lazy doesn't even cover it

I'll stop apologising for the way I post.

Perhaps disjointed and confused is just my style?

*****

How can I not love a book that starts with an introduction like this:

Once I found myself accidentally reading a learned book-review, in which the reviewer censured the author for saying things that had already been said... I found this terribly frightening because there are lots of books I haven't read and lots of my ideas have probably been thought often before. So if you value this commodity for its novelty, sorry.
Two works I know of adopt positions similar to mine, but they express their ideas with a good bit more learning and panache... All students should therefore read these texts.

Occasionally, I have been what I've been accused of being before, cantankerous. As far as I can see one isn't supposed to show anger. But as I write, the National Union of Mineworkers has been heroically pursuing its just struggle for six months; and while I worked on this book it seemed that the age of the first Elizabeth in all its brutalities was all too like the age of the second: and I think I have been insufficiently cantankerous. There's no undoing history, but I hate to see it repeated. May the miners, therefore, win - however long it takes.
The only debt of which I am aware is to Mick Wallis, of course, as ever.

Simon Shepherd, September 1984.
- Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre.

Several things strike me:
1) For some reason, despite knowing the author's name, I fooled myself into thinking that this was written by a woman. Why is that?
2) I've never read an introduction that actually grabbed my attention before - who'd have thought that doing yourself down could big yourself up so well?
3) If I ever wrote a book, I too would like to be cantankerous about it.

*****

I found that book whilst actually doing some work in Founder's Library today. Amazing. I actually managed to do work. Granted I had to put about 200 metres and a castle wall between myself and MSN messenger to do it, and managed to wash my hair, eat some cake, drink a gin, match up every single Desperate Housewives character to one of our uni friends, drink a Snapple, argue with Natwest over the phone, eat about 30 Rich Tea biscuits and hang two pairs of jeans out the window before I was done procrastinating but after that I did some work. Yes! I did some work!

Apparently I'm incapable of reading without making notes now, so reading Tamburlaine the Great is taking a stupidly long time, but it's ok. Founder's Library doesn't scare me nearly as much as it should do, but it's freezing cold. Two hours was enough for me; I came back to Runymede and I've been procrastinating ever since.

I think writing the word 'procrastination' is a waste of time in itself.

*****

I can't help but think that it was this time last year that my brain turned to mush. In a couple of weeks it'll be a year since my nan died. It doesn't feel that long ago, but it was. A couple of weeks since I went into the Bad Place, as I so affectionately call it, and didn't emerge for so so long. I think maybe I'm only just emerging now.

If I'd known this time last year that it would take me a year before I stopped hurting I'd have given up. Good thing I didn't, huh.

*****

Leaving the library, my CD skips to Beautiful Day by U2. It's evening, navy sky, freezing air, and I've just walked out the gates of the quad and I'm heading to the steps into the woods. This is the song that me and Liz sand crossing the Liffey in Dublin, the song I want played at my funeral, the song I used to listen to in the morning when I didn't want to get out of bed. Like, ever again. I have another of my 'I can't believe I'm here' moments, like whenever I look at my college card and see my name with Undergraduate written underneath it.

Someone got grabbed in the woods the other day, so I go the long way, and take lots of time to stop and look at Founders silhouetted against the sky. I do that a lot. With this mood, and this song, and pretty words and thoughts from the library still tattooed in my head its just perfect. I feel like dancing, listening to U2 and bobbing along in the cold I'm a complete and utter cliche. I'm just a walking, happy cliche.