Alive!

Well, despite all my forebodings, we have made it to Sydney in one piece! We left Cambridge on Tuesday night to stay at the airport hotel ready for a Wednesday morning flight. It is now Thursday night and we have just arrived at James's parents' house. I am dazed and confused. The first thing I did when I got here was trod on the family's cat and promptly spilt my cup of tea all over the floor. The cat was not amused.

The flight was uneventful and I didn't even need the Temazapam my lovely doctor kindly gave me - hardly any bumpy bits at all.

I'm going to go and collapse now. I'll update y'all on Sydney life in due course, once I'm feeling human again.

The Big Smoke

I spent the day in London yesterday, mainly to attend a reception at the Foreign Office for staff who are on secondment or unpaid leave. Apparently, I'm a valuable resource and the Office wants to put to good use the skills I have acquired during my period of unpaid leave. That's nice. I assume they will therefore promote me rather than ask me to return to my old job...

I stayed at Carrie's on Sunday night and got up early and accompanied her to work. We had a breakfast meeting and then I went for a wander around Whitehall and St James's Park just as the town was beginning to wake up. It was still quite dark, it was cloudy and raining but London was quiet and beautiful: glossy pavements, the willow trees in the park waving in the wind as the ducks and squirrels foraged for food. Part of it was all too familiar but so much has changed: the huge railings outside Downing Street reminding me that when I started working in London the only barrier to the road was a waist-high temporary railing; barriers at the end of King Charles St, home to the Treasury and Foreign Office, a far cry from the public parking meters that were there when I first joined the Office, allowing anyone to park right outside two Government departments. Yet Horse Guards Parade was still open to traffic, which I found surprising. They did try to make it a pedestrian-only street after the IRA mortar bomb attacks in the late 80s but decided that would mean Giving In To Terrorism. Part of me thinks it's time we do give in, especially as we are dealing with a completely different type of terrorist these days, as the memorials to the victims of the Istanbul and Bali bombings testify.

I had moments of nostalgia, fleeting though they were. But the FCO reception soon put paid to any of that. All the important people pretending to be down with the kids, mingling in such a professional way that they only talk to you for 2 minutes before making their excuses. Everyone assumed I was on unpaid leave to have babies and no-one showed any further interest in my reasons for taking time off ('I'm at Cambridge!', a selfish and childish part of me wanted to cry: see what untapped resources you have?). No-one from Personnel was to be found to answer our questions about grading issues. And the "Investing in People" plaque in reception made me want to scream. All Foreign Office people do when they meet other Foreign Office people is moan about the Foreign Office - this is a fact that I was alerted to when I was still at my last post but which never quite hit home until I left and then met up with old colleagues. The Foreign Office doesn't invest in people - it wears them down and makes them believe they have no other options, no transferable skills and no right to a decently-paid job in the private sector. It's time for me to draft my letter of resignation - I want to make it a good one to demonstrate the new drafting skills I have acquired during my time at Cambridge: I want to make a convincing and sustained argument as to why they should shove their job where the sun don't shine and I shall further highlight my departure from traditional Foreign Office drafting by failing to include any cricketing terms in my rhetoric! That'll show 'em!

Chocolate biscuit dunking, continued...

So, Sunday was my LAST DAY working at R*han. To celebrate, Mike and I decided to dunk the winner of the Great Chocolate Biscuit-Dunking Experiments in our tea for one last time. Fox's Classic was the winner, in all its honeycomby, chocolatey creamy glory. Hmmm, it was just so lovely. I brought one home with me to post to Sophie, intending to have it delivered to her at work with a note saying "put this in yer tea and suck on it, love" but unfortunately, I ended up eating it instead. That's just the way it goes with fantastic chocolate biscuits, I'm afraid... it makes one unfaithful to the sisterhood.

Bunking Off

I've just spent the past four hours NOT READING and NOT WRITING ESSAYS - I know, I know, but what can I say? I'm just one of life's rebels, I guess.

Now for the disappointing bit. I haven't spent the past four hours in the pub, or having debauched sex (or non-debauched sex either, for that matter). I haven't been shoe shopping. I haven't been in a nice cafe eating chocolate cake. Did I mention I hadn't even been to the pub?

No, no, no. Because, it turns out that not only am I a rebel, but I'm also a rebel who is desperately in need of clean clothes. Academic work has taken over my life to such an extent that I realised today I'm living in a nasty, messy flat with very few clean clothes remaining. So, I've been doing laundry. Lots and lots of laundry (I have to keep this posting short because I've got to go and get the sixth load out of the machine any minute now).

I feel justified in taking an afternoon off (even if it is just for domestic chores) because I had a particularly harrowing supervision yesterday. I knew my essay on Ibsen (that Scandawegian PEST!) wasn't one of my best when I sent it off, but what I wasn't expecting was a slating that lasted nearly 45 minutes. In front of two fellow students who hadn't submitted essays, and therefore escaped a slating all together. I'm sure my bottom lip and chin was wobbling while she was spouting forth her criticisms. Immediately after the supervision I made Mo join me for a gin and tonic. Then I came home and cried. An over-reaction, I know, but you tell that to my hormones. I then e-mailed the supervisor asking if my essay was really that bad, told her I was feeling somewhat bruised and asked for advice on improving my essays to avoid aforementioned slating in future. She wrote back and told me the essay was, in fact, fine and would have got a 2.1 if she had given it a mark. So... there's Cambridge tough love for you.

I've realised now that it can't all be about academic work. A slating wouldn't have bothered me in the least last year but when all you are doing is academic work, criticisms like that really get you where it hurts. Because at the moment, that's all I'm doing.

What have we learnt, children? From now on, more boozing!

Hasty Update on My Life

It's not very interesting at the moment because academic work continues its tyranny. Lectures are slowly grinding to a halt so I am slowly moving into various libraries in the mornings instead. I have to do most of my work in the library because it is becoming physically impossible to carry all the books I need for my essays. This week, I am mainly:

- Writing about the female fantasy life in the tragedies of Ibsen
- Writing about the rise of the gothic novel
- Writing a practical criticism essay on something I haven't even looked at yet
- Tap dancing - practising our dance for the show in February - hilarious!
- Marathon training - three runs a week, long run = 6 miles
- Looking after my lovely husband, who is far busier than moi (he has to: finish PhD, write and deliver all his lectures and supervisions, write his book, submit work for Junior Research Fellowships for which he has been shortlisted (clever boy) and look after his wife, who requires 24 hour a day care and multitudinous cups of tea)

I'm off to the Tower of Darkness now. I'm becoming one of those students who fall asleep at library desks - who'd have thought it, eh?

The Great Biscuit-Dunking Experiments, cont...

Sophie, we followed your advice and tried orange Kit-kats. The result, I'm afraid to say, was rather disappointing and nowhere near the quasi-orgasmic experience of the Fox's Classic. This makes me wonder if you have ever tried a Fox's Classic, because I'm very concerned that you may be missing out on something truly wonderful. Then again, it could ruin you for life, damning you to a perpetual and fruitless search for something better, which I am beginning to believe doesn't exist...

How to eat a Penguin Biscuit

1. Bite a corner off of each end of the biscuit
2. Dunk one end into a cup of tea
3. Suck
4. When tea reaches your mouth, this means it is at optimum gooeyness - consume immediately.

You have to be careful, mind, because timing is everything. Leave it in the tea too long, or suck up too much tea, and you are in danger of being left with a biscuit devoid of structural integrity. This is not good. It also means it could collapse into your cup of tea, thereby ruining both your hot beverage and your biscuit.

During our Sundays at R*han, Mike and I have been involved in an in-depth study into the merits tea and chocolate biscuit schlurping. This has mainly involved experimenting with different chocolate biscuits to see if there is anything to rival the Penguin (and I know that any Australians reading this will have very strong views - get over it! we can't get those biscuits in this country, but I will do my best to further my research during my forthcoming trip to Australia). Anyway, we have so far experimented with Chunky Kit-Kats, Time Out Bars and Fox's Classics. The winner by far has to be the Fox's Classics - controversial this, but I think they even surpass the Penguin experience.

R*han management can take comfort in the fact that Sunday sales may be down, but this is a small price to pay for the breakthrough in our chocolate biscuit-dunking research. Future generations of tea and chocolate biscuit addicts will pay homage to the hallowed ground of our little shop on Trinity street where this great discovery was made. And, who knows, they may even by some of our high-waisted trousers while they're there!