Can't concentrate. Tired. Why tired? Had sleep. Had plenty of sleep.

Turns out my room faces east. At 8am the sun's rays shine directly onto my face; a delightful natural alarm clock. Love it. Will be great at the weekend.

It's three weeks into term and I haven't gone swimming as I'd planned yet. Tsk.

Tired. So tired. Why? Didn't do… I am repeating myself.

Had a lecture by Joseph Nye earlier this morning. Interesting, but lost concentration halfway through. One hour later and I'm losing it in an economics lecture. In the best of times I can barely make it through an economics lecture without nodding off.

Pity.

So much wrong with my head.

A quick talk with fellow students reveals what I'd been dreading: that my standards are horrendously low. Horrifying; I was satisfied with 60s and 62s on my essays; others consider those scores to be the nadir of their academic career. It would seem that I have some catching up to do. Same tutor, mind you, so at least the measurement is consistent, if depressing.

Some work to do.

Longish day today; things to do. Alan Rickman coming to the Union? Okay, but I'm not really that interested. If that bug-eyed guy who played Mister Pink in Reservoir Dogs came, maybe I'd give a hoot.

I will spend a while sorting out my calendar for the rest of term. And figure out a way to drag myself from bed to go swimming in the morning. Gaah.

Sleeping on time is an indelible ingredient. Perhaps if I got everything ready the night before, so I could just get up, grab a bag and throw on a shirt and go, rather than actually have to stumble around half asleep getting the stuff I need, it might be easier…

Right now: still tired.

Expectations are important. My expectations of myself, if I were to be brutally honest, are very low. I am capable of more; I have done it before. The problem is, expecting little, I produce little; there is no pressure, no motivation to produce more than I have to. How can I raise those expectations so I drive myself to give more? Questions, questions.

I mean, I'm as good as any of the blowhards around me. Why, then, am I performing so frickin' badly? All things being equal, it is therefore likely to be a problem with the most overt variable: myself.

An excerpt from

Jesus Made Me Puke: Matt Taibbi Undercover with the Christian Right

... Here I have a confession to make. It's not something that's easy to explain, but here goes. After two days of nearly constant religious instruction, songs, worship and praise — two days that for me meant an unending regimen of forced and fake responses — a funny thing started to happen to my head. There is a transformational quality in these external demonstrations of faith and belief. The more you shout out praising the Lord, singing along to those awful acoustic tunes, telling people how blessed you feel and so on, the more a sort of mechanical Christian skin starts to grow all over your real self. Even if you're a degenerate Rolling Stone reporter inwardly chuckling and busting on the whole scene — even if you're intellectually enraged by the ignorance and arrogant prejudice flowing from the mouth of a terminal-ambition case like Phil Fortenberry — outwardly you're swaying to the gospel and singing and praising and acting the part, and those outward ministrations assume a kind of sincerity in themselves. And at the same time, that "inner you" begins to get tired of the whole spectacle and sometimes forgets to protest — in my case checking out into baseball reveries and other daydreams while the outer me did the "work" of singing and praising. At any given moment, which one is the real you?

You may think you know the answer, but by my third day I began to notice how effortlessly my soft-spoken Matt-mannequin was going through his robotic motions of praise, and I was shocked. For a brief, fleeting moment I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your "sinful" self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath. And besides, so long as you are going through all the motions, never breaking the facade, who are you really? It was an incomplete thought, but it was a scary one; it was the very first time I worried that the experience of entering this world might prove to be anything more than an unusually tiring assignment. I feared for my normal.

-----

So, this group psychology/ hysteria/ conformity thing - does it vacuum, as well?

It reminds me of a couple of things - Nazism, with its rousing rallies and an entire nation coming under the charismatic thrall of one man. Religion, in general (because this is religion, after all).

And it makes me think, we're all doomed after all. It's only a matter of time before one incredibly charismatic man leads the entire human race into oblivion. How? Where? What? I don't know, I'd be lying if I said I did; but man is, for better or for worse, a social animal, and we're all going to follow him like lemmings leaping into the abyss of extinction.

I only hope I won't be around when it happens. It would be unpleasant. Well, it probably would be quite pleasant at the time, but dying from an inherent tendency to happily participate in groupthink is not really how I want to die.

One joke got quite a laugh from the team. We were playing "It Just Gets Worse", where four players take turns to tell the story of a disaster which has befallen a small town, each taking on a different persona.

The disaster was, "The post van has broken down". The story got to the point where an angry naked man who wanted his Super Duper Food Processor was chasing a titanium-legged feral boy through a forest with a phlegmatic postman hot on his heels...

"If you're a naked man running through a forest, and only a postman can see you - do you make a sound?"

It's one of those "You Had To Be There" things. But it was hugely satisfying.

Mmm. I'd love to see Liverpool beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge 1-0, Gerrard get yellow-carded for overly- enthusiastic celebrations, and Manchester United beat Barça home and away. Without Gerrard, Liverpool doesn't stand a chance.

Oh, and the icing on the cake would be to see Man Utd beat Chelsea 3-0 at Stamford Bridge. LURVE. 

One of those days – lost my phone, never a good thing, feeling isolated – people used to exist perfectly well without mobile phones, but expectations are raised – people now expect you to have a phone, when previously nobody had phones, so it was okay if you didn't have one either. Was late for lunch wit h WCH; pleasant enough lunch – discussed, among other things, the Arsenal-Liverpool game last night (a real cracker, that one), and Monty Python ("Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!").

No internet access for 36 hours so far; am feeling disconnected. Definitely an internet junkie, now. None of that stuff about physical withdrawal symptoms – am not actually having the shakes, for example – but am feeling nervous and unsettled, need internets now. Very nearly paid GBP5 for 30 minutes of access at a Starbucks – bad idea, no doubt, but verging on reasonable for me. A symptom? Left London A-Z at WCH's office – had to walk back. No museums today, am sad, sad, sad.

On plus side, match tonight should see Manchester United go through to the Champions League semi-finals. Hooray.

Am tired, tired, tired. Walking.

YT was boring. Pleasant, but boring. I do like her, but she's so... bleh. Trying to find something particularly interesting that she does or thinks or says is a bit like trying to hit a fly with a BB gun in pea soup. Lots of pea soup. A large barrel of pea soup. I wonder what she is thinking in her lawyerly little head. Curious. Friendly, but not thinking with her dick (which she doesn't have, of course, which probably works in her favour). Wish I could do that. It's difficult. Lobotomy plz kthxbye.

Visited Windsor Castle today, as symbolic of the anachronism that is the British monarchy. They are rich; more than the usual rich, of course. And privileged. A rather convincing argument for egalitarianism as an ideology; such privilege! Nevertheless, there was much of interest in the palace; many paintings, and a lot of history. As much as I find the excess and privilege displayed by the monarchy distasteful, they are an undeniable part of history, and there is much that can be learned from a quick traipse through their quarters.

I have doubts about the endurance of the monarchy as an institute. There is much respect for the current Queen, but her heir has a decidely smaller reservoir of goodwill. And the rest of the family's mostly tabloid fodder. Still, as a source of foreign exchange in the form of tourism for the UK, the royal family does have its uses.

I'd first noticed her when she was, like me, queueing to buy a ticket for the walking tour; just, initially, the usual reaction on seeing black hair and a familiar-ish accent. I was, at the time, just chuffed that there would be someone closer to my own age on the tour; I'd seen the rest of the group, and they were all rather older than myself

But I found my heart-rate soaring as I worked up my courage to try and talk to her. She was, perhaps, not exactly pretty; but she carried herself well, and had an attractive style. White jacket, black scarf, dark jeans and brown boots. Long hair, and a habit of thrusting her slim, petite hands into the back pockets of her figure-fitting jeans as she walked.

She turned out to have a clear, high voice; easy on the ears, with none of the crude, thrusting, intrusive manner that sometimes seems de rigeur for the modern woman. And, better yet, none of the heavy, plodding, offensive-to-the-ear accent that comes from home (which would have been surprising, since she doesn't come from home, after all). Better and better; until, of course, I found my ability to estimate a person's age has in no way improved with my own aging*.

Still, there is something about speaking to a pretty, articulate lady – one is reminded of an archaic use of "making love" one sadly long gone out of use – pleasure that can be had out of mere conversation. It is probably too short a time to judge; I had perhaps, over the course of the day, exchanged less than a thousand words with her, which by any standard is an inadequate length of time to measure anyone. I did like what I heard (and what I saw), though. That last 5-minute stroll after the tour – found out a little more – in a near-vacuum of information, everything's good to have. KL native; studying Politics & Economics at A-Levels (among others); finishing her final exams sometime in May; and probably taking a gap year after she's done. And that was it.

The best bit was after – while moving through the motions, I asked her – what're you doing for the rest of the day? – dinner, and the boat tour, she said, and how about you – back to my hotel and dinner with my dad, I said – and she gave - and here was the best part – a little sigh of disappointment, a small, quiet, final-sounding "Oh". Loved that. Even if it is really a matter of interpretation; it could have been an "Oh" that meant anything. But I like my interpretation. 

It is, of course, completely moot. She is merely a memory, now, nothing more; already I forget the details of her face. Sad, perhaps; I wish I'd been able to find an excuse to take her photo. And get her number; she'll get older, after all. In 5 years it'd be fine – going by the "Divide by 2 and add 7" rule. Never mind. It was (assuming she was telling the truth and I heard her correctly) Farah (or some homonym thereof), right? Sadly, I will forget you soon; not that it will matter to either you or I in a month.

Memories seem to be sweeter, in any case; reality has a rude habit of intruding on the perfection of real people, adding inevitable imperfections, highlighting and enlarging the pits and potholes of the human spirit. My memory of her will only improve.

* I have been horribly wrong before, whether in estimating a person to be a decade younger than he actually is, or in mistakenly (possibly cruelly) attributing an additional half-dozen years to a budding adolescent. It is probably in part a reflection of what I want to believe, combined with an honest-to-God inability to accurately take the measure of another person – itself the result of a quarter-century of profound disinterest in most people.

Talked to a Malaysian Malay girl today while walking on the guided walking tour of Canterbury. She was pretty. Very cute. Sexy. Smallish, I really, really liked the way she moved. White jacket, black scarf, brown (furry?) boots. Blue jeans IIRC. Unfortunately, 16. Bit young. What was her name? Farah? Damn she was cute, until she said she hadn't even finished her A-levels yet. Which puts her at 16 at the most. Gah.

Anyway I'll never see her again; Farah/ Fara/ [other spelling variations I don't know] is exceedingly common in Malaysia, and even in London it's too hard. And probably doesn't have Facebook anyway. Ah, well… at least I opened my mouth, anyway; I can live with myself.

Then there was that Oxford native who works at Blackwell – Nicole? Nicola? Didn't quite catch that. University of Edinburgh fine-art student. Not too bad too, at least willing to talk. Probably 20. Almost enough to make me want to take up a part-time retail position at Blackwell. Almost. Maybe.

I wonder how much of my creepiness shows. Mmm creepiness.

Snow across England yesterday, apparently. Snowed in Oxford, snowed all the way to Canterbury. When we got to Canterbury it was even worse.

The Oxford Literary Festival was fun; I stewarded a Meg Rosoff event and a second one the next day. Maybe I'll go back next year.