Et In Arcadia Ego

With luck, this is going to get published in one of the student magazines, which is why it's a tad more professional than usual. It's here for now, though, so you know what went on. Frustratingly, I can't watch the iplayer at uni - so can't actually see what went down on the show.

You've read enough pro- and anti- arguments in the past months to do without my justification for attending. I'm not without sympathy for the "freedom of speech" position, but allowing a racist organisation to abuse that freedom is the equivalent of a Hollywood Hero letting his Arch-Nemesis go. Noble, but stupid.

I arrived fashionably late at 6:30. Cordoned pickets had been abandoned in favour of clumping in the middle of the road in front of Wood Lane tube station - about 200 people, armed with banners, loudspeakers and copies of the Socialist Worker. A thin neon line stood in front of the wide gates to the BBC building; police dotted the area and attempted to look reasurring. We stood away from the crowd, and watched as they set off red flares then marched down the road from Wood Lane tube towards White City.

I'd been to protests before, notably against Proposition 8 - but that had been 20 terribly polite ex-pats standing outside a building which was closed for the weekend. With the increased scale, it was hard not to be moved by the sense of togetherness - all ages, all backgrounds - even when Stop the War leaflets and SWP banners revealed it was really 500 different shades of opinion which happened to overlap. The Fire Brigade Union and the Southall Black Sisters, SOAS and Goldsmiths, girls who looked like they'd lost their way to Glastonbury and a man in a Hitler costume. One woman carried a sign reading: "proud to have mixed race parents, proud of my mixed race child" - another, whose parents had died at Auschwitz, had an information board.

I made friends with some members of the crowd. One told me about when Diane Abbot went on Question Time - no one remembered what she said, only the symbolic value of a black woman being invited there for the first time. And by extention, that same boost will now be given to the BNP. Another, an Italian woman, compared the situation to the way fascism has crept back into the politics of her own country, and described how a heavily controlled media now prevented normal folk from engaging with serious problems.

Standing in that crowd was like being hardwired into Twitter. I missed the moment 25 protesters - including, I hear, some from my university - broke through into the building, but I'd got all the details within minutes of arriving. By the time it reached me, they hadn't just been removed by private security, but beaten up by Fascist Thugs and Establishment Tools. No one knew when the program was being filmed - I even heard a rumour it had been cancelled - nor when figures would be entering or leaving the building. Were I Nick Griffin, I'd have brought a sleeping bag and brought sandwiches (or the blood of babes, or whatever it is he eats) rather than face the crowds.

After marching down the street, I saw the crowd start to run, accompanied by a flurry of police activity. I stood back to see it vaulting over walls and onto buildings above White City tube station with their banners. Like breaking into the building, I personally thought this was unecessary behavior which did not help anyone's cause - but it highlighted how non-united any demonstration of this scale had to be. For the rest of the evening, a second thin neon line and two police vans barred that weak point also. The crowd calmed for a bit, then wheeled on the front gate again and charged straight at the waiting cops.

I got a constant sense of the infrastructure accompanying a protest, even one which I felt was still quite small. A helicopter buzzed overhead, while there was media everywhere - in vans, on rooftops. I talked to some students with cameras, a friend was interviewed for Canadian telly, and a man standing next to us was reporting into a mobile phone in his best journalistic accent. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the police. It can't be nice being paid to stand, and wait in expectation of being attacked. And despite blocking off the traffic, daily business continued - a queue of audience members waiting to see Piers Morgan ignored and were ignored by the crowd, while BBC employees watched the chaos from the roof of their building. Outside the Tube station, an entrpreneur was selling teas and coffees for 50p.

At around 6, a proper rally began with speakers from union representatives, members of Unite Against Fascism and other MPs. You can imagine exactly what they had to say - the predictable rhetoric - but I still couldn't help but think of my beautiful, multicultural London, and the England I love. The concept of what "English" means is at the heart of this whole nasty business, and it's so much bigger and more wonderful than the Anglo Saxon stereotype peddled by the BNP. To give them any credence, to allow them to profane what England stands for - well, it just wouldn't be cricket. I don't want to live in their "England".

During the speeches, a ripple went through the crowd that the police were about to start kettling the crowd. It was getting dark, and I could see several large clumps of them gearing up for a riot. I retreated to watch the protest from my living room - there's defending your democracy, and then there's getting clobbered. Final score? Eight hundred protesters, twenty-something breakins, six arrests, four ambulences. Increase in racist violence and BNP membership? Let's wait and see.

Sunday was a lazy day. Calypso read me quite a lot of Pope - Magister loved Pope, for the way he seems to roll off the tongue completely naturally despite the rhyme and meter - and Rochester, made more famous recently by the film The Libertine. I read up on the Indian concept of rasas, in the first academic essay I have ever loved. It explains me to myself - the way I enjoy fiction and the way I write it, I discover, originates in India. Who knew? If I have time I'll explain it to you.

I'm becoming disillusioned with Swap Bot. Getting parcels from all over the world will always be fun. The whole point of art cards is they involve art, surely? But so far all I have received is craft. As a good disciple of Wilde, I believe things should be beautiful for their own sake - art alone, art without message, and accordingly I get quite irritable at Galactica's "War In Iraq" season. And yet totally meaningless is just as bad. And that's what I keep getting - art without feeling, images which do not invoke any emotion at all. It's rather a shame, and I'm starting to look elsewhere for swap sources.

I'm devouring films as quickly as possible, alarmed by only being at 40 for the whole year. I know I've missed some - I always do - and I know I went through miserable no-film stretches, and had Doctor Who demanding my time - but this still seems very low. I want to beat Rob's total for this year, even if he no longer blogs and therefore I won't know what it is.

Finally, a question for you. I read in the paper that there are movements underfoot to prevent BNP members from becoming teachers. It's a sticky issue and one that has been mulling in my mind. Please comment and help me figure it out.

On principle, I don't think anyone should be barred on account of their beliefs - but I still don't want them anywhere near my children. Which of course, is exactly what BNP parents would say on hearing a black man was to be made teacher of their kids.

I think taking one group of people and saying "they are wrong, period" is a dangerous thing to do - because it bars understanding. No human act is wholly irrational - it comes from somewhere. I think its giving them too much credit to say that goodness or genius can be understood, but that bad behaviour cannot be. Look at these two statements:

"That is a wicked child"

"That child is misbehaving because his mother used to spoil him"

I know why the second child is bad, so I know how to help him behave - I also know how to bring up a third child more successfully. To compare: "That racist is wrong" is a position I'm uncomfortable having. I'd much rather know why she holds those beliefs, what in her upbringing or mindset has differed from mine. Because understanding offers solutions. And this further: I know had I had that upbringing, or a different combo of chemicals in my brain, I might feel that way too.

Are the racists right? No, bear with me a moment. I'm liberal but for the grace of growing up under liberal parents. Had I grown up, say, in the Bible belt, as a Muslim, in a hippy commune, in Jersey - my conception of right and wrong would be fundamentally different. One of the issues philosopher's get themselves in a twist about is whether there is an absolute morality. If there is, I actually think discrimination is one of the things that can never be right - even worse than things like murder, which can be justified as self defence. Judging an entire group of people on account of their biology can be understood but not excused.

Yet this line of thought genuinely creeps me out. Of course, maybe alt-me would have broken away from her limiting background and bravely stand up to the opinions of her peers - but I doubt it. My core beliefs have been drummed into me since birth. Just as, say, the kids of racist parents will grow up with a distinct suspicion towards whatever they're not. It's not their fault, it's just genetic bad luck, and it frequently makes me wonder whether the principles I hold most dear are being judged by others around me, or incorrect by the standards of everyone else. Am I right? By my own morality, yes, but if there is an absolute morality, can I work out where I stand in relation to it?

With all this in mind, does it even matter? Political correctness, personal freedom, civil liberties - when our children are at stake? After the bomb trouble, there was institutionalised racism in the British police force because there was a 99% chance new threats arising would be from the Muslim population. Grossly unfair to the 98% of British Muslims who didn't want to hurt anyone and thought the whole matter was appalling, but their sensibilities were subsumed to the cause judged as greater - preventing any more explosions. Similarly, here we are judging between fairness to a disreputable group of people and fairness to our children. Surely if there is a reason to discriminate, this is it? We discriminate against paedophiles in our schools too. Yet I was against ID cards - I didn't think public safety was more important that civil liberties - and if you bar the BNP one day, then who will it be next? Slippery, slippery slope.

Eve identified, correctly, that there are more subtle ways of discriminating than merely passing on your politics. In the classroom, you could easily privilege your white pupils, ignore or make unwanted everyone else, and at that malleable age such ideas would stick. Congratulations on breeding a generation of bullies. As a good liberal parent, I don't want my children exposed to an influence like that - and so the cycle starts again, of children being fundamentally moulded not by right and wrong, but by their parents ideas of it.

Tricky, tricky, tricky. Tell me what you think.

Lessons began a few days previous. Latin Love Elegy is shaping up to be marvellous. We've got a whole stack of required (Latin!) reading, and I am getting stuck in. Our lecturer posed the two big questions "what is poetry?" and "what is love", and showed us some brilliant places on the internet. I keep getting the urge to write, which is a pity for the rest of the world because my poetry has always been appalling. The single downside of the class is the presence of Corydon, a fellow student with whom I am still uncomfortably in lust from last term. Unseemly crushes on rock gods or dead poets is a part of having hormones, but I am deeply uncomfortable objectifying another real and potentially obtainable human being in this way, especially one with no other redeeming qualities. I am reminded of the Elegaic Mistress, a stock figure from Roman love poetry - she is gorgeous but cruel, fickle, deceitful, ultimately belongs to no one, but inspires devotion from her enslaved lover all the same. Still, furens, I'll endure it for Ovid, Catallus, Propertius, Tibullus, Vergil, Horace and whoever else gets pulled out of the bag. And "what is love" is a fascinating question when applied to the Roman world. Their word Amor covers a different range of meaning than ours. I also think the power play inherent in Roman romance is interesting, but I'll expand on that with time.

I hope Greek will spice up. My mistake was probably teaching myself over the summer; all the same, one hour of learning what nouns, subjects, objects and verbs are seemed a little rich - especially considering the class is not aimed at beginners but people who already have a grasp of language. Still, after the trauma it took to get lessons at all, I still feel rather proud and peachy just being there.

World Cinema is this term's slice of Film Studies. I was trying to get it changed because the lecture, seminar and screening all come one after the other - giving me a day from 9 to 6 without a single break.

Unfortunately, it has since turned out to be interesting. I've managed to change seminar groups, so it's now just 9-5, but eating is going to be a problem. We get a five minute break in Love Elegy, so I dashed off to buy a sandwich. I'll think of something.

Last night, Vapilla arrived. It looks like the gremlins in the Administration have got her - you may now, if you wish, hum the theme tune from Brazil - but it was still marvellous to see her. She, Spirita and I nattered for ages, and decided to make brownies at 2 in the AM. They were delicious, especially with the addition of dark choc chips.

This morning I worked on World Cinema wk. 1 for a bit - the results of my musings can be found on Cinecism. My poor movie blog, long defunct. It's not like I have less opinions, or more people to rant them at, but I suppose there's a limited amount of time to blog. I'm trying to write more there. This week's film was Pather Panchali - the classic. I felt fairly meh towards it, but it is hard to care about anything when you've been in solid education for the five hours previous. For a break, I went on a trip around the Disney Haunted Mansion. It's a thing I do every month or so - there are several really good websites which make up for the fact I can't justify visiting it as often as I'd like. Sort of like being there. Sort of.

The plan for the afternoon was a trip to the British library with Spirita and Vapilla. Both looked like being late, so I took a luxurious amble. I found treasures along the way, including a Gay and Lesbian bookshop - no Dorians, alas, but a plethora of Wilde biographies in case I get bored - a second hand humanities bookshop - irritatingly pricey and very up itself - a charity shop in aid of Romania, because I really needed a new floaty scarf, and OH! a paper shop, a paper shop! A shop with stacks and shelves of paper, with folders of samples and ladders to boxes stacked roof high. Rolls of paper in corners, paper looped around racks on the wall. Hand painted Italian papers, hand stencilled papers from Japan, and that knobbly alligator-skin paper that they use to fold reptiles in origami books. Did I mention this shop thought it was acceptable to charge £6.25 for A4 sheets? Buy 10 to get a 10% discount, in case you feel like spending £60 on paper all in one go. Still, I know where it is if I ever want to produce something impressive.

I spent a long time in here, feeling up the merchandise. You've seen the way women shop, almost claiming things as they go along. It's the natural evolution of the animal urge to piss against trees. Apparently, if you pick something up in a shop you are more likely to buy it. I did have some justification, because this is paper I ultimately intend to fold with - not a qualification you can make without fingers. At that point, Davros and Sylvester McCoy interrupted me to tell me Vapilla had arrived at the British Library. So I hotfooted down the road, and rounded the corner to see the huge gates and huge city behind it like a red Minas Tirith rising out of the plain. As Gypsy O'Rouke and I entered, I felt I should take off my shoes or cover my head. They say the British library has every book ever written. What about Mills & Boone? What about my Dad's books? What about graphic novels? What about Doctor Who spin-off novels? What about James O'Malley's self-published book of essays? I hear it sprawls like an iceburg upon the land, with corridors 8 miles long underground and people on buggies to go and find them.

Rising out of the centre is a big glass tower filled with books - "Donna...stay out of the shadows..." - and all around just the whiff of books. Of course, once you wander around it all becomes quite cold and unfriendly. It goes against the principle of a library that you not be able to browse, to run your fingers across the shelves and pick things up on a whim. I understand why I passed so many bargain bookshops on the way - the desire to actually get my hands on a book was very great.

As we couldn't actually read anything, we took to ambling about (carousing, Spirita would later amend this to). We noted that everything was very small - we went up the thinnest elevator you've ever seen - so maybe it is run by gnomes. We found ourself on a cold terrace, with a statue of Mr Punch about Vapilla's height. After that, we discovered the conservation centre. I had a go at restoring an audio recording, and actually did pretty well. Reminded me of Whispers of Terror, a not particularly good Doctor Who audio with a cool central concept: the monster was a creature made of pure sound, and it was all set in the Museum of Audio Recordings. Not as effective as it should have been, but it was pretty innovative - including a scene where the sound monster is tortured using a lo-fi version of Audacity. The central premise surrounds a special exhibition on speeches which, curiously enough, was also the special exhibition in the British Library sound department. Rather creepy and synchronitous.

We discovered the Adopt a Book stand - give us £25, and it's as useful as owning a star, or square of the moon. It's a £1000 donation to pick your own specific book, and it looks like mine had already been taken by the Oscar Wilde symposium. Then Spirita arrived and pointed out the room which we should have been in - an exhibition of their favourite books in their collection, including star maps, the Magna Carta (King's Demons!!) and Oscar Wilde's copy of the Ballad of R G. We also loved an iron book chair.

I met my new head of department today - a Michele Summerfield. Now this is dead cool, because the Seventh Doctor travelled with a Professor Bernice Summerfield, archaeologist, for some of his time -so having a Professor Summerfield, Classicist, about seems pretty cool. My new tutor is marvellous - I've sort-of got the Sixth Doctor's companion Evelyn Smythe instead. She's best defined as a sardonic granny - she seems caring, which is something this uni needs more of, but is also amusing and interesting. Apparently, everyone in the Classics department uses Macs - because way back when, Windows didn't have a character set that could handle Ancient Greek. She informed us we were now old, and everything was downhill, and told us to get to the Careers Office. If I tell you she said this in a way that didn't make me instantly resent the very idea, you may get a picture of how much I warmed to her. She even had tips about the Swine Flu.

I also got my auditions sorted out. Do I want to join a band/choir? Not really, I want my free time. But I'll go crazy without music and this seems the best way. I am swallowing my pride to audition for the A Capella choir again, although if I keep feeling glum I may stay at home for the rest of the day instead. The old depression has returned. One Big Issue had an article on a book about depression - they showed some pictures from it, which characterised depression as a big black dog that followed people around. I have two dogs - one here, one in the other place. I like to think both are related to actual problems - missing people, a lack of autonomy, missing locations - but even if all those problems were sorted, I don't think the melancholy would go away. It'd just latch onto something else and keep going. This one feels different to the Guernsey one, and thus for the moment preferable. I'm doing my best to keep cheery, though. I've tried virtually everything to stamp it out, so now I'm just learning to live with it. Tedious, but OK.

On Wednesday are the Jazz Big Band auditions. I've this funny idea of playing the piano for them, though I don't expect to get in. Put up against some twerp who's been hothoused since they were four, or indeed anyone who has ever had a lesson, and I am sunk. I'm trusting in luck and a little bit of flair. The only vaguely jazzy thing I know is "Firth of Fifth" - it'll pass - and fortunately, that's also the most impressive thing I know. I've been practicing in the Maughan (they have a keyboard with headphones), and it's getting better than you've ever heard it. Of course, that probably still won't be enough, but it is worth a try. And if none of that works out, the Gilbert and Sullivan auditions are next week. In addition, the Kings Players are doing Hamlet. I will not be auditioning.

Today's big treat was the geeksoc quiz, which I've been looking forward to ever since coming second by half a point this time last year. It was an experience of mixed delights. We'd been thrown out of our corner of the pub by a double-booking, leaving us cramped up. Our team got a second "Summon James to Tell You The Answer" card precisely because only two of us had chairs - Calypso spent much of the quiz standing, while the rest crouched on the floor. This made discussion quite hard, and the quiz was less fun accordingly. Half-way through, the other party brought in their DJ making it impossible to hear anything, and also barring any sort of involvement unless you knew exactly what the answer was.

The quiz itself was probably fine, but for me a pub quiz is not a matter of merely getting answers right - it's about the conversation the questions produce - and this element was spoilt. The noise prevented the quizmasters from telling us who the other teams were or how they were doing - thus removing the element of competition, and I think at the end most people were ambivalent to having won or lost. A shame.

Obviously, being a geeky one, it was a mixed bag - obscure questions about things which were obscure in the first place. I know more about Death Note than the average human being, but the questions were aimed at the super-average nerd. I was a useless team member for the Anime, Video Games and RPG rounds, and only sparingly helpful in Film and Sci Fi and Fantasy. Which was no different to last year, but the uncomfortable backdrop as described above made it more pronounced. Still, I acquitted myself well - by which I mean there were no questions I should have known but didn't.

Still, I made a few friends. I glomped someone into the team because of his "Frak You" tee - a soft spoken American here for a year - but it soon turned out he was a huge Doctor Who fan (Troughton - Donna - Cybermen, but only the Mondas ones), so we had a bit of a blissful natter. The rest of the team was a future nurse and a former mathematician. A friendly Fresher, Alzarius, who I met playing "Which Character from Sci Fi am I?" - he was a particular extra from Return of the Jedi. Neat, but he struck me as a little arrogant - which is a trait I tend to like when not being pointed at me. There's a particular blend of perky that reminds me of one of Friend 1's exes. He rubbed me up the wrong way very badly the last time we met - rumours that this was merely cos he killed Adric in the Doctor Who Game have been exaggerated. He was also a shallow attention-seeker, and every time I meet someone of his Type now I instantly see through them and become antagonistic.

This manifested itself when Alzarius started making origami boxes, and handed one over to me, evidently very proud of himself. Which I shouldn't have resented, because it's something I do all the time - but I like to think I do it not to show off, but to give my friends genuinely cool gifts because I adore them and they're marvellous. We were smack bang in the middle of the Anime round, to which I couldn't contribute a jot. So I unfolded his box, refolded it as the Starship Enterprise and handed it straight back. Felt a bit like using the Force for evil (anger leads to suffering...), but it was still fun and as a party trick, got me noticed by everyone - I've promised to demonstrate proper origami to a mathematician and old friend at the next geek meet.

This was also how I met Navi, another Fresher. I wonder if I seem as old to him as he seemed young to me. A Trekkie whose ex-girlfriend did origami - make of that tidbit what you will. Everyone kept getting his name wrong, because the biro had died before he could do the last letter of his name on his name label, but it turned out he was auditioning for the same band I am so we talked music a bit. All the while, the new piece of paper in my hand had turned into the Liberator. At last! I know this means nothing to you, but the Enterprise only turns into a ship because it is Box Pleated, and I suddenly realised that this was the breakthrough I had sought. There are sci-fi ships all over the origami-web, but my two are sorely ignored - I've designed an origami TARDIS and Dalek to fill the gap, but now I feel a real sense of achievement. Especially because Tydar, Prince of Cats, guessed which show and ship it was with only the smallest of clues. He is my new best everything.

It struck me again that we were the irritatingly cliquey people from last year - I felt a lot more at home in the soc with there being little people beneath me. Not being a roleplayer, video gamer or anime fan, Geeksoc has me at a disadvantage much of the time. Everyone else went on to Pub II - the combination of temperature + loud music + cramped made me unbearable on the train home. I still have a bit of a headache this morning.

Home was cosy. I've rearranged the room again - I like it less now, but the desk had to go somewhere. It sort of works, and probably uses space better, but I do lament the loss of my photo shrine. A letter had come for me from Australia - can you remember me plugging Swap-Bot a while back? I'd posted off all my swaps a few days earlier. The theme was Mascarade Masks - she's sent a close up of a small face-mask, pink and studded and marvellous. I don't know why it seems familiar. She'd also stuffed the envelope with pretty papers and art bits. Woo hoo!

Oh, and Friend 4 had been to see John Simm in a play. She ended up sitting two seats away from David Tennant and Georgia Moffat, two rows behind Catherine Tate and within spitting distance of Tim MckInnery. Emoticons are not something I like to do on my erudite blog, but some times words are just insufficient:

0_o

When I woke up attempting to play "Where the Wild Roses Grow" on the piano, I knew I was in trouble. The piano craving had suddenly become too much. Today's task? Talk my way into a church to find one!

I went for a long walk, armed with my map. First stop: cemetery near the Tube station. Very beautiful, as was the church itself - an arch dividing two chapels. But it wasn't open. Next stop, Noel Road anglicans. Huge huge building, but also shut. I broke for lunch at this point, then set off with a bag of origami paper and a secondary objective of finding the Central Library and dedicating myself to happy folding. I headed for Acton High Street, but by a detour route. I went through the backstreets of suburbia, the winding dark alleys of white picket fences. One of the most interesting things en route to Church Three was a van marked with an Australian flag and the words "Thomas the Spank Engine". No, I don't know either. When I arrived, I ran around this small block for a few minutes looking for any building of religious character, but there was nothing there at all. Onwards!

Church Four was only questionably a "church". It was, in truth, Acton Spiritual Center. It was set back from the road, and I walked down a passage to find a closed in car park with a normal Acton house set in the middle. It looked open, but they didn't look the sort for pianos. The whole thing reeked of aromatherapy and crystal chakras. They have a different clairvoyant come in every Wednesday for "Medium Evenings" and we are totally going. Next stop: St Marys, Church Five - in Central Acton and totally closed. Then I walked out towards the edge of town to Church Six, some Methodists - big, limestoney, imposing and closed. I lost a bit of faith in religion at that point. If I'd needed some spiritual guidance, I'd have been sorely disappointed.

I gave up on the piano, and kept walking out of town. I found Acton Fire Station, a paper shop, and not much else. The library was not where my map said it would be, and after a long while I turned to walk back. May I add that a scarf is a bit like the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy towel - is something you shouldn't go without. Keeps you warm, unless you put ice in it, when it can keep you cold. Good for reaching things a long way away, tying things/people to and dangling them, hitting people, coping with wounds, entering religious buildings - and making head-scarves with when getting unexpectedly caught out in the sun.

I also checked out the Emmaus building. I think they're connected to the Emmaus Cambridge project. They have a working village for former homeless people, which sells back donated goods to people of low incomes. It seems to be a soup kitchen, with showers, for the local homeless. Once I have my timetable, and have spent a week or so working out how things be, I might volunteer. Homelessness is an issue that bothers me a lot, and I can wash dishes for a good cause.

What fail! But I had enjoyed the walk, and it's nice to go one block off the beaten track. Its a strange, nasty London thing that you get so into your routines that you never see what's a few streets away. I decided to head back to the library we had found. And on the way, I passed Church Seven - the Baptists. I don't know what it was that creeped me out about this denomination in particular, maybe my fire to be cheeky had dimmed. But I looked anyway, and it turned out the big dark alley to their Youth Centre was open. I met three American women coming out, to whom I explained my situation.

Have you seen Borat? One of the jokes is how - LOL - anti-Semitic he is. The most brilliant damning of racism I have ever seen comes as he realises his landlord and landlady are Jewish. He's hiding behind the bed in his cosy room, and intercut with his terror Mrs Jewish Landlady is coming up the stairs with a plate of cookies and milk. The whole thing is choreographed to horror movie music. The pointlessness of racism is heightened by how genuinely adorable the couple are.

I was reminded by this as they led me downstairs, chattering politely, to a beautiful room of bean-bags, coloured rugs, and a piano - like wood to a drowning man. As there They asked if they could stay and listen.was really nothing wrong, they were kind and marvellous, and yet I still felt a sense of ominous dread bourne entirely of my own paranoia.I said yes - I meant no, but I was being very cheeky. And soon two of them were happily asleep, and the third colouring in. I was in heaven - I really did feel like I had been missing something. I must have been there for about an hour, playing everything I could remember and some random improv to cover the gaps when I couldn't think of anything. Oh, bliss bliss and bliss.

We got chatting afterwards. They had come from Georgia for a week to the church on a sort of outreach-exchange thingie, working with the youth. They'd been into Central London one day and seen the obvious sights - Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster. They commented on the same thing I mentioned a few days back - London's multiculturalism - which evidently was totally unlike anything they had experienced back home. They had just visited and enjoyed an Afghan restaurant. I was also very impressed that they had gone on interfaith trips to see a Hindu Temple and a Mosque - hurrah for the death of religious bigotry! The hard sell, when it came, was actually rather gentle and I didn't object to it - on some level, I was using them so it didn't hurt to be used straight back. I am so happy for people with religion, so very happy. We swapped Facebooks, and I offered to play piano anytime the church needed someone. I don't expect them to take me up on it, but the offer was a totally sincere one. I feel I owe somebody something.

So I left the church with a sense of peace and contentment, although not for the reasons one would expect. I picked up my phone to call Calypso, just as she rang me. She was at the Fresher's Fair, Welfaring the LGBT desk, and had a lot of - crackle crackle - to carry away, so could I bring up the suitcase? This I did, arriving just in time before she was thrown out. Crackle Crackle turned out to be some four boxes of heavy leaflets. We struggled with them to the BFI, very close, for a slump. She'd had a fine day, if a tiring one. She also had a fantastic booklet about why universities need Officers for Disabled, Female, LGBT or minority students. Here are some of the facts I found particularly shocking and/or intriguing:

• Women own less than 1% of the world's property .
• A planeload of women die every week from unsafe abortions.
• At the current rate it will be 200 years before there is gender equality in our parliament.
• There are only 15 Black MPs - but if numbers reflected the proportion of Black British citizens, there should be 55.
• Black students are regularly awarded lower marks and are less likely to receive first class degrees unless strict anonymous marking is in place.
• African-Carribbean boys are 3 times more likely to be excluded permanently from school than white children for similar misdemeanours.
• In 1994, China introduced a law which enforces sterilisation of disabled people and compulsory abortion of disabled fetuses.
• Disabled people are ten times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse.
• Disabled people are denied adequate sex education due to the topic being taboo.
• 1 in 4 lesbians have suffered homophobic violence - as have 48% of LGB people under 18. 90% have experienced verbal bullying. 1 in 5 have attempted suicide.
• Only 6% of British schools have a homophobic bullying policy.
• It wasn't until 1992 that the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from it's list of mental disorders. Until May 2007 it was legal to refuse foods or services to an LGB person. Trans people still have no protection from discrimination.

That's a selection of 101 points, all equally nasty, but those really stood out. I did disagree with one point, however - gay and bisexual men cannot donate blood. That's not discrimination so much as common sense. You're not allowed to give blood if you've had a transfusion since 1980, due to a bad batch; you're also not allowed to if you've been on holiday anywhere strange for the last year and, I think, if you've had sex at all in the last six weeks. I have no access to the internet, so I can't check these facts as I would like to, but certainly their rules are very strict - and so they should be. I know it re-enforces negative stereotypes about AIDS and what-such, and is probably very over-zealous - yet if there is even a risk I think the life of the patient should be prioritised over the feelings of donors.

I was also cheered to discover that Kings now have an Interfaith soc, seeking to put all the various religious societies on speaking terms.

We then went to the Maughan for internet. London Fashion Week is going on at Somerset House, and it's very funny to watch all the socialistas toppling around there in their ludicrous heels and noticeable fashionable-ness. The Maughan remains big and horrible, and we worried a little about being shut in. We got a takeaway at home and watched half of Muriel's Wedding, scuppered by the DVD breaking an hour in. Calypso's web dongle now works - ominously, the port she has to connect to is port 666 and is marked DOOM. But it works, so we have access now! And I made the origami eagle, although it started looking so much like a seagull that I changed the design a bit. I propped it up on one of my DW spaceship stands, and it is now happily flying in our lounge.

Hello dear readers! If you're just joining us, I've uploaded about six days worth of blog. It'll be a while till you get more, so ration them if you're desperate!

Monday

Rather a glum morning. Greek was interminable for a second time. I was determined to behave this year, which is why I've spent the summer brushing up on my Greek already. Alas, we're now crawling through a bad textbook at the speed of a striking Myrka. This is the problem with doing the work pre-lecture - you've probably already covered everything in the lecture itself. At least skipping homework keeps you on your toes in class!

So sitting there for an hour made me rather stressed and fractious, and I came out to discover I'd failed to get into either of the two music groups I'd auditioned for. I'm not exactly disappointed, because that would imply I expected to get into either. I'm obviously not one of the top 15 singers in the university, nor the best jazz pianist. Instead, I might define myself as irritated. Nothing should be a competition, really - music especially not. Passing an exam means nothing more than you know how to pass an exam - it's a talent like everything else. I've never taken a music audition in my life, precicely because I don't believe in them. I wish I was Tim Roth. He refuses to do auditions because he is bad at them, and QT only talked him into doing a read through for Reservoir Dogs after the pair had spent the entire day in the pub and had gone home with a crate. Unfortunatly, he's Tim Roth and he knows people will cast him anyway on the grounds of his previous work. Can I play? Sort of. But I bring with me no better qualifications than I enjoy performing as part as a group. Don't let them tell you at uni you can try something new - I've been a choirgirl all my life and have been rejected from a rock-pop club because I can stay in tune, but can't sing (there is a distinction. Calypso can sing but not stay in tune). I presume the Jazz band didn't want me because I'm incompetant at playing under pressure, in front of other people and in time. Which is triply frustrating, as all these things are things that must be practiced. I can't learn to be a great performer unless I'm given a chance to perform. In short, all the reasons I wanted to try something new are the same reasons I can't.

Maybe bitter would be the best way of describing it, because I can never bring anything more concrete than my passion to music when compared to anyone who truly knows what they're doing. It is one area where my lack of ambition is going to always trip me up. Take it this way: I'm better at origami than most people you know, but compared to origami masters I have a long long way to go. Yet I'm content where I am and have no desire to be much better. I only desire to be good as far as it gives me enjoyment to do so. And the same goes for Latin, and film studies
and for music too. When it ceases to be fun, it ceases to have any point. Grades, names and standards in the eyes of the world mean nothing. Unfortunately, music is an area which seems to be competitive even in the amateur world. Which is a shame, because all I really want is a group of people to play music with - even a bunch of incompetants would do me fine. Kings does have one free-for-all choir, but it clashes with the film department's Film Noir series on a Monday evening, leaving me with an unpleasant choice, and this beyond anything else has made me irritable. I don't want to give up either one of those for the other.

Which brings us back to Tim Roth, and his movie Legend of 1900. It's like porn for pianists - a paper thin plot which exists only to string together extended scenes of thrilling keyboard antics. Friend 4 suggested I watch it pre-audition as inspiration - which turned out to be pretty good advice, although probably not how she meant it. I'm fairly sure the idea was I'd go and play that piano so hard the strings would get red hot enough to light a cigarette from. Not, in fact, what happened. But what would 1900 say? "Fuck jazz". Damn straight.

So I'm gonna start my own band, featuring everyone who wants to join, and we will make noise.

I've been clamouring to catch up on my movie watching. Can you believe I've gone my whole life without seeing a Carry On movie? Carry on Up the Khyber has just rectified that, and my isn't it marvellous! I particularly enjoyed the "English" dinner at the end, and the poor Governor being set upon by all of the wives. Also, crush on Roy Castle like you wouldn't believe. I'm just a sucker for men in imperial red.

I've also watched my first Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times. My overall reaction is a bit of "meh". In terms of the physical stunts, Chaplin is obviously a marvellous comedian, but I didn't find myself laughing out loud more than once or twice. Still, I liked the iconic moment he is dragged into the belly of the machine, and I keep thinking of the shot of the sheep which opens the film every time I go onto the tube. I'm also intrigued by the use of sound - because but for a few moments, this is still a silent movie. Was that a stylistic choice by the silent comedian, or was the film in production as sound was invented and they thought they better add some token bits to pull audiences in. Certainly you can tell this could only have been the early years of sound. In particular, the scene where the new invention is presented to the Boss not by the salesmen, but by a record player they have brought with them. This indicates to me that they were not yet confident in matching sound and picture, so this was the easiest way to do a sustained dialogue scene. But do correct me, that's only a theory. I think it's another case of the thing that started the Thing being superseded by the things that copied it. Modern comedies owe a lot to Chaplin's pratfalls, but they also do visual gags, wordplay, jokes crude and clever e.t.c.

Last night we did a double bill, starting with Tideland. I love that film. It's still disturbing on a second watch, but also still beautiful and marvellous - and I like it enough for it to get on my Official Favourite Films list. Which is nice, because I'm getting increasingly apprehensive for Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. I should probably have more faith in my favourite directors. Film two was But I'm a Cheerleader, a mildly subversive teen flick about a girl sent to a de-Gay camp because her parents think she is a lesbian. Of course, this is the worst thing they could possibly do (think the sex addicts class in Blades of Glory), and the huge comedic possibilities in the situation are happily exploited. Our heroes were dressed in blue or pink, and made to chop wood or hoover carpets to persuade them back to "normality". There was something very queasy in the design and style, though the underlying plot is nothing you won't recognise. It was slightly spoilt for me by the knowledge that they actually do this to people - it seemed quite trivialised - and my overall reaction was to become quite depressed. I do tend to have problems with parody, however - like Galaxy Quest's Thermians, I tend to take most films at face value. I got genuinely worried for the characters during Carry On up the Khyber too. I know that's not the point, but I can't help but care. Also, very puzzled by presence of Julie Delpy as a random extra in a club. The film was made in 1999. Was this before she got famous, or was this a deliberate favour for a friend or something?

PS - I'm listening to Space One, as recommended by Tydar, Prince of Cats at the Geek Soc Quiz. It is marvellous! A concept album of sci fi franchises, as explained by lowest denominator operatic space prog. One in particular is really exciting, and one I know I will be screaming the lyrics of when I'm actually allowed to know what they are, instead of blocking them out with Plato and Xenophon. Damn spoilers. Damn, damn spoilers.

So, today's quiz - look up the lyrics on this website

And try and work out what they all are. I definitely know 5 (Master of Darkness, Eye of Ra, Perfect Survivor, Intergalactic Space Crusaders and Starchild), and could have a very good guess at Sandrider and Songs of the Ocean. Not sure about Set Your Controls or High Moon. High Moon in particular is bothering me, because it is so detailed and I know it'd be obvious if I did know. So in the comments, tell me which you have guessed but only tell me what the song titles are. I'm still enjoying mulling on the identity of the ones I haven't got. If you need a clue, look at the wallpapers in the downloads section - although frustratingly, only the ones I know seem obvious. So, beat my total of 7/9. For bonus points, work out Spaced Out and Inseperable Enemies from the bonus disk, neither of which I recognise.