What an idiotic thing to suddenly feel sad about. On my shelf at home now are both extant series of Spaced. Far more than the house mix, which is of course excellent, Spaced to me now represents the psychic residue of two years of living with the wonderful people with whom I have been living. I don't think I'll be able to watch it for quite a while without feeling extremely down. For the greater part of two years, I could put on one of two videos and you could rely upon someone or other, usually Andy, Paul or James or all of them, to park themselves on the ergonomic delights that were our uni chairs and watch it with me. Now I am at home, and if I put it on, Casualty or something will start. I think for the sake of my sanity I should consider destroying the tapes, buying them on DVD and only watching them again when I can afford a DVD player, which may well be at least a year from now. How ridiculous.

This morning, as I say, Paul left. He texted me and Andy to say byeeeeee, so I rushed downstairs, half-expecting to determine that he had left a few minutes ago, but fortunately he was still there. Paul is not living with me next year. I like Paul; it's going to be strange not living with him next year. Even stranger, Andy won't be here. Naturally he left too, albeit rather later. The But he'll visit, so I guess that's okay. cleaners had said we were to be out by ten. They wandered round treating us like children and generally getting in our way. Next year is going to bewilder me. Then there was only Gavin and I. I said goodbye to Gavin and left him in Exeter, to move to his new place for the summer.

The drive home was okay, 'cept for one thing - Mere. I hate Mere. It is a twee little village that sits off the A303 at the midpoint (dinner-time) of my journey home by car and that has phantom services. This is the second time the curse of Mere has caused me discomfort. It lures you away from the A303 with promises of food and rest to a T-junction which has no directions for such a thing. Then you head for Mere, as is logical, drive through the middle of it thinking "This is a fairly pretty but utterly boring village which bears no resemblance to what I actually wanted." and miss the absurd turning back to the A303, drive up some relatively steep narrow roads, the U-turn and curse the day of your birth. I hate Mere.

Now I am back, and my room is filled with stuff. I think I shall read The Silver Chair. I suppose I didn't get around to mentioning that I finished Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Well, I did leave my computer assembled. It's not much trouble. It means that I can blog that Paul has just left, having managed to fit all his stuff in his car. James' Dad wanted to wake James up so I suggested phoning him, but our phones (such as they are) have been shut off. How incredibly tight-arsed of Keycom. No blog 'til Brooklyn Camberley.

Well Mino said goodbye, and then I dropped him and his stuff off at his new place. It's all very strange. No-one seems to be in; perhaps Paul is. I think Andy's gone off for a meal with his Dad. I'll see how James and his Dad are doing in the Artful.

* * *

They were doing quite well, I gather. James' dad is a very amicable chap, and he also bought me two scotches, which may well have been doubles. So we just chatted for a while about various things. The history of the James v. Andy prank wars was a major feature. Joe also turned up, having been on his own in his flat and having read that I was going to the pub. He was leaving early the next morning, so that was probably the last I'll see of Joe. It's good to know that people still have blogs though. When we got back from the pub, we complained about how rubbish TV is. Paul had left some pancake batter out, which was clearly not going to be used, so we had some pancakes. James replenished the batter using up my eggs, which made my fry up not as good the next day. And then to bed.

Packed till midday, and now I can't be bothered. Fortunately it was lunchtime, and everyone else was quite keen to stop packing too. A collective dinner again for them. Nice. I had been considering whether or not to smash my acoustic guitar to bits against the wall. Andy reminded me of the possibility, so I did. That was quite fun. I wish I'd left the strings on for it though. I suppose I was intending to fix it at the time, but it would not have been economically viable. Then I made the best joke in the world. I saw that Paul had a hand-whisk on top of his cupboard.

ME I suppose you don't need that; you've got an electric whisk.
PAUL Do you want a whisk?"
ME That's a whisk I'm not willing to take.

Andy hit me on the head with a wad of paper. It was ever thus.

Packing. Better get on with it. Before that I e-mailed my grandparents, phoned my other Nan and also one of my aunts. aunties. my mum's sister. Aunt isn't a very nice word. Not as bad as spinster (she's not one btw).

I was getting ready to go to campus to get my results when Gavin texted me to congratulate me on my result. News to me it was. I phoned him up and he said I'd got a first. Golly. I was going up to campus to see Karen in any case and get my breakdown (Stop - hammer time) so I thought I'd see if Gavin had misread it - it didn't seem beyond the bounds of possibility, but Gavin read it with startling precision, so that's jolly nice. So, feeling all chuffed, I spoke to Karen. It was basically just a bit of an ego-stroke really; she said she really enjoyed my work, and that I came at things from interesting angles, and that if I ever felt the appeal of academia again to give her a bell. A pleasant addition to a pleasant day.

* * *

Not a great deal happened after that during the day. I just hung around as usual. We watched a good deal of television though. Channel 4 News was terrible; what are they playing at? John leff this morning and I didn't blog it - goodbye John. He's upset about James' animation, angry actually he says. Hmm. I might let my nationstate drift into oblivion now - it was a Scandinavian Liberal Paradise last time I checked, and that's a good way to go out. Also, though the idea of it is pretty cool, there is no way I'm going to bother managing my virtual team, the Rum Chaps, so I guess I'll let that go too. It's a great deal more important to try and keep this blog running until the end of the summer. And then, who knows?

In the evening we went round to Joe's and drank some beer. It was sort of like being in the pub, only it was Joe's room. It was good. He should leave his leftover beer as a window-ledge present for th next occupant I think.

Benny Benassi (www.Benny Benassi.com) has been ivolved with a coupleof new tracks that I rather like. I kind of like that Tomk/craft "Loneliness" one, which he did a remix of, but Benny Benassi presents the Biz "Satisfaction" is the daddy. I wonder if he will fade into obscurity? He certainly deserves to less than Fatboy Slim. Can't work out the appeal there really...

Yesterday, James spread flour over the front room. Naturally, it was still there this morning. Anyway, I was walking through it barefoot,and it reminded me of gymnastics. That is all.

Songbird sweet and sour Jane, and music is my aeroplane. Someone better slap Flea.

Today was a day of orderliness, at least to begin with - I tidied the kitchen a bit, washed up most of the washing up and then tidied my room.

I think most people must have got their results today, because everyone was asking me whether I had, but I'm getting mine tomorrow. I can't work out when tomorrow though. I'll try going up at midday.

I didn't know whether to leave on Friday or Saturday, but Mino assisted my choice by asking me whether I wouldn't mind transporting his Italian possessions from hither to thither. A helpful use of the car, huzzah! John is leaving Exeter tomorrow. It hadn't sunk in, and it still hasn't really. James said it'll probably be like, in a week or so, we'll think "I quite fancy going to the pub with John and Joe" and we won't be able to,and that's very bad. I think Andy not being here will be the absolute strangest and not good thing. I rather gatehr that he will visit Exeter a fair bit though; I think he has shedloads of friends who are still here. John was returning a book of mine (It's jolly good) and he thought, as did we, that we should do something on his last evning in Exeter. Pub it is.

I said something about my stolen cushions (they were going to be thrown out) and James said we should move them to Cowley Bridge Road. As I had a bike to take over, and some forms, and we didn't know where there was to park over there, James and I went over, parked in the chaplaincy car park and did things. Adam had gone home already, so I stashed my bike and cushions up there. Then we just stayed in Adam's room, James, myself, Norris, Luke and another chap who I will probably never see again, which makes it less of an issue whether I know his name or not. I noticed Chris Moyles was on, so we left.

We had an ecumenical BBQ to go to before going to the pub. It was alright. Neither James or I thought we had our money's worth. At one point a guy loudly recommended "www.sologuitar" Little Mark kept trying to invent jokes of the formulaic kind. He started with the question and wondered what the answer would be, like this poser: "Why did Mr. T cross the road?" Naturally all such questions can be answered with reference to the original joke. I wonder why that joke even took off actually... It was the last Wednesday mass before next year so I thought we should probably go. We rushed to John's house to say we might be a little late, but he was in the middle of eating dinner anyway. Then we rushed to chaplaincy. And there was a mass going down. LT has started painting her car with eccentricity.

After that we did go to the pub. Paul came as well, but Joe and Jenny were off clubbing. We started talking about the reformation. James said that Elizabeth brought in the new religion. I maintained that it was Henry, because making himself the head of the church seemed fairly innovative to me. James and I both knew that Henry didn't change much practice though. Anyway, I'm right. The Artful is under new management. We then went to John's roof,but I think James has probably blogged all that, and I'm running out of interest in this entry.

I awoke at about 0510. Sheesh. I had another dream. I can't remember much of it, but I think it was the tail-end of a party that Mum and Dad had thrown. They had distributed, like the Easter Bunny, presents in the garden, and one guy hadn't found his shower curtain yet, but I helped him locate it under a hedge, and so all was well. Happily, the documents for the Xantia had arrived. I went to campus and found myself there too early. I had skipped breakfast, wanting to get this over and done with so I could relax again, but the prosepct of a half hour wait with an empty stomach was not appealing, so I had a styrofoam cup of tea and a muffin beforehand. Now all is well, but I want to go back to bed. This I should do after e-mailing my CV to indifferent temping agencies.

I didn't blog yesterday firstly because I wanted to get on with going to town, then because I wanted to get on with coming back to Exeter and then when I got back I was realy tired and couldn't be bothered. Here we go then-

Went to town as soon as possible after making myself presentable. I asked about temporary vacancies in local government and they said they were advertised in the local papers, so I shall watch out when I get back. Then I just did the rounds in terms of temporary agencies. I'm going to e-mail my CV to three of them today. They're pretty much full in terms of students so they didn't bother with a hard-copy. I was expecting this. I didn't feel disappointed until Dad suggested that I should. Bah. Anyway, it wasn't all bad; I went to one place that didn't want anyone without office experience (to wit, me) but they directed me to a place that didn't complain about being full up with students and even gave me a couple of typing tests. Theysaid Iwas abity below average on the number one, but that I "did well" on the alphanumeric one. I wasn't convinced, but here's what mynew pieces of paper say:

Numeric - Form 1 (UK) Test
[...]
  Gross key strokes per hour  4788

Alphanumeric - Form 1 (UK) Test
[...]
  Gross key strokes per hour  6912

So there you are. I went home and cooked dinner for Dad and Nick; used Mino's recipe, but I didn't put enough basil in.

So then I drove back in the Xantia, which wasn't a great deal of fun. As soon as I thought I'd really better take a break, the places in which one takes breaks seemed to vanish. I headed for the M5 too early I think, and even when I came off that, I ended up coming the long, wrong way into Exeter where you end up near Belmont. It was about 1730, so I caught all the outbound traffic. I then had to go to Loyes' to get my key off Neil and deliver his mail. I had issues driving in. Neil said he was in the laundry room. I didn't know where the laundry room was, predictably enough. When I got home, I found that the insurance documents hadn't arrived, and therefore I couldn't get a parking permit for the Xantia, at which point I despaired greatly. James was playing Sanity's Requiem (note the orthodox use of the possessive apostrophe) so I had a chat with Andy in his room. It was a bit dark; the conversation I mean. He also said that I looked absolutely "shagged out", I think his words were. Then bought some Bodingtons, burnt some toast and put beans on it, retreated into my room and read Prince Caspian.

n.p. Joy Division "Isolation"