it's friday i'm in love #3

I've slightly been dreading this all week, since it's been a long tough week with far too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, but in actuality, it's nice to take a step back and be aware of the things I have to be thankful for. I've been suffering rather a lot from Tarquin this week: he's decided to be intensely difficult, and my response to this has been, in the words of Bernard Black, to 'drink (tea) heavily and shout at you!' This approach has been...somewhat mixed in its success. Tea is good, yelling at an inanimate object (and at this stage, a largely abstract concept!) is a bit ridiculous really. It's difficult though, because I love my degree and my thesis subject, but the time pressure is making me both dislike what I'm doing and doubt my skill at doing it. Nonetheless, it is interesting, and I am capable of making a contribution to the scholarship in this area, but having a supervisor who's rather busy and simultaneously feeling rather tired and uninspired myself is a combination which is leaving me a bit lacklustre.

I've had a couple of nice treats this week though which make up for the difficulties. Firstly, my mum and stepdad came to Formal Hall at my college, which gave me a chance to show the college off to them, and also gave me an excuse to wear a rather nice new dress I picked up in a Topshop sale. It was also the induction dinner for PD James, who's now an honorary fellow of my college, and she made me giggle ridiculously. My college president has not been well, and is quite soft-spoken anyway, needed a microphone to be heard, but PD James offered her thanks without any amplification, and her rather plummy voice could be heard at the back of the hall easily! At any rate, the food and company were both excellent, but there had been a bit of faffing about when the menu was released, because the dessert was a 'Duo of Banana Desserts', and my mother is ridiculously anti anything banana flavoured (my stepdad too, just not as vehemently!), and as such both opted for a fruit salad. This made me a bit sad, since my college do really damn nice desserts, but I did it anyway. Well, when the dessert was released, it was a brownie and a marbled chocolate cup with copious quantities of cream inside - both parents took one look, and decided that the chocolately creamy goodness was worth the banana.

I gave a talk at the seminar I run today, and despite being rather/nervous, I think it went well. It definitely threw up some interesting ideas for the thesis as well, which is always a good thing, I feel. My dad and stepmother came along for support, which was particularly ironic because I was talking about the Phaedra-myth in Apuleius and Heliodorus, which involves a lot of adulterous, lecherous stepmothers! Thankfully she saw the funny side. Bearing in mind that they're both more scientifically-minded than me and didn't have much exposure to Classics until my brother and I studied them, it's really nice to be able to share what I do with them. I hope it was vaguely coherent, at least!

I've also ended up co-founding another seminar group, which is focused round reading the Odyssey with no preparation and just a few dictionaries for comfort. It sounds mad, but it's really quite good: it made me realise how out of practice I am with reading Homer, at least!  We also had custard creams, brownies and caramel shortbreads for our first meeting, which demonstrates our priorities clearly. My friend Matt also made some truly fantastic and geeky jokes with punchlines like 'it's definitely the dative of disadvantage!' Oh how cool Classicists are. Really.

Despite the difficulties of this week, it's been nice for reminding me that my family are so lovely. My brother's phoned me several times a day recently to check I'm staying positive, and I've stayed a home for a few nights to recuperate with family and cat (never a bad thing!) I'm also off on a rather fun little trip tomorrow for twenty-four hours of birthday fun, whimsy and undoubtedly some gentle lesbianism with some of my favourite ladies, so I promise some lovely photos and amusing anecdotes on my return. À bientôt , bisous!

It's impossible to capture this on a mobile phone camera, but the bluebells outside my house, entwined with the rosemary, are so beautiful at dusk. It's so lovely - I'll have to get some photos on my proper camera soon. 

My latest Graze box. My god, those dips are absolutely superb, i fear I'm a little addicted now! 

The infamous banana desserts, in their creamy-chocolatey-bananay happiness. 

My boyfriend Paul and our friend Georgina hamming it up for the camera. 

An adorable, tired pudlump.

[*]

Due to the stress of this week, I've been reduced to a lot of musical comedy (Stephen Lynch, Tim Minchin, etc.), but the Axis of Awesome's The Four Chord Song has been stuck in my head for days now, and I show no signs of getting tired of it. I'm still desperately trying to identify all the songs, damnit!

Cookies of joy and happiness to behold (with a little secret ingredient I may share here soon...!) 

The handout from my talk, next to some of my favourite minature alcohol bottles. I collect them, so I truly do have a mini bar! It's becoming ridiculous, I have so many now, some of them for alcohols I've never even heard of, but they are very pretty. 

Some lovely post from my friend Ruby which made me ridiculously happy.