story that doesn't add up. Namely, what she was doing in the 90 minutes between getting in contact and telling us to be at St Pancras, and actually arriving there herself; and how she got there, having no cash, no credit card and nothing left on her Oyster. She's keeping us in suspense on that. To continue with the Flame-allusions, I get the feeling this is going to turn into a "why Ivy objected" mystery, which is made far more exciting and significant by the fact it is kept secret than it actually deserves to be.

It occurs to me the only person reading this blog who will get that allusion is me.

No sooner did she arrive than she was off for Luton. No one really established why we lingered at the station for another hour in the big icy blanket of artificial light keeping the night at bay. It was, as I said, charmingly surreal - from Iacomus and Calypso Twittering at each other across the table as well as chatting, to Calypso ambushing the waiter to establish whether she was more like Catwoman or the Penguin, and Vapilla and Calypso ordering civillised desserts. But in the end, the cold became too much, even hiding under some blankets we'd found in the "garden", and we headed home.

I abandoned the party almost as soon as getting back to Hampstead, which was about 11 anyway. I've been too tired to cope for about two weeks now - I just need sleep, and the early sunset isn't helping my internal body clock. It's time for hibernation. Not to mention I'm now too homesick to cope, in a way that no one else I know here can really appreciate. And fed up in most ways - triple fed up of the tube, fed up of being an hour away from anywhere useful, fed up of all my clothes being slightly damp in the morning because our tumble dryers don't work. I'm fed up of people moving my dishes to places in the kitchen I can't find them, of stealing my milk when I've been looking forward to breakfast, and of my sandwiches tasting so rank by lunchtime I'm forced to go to Pret, Eat or the Terrazza for a wrap. I'm fed up of my glasses never looking clean, and especially annoyed that I seem to either have lost two knives and two little spoons, or gained two forks and two big spoons. I'm fed up of eating - I try eating fruit, but I'm not in the mood; nor for chocolate, nor pasta, nor bread, nor meat, nor pizza. I'm subsisting on milk. I'm fed up of charity buckets picking on me, just because I'm blonde, adorable and wearing harmless colours and a smile - it's like being stuck in Season 21.

Actually, there is only one student gripe I've avoided - at least I'm not fed up of being skint. All those Sainsburys basics products have paid off - I'm so gorgeously in the green, compared to my fellow students, fellow Londoners and Woolworths, that at least being 50 minutes from Forbidden Planet still has a certain appeal. I am fed up of living on a budget, but even though I now definitely have the freedom to indulge, I'm still not going to. One carton of sicilian lemonade a week is my little treat, and the occasional Battles in Time cardpack.

No time to talk about Reading now, its only 8:30 but I need a nap...

After three months of being here, I find myself wondering - as pretty much the only non-drinker in the kitchen, why am I still the only one to have a corkscrew and bottle opener? My non drinking kudos has just evaporated, however - I am now the happy owner of a cocktail shaker. Like the rest of the miserable vultures, I did pop in to pick at the carcass of Woolworths. It was an upsetting experience for various reasons. It reminds one of Primark now - none of the staff can be bothered to price things, shelve things, replace things. So items are strewn on the floor and in the wrong departments, and they're dirty or scuffed and no one cares. Everything is depressingly dirt cheap. I considered stocking up on notebooks - in the end, I just got a superslim 2009 diary for my pocket next year. And then came the cocktail shaker.

One of the things I've discovered at uni is fruit juice is phenomenal. Not only is it more convenient than real fruit and vegitables for a FiveaDay hit, it just tastes terrific. I've started picking on mocktails and smoothies when out - but they're always so damn overpriced. Mixology would be a cool skill to bring back, however - and the shaker came with a book explaining how to make them too. Whether I decide to try some proper cocktails, or stick to regular fruitshakes, it's something to practice over the holidays. Doesn't matter if I never use it, because it was £1.57 for the set reduced from £7. Weep for Woolworths. I'm just sad I already bought all the microuniverse figures...

...or have I? Because the other reason it upset me was this. There are 32 figures in the collection, but six you can only buy along with a spaceship in an overpriced special pack. After getting the other 26, I figured there was no point in not indulging in spaceships too - they look terrific in my room, and I managed to buy them all 1/2 price or less. Satisfaction. Collection complete - a pleasant challenge gently conquered, time to waste my money on the BBC in another way. So I was furious to find the new marketing ploy they've come up with to sell off the stock. You can buy the ships in a threepack:

I'm angry, because I don't have the Ood Transport Ship on a snowy base. I'm angry because I can see it's a Sanctury Base ship, in yellow instead of red, but I still want it so my collection is complete. I'm angry because they cheated - they've mixed in such a selection of "random figures" (Long Coat, the Ood), ships (Jack, the TARDIS) in such a way that you have to buy it, and you have to buy repeats. Otherwise you'd never get a Sonic Doctor, nor one in the Spacesuit if you tried getting the threeset instead of buying them individually. It's a big, horrible con; all the worse because I can see right through it and want it all the same.

At least, if I decide to give in, Woolworths are happy to swap it for shoelaces.

Finally, I'm not a radical feminist, radical pro-censorship, radical anti-swearing or anything, but I found myself getting first disturbed, then offended, and finally really rather angry at this delightful ditty I overheard in Camden, to the point at which I left the shop.

I'm sure there are more insulting, not to mention creative songs in the world. Yet after doing a detailed cross analysis of the complex snippets of lyrics I could remember, I narrowed down the vast selection of possibilities to a single suspect. It is here reproduced for your enjoyment.


Skip to about half way through, it takes a while to get going...