Hey Reader,
I write to you from a University library, while I take a
break to question what on earth I’m doing here at 5:30 on a Saturday evening. Year
13 (and therefore my final months of school) seems to be slipping by very
quickly, months becoming moments and weeks mere seconds. I can feel myself
wanting my independence more, and I’m beginning to resent everything I have to
do that is imposed on me by another person as opposed to myself. Annoyingly, I
know this will happen for the rest of my life unless I go off and become some
atheist Ayn Rand inspired hermit where the only person I would possibly ever
have to think about is myself. Perhaps I would feel this less if I had had two
weeks off for half term as I may actually have had time to get everything done.
At least UCAS is out the way (PS Offer from Birmingham! Woo!).
It’s my friend’s Halloween party tonight and the first time
I think I will really socialise this holiday. I’m going in a joint costume with
Max inspired by our favourite theory in physics known as ‘Linde’s monopole’*,
which basically just involves me painting my hands and feet blue. As fun as I
am sure it will inevitably be, a large part of me does just want to spend this
evening curled up on the sofa watching a German film. I guess it doesn’t help I
have left my disposable camera at home, which I have developed a distressing
habit of doing.
My parents thought I was actually coming up here tonight to
meet up with some mysterious boy. Part of me wishing I was just because it
would mean I wouldn’t be procrastinating from this essay that I gave myself to
do optionally over the holiday. And I didn’t bring a coat as I forgot that it
is much colder at 6:30 than at 2:30 when one just needs a jumper. Ah well.
I don’t have anything intelligent to say. I feel like I
stopped having anything intelligent to say a while ago. Cecily is the Queen of
the Intelligent Content-Driven Posts but her digital presence seemed to
disappear from this blog a while ago and I really miss it. But I assure you
dear reader that she is alive and well, flourishing at school and still on
track to win a noble prize.
In middle-class news, we got a new kettle today that boils
the water a good few magnitudes quieter than our old one, so it is now possible
to have conversations while waiting for a cup of tea.
It gets dark so early now, which probably doesn’t help my
perceived speed of time. But it does amplify the feeling of being inside or
outside. The former has become so much more intimate and cosy, while the latter
seems so lonely, but nicely atmospheric with the right music.
The highlight of each week has become this new podcast I’ve
found called Serial. It’s from the producers of the equally wonderful ‘This
American Life’, and it seems so frivolous when I know I should be listening to
In Our Time Podcasts about Shakespeare and the Metaphysical poets. It’s about a
murder case in the 90s, where Adnon (the guy who supposedly killed his
girlfriend) still maintains never doing it. Each week looks at a different
aspect of the case, and you really do oscillate between feeling like he did and
didn’t do it as neither side can put forth a solid argument. It sounds so
stupid, just an easy way of attracting listeners, but in reality it is half an
hour of brilliant story-telling, that I would thoroughly recommend you indulge
in.
I should probably spend the next 45 minutes working solidly
on my essay. I hate that I’m finding it so hard to construct a decent argument
as this is the subject I want to do at University and really should be
excelling at.
Gwendolen
*Monopoles are theoretical particles with one isolated
magnetic pole. This theory suggests our entire universe is contained within a
monopole, inside another universe monopole, inside another universe monopole
etc. (Not forgetting of course that there will be one solitary universe
containing monopole floating inside ours, also containing a monople etc). Then
each of these monopoles are connected to their anti-monopole by a worm hole,
which would be able to observe as a magnetically charged black hole (I think
that is how the theory develops at least).
