All the clichés about postgraduate life are true. I'm down to my last clean inoffensive black t-shirt and longing for a timeslot in which to do my laundry. Also, today, four weeks after I arrived here, I enyojed the first stage of Masters student psychosis: The Good Friend From Before visits for a weekend, then departs with me imploring, "Don't leave me here with all this work and all these people I don't know! I'm sure they're nice people, who'd be happy to get to know me, but all this work prevents me from meeting them! I'm sure I'd be ok if they weren't playing emo in Burger King, but since they are: WAH!"

Daylight savings weekend is cursed! Cursed, I tells ya! Four years ago, I left Cambridge. Three years ago, it was wonderful - I saw "This Is Spinal Tap" and went to Slimelight for the first time and Bryn introduced me to his parents (A Sure Sign That Things Would Last) - but that only served to make it worse in following years! Two years ago, me and Bryn attempted to go to a concert, only for us to be cruelly separated by the confusing clock, resulting in Bryn missing half of it, me missing part of it, Bryn getting lost in Nodnol, and him having to buy a new ticket. A year ago, Bryn dumped me (although I did go to Slimelight and a funchie concert). And now this! And Terry Pratchett was supposed to do a booksigning in York on Friday, and he didn't.

On the plus side, I have black hair again. (As opposed to hair of all shades between white and black, with some red and ginger bits thrown in for good measure.) I also have a bathroom which looks like someone's been shot in it, but I suppose someone did dye there, so it's only fitting.

Also, a vaguely amusing story:

On Friday, I had to buy some Dutch textbooks. They call the language problem here Languages For All. HA! It should be Languages For The Stinkin' Rich, I tells ya! Even though I'm not paying for the course (the sole reward for being a masters student), the two essential textbooks cost £46! So much for spending less than £50 this week! Anyway, because I didn't know where the campus bookshop was (best for me not to know these things), I investigated the campus's "market square" very carefully.

Later that day, I caught the bus to the station because it was dark and I didn't want to walk alone, but my companion and I made our way to the university on foot. Because I'm not very familiar with York, I was looking out for only one landmark: Endsleigh Insurance. We got to the place where I thought it should be, but it wasn't there. "Oh well, it must be further along," I said. We walked on and on . . . and it never appeared, though it eventually became apparent that we must have gone past it. And so, our long cold walk ended up taking about twice as long as it should have done.

The next morning, we went to the "market square" to buy food. And what was beside the food shop? Endsleigh Insurance! Where it most certainly had not been the previous day!

So there you go. Shops really do switch places overnight!