Fresher.

So it's been a hell of a long time since my last post. I am now not just not a fresher, but no longer a fresher. For the first time in my life, I feel like I am ageing. Of course, I have been ageing since day dot; it's just that now birthdays seem more to loom than excite. My first year in Cam seems to have slipped through my fingers. It's been exciting and strange. Lots of tears, both of happiness and not of happiness. People live life at extremes in Cambridge, and sometimes you miss just doing nothing - sitting in front of the TV, going for a walk, socialising without alcohol. Nevertheless, if you accept that you're in for a roller-coaster ride, it can be exhilarating.

Money seems to grow on trees in Cambridge. Tenners fly out of your pocket for the weekly formal (attendance optional, though highly encouraged). Twenty quid is the standard spend for a swap (fifty if you're planning on painting the walls of Mahal with the remains of your Chicken Tikka). May Week easily tots up to a cool two hundred. No wonder my overdraft is aching. I am now faced with a summer spent paying the price for my Cantabridgian lifestyle, a bizarre penitence for those few, expensive hours of precious down time.

In a masochistic way, I can't wait to hurl myself back into the self-destructive habit of working and playing with equal fury.