We COULD Go to Bristol. I Believe People Do...

If the title makes no sense to you, then you obviously haven't been heeding my frequent exhortations to listen to Cabin Pressure.

LISTEN TO CABIN PRESSURE. LISTEN TO IT NOW. You'll like it. It's got a lovely suspension bridge.

Wait, where was I? Oh right, Bristol.

So, I went to Bristol!

And despite Douglas's reservations, Bristol is awesome.

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Terrorism and Sponge Cake (and a Puddle of Tiny Goslings)

Today I put on my grown up costume. Ta da!

Bring it, workplace.

(My grown up pose is exactly the same as my hero pose, because that's how accomplished ironing makes me feel. Even though I actually can't iron, and after half an hour of introducing new and artistic creases to my shirt just had to wing it.)

I had instructions to look like a grown up (that may not have been exactly what the email said, but that was the gist) because I had an outing to J P French Associates,* the people who actually do the stuff I'm studying, and more or less the only four people in the country to make a living from doing it. Promising.

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Yet Another Library Self-Portrait

Surely it's not another blog post that starts with a library self-portrait?

Yes. Yes it is.

I don't even have my exam time excuse of working super hard. I've spent precisely a day and a half here since the deadlines passed, working either quite hard (last week) or not at all (this week), trying to come up with a dissertation topic that I might actually find interesting.

I fell in love with a crazy idea about LADO and the Krio language and female asylum seekers, and spent several days trying to find literature before I realised that there wasn't any, and that even if there was, I had no way of collecting data.

Fine.

Which brings us back to Image 1. When not slumped over on the desk playing dead, you can also find me commenting on my friends' Facebook statuses eight seconds after they post them, eating copious amounts of chocolate and donated flapjack (thanks, Bri!), and Googling for houses I won't live in and jobs I'm not qualified for.

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It Must Be Art

Then suddenly, family! My family!

You can tell where I get my rougish good looks from.

(I blame Latin class for my frequent impulse to adapt "Suddenly, pipe players!" to every situation.*)

My dad and my younger brother came to visit, and we spent a few days touristing in London, walking around, cycling in Hyde Park, and visiting the museums. I also drank more coffee than was good for me because my dad was paying, which counters the effect coffee usually has on my wallet, but not, apparently, on my brain. I seem to remember that London is made of wibbling and feels like dizzy.

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In Soviet Russia, Sights See You

And I'm back! With my assignments in and my exams done, I've finally left the library and crawled out from under my pile of flashcards, and I'm back in the blogosphere.

I stopped reading ages ago. This is just a dead-eyed stare.

Good old Gor...ge...chov? I'm pretty sure I failed this section of the exam.

And back to RUSSIA!

(In the sense that I'm writing about it, not the sense that I'm going back to - oh, you know what I mean.)

So, remember how I was trying to have a secret cold? As it turns out, it's practically impossible to have a secret cold. The coughing was hard enough to hide, but then the sneezing started, and it was all over. Fortunately, once Emily's grandfather had been convinced that he didn't need to call the doctor at once (or, indeed, at all), we were still allowed to open windows and leave the house. But only at the cost of a lot of dark muttering of the "on your own heads be it" variety.

It probably helped in our being-allowed-out that the sun came out. And everyone knows that you can't die of consumption in the sunshine. Also, Moscow looks much better for it.

The sunshine, not the not-dying. Although probably also that.

No consumption or sad Soviet grimness here.

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