I was at the local train station today, having gone into town, and was just getting off the (delayed) train from New Street when I saw a train approaching from the other direction. It was definitely a local train - it was one of the new shiny 'London Midland' variety - and it slowed down as it pulled in, but instead of stopping to pick up the substantial number of passengers that were waiting on the platform, it just sailed straight past, presumably to make up time. The standard delay on those trains since 'London Midland' took over 'Central Trains' is seven minutes - seven minutes on a ten-minute-ly service, which is actually quite a lot if you're expecting the train to run on time and you have a connection to make. Twice in the past few days, I have been on one of those trains and they have stopped at a station but the doors have simply refused to open, carrying people on way past their stop. In our case, fortunately, we were let off a stop later, at a station roughly equidistant from our house and with time to walk and get the car from where it was parked; but that's not really the point!

 

What seems so bizarre to me is that those trains have always run completely smoothly before. While Travel West Midlands continue to notch-up late marks for anyone who needs to use the 18 to get anywhere, that train line's been good and reliable! How does a new management manage to comprehensively undo all the good of the people whose service they'd bought out to 'improve'?

 

And please, calling it 'London Midland'?!

 

Privitisation. Hmph.

 

 

In other news, never try and have a financial discussion with an English graduate. I was in the room as Mum and Rachel were going through who owed who what. First receipt in was for a Christmas present, so Rachel just called it "Item...". She got no further...

 

Mum: "Item! Item... now where does that come from? 'Item: two cherry lips'. Is that Henry IV part I or Henry IV part II? That's the problem with going to see all the Henrys in a row, they're all merging into one..." [her and Rachel went to Stratford just before Christmas, and saw Henry IV/I&II and Henry V all in one day. That's nine hours of Shakespeare.]

Rachel: "Are you sure? I'd've thought Twelfth Night. I'm sure I recognise it from somewhere and that's the one we've been through in detail in class."

 

Half an hour later, several Shakespeares of the shelf, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations no use, and Google brought in to arbitrate (on my suggestion - I felt we weren't getting very far), this excellent site gave us the answer. Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene V, Olivia:

          "O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give
       out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be

 

 

I've decided that the secret to enjoying Christmas is not expecting too much from it. When you're little, all the lights and the presents and the excitement are enough to get you through nicely, and it feels like the bestest day in the whole wide world! Then as you get older, slowly it isn't the bestest day in the whole wide world. It doesn't have to be a particularly bad day either, only because you feel that it ought to be a particularly good one, you inevitably feel let down. I can't remember a Christmas Day offhand where is was even frosty, let alone snowy - and as the years have progressed, the stress of shopping and the inevitable looming of homework/coursework has always put a slight damper on enthusiasm for the holiday season.

 

On the day itself, everything has to be perfect, you feel. You awake early with shining eyes and bushy tail to discover magical little goodies in your stocking. You go downstairs, have breakfast together, and nobody wants to shower at the same time. You all get dressed up smartly (and it's the one day of the year, of course, when your hair does what you want it to, and you don't manage to get mascara all over yourself), go out to Meeting (where the silence is meaningful, and the readings thought-provoking)... then you come back home to a meal that has been preparing itself and is just ready, no stress, for 2pm. You eat just the right amount of sumptuous dinner - tender chicken, cranberry sauce, potatoes that are burned slightly without being overdone or dried out, sprouts that have had just the correct time. Then after your final glass of Schloer and a home-made mince pie, you have a few presents, go out for a walk in the frosty sun, return, open more presents (receiving exactly what you never realised you wanted)... and finally with carols on in the background, you settle down to all play a good game together and eat chocolate log. Maybe the TV schedule will have excelled itself this year, or everyone will settle down in front of 'The Tailor of Gloucester'.

 

That's my fairytale Christmas Day. Apart from the moderate impracticalities (I didn't notice anyone doing any washing-up, for instance), though, and the sheer unrealistic aspects of some of it (- there is a limited amount of enthusiasm that can be conjured up for some of the presents that we end up getting for Dad, but if he will buy for himself all of the books that he wants, and then wrap them up under the tree addressed to himself, then what can we do about it?!), the problem is that it rarely happens like that. And even when it does, realities must interact. My perfect Christmas Day does not match my brother's by quite a long shot.

 

So this year, I for one spent most of Christmas Eve and indeed today just like I would spend any other day in the Christmas holidays, two/four and a half weeks conveniently placed to break up the school/university year nicely if you don't consider yourself a Christian. OK, so we did most of the things yesterday that we would normally do on Christmas Day, but for me it was nothing special really - and for me it was much more enjoyable for it!

 

And rather belatedly, I guess.. Happy Christmas!

 

He actually is!

 

(and make sure you read the mouse-over text on this one as well)

 

Yesterday in double AMV, we were learning about diffeomorphisms. 'Diffeomorphism' is a lovely word, isn't it?! It made me think of a breed of dragon, only a reasonably small, quite benign breed, none of this fire-breathing nonsense. Then our lecturer went on to talk about 'local diffeomorphisms' and I had a vision of meeting one of these dragons in the corner shop, buying a pint of milk and his morning Guardian. I was quite entertained by this, although when my next-door neighbour asked me what I was grinning to myself about, I kept quiet. I think that he might have thought that I was a little weird if I'd told him...! Still, Helen appreciated it when I told her later, as would have my Mum! Humour is undervalued in Maths lectures.

 

 

It was the DICCU (Durham Inter-Collegiate Christian Union) carol service last night in the cathedral, the singing led by Choral Soc.. The cathedral was absolutely packed with students and it was so, so beautiful, and so uplifting being one of thousands singing carols together in that acoustic! We also had the 'personal relection' bit to contend with, however - "How I found Jesus" and "Why the rest of you are going to Hell" (in not so many words).

 

It's so difficult to know where to start with opinions like that. As one of my Quaker friends remarked at lunch on Sunday, if you genuinely believe that Jesus is the way, then the rest must follow and you must genuinely believe that you are helping people to convert them to your beliefs. I (and quite a few other choir members) sat there as quietly as I could - it was their service, after all, and in a Christian building to celebrate a Christian festival. Still, it's not so pleasant to be sat there are be told that your beliefs are WRONG, and it seems a particularly marked irony that the Christian Union up here only really represents the views of a particular group of Christians, to the point where others feel excluded for believing in Jesus in the wrong way.

 

 

It's icy cold. It's twenty-five to ten, and from where I sit in the first floor of the house, facing south, the sun is only just peeping over the rooves of the houses to the south-east. It is, however, still stunningly beautiful - and I know that this is becoming a bit of a mantra of mine, but Durham really really is! I was walking back from the others' house last night where I'd gone after the cathedral. My ears and my toes were numb, and I barely warmed up fast-walking up Crossgate Peth (- quite a hill!), but the sky was a dark navy swash of colour, and simply covered with bright stars! Somehow, I felt more at one with what I call God then than I had throughout the whole service in the cathedral.

 

 

Lectures call for the attending. Stash companies call for the harrassing. Presents call for the giving, and bedrooms call for the tidying and cleaning. On Friday, my Mummy calls for the collecting at Durham station and then on Saturday, Birmingham calls for the returning :-)

 

I've just finished cleaning the kitchen, as is my duty this week on the house rota. After a week/ few days when I've been very up and down emotionally (for a whole host of reasons, just don't ask), the Maths is still not quite finished for tomorrow, and all I've wanted to happen is for lectures to finish so I can go home, I've actually found the cleaning really satisfying and theraputic. I am trying not to say this too loudly, however. I don't *think* any of my housemates read this...

 

I am currently listening to Christmas choral music on the online Naxos Music Library as a way of encouraging myself through the multiple homeworks which are my sole entertainment for today (- it's an odd Wednesday, which means NO TIMETABLE! *ahem*). Traditional carols, I've decided, are more conducive to epsilon/Kronecker-delta manipulations than 'The Greatest Christmas Album Ever!!!', which alternately makes me want to dance around the room singing at the top of my voice with a manic grin on my face, find my earplugs, or feel thoroughly sorry for myself because I miss someone/ want to go home. Britten's 'Ceremony of Carols', however, is lovely and calm and beautiful, and makes me feel thoroughly cosy as I sit looking out of my window at the December sky and contemplating the ith component of curl(AxB).

 

Anyway, the album that I am currently listening to is entitled 'Christmas Songs From Europe', and it started with 'Adeste Fidelis' - that is, 'O Come All Ye Faithful', only in the original Latin. And it was really, really weird, because I, like most of the country I suspect (even if they don't realise it), am so familiar with the David Willcocks Carols for Choirs version that the alternative arrangement completely threw me. There were some weird harmonies and hell, it changed key three times, completely randomly in the middle of verses! Forget not starting in G major or having the famous descant!

 

 

On that note, the end of term approacheth, and as I start to care less and less about curl(AxB), the amount of concerts that are on my planned schedule is steadily increasing. There's one in the cathedral on Friday evening which I am really looking forward to (- yes, the one I wrote a note on Facebook about. 'Ceremony of Carols', cathedral choristors, with that building and that acoustic. It really doesn't get much better!), then I'm singing in the annual Trevs one on Saturday evening. Unfortunately this means that I can't go to Eleanor's choir's carols and mince pies evening as the two clash, but come come Monday evening I will be part of Choral Soc. who are leading the carols and doing a couple of our own things in the cathedral for the DICCU (Durham Inter-Collegiate Christian Union) service. I'm hoping that that one will be candlelit, but even if it isn't it'll still be pretty magical, and I'm sure that I will manage to smile sweetly as I am informed of my Promised Redemption by Christ and what have you... That is instead of singing with Trevs Choir in the Christmas Formal service, which I did last year. Concept: get an entire college and their choir trashed, then select carols solely on their entertainment-while-drunk value and watch as hilarity ensues...!

 

And then I daresay we'll have a houses gathering or two, especially as there are a couple of birthdays just after the end of term. And y'know, it'd be a shame not to celebrate Christmas just because term ends a good two weeks beforehand!

 

Right, it's voting time again! Which of the following is more sacreligious:

 

a) me not having seen Top Gear

or b) Paul not having read the AA Milne/ EH Shepard Winnie the Pooh books, and referring to stories as 'episodes'

 

?

 

Yes, there is a right answer!