In the last two days most of the college seem to have been drunk except me. I’m beginning to feel left behind. Not that I was missing out on the festivities, of course. Au contraire, I was merely experiencing the carnage to the fullest in my lightly inebriated state. Last night was the Whitby Society‘s annual dinner. The medics have quite a reputation and much revelry had clearly occurred by the time they staggered en masse into the bar. Lyds swayed perpetually while playing pool with a sober Tom. Catherine described herself as not being as drunk as she should, just very hyper. So I left her to it. Her assessment may have been a little hasty since she could barely stay upright by the time she left. And yet for all their reputation, they were undoubtedly outdone the previous night by the Danby Society, comprising of Downing’s natscis, mathmos and engineers…
Ball President Will greeted me with, “Now I don’t want you to get the wrong impression; I’m not always drunk,” to which I reminded him that the first thing I’d seen on leaving my room that evening had been him rolling around on the grass. Andy and Irina were both suitably merry (for which Irina firmly blamed Will) and Sarah was slightly flustered by the strange people hitting on her. Annabel didn’t even remember speaking to me. “There’s too many physicists in here; it’s scary!” proclaimed one – er – physicist. And on both nights I headed back home smiling, despite the fact I still had a fair chunk of work to get done for the next morning’s supervisions.
It was also Ravi’s birthday yesterday which was fun. Nothing too strenuous, Zizzi‘s pizza and Family Guy in the evening before mingling with the drunkards in the bar later. I didn’t go out clubbing with him but was up with Angie on his return to greet him with a triple fudge stack replete with candles proclaiming his age in binary. Angie had asked me whether you could we could put 19 candles into it, but after watching her attempt to operate a lighter I decided that was a distinctly bad idea so designed the alternative system which only required 5 candles. Amusingly it was a drunken Dave who worked it out, not Ravi himself (indeed it was the perfectly sober Ravi who proceeded to smash a glass – must have been the sugar high!).
The various political parties have been targetting the Law Faculty over the last few days. We’re probably a fairly tough bunch to crack all in all, though I found Labour‘s presence somewhat amusing given that we’re not the most Labour-friendly bunch by reputation anyway, moreso given their disastrous approach* to legislating since 1997 which has irritated all of us to no end. The Lib Dems were received far better on their arrival yesterday and today when David Howarth was wished good luck by several of us as we left lectures to go and vote. For those who don’t know, Cambridge is narrowly contested between Labour and the Lib Dems with the Tories trailing behind significantly. As such the Lib Dems have really been pushing for the student vote (although beginning to irritate some of their staunch supporters by flooding their pigeonholes with propaganda). It’ll be an interesting one to watch, both locally and nationally (I’m confidently disappointed that Labour will win but the margin is difficult to call), and I’ll be keeping an eye through the BBC‘s rather nice desktop alerts service. It’s a tiny little application that will show you breaking stories as they happen.
*perhaps naively this presumes, of course, that they have one.
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