Toga! Toga!

Monday 8th October

My first lecture, in the St. Cross Building! I thought it was Darwin and Literature, so imagine my horror when the dude started talking about industrialization and I realized I was stuck there. Apparently they switched it around without telling me, the bitches. But it was ok, bc it turned out to be quite interesting, bc industrialization and literature also reflects a bit on my current interests.

But then I had to go home and do work, as is getting critical.



9 Tuesday

Spent whole day on couch reading A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Ugh.

I liked the book, I was just tired of reading it by the end, so I just skimmed to last third.

Mary just wouldn’t stop bitching about vindicating our rights.
Isn’t that just like a woman.



10 Wednesday

Doom. Doooom. I just don’t have time to read the other books on my list. I’ll put them in my bibliography anyway.

Spent whole day on couch reading Caleb Williams. It was terrifying when I opened this little book and realized how tiny the type was. Fortunately it was quite a good and interesting book. There were some interesting parallels with Frankenstein.
Frantically wrote some rubbish about it, trying to splice in bits of Wollstonecraft as well. I don’t think it hung together at all well, but it sounds good and that’s what matters.

Took a break to walk around Cowley with Kelly. We went to Tesco’s and I bought pita and hummus and many good things.
Cowley road is as close as I can get around here to downtown new york. The grittier it is, the more at home I feel. It’s fabulous that here, even though we’re more or less in the country and Oxford is small, If I want greek food, or west Indian food, or Turkish, or polish, or anything, I can find it. I did go into the greek place and get some baklawa that made me happy.

Also, I hideously cut my hand open with the bread knife.
I bled a lot, all over Caleb Williams, too. I hope the library people don’t notice.




11 Thurs

14.30: essay due. To my pleasure, I didn’t have to read my essay aloud, Ballam read it aloud to me, which I think is actually better. When you read it yourself, let’s face it, you’re probably concentrating more on keeping your voice steady than on the overall composition. But he read it with lovely intonation, and, while making some criticism, of course, and taking some dramatic breaths during some of my more run-on sentences (which are most of them), he also said it had some good points. When we signed on the for the programme everyone was preparing us to have our essays torn apart and ravaged by the professors with the bloody jaws of contempt, but really he was quite nice, and gave me a 68, which is an A-. So I actually walked out of there feeling quite vain of my essay and how good it sounded and all.

Then I sat for a while with Hannah and Abbey in the garden and it was unreal and beautiful and Oxfordian. But then I had to go, bc I had a whole other essay to write for TOMORROW.

It will take a while to get used to this. I’m used to doing nothing for three months, then going mad and not eating or sleeping for three weeks. With this system, the minute I finish, it starts again. Barely have I finished one essay, when I have to begin another. I can’t decide if it’s worse, or better. At least it will never get crazier than it is now. It will always be like this, two essays a week.

We had dinner and Chris came over and played us some songs on his guitar which was lovely. Then they went to Cat Weazel but I couldn’t go bc I had to write my paper.

Poopie.

Thank God I’ve read Frankenstein before. I just couldn’t physically do it if I had to actually read the book.
And I actually spent most of the night procrastinating horribly.



12 Fri

Woke up early and actually wrote my paper. My tutorial was at 5pm so I had it done well ahead of time, but still. I promise I won’t leave it this late again. Besides, I want to have time to actually read the books next time. I do want to learn, after all. My paper was a little too personal although I made some really good points. It was not for nothing that Neil said, on the Frankenstein paper I wrote for him, that I cut right to the emotional core of the novel. I mean, if I can’t write about Frankenstein, what can I write about?

I read it to Professor Cunningham, naturally focusing more on the intonation of my voice than on the words, and he sat there and listened. Then he started talking about whether I thought it held together, and I started to stammer out some circuitous answer, but then I realized it was Frankenstein he thought was amateurish and didn’t hold together, not my paper at all! He said my paper did have unity and was good. That was all he said about my paper. From then on he rambled on and on about Shelley, Milton, the Gothic, everything, for at least half an hour. But that’s not to say it was boring. It was actually fascinating. I sat there and listened and was quite enthralled the whole time. It was great. It was like having my own personal lecture tailored to my interests.


Back at the flat, Abbey convinced me to come with her to the gym. I was skeptical bc it’s 50 quid to join and it’s not like I’ll ever have time during term.. But then it occurred to me that I could go during holidays after all, when nobody’s here and I’ve got no work and it’s cold and miserable, it might be good to go be mighty for a while. Anyway, it’s not like it’s my money or anything.

Then had naps, then got dressed for frat party. Jemma came in looking way hot as a slutty girl, Kelly was the feminist lesbian, and Abbey wore my cowboy boots and was a very american girl.

I wore my floaty peignoir, bc I wanted to be a frat boy, and in my mind it’s like a toga. It does have a greco-roman quality, surely. I brought also my little house on the prairie bonnet and my coonskin cap for dress-up purposes.
In the party flat people were playing beer pong with red plastic cups. It was a bit awkward at first. Then suddenly about a hundred people materialized from nowhere and there was no personal space left anywhere. I tried to make friends, but it was a bit hard, bc you couldn’t hear anything anyone said. I danced with Jemma. After a bit of shyness, I managed to gain the attention of a large group of people by telling the story of the French ambassador’s cannon, one of my favorite stories. Then I said they had to entertain me with a story about treacle.
But they got off on a tangent about kafka, which made me cross, bc I don’t want to hear about kafka!

But this one bloke finally had a story for me, and it went like this:

One morning a man woke up in his bed, only to discover that he had been transformed into treacle!

Isn’t that the best story of ALL TIME?? It was perfect! So then I hung out with Casey and Andy and spoke to this renaissance man from east London called fayyaz who told some jewish jokes and some welsh jokes since I was there and also this Welshman who had such a nice hat I swapped with him. Also we both love robert browning, me and fayyaz, that is, not me and the Welshman.

But everyone loves the welsh.

So then I was outside talking to Hannah and this very nice English girl and this very tall and French man. And I felt someone behind me grab hold of the coat of my peignor and quite deliberately tear it about a foot down my back.

I turned around, not quite able to believe it, and there was this drunk dude and girl who were laughing. I sort of stared. But then the dude reached and pulled my top down so I flashed everybody. It was quite fortunate that we were so situated that my back was to most people so I don’t think anyone saw. Even more gobsmacked, I pulled my top up and slapped his face, as hard as I could, both sides.
I went back to my flat, still quite stunned. Alex was there and I told him what happened and he went and kicked the cad out. I went upstairs and put on my dressing-gown which is thick silk and doesn't tear easily. Anyway, so Alex is my hero forever basically.
Eventually I felt better enough to go back out, where I and got hugs for my trials from Hannah and Abbey. Then Abbey and I went to bed.



13 Sat

Sat in bed to update my journal. I think I’m just going to putter about and do household things to-day, and get me books to-morrow. Jemma came up and gave a beautiful gold box of Fairtrade Begian chocolates. She said she had heard about me being attacked by the bodice-ripper. Isn’t that the sweetest thing in the history of the world?? Of course, it was traumatizing at the time, but just silly in retrospect. Although the peinoir is vintage and irreplaceable, it’s still just clothes, after all, and although I was humiliated, the combination of me slapping him and Alex booting him out satisfies my honour. So it’s okay. But chocolates also helped a lot. I think they are the most appreciated choccies I’ve ever gotten from anyone, anytime, seriously.
I love Jemma. I can’t believe I only just met her.
But I must sort out my room and that, for to-night we are going to explore Cowley and have takeout night.
Huzzah!