Mmm. Sleep.

Things I've done this weekend which would suggest a lack of awareness:

• Sending texts to the wrong person. Three times in two days. Essentially, I have forgotten how to read, and simply jab the keypad in the hope that my message will reach someone, somewhere.
• Watching highlights of the Australia-India test match, having promised to report back to all interested parties. Then proceeding to forget everything: score, wicket-takers...absolutely everything, save for the observation: "Mmm. Perth. Looks nice and sunny, doesn't it?"
• Almost falling into a hole - indeed, a gigantic manhole - whilst out for the evening. And only 'almost' thanks to the arm of an acquaintance. Unfortunately, his sympathy only stretched as far as: "God, are you blind?"

So, in a bid to keep out of trouble, I intend to spend as much time as possible in the bath, re-reading Anna Karenina. This is part of my new plan to get my face off Facebook and into an actual book, redressing the intellectual balance which has been lacking somewhat since the post-interview exhaustion. Also, last week felt like I was participating in a hideous Hollyoaks episode, for one reason or another.

I've even put the writing on ice, just for a while, so that I can get through exams and, subsequently, get myself together a bit. Like I said, these past few weeks = weird. For the next seven days I intend simply to hang around, hang about. Read a little. A lot. Throw together a nice essay on Parnell. Text the interesting people in my phonebook. Eat dinner with my brother. Drink much smoothie. Continue to take sartorial influence from Jules et Jim - more lined eyes and black opaques, please.

A quiet week will be a good one.

Friday: this week, better than Monday

"She threw you out? Threw you out? Wow. Well, that beats my news..."

So, temporarily, Sophie is homeless (though actually living in town with one of her best friends, so worrying isn't necessary) following a book-throwing, insult-slinging, door-slamming fight with her mother. Over revision. Revision. Honestly, there's drama, and then in an entirely new-born, Oscar-worthy category there is Sophie.

And my money? Well, it's on the pair of them to make it up before next week's out.

Anyway. This week is nearly over, thank God. It has put me in a curiously angry mood: I have calculated - so it is practically a scientific experiment - that something pisses me off at least, ooh, every ninety seconds. Never mind, I'm sure I'll get a book out of my excessive inner rage, one day.

Something that hasn't pissed me off - in fact, it's done rather the opposite - is perusing Facebook for photos of my friends and I in either costume, or increasingly humourous positions. My favourites, at the moment, are thus:

In which I make a rather "saucy" (I quote from Kat) pirate and Yasmin a sensational showgirl, and:

...Simon and I striking a pose. That is undoubtedly a face that he practices daily.

Ahhh, the anger has diminished. Lovely.

So, the moment of the week thus far: A car journey, with my brother and friends, and Interpol playing extremely loudly. At the traffic lights, and during Stella ("Robyn, I fookin' love it!) the following scene ensued:

(Window open. With one young man's head sticking out, much like a dog) "Stel-la! Stellah-ha! Oh Stella! Stella, I love you, Stella, I love you, STELLA, I LOOO-VVEEE YOUUUU!"

Yeah, that was fun.

Monday: always inexcusable

"...the trouble is, you're in love with someone else..."

(I've realised that my emotions, on any given day, can be summarised with a Paul Banks lyric or a quotation from The Bell Jar. Presumably I have serious issues.)

Ugh. Ugh. I am reading Kershaw, dutifully, to learn 'stuff' about the economics of the Third Reich. Now, I read. A lot. One might even say it is my purpose in life. But. Kershaw writes the most ridiculously dense prose - long, long sentences tagged together with excessive caesura - that I've ever come across. I've scaled Ulysses, and loved the challenge, but this is an impenetrable fortress of historiography. Dull. But for the love of knowledge, I will persevere...

...Kirstin, Sophie and I are going on an anti-Valentine's trip to Edinburgh, to drink and dance and lament. It will be fun, I think. Only, though, once I've navigated the English exam next week. Preparation will be a solitary affair: we tried revision groups, and were distracted by 1) each other, 2) an excessive use of the term 'forward thrusting' and 3) the prospect of going out to eat and verbally abuse each other afterwards.

Another case of "stop laughing at the back"...I blame Yasmin.

I also blame, for my distraction, my kid brother. Tonight he's swanning about, hair like Coffin Joe and jeans around his arse, writing a speech for the debating team (of which he, inexplicably, is captain):

"Are you busy?"

"Yes, I'm -"

(Skillfully employing his selective hearing, and ignoring me completely) "Great, because I need help with my debate. You're alright at essays, aren't you?"

Thing is, he's entirely unresponsive to eyebrow raising, sighing or me getting out a copy of Sartre. Either unresponsive, or annoyingly determined to exploit me before I leave for uni. That last one, I think.

Speaking of Sartre, I'm writing an assignment on L'Existentialisme est une Humanisme. Amazing. Perceptive, intelligent, incredibly lucid (his work, not my assignment). I'm now a fully paid-up existentialist, between Nietzsche's Superman and Sartre's thesis on human freedom.

These days, I've never been more glad that I can read...

Gemma's house, apparently, was full of onions on Sunday morning. Strange, I missed them.

"Come here, little boy..."

"The zone, Robyn, is far, far away. And you're running even further away from it."

It seems apt to begin with twenty-five of us, crammed into Gemma's house, armed with several cameras and bottles of vodka. And so that's where I was last night, and where, frankly, I would gladly spend every night for the next year. Surprisingly mellow, for one of our get-togethers, though with the usual, slightly random highlights:

1)Kat setting Gemma's grill on fire. On actual fire, with smoke, and flames: "Oh, fuck... I don't think we should put the pizzas in there".

2)Simon and I (who, incidentally, shouldn't be allowed to use technology when drunk) stumbling upon Gemma's camera, and proceeding to take several (hundred) photographs of ourselves, my favourite of which was the one with Si's head in the microwave.

3)Someone throwing several clementines at Marshall, then an onion. Which he promptly ate.

4)Kirstin's advice.She is, of course, completely right. She also told me that I had "good boobs" in my LBD: deduce from that what you will.

5)Simon telling (poor, thirteen year-old) James, who was skulking around as a guest of Joe's, to "come here, little boy", in a terrifyingly seductive voice.

And a nice text, this morning, from Marshall, apologising for using me as a duvet after midnight. Actually, I was passing numerous spirits his way, so I don't think he was sleeping. Technically.

All that, without a single punch being thrown. We must be growing up. Ugh, though. I wish I knew what was in the hideously alcoholic brew that Jack cajoled me into drinking...

...on second thoughts, no. Ignorance, here, is bliss.

And again...

I was here once, and I'm back again - in response, of course, to a challenge from Ben, who believes I won't be able to keep it up.

But it will be nice to write in non-essay form; thus I think I will be up to the task this time.

(Hi Ben!)