May Week Part II

[vyvyanx]

On Monday evening, G and I had to vacate my room in college before 6pm to avoid the May Ball (it's much harder to get in or out of where I live once people start to queue up outside and the porters become obsessed with security). In G's house, I made a great neapolitan sauce with fresh tomatoes (left over from the Summerthing). It was a bit of hassle getting them out of their skins, but I think it was worth it - I was surprised how much nicer it made the sauce. That evening, G played online games with the Pandemonium people, and I began reading "Days" - a really excellent book, set in a near-future London. All about materialism and consumer culture - disturbingly familiar. It centres on a really enormous department store, kilometres long. I wonder if the author got the idea from a dream about such a place? I know I have always had a lot of dreams about really enormous department stores, and G says he gets such dreams as well - perhaps it's a common dream image.
Tuesday evening we went night punting with emperor and antinomy - met at the Mill, got a punt from Scudamore's, set off for Grantchester meadows. There, as the light slowly faded, we set up a disposable barbecue and cooked nice food, drank wine, and fended off a very determined duck (who managed to extinguish a candle by treading on it, didn't seem to notice, then walked right up to the barbecue and tried to grab a sausage off it!). When we were full, and the light all gone, we reembarked, set up citronella candles along the sides and front of the punt (to ward off insects, not that they seemed terribly scared of the candles!) and headed up towards Byron's Pool. MCV punted with great skill through these difficult waters, dodging numerous overhanging branches, and avoiding running aground in shallow areas. And then we came back, about 1am, I think. Great fun!
Yesterday afternoon was the ucam.chat garden party on Darwin Island. Pleasant time, while we were there (though I did have a rather vigorous discussion with KS and IWJ about an American lesbian deaf couple who chose a deaf sperm donor from among their friends, to maximise the chance that their child would be born deaf - I'd seen an article about that in the university LBG magazine earlier). G and I left after a few hours, and apparently after we left there was some sort of unfortunate bust-up which seems to have upset various people. Oh dear.
In the evening, we met up with GC at the Mitre for some Addlestone's. AC and her friend were also there. Having been drinking wine for some time before we got there, G and I got really quite trolleyed. I vaguely remember discussions of Milgram, Heinlein and models for world government. A good time was had by all.
Recently, G and I have also been drawing up guest lists for the wedding (which we now intend will be on 7th December). We were partly inspired to do this by receiving an invitation (at very short notice!) to JDA and S's wedding this Saturday. Drawing up these lists is very hard - balancing considerations of space in the registry office, distance some people will be coming, obligations to invite relatives with large numbers of children...
Well, I have to go off and pick up mark books for the various deeply important and boring meetings I have to go to over the next couple of days. This evening we plan to watch Godfather II!

Comments

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

Days has some nice ideas, but not enough stamina for an entire novel, really. Would have been a great short story or even novella. Still, I suppose if you're particularly fond of black comedy, it might be worth the haul.