On Wednesday, after rather too much sitting by the lake in the sunshine scoffing Mars Bars, I eventually found the strength to go and revise. I decided to go to the bar, and happily, I found classmates Hannah and Phil there, so revision wasn't the solitary experience I'd been dreading. Sadly, this also meant it wasn't the productive experience as I'd been needing, but I couldn't bring myself to feel overly worried.

Thursday: another early start, another group revision session in the bar, and another consulation with the bloke setting the exam, who told us we didn't, in fact, need to pass it in order to pass the course. Phew. Nonetheless, by the time it rolled round, I'd reached the point of feeling quietly confident about it . . .

Sadly, it was PANTS! I'd spent a fair amount of time revising and had committed to memory a large chunk of the material. It just asked me about things I wouldn't have dreamed of looking at even if I'd spent three times as much time preparing. Luckily, everyone agreed on its evil.

I felt guilty about it, because the lecturer's a really nice guy, and I didn't want him to think I didn't like or care about his module. It was, in fact, the most interesting module in my entire course. It's just that it probably had the most content of all of them and I've barely done any Mathsy Maths since early April, so was out of practice.

Anyway, silliness ensued. There was pool and there was cake. Classmate Hannah vanished, so four of us tried to do a summoning spell, by typing "Come hither!" on our mobiles. (Then we decided to bombard her with these messages.) We (me, most of my coursemates, 2 partners + Alex) spent a while at Penny's newwww huuuuge house, before we (me, my coursemates, 4 partners, and Alex and James Off The Other Course) went to York's weird vegan restaurant. You sit around the table on cushions (which isn't terribly comfortable, especially when you're still suffering the after effects of twenty-four hours on a plane - luckily Teresa relinquished her beanbag) and get to play with a one-string guitar and Duplo. (Like Lego, only bigger.) I built a scale version of Whitby - about twenty steps leading up to some ruins. Sadly, it went the way of Boscastle before we could photograph it.

Spent the night in the "suburb" of Fulford The Mythical State Of Garthonia (the kitchen noticeboard is covered by a map of it, and its national anthem, motto and bird), on account of one of its four bedrooms being currently occupied by Alex. Naturally, I took one of the vacant ones, you geens, despite the earlier-

Zed: The beds had better be comfortable.
Alex (intended only in the, "Well, as the beds go" sense): Well, my bed's comfortable.

-conversation.

The next day, I departed early in the hope of the opticians being able to make me up a new pair of glasses before I had to head for Derby. Sadly, they couldn't, so I wandered round the shops, and accidentally happened upon a shop with an amazing quantity of extreme metal CDs! I'd been in there once before, with Bryn, but, beeping goth that he's become since he got to know me (irony being, he was into black metal beforehand), he was too busy going, "Ooh! They've got Kaleidoscope! Let's see if our reviews are in it! Ooh, there they are! Hey shop bloke, check us out, we write for this magazine!" for me to take in the brilliance of its stock.

But it's as good as Metal Mayhem! So annoyed I didn't discover its greatness before, like, you know, pretty much my last day in York, ever! At least it's slightly nearer than Melbourne, and it's due to remain there for another two and a half years (although probably not much longer, as it's not doing enough business at present. Woe!) I bought a Kamelot album there, though, which I of course promptly lost somewhere on my subsequent travels. Sob.

Further wandering yielded a biiiig chain, some Fair Trade fudge and two cheap Judas Priest albums. It was a beautiful day and I was sweltering and dehydrating in my PVC trousers and trenchcoat by this point, so I went to the station, bought some water and the new issue of Metal Hammer (yay, although I also lost the cover CD, beepit!) then went to Derby.

It was at this point that said PVC trousers decided to start eating all my skin. By the end of the day, I had the legs of a suicidal teenager and I could barely stand to walk. I have no idea why - I've worn the trousers on numerous occasions before, at length and while very hot, and they've never caused me any pain whatsoever. This was truly horrifying, as online friend Jess and partner Mark, who I stayed with that night in Nottingham, can attest: they saw fit to provide me with the last of their plasters. (Which had Barbie on them, despite their not having any children.)

I could, of course, have taken the trousers off, but I thought, "Beep it, I'm in all this pain in order to look cool, so I'm beeping well going to keep looking cool."

This rather prevented me from looking around Derby, so I sat in the station until the gig was due to start, reading Terrorizer and feeling delightfully pretentious. In the two hours I was there, I saw at most a hundred metalheads go past, but amongst them was a bloke who recognised me from my time at York!

And then there was Blooooooodstooooooock! Got the t-shirt. Saw Mark's band, Illuminatus, who sounded much better than they do on MP3, and I liked the MP3s, so were consequently mint! Sadly, their set was cut short. Since I've been away from my native heath, a bloke has started putting on some pretty cool live bands in the none-too-distant Dumfries, and I now feel inspired to hunt him down him and hassle him about getting them a gig up here.

Then it was Sinergy, who I love, and whose greatness I must wax about. As with most non-native-English-speaking extreme metal bands, some of the lyrics leave something to be desired, but the music is both very melodic and very heavy at once, the guitar is amazing (Children Of Bodom's guitarist, innit!) and I love the vocals, which isn't something I say very often. I can admire a good singer, but normally, at best I'm indifferent to vocals of any description, and the rest I simply have to tolerate. (Which is probably why my liking for death metal exceeds most people's: it wouldn't sound as good or even right with any other sort of vocals, but I'm not convinced it's possible to like them per se. But as I've always had to just put up with vocals of many descriptions, they bother me less than those of say Tori Amos - obviously a good singer, but argh, the purity of tone, it hurts, it hurts!) But, along with Andrew Eldritch's, well, eldritch tones, the female Bruce Dickinsian vocals of Sinergy are, well, music to my ears. Sadly, the sound wasn't that great, and their set was cut short too. Come back and headline somewhere! Soon! Please! In fact, anywhere in Europe will do! I'll even go back to Australia! Just get your website up, you geens, so I know about it! (Not that I can talk, as mine's been missing in action for the last ever.)

The next band, Threshold, were, in my opinion, slightly boring, but accomplished and they gave a good performance, and headliners Gamma Ray were mint!

The next morning, I discovered that Jess and Mark went to Churchill College, Cambridge, like me! (Albeit for all of four weeks, in my case.) Jess left the summer before I started, but remember how I had a "college mother"? Turns out she's my grandmother-in-law or something!

Got the TRAM to Nottingham station! I didn't know Nottingham had a tram until then, but I approved, as it told me exactly where I was. Not sure I approved of all its clientele, though, as there was a severe case of Overly Informative Dressing (tm) - a woman wearing a mostly backless top, revealing the entire back of her bra. Surely you're meant to do backless without a bra, and, you know, as eveningwear?

Nottingham station is the most confusing place ever. I had to wander up and down all the platforms before I found the place that sold tickets, and even then, it didn't say I was going in the right direction - I just thought "Cash dispensers" sounded hopeful, and I couldn't even find any of those. Then, in my half-hour wait, the train got shunted from platform 3b to 4a to 6 to 1b to 1a!

Saw Edensbridge and (I think) Evergrey, both of whom were better than I'd expected them to be. Ran into a member of the UKC Rock Societyyyyyy whose existence I'd completely forgotten about. Bought and put on an Illuminatus t-shirt, and had my photo taken by a random woman while watching Balance Of Power (also good), possibly on account the t-shirt, but I couldn't hear. Primal Fear were mint. Sonata Arctica, of whom I'm rather fond, had terrible sound problems - you could barely hear the guitar and keyboard, and the singer seemed (understandably) a bit distracted. Children Of Bodom, though, were utterly brilliant! Every song was amazing - even those I don't like as much recorded were fantastic! (And several members of the audience were wielding plastic scythes - in addition to those with plastic swords and supposed Viking helmets. (According to Bryn, Viking helmets didn't actually have horns, but hornless helmets would just look weird.))

I'd decided my best plan was to spend the night in Sheffield with Kim and Natalya (formerly of UKC). Sadly, I'd lost my magic piece of paper with the train times on, so wasn't sure when the last train was, and also didn't fancy my chances of being able to get a taxi / walk / find the station, so I had to leave before the encore. A taxi was hailed, though, after a fashion, and at the station, who should I find but fellow York student + brother. They were not happy, as they'd missed Children Of Bodom to get their train back to Leeds, which hadn't come. Instead, they were to take the train to Sheffield (which was in fact a bus) and then British Rail would pay for a taxi for them. So we dissected the festival and they gave me Opal Fruits. (Not Starburst! Never Starburst!)

Once at Sheffield station, I was going to walk by the tramlines to the stop nearest my destination, but the door leading to them was locked, so - having no sense of direction - I got Natalya to come and meet me at the station. Meanwhile, was there a taxi for my companions? Yeah right! So we waited with a woman in a similar predicament, and waited, and waited, and waited. The place was totally dead. Eventually, I discovered Natalya was outside, but couldn't get in. Argh! But I managed to open a heavy back door and escape into the night. And my companions seemed to have gone by the following evening, but how much sooner before, I have to wonder.

Sunday was spent chatting, drooling over the pretty graphs corresponding to the house's temperature and movement and stuff (ah, geeks!), and playing with their barcode scanner(!) Then I went home, which was pants because train #1 arrived in Newcastle at 7.39, but train #2 left at 7.40, so I had to wait an hour for the next one, and urrrrgh, the Newcastle-Carlisle trains are diesel ones, and they make me sick! Sick, I tells you!

But at home, there was birthday cake (yes, a fourth one!), a Slayer album (from Noj), £20 from my aunt and uncle, a book from Soppygit (seemingly a humorous crime novel), two books from Meaghan, some stuff I'd ordered off Amazon (the coveted thesis on death metal I'd seen in Melbourne some months earlier and Hypocrisy and Tyr albums, the latter being Faroese metal!), and "Hell Bent For Leather: Confessions Of A Heavy Metal Addict" from Ibid. And I got to watch Noj's various creations (he's just finished a degree in Broadcast and Multimedia at Sunderland University) including the uberly Maidenesque-cheesy video for the Screaming Death Monkey masterpiece, "Knights Of Pleasure"!

METAAAAAAAAL!!!!!