I've just got back from singing in a memorial service with Trevs Choir. The service was for a second-year lad - at Trevs - who was killed ten days ago in a car crash during a visit home. His brother, the driver, was also killed. You can only feel truly heartbroken for the parents and for the girlfriends, for the friends and for the housemates.

 

I didn't know him, for which I feel mildly guilty; there are only 180 students in a year in college, after all. But you still don't know everyone, and there's still no reason why you should know the precise person who will be picked out first. I guess what I really feel guilty for is the fact that I am so inherently thankful that it was not one of my close friends or housemates. Eleanor was sitting next to me in the service - Pippa was across on the other side of the pews with the sopranos. Max had come to play with Trevs Strings, and indeed to come to the service as he is the only one of us who knew Martin (- through doing the same degree). Paul was not there, as would I not have been had I not been singing. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose one of them. I don't want to imagine what it would be like if the last thing that I'd ever said to them was some tired, sarky comment about the washing-up fairies.

 

I hope the service was helpful to those who had come to mourn. Kate Bruce, Trevs' chaplain and associate priest of the church in which the service was held, spoke particularly well, I thought - just the right balance between seriousness and informality.

 

Whoever you were, Martin, wherever you are now, go well.

 

I'd like to refer the point of the entry to a mini-discussion that started in the comment section of Dickie's blog, completely tangential to the original point of the entry (sorry, Dickie! Not that I don't agree with the entry either, 'cos I do, but y'know...!)

 

Doing my Linear Algebra homework. Reducing a matrix.

 

(-1) - 2(2) = (-3). I think I thought that the 2 was a 1, a column over.

 

The amount of time and sanity that that slip-up has cost me is simply stunning...!

 

I went for a contact lens assessment and trial this afternoon, with a voucher that I got from the Freshers' Fair. I don't have to wear glasses enough to have really justified them before, but the thing about my eyesight is that it's so erratic - and it has been going downhill over the last year or two. And basically it'd be really nice to be able to dress up for an occasion or go out without worrying that my eyes will start to part company, or that someone will shove a screen in my face or something. So I spent two hours poking myself in the eyes - I don't seem to have a problem putting the things in, it's getting them out that's a little tricksy..

 

So I am currently sitting at my computer without wearing glasses! It feels very, very odd...!

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen - lend me your ears. I have a confession to make. For the past nineteen-and-three-quarters years of my life, I have, in fact, been living in a hole.

 

It's a very nice hole. It's warm, it's comfortable, it has all I need. I am let out of it on a daily basis to go for walks, go to the shops, attend lectures. When I decided that I wanted to do a degree away from home, special arrangements were made so that my hole could be moved from Birmingham to Durham and back with minimum fuss, and it is reassuring that everything has stayed intact during the process. Yes, I am quite satisfied with my arrangement!

 

Stuff gets posted into this hole at random. This is how I have acquired such a bizarre and mis-matched set of knowledge over the years - whoever was supplying me with my material had a love of misquoting Shakespeare, a fondness for choral music, and a heavy sprinkling of logical argument. They were keen for me to read prodigiously, worried that I should have a broad knowledge of political issues (with a distinct leftie stance, it has to be said), and adamant that I should understand the ethics of right and wrong, even if it was my choice which one to take. They travelled all over England, letting me out for numerous long walks in all sorts of weathers in the middle of nowhere and instilling in me an appreciation of beautiful places, especially in East Anglia - though their eventual choice of settlement has meant that I will always feel most at home in a city. They didn't feed me any make-up over the years, resulting in one or two, erm, interesting experiments since. They were definitely a Marmite lover, and salad formed an integral part of my diet, resulting in a oft-explained email address.

 

The thing is, though, quite a lot of stuff didn't reach me in my hole. Films, for instance, didn't really feature. TV did a bit, but of the more educational variety, and not a huge amount. Computing, yes - computer games, no. Whoever it was posting stuff in clearly hadn't heard of a Nintendo, didn't play a lot of sport, and had an abysmal knowledge of popular music. So when I venture out of my little hole nowadays, I am confronted by a society who doesn't understand a lot of my references, and I sure as hell don't get a lot of theirs. I believe the current tally of remarks to the effect of, "Lucy!! You must have heard/seen that/ know who they are!" is around 23,476? Give or take a few. The thing is, I generally haven't seen or heard that, I don't know who they are! I mean, sure, I've heard of Richard Hammond and everything, the nutcase driver who nearly killed himself, but was I really meant to know who he was on TV?! How was I meant to know that the black box sitting on Henry's desk was a PS2?! They don't have those in holes!

 

I'm going back to my hole now. It's nice and warm in there :-)

 

The last few days or so haven't been easy. This is mainly due to the fact that I have been constantly trying to ward off a cold which sprung itself on me, probably as a result of getting soaked walking to Langley Moor ten days ago - but as a result I've been tired, and my back's started playing up all of a sudden, and every time I've phoned home, it's felt like, I've got told that someone else has died (or has breast cancer, in one case). Add to this the fact that I am consistently not understanding one of my modules (Numerical Analysis, ironically enough), and the fact that I'm already having to think about houses for next year and I'm not 100% sure what I want to do, and the fact that there's other stuff going on at home that I won't talk about on here... it's just all these little stresses building one on top of another. And inevitably this was going to lead, sooner or later, to an internal wail of "I want to go hoooome!"

 

So as I was sat in my room last night, hot chocolate in one hand and Marmite on toast in the other, the door sign set to 'Having some time to myself', I was really shocked to discover how much of the stuff in my room would be completely unfamiliar to the me of two years ago. This laptop was an 18th birthday present. That wouldn't be there. I got a multitude of stuff on coming to university - my bathrobe, my academic gown, even my rucksack. I didn't have Irma until what, 15 months ago?

 

It's horrible feeling like an imposter in your own room. The pillowcase and the duvet cover were still definitely mine, but the pillows and the duvet themselves were of the wrong texture, too airy and light, and those certainly weren't my pyjamas. Most of the clothes were wrong, though at least my stripy blue tops were still hanging over the drying rack. There was a photo of Rachel and Helena, aged 16 (which I know for a fact has adorned my desk at uni throughout), but what happened to the 12-yr-old girl that I used to live with? And at least it was still my mobile phone; that ent going anywhere, not until they formally pronounce it dead from natural causes. (Though where did the Mp3 player come from and what happened to the cheap blue CD walkman that I had? Or the silver one before that, the one that I won from I-can't-remember-where in Y6?) Who were the people that I could hear moving around in the house downstairs? There are so many people who I know now who I didn't know two years ago - and so many people, I fear, who I have known throughout my childhood and lost touch with. It was Harry's birthday yesterday, Harry being a friend of mine from primary school. I knew that even before Facebook told me because I have a head for dates, but somehow something stopped me from writing on his wall and wishing him a good 'un. He's twenty now. I'll be twenty soon. The last time we spoke, we were both eleven. That's only a year after I started wearing glasses.

 

But the thick, pinky-red blanket sitting on top of the wardrobe was definitely mine. That comes from Mum's childhood, a Christmas present from when that was the only way that they could afford to buy the blanket, and it has been well-used throughout the winters ever since. The hairbrush was definitely mine, although it should really have had the peeled nail-varnish decoration on the back that the last one had (as a way to distinguish it from Rachel's). The clarinet was definitely mine, and the elephant coaster, and the little beige rucksack that I bought just before the Italy trip in Y10. And the photos were definitely mine - the one of me as a toddler and Dad in Devon, the one of me and Rachel in the bicycle trailer in America, the even older ones of Granny holding me as a baby. It is these objects, these images, that I was (metaphorically) clinging on to last night, and it is these things that I would have to grab were the house to go up in flames. Memories are very powerful, and even the bad ones can be comforting when you feel adrift in the world.

 

 

I'd be intrigued as to the exact study that was carried out - who did the study, who the patients were, what condition they were in, and what counts as a recovery. Keeping active is crucial, yes, but to what degree and at what stage of proceedings? It is articles like this that frustrate me a lot, because people may be using them - without the full information - as a valid subsitute for medical advice. And as I sit here in pain myself, I am highly sceptical of the implied conclusions drawn from this article - that paracetamol and 'keeping active' are a solve-all miracle cure for the worlds' spinal problems, particularly in place of treatment such as physiotherapy or chiropractic.

 

I must off, to 'keep active' for 10 minutes before my next run of lectures..

 

 

(Just to clarify, when I say 'article' I am referring to the BBC's news article, not the orginal medical report!)

 

Row-reduction of matrices was the one topic in Geometry last year that I really couldn't do and didn't learn for the exam - you can afford to have a single topic like that because you get a (limited) choice of questions, and if even that one topic comes up then provided you know the rest, you can skip over it. So yes, my ignorance was with row-reduction of matrices, and not being a big topic, it didn't even come up in the end. But now all of a sudden, I need to know how to do it for both my Linear Algebra and my Codes modules, and I can't. The Codes homework should be really easy, and I mean really easy, but I don't have the time/ energy to do it right now because there is a currently insurmountable step of getting my matrix into row reduced echelon form, and it's 11:45pm, and I'm tired, and have gone from a singing high to a maths high to a 'I need to go to bed but I must keep working, must keep working..' high. So I might stop rambling and go to bed. And work this out in the morning...

 

Update: Caroline (my Maths friend from Grey) came round, and I think I kinda get it now. Well, that's a lie - I sort of get how to do it, I don't get why it works. So practice and a visit to the lecturer is still needed. But in the clear of the day, I discovered that for homework purposes, three simple lines in Maple will suffice:

 

 

 

Some of you may or may not have seen the play 'Oleanna', by Mamet, about a girl in a university who accuses her lecturer of sexual harassment. The lecturer, finding action taken against him, struggles as his life spirals downhill rapidly. In the performance of it that I saw last year, it is fairly clear who you sympathise with (- the lecturer), although it is by no means a black-and-white situation.

 

Anyway, there's a not dissimilar situation going on in college at the minute. I'm not directly involved but a trusted friend is, and it's all getting really, really unpleasant. The last words shall go to the infallable xkcd:

 

"Dear God,"

"YES, MY CHILD?"

"I would like to file a bug report."