Happiness is a ceilidh :-)

 

My hip might not agree tomorrow having been dropped/dragged on the floor during the basket dance. Me, that is, not just the hip.

 

The overlap between people at the ceilidh and student Quakers/members of Allotment Soc/Durham University Hill Walkers was quite awesome!

 

I sent off for more information about the job. It looks good hard work, but quite interesting work nonetheless. I have found that I can apply for positions in Nottingham or Durham or Bath, and that's all good as they provide accommodation. But - they don't need many people, and they only need them for a maximum of three weeks, late July to early August, paying around £250 a week. So the next question is this: do I apply for two/three weeks' work there, potentially earning £750, or do I hold out in the hope of getting two months' (or at least six weeks') work back home? Do I try the Sealife Centre and places like that again on the basis that I can offer my services (so to speak) for the entire school holiday and will therefore be more employable than last time? Of course if the first place turns me down then it doesn't matter anyway, but by applying I am effectively committing my interest.

 

Decisions, decisions.

 

I started filling out the form anyway. The question 'Are you eligible to work in the UK?' always amuses me. Who would submit an application with 'No'?!

 

I spent the first of my two hour-long timetable gaps today in the Chem Café with Rob and Michael, as I often do. I was trying to get some work done (on the basis that I'd rather be doing tedious algebraic manipulations then and have some proper time off tomorrow, than still be having the tedious algebraic manipulations to do tomorrow and not be able to take time off), and the others were kinda working and kinda talking/ eating. That's the nice thing about Chem Café, that it really does work as a working and a relaxing environment all in one.

 

Anyway, these two are quite... odd. Odd in a mathematician-type way, but also pretty eccentric in terms of their humour and in terms of the way they relate to people. They are both very funny - Rob has even done comedy shows, and he's just one of those people who everyone's in love with. And so when you're greeted with "Oh no, it's ugly Lucy! Ugly, stupid Lucy! Poor, ugly, stupid Lucy!", you take it with a large pinch of salt, secure in the knowledge that he has a twinkle in his eye, is about to grovel for notes, and that every one of his friends gets greeted like that. Sure, if you didn't know him you'd probably be offended - but then again, maybe you wouldn't, because part of the way that his humour works is that you know that he expects you to give as good as you get. So being told by him and Michael that I am stupid and retardant and what have you completely washes over me 'cos I know that they wouldn't be constantly insulting me if they genuinely disliked me! I am good enough friends with Rob in particular, and have known him for long enough not to take real offence at anything that he says.

 

In the way that topics come up, then, it came up the other week that I believe in God - I think one of my friends from Quaker Meeting had come over to the table to say hello or something. Needless to say, that got added to the list of insults. Again, I generally take it in good part - hell, if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at, and I know from conversations in the past that Rob is actually a very interesting person to discuss religion with. I do not have all the answers, and I do not claim to have all the answers - I can see that from an outsider's perspective, Quakerism is a very difficult religion/denomination to grasp hold of, and I do not resent people wanting to discuss it and question it. Refusing to discuss or question one's own beliefs belies a very closed-minded outlook, and it would also be fair to say that the lack of a creed necessarily generates constant questioning, which forms the very essence of Quakerism.

 

What I do resent, though, is constantly, day-in, day-out, having my beliefs and values mown down and trampled on by Rob and Michael's insistence on playing twisted devil's advocate - and by 'twisted devil's advocate' I mean playing devil's advocate with a good dosing of unnecessarily offensive humour. Sure, they like a good argument. I have heard Rob argue diametrically opposed viewpoints on all sorts of issues just for the sake of having a good debate with people. Sure, for them being offensive about religion is no different to being offensive about abortion, or being offensive about somebody's height (- Rob is 6'6", so we bonded long ago in declaring everyone around us a short-arse). But to be constantly be told that my beliefs are WRONG, that my values are STUPID and that I'm completely IRRATIONAL... I do mind that. In a moment of impatience at that end of the hour, I accused them of being as bad as the CU. That shut them up for all of twenty seconds, which is quite an achievement.

 

I don't know. Seven hours working without a proper break makes you bloody tired. Maybe I'm taking it too seriously? Just one day without insults would be nice, and I can't help feeling that they sometimes take it too far.

 

 

On a completely different note, an advert went up on the college website today advertising a summer job in Durham. It's not badly paid at all and includes accommodation and food, in addition to which I will still have this house. While not thrillingly exciting, I can think of much worse things to be doing for the summer. Potentially I could have friends up here to visit at weekends who can't come in term-time, and Durham is gorgeous in the summer. More to the point, job-hunting back home didn't exactly go well last summer and I decided a while ago that I do not intend to go on family holiday this year. But I would miss out on two or three months with my family, and it would still feel pretty isolated for most of the time. Advice, please?

 

      

 

        

Anyone would think I did a Maths degree...

 

I am sitting at my computer somewhat tipsy, having opened my bottle of Coke and had a shmidge of the Kahlua (bought on the justification that everyone else in the house had their own alcohol, it might be nice if I could join in. And Kahlua is yummy :-) ). I'm not so drunk that I'm going to do anything stupid, I don't think, but I'm distinctly light-headed and trying to copy up some Complex Analysis notes from a lecture that I missed, and it is an odd experience. Even though I rationally know that they're not difficult arguments to follow, my brain in its addled state just can't make the connections between one line and the next. Maths by the time you get to university level is all about thought processes - and I'm having real difficulty in following any line of thought through right now, forget theorems about holomorphic functions in the complex plane. A 'go to lectures drunk' day would be interesting to say the least.

 

You would not believe how long this entry has taken to type. I apologise now for spelling/grammar/rambling errors...

 

After this promising weather forecast:

  

, I'm on snow lookout!

  

8.40am: heavy rain

10.05am: freezing heavy rain (although that may have been due in part to coming out of a heated lecture theatre)

10:48am: The rain is lighter and has white bits in it! Still sleet, really, but there's potential... Still don't want to put soggy jeans on again.

10:58am: Thick white fluffy sleet! And a car just drove past with a very generous helping of icing sugar on top, presumably from one of the villages. No, I'm not just sitting at my desk staring out of the window. What makes you think that?

11:04am: Snow! Snow! Snow!

12:21pm: Back to rain. But the cars, the cars! And I can see snow on the hills across from my window (in the middle-to-far distance). Stupid living-in-a-city-with-a-microclimate!

 

pm: Rains heavily all afternoon. Roads flooded on the way down to the Science Site. Stupid car drivers going too fast and soaking (admittedly still soggy) jeans. Rains going up to college. Rains coming back down from college.

 

But at 9:35pm: Choral Soc. ends. RAIN HAS STOPPED! I have a lift home, ironically.

9:55pm: Sky is clouded to the south but almost clear! Bright moon, pretty stars. Reckon this is where the -4°C comes in. And on the hills to the south-west of Langley Moor, there is what looks like a thick sheet of perfect snow :-)

   

   

 

How cool?!

 

I'm trying to decide what to cook for supper. Don't get me wrong, soya mince and vegetables and rice is yummy and easy and everything, but there are only so many times in a week you can stomach eating *exactly* the same thing for lunch and supper. And supper the day after. And supper two days after that.

 

I found this article very interesting. It's a long one, but I'd stick it out. While I don't agree with absolutely everything that's said (particularly the bit by Simon Wessely - a very interesting discussion in itself, but one which I will not hold here for coherence purposes), it makes a lot of very valid points.

 

I am as guilty as the next person at sometimes buying things which I don't strictly need. I'm trying to think of my most recent purchases... OK, so I've been relatively good of late. But if I needed to pull the belt in financially, I fairly easily could. I am still at the point of operating a one-in, one-out policy on clothes because my drawers have reached capacity and compared to what my mother took with her to university in the 1970s, I still have a stupid amount of stuff with me up here.

 

Without wanting to sound middle-aged, the whole perception of 'need' has changed. It used to be that you needed a coat to keep you warm and dry. Nowadays, people 'need' a winter waterproof coat, and a smart winter coat (or two, because fashions go in and out), and a couple of jackets, and then a spring coat... and then a couple of umbrellas. And shoes to go with the different coats. And two different styles of shoulder bag... and so it goes on. Multiply that by everything that you wear, everything that you use (not to mention everything that you don't really use, but you might do, you never know, and it was half price), and you can see the consumerist spiral that our society's been drawn into. Mum and I were looking for darning wool in the holidays, in order to mend holes in our gloves; it was remarkably difficult because it would seem that people don't mend holes in clothes anymore - they just throw them away and buy new ones.

 

The statistic at the top of that article - that the average home has 4.7 TV sets - really shocked me. I will admit that our family doesn't watch a huge amount of television, and I will admit that there are nights when Rachel and I want to watch a documentary that clashes with a Liverpool football match and all hell breaks loose. But even in a large household (four kids, say), is it really doing anyone any favours to give each person their own television? Even if you ignore the direct social, health, and environmental implications of that, what message is it giving to someone that if something is a little inconvenient then a solution must immediately be bought? What message is it giving to someone that if something is a little inconvenient then a solution can be bought? The real world as most people know it simply doesn't work like that.

 

I think that's why I get frustrated with a lot of the wealthy students up here. It's not that they're wealthy per se - hell, they can't help what their parents earn and they/ their parents have probably worked very hard for it. But I get frustrated with their lack of perception about the value of money. I get frustrated with the fact that a lot of them spend it like water because there'll still be plenty tomorrow. I get frustrated with the attitude that to be happy and popular and acceptable, you have to buy the latest clothes, and you have to go out for lunch every other day, and you have to spend £20 a night or more just on getting drunk. I think what it really boils down to is that I get really frustrated by the perception that if you have money to spend, you must spend it. That doesn't just apply to the wealthy.

 

There's a recession coming to this country. And while I will be moaning about the cost of train tickets along with the rest of 'em, I reckon it's the wake-up call that a lot of people need.

 

Live simply, so that others may simply live.

 

Dad's friend who plays the viola came round last night, and we had an hour playing K498, Mozart's Kegelstatt trio for clarinet/violin, viola/'cello and piano as has become our custom in the last week or so of my holidays. It's still very beautiful, and I still stumble on those damn semiquaver runs at the end of the third movement; but what really occured to me as we were playing last night is that it's a very good musical experience for me. Not the playing chamber music per se (although that does increase your sense of ensemble, which is never a bad thing) - it's the fact that the clarinet has the descant line, the top part.

 

I have sung alto in choirs since the age of about ten, due both to the natural range of my voice and to the fact that I can sight-read ('What do you call a soprano who can sight-read? An alto!' So, so true! *ahem*). The clarinet lends itself well to taking the alto parts in orchestral music, and instinctively now it's the line of music that my ear picks out when listening to something new. A female cellist who I was talking to in Choral Soc. says that she does the same with bass lines.

 

It's not just the range of the notes. Each part - descant, alto, tenor, bass - has its own musical characteristics, its own function within the music that binds it together. In that sense, string quartet writing is a lot like writing for an SATB choir, because although strings and voices have their own musical characteristics again, it's the same principle of interplay between the four lines. You can get some gorgeous alto lines, and you can also get some hideously boring ones - but by definition of being in the alto range, the part will always fit beneath the sopranos' one (and above the tenor and bass), so will be written to reflect that. It is much easier to develop ensemble and harmony skills as an alto than it is as a soprano because to place it well, you have to listen much more closely to what's going on around you - that is why it is much easier for beginners to sing soprano, and that is why sopranos have a slight reputation in choirs for getting so carried away with themselves that they don't realise they're singing out of time/ out of tune.

 

Having said that, carrying the top line has its own set of demands, and they are demands that I am not used to having to meet! So it's good practice!

 

...I am going to spend less time on the internet...

 

To be fair, though, I didn't even turn my computer on until just before lunch today, and I spent the morning doing useful things like buying bread and paper and darning wool. And I have been doing vaguely useful things since - namely going through xkcd on 'random' and copying into Publisher all the ones I want to print out and put on my bedroom wall in Durham (- I don't have a printer up North). And I did go out to get my hair cut/ thinned in the middle...

 

Must try harder.

 

(While we're on the subject of xkcd, though, I've found that part of the problem of choosing which ones to print out is that on some of them, I find the mouse-over text just as funny, if not more so, than the cartoon itself - http://xkcd.com/123/, for instance!)

 

There are times when I miss school. There are times when I most definitely don't.

 

Every letter that my siblings have brought home recently has contained reference to the fact that this is our school's 'Jubilee Year' - 125 years since opening, 50 years since its move out of the centre of town, 20 years of girls in the sixth form and 10 years of taking girls from the age of 11. Every school trip or event is now being preceded by 'Jubilee', and the school scarves that they are still trying to persuade socially-suicidal kids to buy are now embellished with a 'discreet Jubilee logo'. It sounds as though Wheeldon's laying it on a bit thick - Mr Sharp apparently welcomed Rachel's class to their first 'Jubilee Critical Thinking lesson'. I can just see Middleton's face now.

 

(Seriously, though, 10 years since they started admitting girls?! Makes you feel old!)

 

 - Learn LaTeX. I will need to do so at some point, so better sooner than later, probably..

 - Learn how to make clothes (or begin learning how to make clothes anyway. Learning how to use a sewing machine might be a good first step. What use are your solder-balls now, eh?)

 - Lose weight. Get fit. Yada-yada.

 - Make more effort to do at least some of my homeworks in lecture breaks at the Science Site.

 - Do better socially. And not just from a boyfriend-wanting point-of-view.

 - Spend less time on t'internet.

 

 

...but let's forget about Thing 6 for a bit.

 

"clarinet repair custard factory" is one of the more bizarre things that I have typed into Google in my time. I will leave you to work out where the breaks are meant to come.

 

 

We got back from Southwold yesterday. The damage wrought by the November storms and flooding was simultaneously fascinating, terrifying, and for those of us who know and love the area, heartbreaking. But it's still my absolute favourite place in the world :-). I knew there was a reason I applied to UEA. So New Year was good, albeit quiet. Forget 'Things I Want To Do In 2008', sometime before I turn fifty I would really like to go to a New Year's party!