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.