Monday was the day on which I had to print out and hand in my project report to duuuume.

Naturally, my printer stopped working.

However, after some cable jiggling, it returned to life, and I handed in the report in good time. I spent the rest of the morning putting my possessions into carrier bags, then caught the train to Canterbury, where I was to stay with Ibid for a few days.

We went to The Beercart!!! The crowd has radically changed since I was last there - it is now attended by a guy who is about seven foot tall - but ahhhhh, it was good to see people again and attend a sufficiently metal night for the first time since . . . well, I was last at The Beercart in July. I also met my York classmate's (in fact, my group project partner's) fiancé's sister there!

Ibid and myself discovered the ultimate way to attract men's attention at club nights. I had brought her The Gift Of Bubble Wrap, and we decided to start popping it right there. At once, three blokes we'd never met joined in. (Though it turned out I had seen one of them, as my Dad accidentally drove up Canterbury's pedestrianised high street on the day of my graduation.)

On Tuesday, I wandered around the streets avec Bryn, who'd taken the day off work. I have become quite frugal of late and only buy frivolous things when I go into shops. Sadly, we went into lots of shops, and I spent about £30. I got a young adult book set at a girls' boarding school avec vampire and lesbianism and the Meads Of Asphodel album, only to sadly negate the black metaaalness of these purchases by also buying a copy of Metal Hammer (only for the CD and to laugh at the idiots therein, really!) and a wallet chain (all my trousers are boring and funchie trousers never fit me, so I had to do something, ok?)

We then went to see "Kill Bill Volume Two" which didn't blow me away in the way that Volume 1 did, but was still rather groovy. In the evening, Ibid and myself tried to go to LGBT, since I used to go now and again during my third year (simply out of curiosity - and not THAT sort of curiosity) and Ibid was also keen to see what it was like. Sadly, however, their website hadn't been updated since the autumn term, and find the meeting, we could not.

I spent most of Wednesday with various combinations of Bethany, Ian, Klair and Neil. We gossiped, unwittingly scaring many people in computer rooms with topics of conversation entirely normal by our standards.

Int evening, Ibid and myself went to the Hobgobleeeeen, where we met various folk. On the way, we spoke about one of the things we normally talk about when we are together: the splendours of the majestic north. We would very much like to go to Iceland one summer, since from there you can take a day trip to Greenland. This costs £300, but how good would that be? Anyway, she also saw fit to mention a Swedish girl on livejournal, eydimork, who was currently at university somewhere in Scotland.

When I was fifteen, I was a vice-president of an online club, The Young Writers Club. There were some very talented individuals there, including a Swedish girl exactly three years younger than me called Emma Oxenby. Over the years, I've occasionally wondered what happened to her, but never found out much.

But I knew she was going to study in Scotland, so could she and the person Ibid spoke of be one and the same? And indeed they were! What are the odds?

Anyway, from the Hobgobleeeen, we went on to a rock night at KIAD (Kent Institute Of Art And Design or sommat). The speakers weren't exactly ridiculously loud, but the sound quality was vicious, and trying to talk over the music was most trying. So Ibid and myself spent most of the night cowering in a corridor. The music was ok for part of the night, but then it turned into Bad Ska, including a track based on the Can Can.

I like Madness and The Specials and even some Less Than Jake, and I heard some early No Doubt while I was in Stamford Bridge and that was ok too, but most ska makes me homicidal. It's not that it burns through my Aura Of Gloom, as in truth, I'm generally filled with an almost sickening amount of Sweetness And Light. But I think I need music that complements me, filling me with anger and energy, rather than forcing yet more cheery laid-backness upon me. So we left early.

On Thursday, I needed to be anti-social for a while, so I read the vampire lesbian schoolgirls book, which was pretty good, then wrote about a thousand words of yet another new *sparkle* novel. I will finish this one - really! Then I went to the wondrous campus cinema with Ibid to see a 1951 Japanese film, "The Lady From Musashino". Ibid wore a kimono for the occasion and the ticket takers were most impressed. The film had a pleasing atmosphere, but had dated and the plot and use of language didn't match that of more recent world cinema.

Today, I went to see some of my old lecturers, regarding my prospects for next academic year. Thus far, the funding situation for the PhD I particularly want to do is unknown, but there is funding for a rather cool one (well, it's about ducks - who could ask for more?) so w00t!

Then I hung out with Klair, Ian and James variously for a while. Me and Ian went on a mission to find Cool New Places (tm), but other than a strange-smelling deserted staff common room we had no luck.

Afterwards, I spent a couple of hours with Ibid. Since I apparently made her a card when she went to Finland for a year, she had made me one, depicting a pelican Zed (in accordance with my livejournal username pelicanzed) wearing New Rock boots and jelly bracelets, flying to Australia, meeting a wizard in Australian airspace, and being waved goodbye to by the ghost of a dead squedgehog. It also contained a poem, which I will reproduce here for posterity:

I hope you have a lovely time in Oz
Although it's not in sketches by Boz'.
May what you do full of interest be
(though beware of jellyfish in the sea).
Be innocent of any crime
Save the forgivable offence of bad rhyme
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
May there be goth nights in the absence of the light of Slime.
All good wishes for the future.
Be happy with your computer.

We tried to work out how we'll get to Greenland in the summer of 2006 and I drew a picture of Henri Legrande, a porn star with a heart of gold, who is the latest character in our forthcoming immense film "Jacob et Claudine". Afterwards, I met up with Soppygit, who kindly walked me to the station, from which I headed back to York.