I should be revising for my exam tomorrow, as I have never felt less prepared for an exam in my life. Sadly, I can't bring myself to care much about it, even though no one knows whether you have to pass all your exams to pass the course or not. If not, then I should be able to not turn up and still get a distinction; if so, I'm most likely d00med. But I've had a dangerously small amount of sleep in the week, and I have a cold, and can't see properly, and it's making me think it would be more sensible to instead write about the last few days before I forget.

Sunday: My landlady most kindly and unnecessarily drove me to the airport. (Well, I had to be there, but she didn't have to take me.) As per usual, I took my boots off before walking through the metaaaaal detector, and the scanning woman said she had a pair just like them, which was weird, because as far as I can tell, only the most hardened of goths in Australia have New Rocks, as they cost more than twice as much there, and they're pretty expensive to start with.

I sat in the departure lounge with my laptop on my knee, bringing my journal up to date, and I thoroughly enjoyed feeling like a complete yuppie. I even looked vaguely smart for once, in plain black vest and cotton trousers, in an attempt to not make all the customs people think I was dodgy geezerette. (It worked.)

You know normally as you're board a plane, you show your passport and boarding card to someone? No? Well you do. It was completely weird here though; the departure lounge was cordoned off some time before boarding, and a woman went round checking everyone's stuff. While this happened, a lot of people turned up wanting to get the barrier. Someone tried, and the woman snapped that the area was cordoned off for a reason!, although her Anne Robinson demeanour slightly undermined by the fact that she was chomping chewing gum. But a bloke came through the barrier while she wasn't looking. Ha! Luckily, if he was a terrorist, no terrorising occurred on the flight. Meanwhile, the man next to me wanted to escape to go to the toilet . . . a good system, aye.

Ont plane, I was going to revise, but I was stuck between two people and had no elbow space whatsoever, so I just watched tree fillums! As they say in Ireland. Since my headphones didn't seem to be working too well and there was a lot of ambient noise, I chose some subtitled ones. They were:

- "Football Days", a Spanish film about seven friends going through various life crises. It was weird, in that it wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, not dramatic enough to be a drama, too scripted to be A Pretentious Portrayal Of How Life Really Is, and not feelgood enough to be feelgood in the way that, say, "The Full Monty", a film with a similar storyline, is. But it was entirely watchable.

- "Jeux D'Enfants", a French film. Now this was pretentious! Twas playful, in the "Amelie" sense, but grimmer and weirder, though nonetheless pretty good.

- "Itchy Heart", a Chinese film. The blurb in the inflight magazine made it sound Innocuous, Sweet and Boring (boring being a highly desirable quality in films, as far as I'm concerned - myself and Ibid even founded The Boring Film Appreciation Society), but it turned out to be a romantic comedy! Arrrrrrgh! Western romantic comedies are bad enough, but at least they're, you know, vaguely funny and romantic, which is very well if you like that sort of thing. I don't, but I can appreciate that by these yardsticks their performance is generally ok. But in this, there was barely any explanation as to why any of the characters felt the way they did, or exposition of these feelings, and the humour could be seen from a mile off, and you could almost see the neon ker-azy-Anime-style "HUH?!#" flash across the screen in every supposedly funny moment. To its credit, a couple of the characters came across as pleasingly realistic; to its debit, I suspect this was accidental. But it was so bad it made for compulsive viewing. (And anyway, one of the characters was fit.)

By the time I got to Singapore, my bottom was killing me, and I still had another thirteen hours of flight to go. So I spent an hour and a half walking up and down the airport (given its size - it probably takes up half the country - little retracing my steps was necessarily).

When I eventually had to sit down, the (English) girl opposite me called someone on her mobile and had a long conversation, filled with gossip and confessions, of which I heard every word. I love mobile phones, I do.

Then came over an hour of sitting on the plane, followed by the flight which would have been much quicker if either 1) they'd flown over Russia like they did on the way there and 2) they hadn't very obviously been avoiding certain Middle Easterni country airspaces. This was also annoying, because it was too dark to do anything except watch the screen, and my brain hurt to much to do anything but watch Flight Path (which tells you where you are in relation to various cities), and Saudi Arabia appears to be boringly devoid of them. But I did get to go over India! And Israel! How good is that!

Flight Path is also totally weird, because it occasionally tells you how far you are from small not-widely-known but touristy places like Ely and Ripon. Yeah, like you can get off the plane when you pass somewhere that looks interesting!

Arrived in Manchester at 7am English time. It was then announced that we'd have to wait twenty five minutes before a single gate in this huge airport was available to us. You would have thought the people who'd just spent fourteen hours on a plane and in most cases another lengthy flightly shortly beforehand would get priority, but nooooo.

Then followed a series of unfortunate events.

Before I could collect my suitcase, my period started. No, that's not too much information; at least, it's less information than "I have to go pee", a phrase nobody seems to have any qualms about saying, as that contains a colourful verb, whereas period's almost an abstract noun. I agree that there's no need to talk about one's bodily functions if they're of no relevance to the point you're making, but as it is, a highly pleasant welcome back to England, yes!

So I went to the toilet. While I was waiting for a cubicle to become vacant, I noticed a weird machine in there: with my impaired vision, I couldn't work out what it was: was it a weighing scale or a currency converter or what? In spite of my bafflement, when a cubicle did become free, I tripped over said machine, landed on both knees, my hand and my elbow, and got enormous bruises. Another nice welcome home!

I then went to get my suitcase. Of course, I was too uncertain it was mine to grab it the first time round, so I had to wait, and then, as I heaved it off the carousel, I whacked one of my knees with it, and was in too much agony to walk for about a minute. Brilliant!

I met my parents, and we headed for the car park. We had to take a lift to get there . . . and the lift was drunk! It opened its doors with an amazing amount of reluctance and took us to completely the wrong floor four times, and no, not because other people were summoning it! Yeah, I love you too, England!

My parents had spent the previous night in a hotel, so they went back there to have breakfast and pack up. At this point, I could have done with a sit down, but of course sitting down meant excrutiating agony. But I was also very smelly so I decided to have a shower. I found two hair-product-shaped bottles in the bathroom, one of which was shampoo, the other of which claimed to be revitalising and conditioning, so I naturally took it to be conditioner. Of course, only once I'd put a load on my hair and did I realise it was moisturiser. (And, of course, by the virtue of it being Someone Else's Shower, I got blasted by cold water before I could turn the tap off.) Aye, a warm welcome back to England, Zed!

Other than all that, my return was funchie. My parents had brought me untimely birthday cake #2 and copy of Metal Hammer, which I've missed desperately since I've been in Australia. Obviously, Terrorizer's more interesting to me, and Classic Rock's written more betterly, but Metal Hammer has the unbeatable combination of a lot of useful information about the more mainstream bands I like, a few well written articles, and a huge amount of cheesiness, stupidity and utterly pointless features, which for some reason I find absolutely hysterical! I especially like the "penbangers" section: all the adverts say something like, "Male vampire, 15-" (or "40" - it's equally amusing either way) "-seeks Deviant Gothic Mystress Of Darkness And Pain. Into fetish, satanism, witchcraft and Blink 182. Contact: linkinparkfan@upperpigsvilleonline.co.uk."

Then, since I didn't want to fall asleep until a sensiblish hour, they took me to Liverpool! As I've never been to Liverpool before (despite only living a hundred miles away), I was well excited! I liked it a surprising amount: I always envisioned it being really run down and swarming with vicious scallies, but although there were a few scallies in evidence, twasn't too bad, and the centre was all clean and whatever-the-word-is. You know, with all the old warehouses made pretty and posh. You could tell it had been whatevered, but I liked it that way. It was like they wanted it to be all slick and sleek and modern, but there was undeniable life and vibrancy seeping out from beneath the façade.

Also, it being a bank holiday weekend, there was a huuuuuge festival on, with horrifying but entrancing carnival rides all over the place and music coming from all directions (including from a puppeteer dressed as a bear, perfectly operating two little bears singing Beatles numbers). We just wandered round the town centre (once we found it - it wasn't easy. But nothing i-is!) We were going to get a ferry crosst Mersey, but the water was so rough Mum vetoed this idea. But I later found out this was just as well, because they play "Ferry Cross The Mersey" on loop on it, which not only isn't my favourite song ever, but is far too short to be comfortably looped on a twenty-minute journey for anyone's liking.

My parents bought me a Mars Bar. Ahhh - Liverpudlian (and Yorshire) Mars Bars taste so much better than Australian ones. Australian ones taste nice and interesting, sort of like Quality Streets, but the greasy taste of these relatively northern ones can't be beaten. (Cumbrian ones aren't as good - the nougat's slightly too brown.) They also got me the Cutest Screwdriver Ever! (With which to fix my glasses.) Didn't think screwdrivers could be cute? Neither did I, but it's so tiny it almost gets lost in my wallet: it's a silver tube you unscrew one end for for a tiny flathead screwdriver and the other one for a crosspoint. Everyone I've shown it to (and I've showed it to a lot of people) has been enchanted! I don't have much need for tiny screwdrivers in my day-to-day existence, but I think I'm going to have to carry it with me everywhere from now on anyway.

Then they took me to Stamford Bridge, where many pleasant hours seemed to evaporate on conversation with my classmate Teresa and her fiancé, and coating the inside of my boots with black gaffa tape. (Well, they're cream inside, and you can see that, and it's just not black metal enough.) I went to bed at 9.45.

Ont Tuesday, I woke at 5.45. Not the best start to the day, as I could have done with rather more sleep and waking up at a more sensible hour, but it turned out to be the best day ever!

I did some revision, then went to campus with Teresa to hand our projects. Teresa has ridden the bus to York many a time, so we bought our tickets confidently, but the driver told us off for not buying more expensive enough ones. (Remember this, it's important!) Other classmates met and projects handed in, we played three games of pool in celebration, just like in the old days. With the exception of Phil who's better, we're all at about the same level at pool - the most entertaining level of pool to be at - good enough to pot things fairly regularly, but mostly the other side's balls.

Then I met up with Berna, who'd brought me a spiky-but-traditional bracelet back from her trip to Mexico. In wondering where we should go, I hit upon the idea of going to her department, as I'd never been to its inner realms before. So we went to her office, where Anime society bloke was working! I've only met Anime society bloke once before, as far as I remember, but we had a really good chat then, and now another one. Also, while I was there, Mr Ed from Screaming Banshee Aircrew walked past so I got to chat to him as well! And after I left, I ran into Hannah from York Writers!

Me and my classmates reconverged to meet the guy who's setting this exam tomorrow and ask him some questions. Then, I said I'd talk to Bryn ont phone, so I went and sat by the lake. Ahhhh, the lake. I'd missed it. I used to sit for hours in my room, staring out of my window at it, and this was a lovely sunny blue-skied day, with ducks quacking and everything. Bliss.

Then I met up with my former corridor mate Nicola. We chatted for a while (apparently the visiting academic who's moved into my old room is a neuroscientist with jars in the communal fridge marked "goat"). Then we headed for The Charles (a pub, also with many good memories attached), collecting her blokey on route, and meeting up with Berna, Alex and some other people off The Other Maths Masters Course when we got there.

Alex had brought me the rest of my birthday present. Back in December, he bought me a ticket to see Projekt; now, he'd got me a Lunatic Fringe t-shirt (I've wanted one ever since I saw them at Freshers' Fair a year ago), an Alchemy Gothic pendant (!!! as I've just been thinking I needed to investigate their range) and the Swarf album (!!! as, Swarf platonic-groupie that I am, I wanted this very much indeed), and considering I bought him a cinema ticket on his birthday, SLIGHT discrepancy between expenditures there! [hart] Alex! (Also in entirely platonic way, mind, much as everyone wishes otherwise.)

On the way back to our respective destinations, Alex, Berna and I bemoaned the not-great-enough amount of Andy in our lives: they hadn't seen him for too long, and I didn't think I was going to get to see him before I left York. But! After we'd parted company, who should I run into, but the man himself! Not only was it good to see him, but he's one of the select number of people I know who shares my level of delight in TRAVEL! So joyfully we exclaimed over the wonders of Australia (and it was wonderful, despite my sometimes less than thrilled coverage of my time there) and our mutual itchiness to get back and elsewhere.

And, the best was yet to come! Buses to Stamford Bridge run but once an hour in the evening, and I had no idea when. But just as I was approaching the bus stop, the bus came!

And! Teresa had texted me, saying the driver that took her home hadn't looked too carefully at her ticket, but mine studied mine closely. I offered to pay the extra 30p that I should have been charged that morning, but he said it wasn't necessary. w00t!

Today: Slept badly and woke before 6. Oh dear. Still, I got to do a fair bit of revision before today's Dutch exam, and while it wasn't uitstekend, I didn't feel I hadn't done enough revision, just that what it asked didn't relate perfectly to what I'd focussed on. I imagine I've passed and should hopefully still be in with a chance of a distinction.

And now, I go revise.