Why sport?

So why is it that 3 days out of 4 so far this week I've been to the gym or to the pool? What's the point?

(NB this is hypothetical - the gym is my heaven!)

I went to this How to survive Finals talk thing and something they said was that people who do excercise on average do better in their final exams. There are obvious links - being awake, endorphines, stress relief etc. But I reckon there's another reason.

Of the 10 people working in the lower room of my rather nice library (I told you it was exclusive!) three are people who I've at one time or another trained with. One is a cox, which means all the early starts and missing out on nights out, even if there's no physical exertion involved!

The only people likely to still be excercising the week before finals are people who've played sport at a relatively high level or have been effectively gym addicts for the last 2.5 years. Everybody else will have given up. That means that those people who are doing well in exams - they're not just people doing excercise, they're people who have pushed themselves and had to develop some discipline. There comes a point when you're in the gym at 6am and it's not about pleasure it's about progress.

The way I see it, developing that kind of discipline has got to have some kind of reflection on your work life right? I like this little theory... :)

Again?!

I have a flat tyre. Again. So annoyed!! More annoying is that I'll probably have to pay double to get them to fix it by tonight (I haven't the time to do it myself and I'm in school tomorrow morning and don't fancy a 6 mile round trip on foot!)

Last night I saw somebody jump a red light in a car. Not just an I'm accelerating and oh the light's gone red but I'll just nip through either. I was waiting at the lights, the cars that were going in other directions were all gone, and this red Ford that had been sat waiting just... went! I couldn't believe it! I mean obviously cyclists do it a lot but it's a damned sight safer!

So far this week I've been to the gym twice and swimming this morning. I seem to have strained my calves somehow (thought it was lactic build up but another gym sesh did nothing - swimming today seems to have eased it but still not completely). I've been trying to get used to using a cross trainer - I'm told this is pretty good excercise, and it's the only thing that uses my arms other than erging, which I'm trying to stay away from until I'm totally better (cos I know I'll just push my split under 2 minutes and then come off knackered cos I'm not well enough yet!)

While I was doing the washing up I broke CrazyGuy's favourite mug - it's a picture of him with his two best friends from home. I need to buy some superglue today and see if I can fix it (it's just the handle that's broken).

I've written maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of my first draft of my extended essay, although I don't know how many words yet - I'm refusing to use Word Count until I've got a whole draft. I need to go look at some more papers today but mainly I'm just writing.

Guess that's the round up for the last few days!

Yo-yo

This morning as I walked to the library to pick up some papers (which it later transpired weren't there grrrr) I realised that I was happy. As in not just not-depressed but actually... glad to be alive. This happened quite a lot back in January but I guess all the dissertation stress and illness made me lose it for quite a while. Which is not to say that it was common-place to begin with: it came as a pleasant surprise when it started happening.

So... I was happy. And I was happy that I was happy. I actually started grinning. It feels good to come out of a rut and know you're ok for a while.
Except now I'm moping again. I'm really tired: promised myself I'd work until 9 but just don't care enough right now... I just want my duvet and a hug and a good night's sleep. Well hopefully I can get 2 out of 3.

Not my expectation...

I expected that he would be vacant and rude; ignore me, mock me, refuse to talk.
I rather hoped that he'd be civil, but that I'd be having too much of a good time to notice.
It didn't so much as occur to me that he might be friendly and that I might respond and that we (despite being sat opposite one another around a very large round table) would have animate conversation across everybody else; would defend each other in debate; would reminisce about him teaching me to eat with chopsticks or a particular training session from our first year.

But that's what happened.

There was a long time when I hoped that whatever issues he had could be resolved, our friendship ressurected to some point. After a while I concluded that this would never happen and I... got over it. It's taken me the better part of two years to stop being so much as nostalgic but I finally achieved it. So it came as quite a surprise to suddenly find myself back where I was two years ago. Actually two years in fact... it was around this time in 2006 when it all went wrong.

I'm ... perplexed.

Cycling in the rain

There are many things I hate about cycling in the rain:

• Having a soaking wet bum all day
• Having hair like a bird's nest from the combination of rain and helmet
• Getting generally even wetter because you have to go through the puddles in the cycle lane rather than pull out because it's rush hour
• Fumbling with your wet keys and lock at the other end
• Knowing you'll have to do it again to get home

:(

Grin and bear it

L and I were the best of friends. We talked about everything. Religion; politics; world affairs; relationships; food; sports... you name it and we had fairly polar opinions that we wanted to thrash out. At 3 in the morning. Over the best black coffee we could find.

This was back in my first year.

L and I met early, during freshers' week, when he came home with a girl in my halls to chat. I ran into them in the communal areas and talked for an hour or so and he seemed a nice enough guy. Later that week, we ran into one another on a club night out. We got bored, and walked back together to the place where we were both living, talking as we went. On a spur of the moment thing he invited me in for coffee and thus what would become the firmest friendship of my first year was born.

The two of us were inseparable; talked to each other about everything; put each other to bed when drunk; visited each other in the Christmas holiday, and he then got quite arsey when I didn't have time to come again at Easter. And then came the summer term.

And he wouldn't speak a word to me.

We still saw each other around uni, but he would barely acknowledge my presence. It wasn't just too much work, or not having time to see me. He just cut me dead. And I still don't know the reason why.

A lot of other people I knew were unsympathetic: which was... understandable. For large parts of those first two terms he'd casually taken the piss out of me, which I'd always just seen as something we did, and it was my fault for being over sensitive (which, as I'm sure you've realised I am). Sometimes if other people invited him out he'd cancel with me. But then we saw each other all the time - it was hardly a big deal. Except in retrospect, everything they'd said about him not valueing me as a friend seemed so blatantly obvious that I couldn't believe I'd put up with it for so long.

As time went on we learnt to be civil. He actually started talking to me, and not just being plain rude, and I stopped acting like I cared. When he left at the end of last year for his year abroad I went for the handshake and he went for the hug. It was painfully awkward and neither of us knew what to say. By that point he'd invited me out for a drink three times saying he had his reasons and needed to explain. The only time we made it out he avoided the subject.

This year I've grown. We'd been so close to begin with that I didn't have many other friends. When he left I felt at a loss. Everybody else already had their cliques and their flatmates. I had nobody. But this year I've found all these new people; started a new life.

And then he walked back into it.

Two weeks ago I ran into him on campus, just back to talk to some people in the department. It was short and it was polite, and we made out like we'd go for a drink without either of us believing it. And then he was gone, and I didn't think about it much. A little regret that I hadn't been able to show him how far I've progressed without him. That's strange... like something a lover would say. But I don't think the heartbreak was that different. "Guy-love" as JD and Turk call it in Scrubs.

Tonight I'm out for a meal with some of the mutual friends we used to hang out with. I was just reading an email about it when I saw his name. He's still here. He's coming out. I'm going to have to make nice for several hours. The prospect terrifies me somewhat.

2008

This year so far has been - is - messed up.
I've been horribly horribly ill.
My superviser has left the country.
I've started cutting again.
I'm self sabotaging relationships.
My best friend - somebody who knew me better at one time than anybody before or since; somebody who knew me so well it scared me at times - has gone to jail. For a crime I still don't believe he committed.
My hopes of a 1st (admittedly only conceived following my performance in last years exams - which was frankly astounding) seem dashed already, even with 2.5 months until exams.
It's just not quite how I thought it would be y'know?