Je suis dans la bibliotheque.

So, the Easter break is already here. Unfortunately it won't be a break at all. In the space of three weeks in May, I'll be spending a good few hours sitting in various buldings around campus, and determining the direction of the rest of my life with a few badly-written essays.

Most of my waking hours are going to be spent in this building:

Five floors. 1.2 million books. Nowhere near enough plug sockets.

The trouble is, just because i'm in the library doesn't mean I'm actually doing anything useful. Last week I spent at least an hour poring over a map from 1939, simply to see if I could find my house. I couldn't. And just yesterday I spent the majority of the morning looking out of the window, watching people's reactions upon finding out the cash machine had run out of money. Most seemed to just walk away; one man decided the money was probably hiding somehwere, and proceeded to look around the corner before returning and peering at the screen.

Another highlight of a 'revision' day last week was when this decided to fly over:

It's an airship. I think.

Obviously, it wouldn't suffice to simply look at it, then get back to work. Oh no, I had to take a photo, wonder what the difference between an airship and a blimp is,research it, look at how much they cost to run, watch videos of blimps being inflated, then wonder what the French word for 'blimp' is. All while I was meant to be writing an essay on constitutional reform.

It's going to be a long time until Easter...

Reading Half Marathon.

I’ve realised I haven’t posted anything on here for ages. I seemed to make a grand re-appearance, and then promptly forgot to write anything else. But now I’m back again, possibly to do precisely the same thing again. We’ll see.

This morning I wandered up to campus at 10am to cheer on a couple of friends, James and Eve, who were running in the Reading Half Marathon. A group of us found some convenient railings, and stood there waiting for the masses of people to start sprinting past. 

Eventually, a car drove past, being chased by a man in a wheelchair who was going far faster than is probably allowed. A few minutes later, a couple of police motorbikes came into view, followed by four Kenyan men who seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously (it worked – apparently they took the top four places). Finally, the hoards of people arrived, in a variety of guises. Batman was among the first to pass, with Spiderman, Superman and other assorted superheroes following him. Also running were a Lucozade bottle, a fish, a chip, Spongebob Squarepants, a variety of insects, and a camel. Oh, and there was a banana. There’s always a banana.

The Lucozade bottle, happily running along. (Photo from Toffee Raspberry on Flickr)

Our friends did come running past, both so fast that we almost missed them. Surprisingly, they didn’t want to stop and chat...

After the 17,000 runners had passed, and I couldn’t find any further excuses, I went back to my second home, the University Library. Six-thousand words of essay are due in on this coming Friday, and they’re not going to write themselves. Trust me; I tried that with the last one.