Break's over. The wait's over.

I'm writing this listening to a piece of music. I have no idea what it is; it's on piano, and it's unaccompanied, and it's being played by a friend of mine whose talents are apparently infinite. It's got pauses, hesitations, sudden quickness and then sudden pauses. It's not quite perfect, but it has the shape of something perfect. She'll get it perfect, I don't doubt, but there's something perfect in its imperfection.

What is there to write about today? Everyone's talking about the anti-establishment wave sweeping Europe from both the Left and the Right, but I'm not qualified to talk about that - aside from saying, as a dabbler in PR, that UKIP have absolutely proved that all publicity is good publicity. If we had all just very quietly ignored these little men (and they are almost all men, in a party that claims to be representative of a country in which 51% of the population is female) then they would not, could not, have made the gains they have. Instead we pointed cameras at them and covered them in papers and apparently did everything we could do give them free media. I imagine every single client at Edelman is calling up and asking why they're not getting this much coverage when they pay as much as they do.

What else is there to say? Reaction to yesterday's blog was good. It is utterly mind-blowing that most media are not characterising this as a hate crime; then again, the manifesto is very long and they are very busy journalists. The Mail Online, for example, was hunting down the woman who apparently started all this. They take great pains to insist that they're not blaming her. They're just hunting down the women so we can see how blonde and leggy she is, just like he said.

This girl had nothing to do with it. We shouldn't involve her but if we do we get clicks from perverts, so...

Yikes. It's just super fucking creepy.

But in happier news, I'm at home with my family eating leftovers from the masses of food we barbecued last night. Coming home again is difficult, because every time you do you realise you can't really. You change, your family changes, the people around you change. It's inevitable and unchangeable and still weird, because you keep hoping it won't.

But of course it does. Time doesn't stop for anyone.

So with that in mind, I'm hoping to finally get word on my H+K application and/or finally know one way or the other what I'm doing this summer. Please let it be creative work! If not, it'll be a bar and a lot of focus on my dissertation.

And I'm going to learn some piano. Just four chords, and after that I should be able to play a few songs.

How many?

Well...

Quite a few.

The Elections Are Over

We have a new executive committee, I have had 6 hours sleep, and I'm facing a half-written essay with my mind on one thing, and one thing only. Food. I am starving, but I can't bring myself to heat up food and put it in the hole I breathe out of.

We're quite gross, us human beings, when you think about it.

But elections are over, so let's focus on that before we lose our thread and realise we're just fleshy bags of mostly-water held up by a framework of bones. Elections are over! And we have a shiny new Sabb team with a few faces from the old guard.

The experience over the past few days has been something quite astonishing, because it turns out that people are actually curious about all this democracy. Over 2,000 votes were cast, or one in seven students: a result that's really very, very exciting. I spoke to so many people and did not get a single blow-off or mean comment. People who love me have said that's because I'm good with people. Personally I am loathe to trust anyone who says they love me, because most of those people have seen me early in the morning and even I struggle to love myself at that hour - but there it is. Let us leave it as a moot point and accept that either I am good with people or people are generally good and democratic and inclined to give people a chance if they stop them in the street. I hope it's the latter over the former, to be quite honest.

She did it! V did it! And I helped.
(Not to choose the socks. That one's all on her)

The campaign with which I was helping, themed around Rosie the Riveter, saw Veronika elected to the position in which you see her above. There were tears and roars at the announcement, but unfortunately had to skip the ensuing party - which I feel I can safely assume was legendary - to make sure I got some work done before the USA trip, which is a fairly frightening five days away. My agenda between now and then is, thankfully, almost empty: gods bless reading week. I've still to pack and, quite possibly, buy a new suit - and new shoes - after all, what sort of savage only takes one suit across the pond?

In any case, the work plods on. I am about a third through an essay, which is a massive improvement on the last time I did an essay (if you imagine me at 5am shaking because of a massive caffeine overdose and feverishly writing then you have (a) an excellent imagination and (b) an exact image of me writing my last essay.) I'm helped in this regard by the fact that I really enjoy the subject: the course is well structured and the lectures are fascinating. The reading is fun too: the end of Monsieur Vénus is the kind of twist Dahl would have considered inspired.

If, by the way, you didn't know Roald Dahl wrote fantastically twisted stories then I urge you to read Tales of the Unexpected at once. That the man had a gloriously bizarre imagination is evidenced in his "children's" books (though, let us remember, that an awful lot of awful people get their very unpleasant comeuppances in them....) but it's in these tales that his imagination really explores some darker places.

Look, we're getting off topic again.

The point is that my life is actually flowing along quite nicely. I am proud of the work I've done with Veronika, I am excited beyond all reasonable measure about the incredible sabbatical team next year, and I'm going to New York New York in six days.

And The Woman is still alive, which is reassuring.

Life is good. And hey, we raised £2m for cancer research! Let's kick cancer with our naked/made up faces. I've done and donated. I hope everyone reading this has done so too.

If only all charity was this easy. And made me look so good.