Hello readership,
Once again you have my sincere apologies for last night’s moody quasi-rant, but I’m pleased to say that I do feel somewhat better today. Not quite as good as I felt on the camp last week, it must be said, but I’m certainly feeling less dismal.
Part of this can be put down to the fact that my girlfriend returned from university – she’s at Exeter, for those who aren’t aware – for the weekend. It’s rather more difficult for both of us when we’re apart, as is to be expected, so we had a pleasant morning in Kingston; we went to a rather nice patisserie close by the River Thames and we had an enjoyable hour or so. We also decided to return to my old school – also in Kingston – which was a truly lovely experience; going back to school is always very agreeable. It certainly helps that most of the staff seemed fairly pleased to see me – almost as much as I was to see them. I was wished some very welcome luck (quite frankly, I’m more likely to need a modicum of luck over the coming weeks and months than not) and the English Department asked me to email after I had been up a couple of weeks to make them aware of my doings in Oxford. As sad and pathetic as it may well sound, there are few things like a return to my old school or meeting my old school friends to raise flagging spirits.
The return quite made up for my missing of the final Parkrun I was able to do in London – or, perhaps, it mostly made up for my injury-enforced absence. My plantar fascitis has improved somewhat, through conscientious application of Ibuprofen combined with regular massages and application of ice packs. I do intend to run the Reading 10K tomorrow but beating my road personal best of 38:37 appears unlikely, with my track best of 37:20 disappearing over the horizon. It’s not a catastrophe; my main race this year was always going to be the Oxford Half Marathon, and provided I come through tomorrow relatively unscathed I’ll be pleased enough. I have more than enough races to come this year; aside from the Oxford Half I have the Freshers Run on the Sunday of 0th Week, Cuppers, the Freshers Varsity match in November, cross-country races and around fifteen Parkrun opportunities. Far better to spurn a good performance in a race that is far less meaningful and allow my fascitis to ameliorate than to push myself excessively tomorrow and spend two months rehabilitating. It’s a difficult philosophy to assimilate into my mind, simply because I’ve never had a detrimental injury before. Such is life, I suppose.
My packing is very nearly done. I now have all of my clothes, all of the books I intend to buy plus a few I’m bringing for pleasure reading – Lolita, Wuthering Heights, The Picture of Dorian Grey and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Dorian Grey is a business text in that I need it for Week 6’s work, but I also adore it and so reading it is no hardship whatsoever. I also purchased J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’ today and, should I have time to read it in Freshers, will post a review as well as my planned Freshers Week blog entries. I also have all of my toiletries – forming a rather larger weight in my packing total than one might think – and my bedding. It would also be worth mentioning that I bought a 100-strong pack of Earl Grey teabags and some cookies in lieu of my shameless intention to entice other people on my floor into friendship through a Freshers Week tea-and-biscuits session. This is predicated on the assumption that such openness won’t instantly prove me to be a desperate, slightly pretentious recluse. Such an assumption may prove fallacious; one will know if it does through a sharp increase in the number of anguished posts I make on here.
I jest. Perhaps. In any case, I’ve now packed everything apart from my laptop, my suit and my running shoes, and it’s an incredibly unsettling feeling seeing a substantial proportion of my life crammed into four bags of moderate size. The initial shock that this is finally happening has actually worn off; now my emotions manifest themselves as a dull sense that my hours here are limited and I should be doing something rather more indicative of that fact; engaging in deep meaningful conversations with my sister, perhaps; or rather trawling each and every room in my house, reminiscing over good times spent in each one; walking around my local town, wondering what it will be like when I get back; or, perhaps, engaging in tearful, somewhat contrived discussion with my mother about how much I’ll be missed (or how much I shall miss her). Nothing of the sort has occurred or is occurring; I got home from Kingston, did some reading, watched the football with my brothers, went to Tesco and am now blogging. It is an utterly unremarkable Saturday in our family. Perhaps I prefer it that way.
I had a very pleasant chat with my college mother (she is the parent whom I’ve contacted thus far; I should really get in touch with my father at some point) about coming up, and I think this was conducive to my feeling better as well. It was intended to be just a brief discussion about whether there was anything that I may have forgotten to pack or buy (there wasn’t, thankfully) but she seemed very pleased to hear from me, which obviously was nice as I was worried about being that college progeny; that is to say, the overly officious one whose enthusiasm manifests itself as an irritating yearning to ask every single question that has ever been asked and could ever be asked about Oxford, from ‘Is a second pillow advisable?’ to ‘What fancy dress do I need?’ all the way down the list to ‘What’s the thread count of my mattress?’. She’s actually from Malaysia, which threw me as her accent sounded vaguely American – though she reassured me that such a misunderstanding occurs extremely often.
There is little more to say, I suppose. I still have a number of worries regarding coming up (among other issues) that I shan’t irritate my readership with, but I don’t feel too dreadful. I did feel a slight twinge of guilt when I saw the cost of all the shopping I did today, because my parents seem to have shelled out a quite ludicrous amount on us this summer, as well as the perpetual cost of my brother’s education, but there we go. Suppressing feelings of guilt is something I should really work on.
Regards,
Jack
jacknmoran 