Back in Devonskaya

They say that Divorce and Moving House are the two most stressful events in a person's life. Exams are also a heavy hitter in this category. Then you get things like travel, illness, job hunting, and such.

My school year was the first to go through a number of reforms: tests at age 14, AS levels, and a reformed Oxford degree syllabus. This means I have exams every summer for eight consecutive years, assuming I don't do any post-graduate study, which I almost certainly will. In this time I've lived in my parental home, college, and a private house. I've just relocated back to Devon for the summer, and will move to a new accomodation block/ colony in Autumn.

I'm glad I'm not a divorcee. That might push even my pacific character.

I haven't been blogging all that much lately, because I've been putting things in boxes and such. I never realised I owned so much stuff. I've been taking down posters and revealing the extent of the horror my blu-tack has inflicted on the walls, and idly wondered how much the landlord is going to deduct from my deposit.

A lot of my packing time went into agonising about what to take home and what to put in storage. I had whittled it down to a select kit that any traveller would be hapy to lug around when my family, who had driven up to transport me, came up with a more straightforward suggestion. "Throw it all in the back" they said. "It'll be less bother".

I think I already blogged about my trip to Scotland. I think I caught some kind of exotic disease there- it causes me to sniff, sneeze, mope and crave Irn-Bru. Something I don't think I mentioned in that blog is that my "direct" train from Glasgow to Oxford actually terminated in Birmingham.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our next station stop is Birmingham New Street. If you are leaving us here, please take all your luggage and personal belongings with you, and take care as you step from the train. Birmingham New Street, your next station stop.

You know what? This service terminates here. I mean, it's so bloody depresing. What am I doing driving a train through Birmingham at ten o'clock on a sunday night? I wanted to be an astronaut. If any of you think it'd be fun to be a train driver, let me tell you, it isn't. I'm going home to be with my family.

The taxi that took me back to Oxford was the first car I'd been in for about two months. That was about a week before I next took a car jounrey of a few hours, requiring me to direct people onto unfamiliar ring roads.

Trying to avoid driving is a hobby of mine. I passed my test on the third attempt: that is, after 120 minutes of testing. Since then, I've driven for a cumulative total of about 40 minutes. Sadly, avoiding driving isn't always easy to do, especially when you live, as I do, in a region so rural that pine forestry and hydrolectric resevoirs are the main local land uses. There's also an element of culutre shock. Around here, the main entertainment is drinking until you fall over and the primary association of the word "bitch" is still a female dog.

It's a bit like being in Russia.

Song in my head: "Drifting out" by Mellow