Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

I have no date for the ball.

I had invited my friend Tim from Durham. I gave him quite a lot of notice, you know. A couple of months, I'd have thought. But some time last week he started muttering about how he might be starting work. 'He wouldn't be such a cad', I said to myself, and thought no more about it.

But he is indeed such a cad. He says he is only starting work so can't take the time off. Pish posh. It's quite common for people starting new jobs to have already committed to doing something in the first week or two. Employers really don't mind, you know, if you're polite and honest about it. He should have told them as soon as they offered him the job. But did he? No. He also claims that he's got Council on Friday (who has Council on a Friday? Oh wait .. we do) but the ball is on Saturday. And that he has no money (but didn't he say he's just started a job?).

I'm quite unimpressed. Severely unimpressed, perhaps. That's him wiped off my Christmas card list. If he was going to let me down, you'd think he'd have the decency to give me more than five days' notice.

I'm tempted to go alone now, you know. Bangor is already clearly segregated into Those Who Are going to the ball, and Those Who Are Not. You can't spring a formal occasion on people out of nowhere. It's even more difficult to spring formal occasions on people who don't live in Bangor, who might, say, have to travel from Ireland.

Oh how exasperating.

At school I had a lovely friend called Karen. We both live in Limerick, so we used to travel to and from Waterford together every few weeks. Our parents would take turns collecting all the Limerick crowd (and some Galway ones too), and me, Karen, Rob and Rory were quite the little gang.

Karen turned 21 a few weeks ago, so she had a very large party on Saturday night. She lives in the gate lodge of a castle her aunt and uncle own, but they live in South Africa, so her family looks after it. There's a deer farm in the grounds of the castle, and absolutely oodles of space.

The party was held in Karen's house (although previous parties have been in the castle itself), with a big marquee on the lawn. We all brought tents. Most of the people there were Karen's friends from Cork, but there was a nice group of people from school there too. Janette (who studies Documentary Photography in Newport) had caught the ferry that morning (passing through Bangor on the train) and had brought one of her housemates. Ali had brought her beau, who she's building a house with. Poppy lives with Karen in Cork so she knew all the Cork crowd. Dave knew the Waterford people better than us, but joined us later in the evening. There were various other people who'd been in different years at school, excellent people like Steve and Abi.

It was such a good-natured party. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. Karen's family are real foodies, and cooked a huge sit-down meal for 60 or 70 people (fajitas with all sorts of yummy dips and a zillion desserts). Then there was fire-juggling by a couple who live in a farmhouse in the grounds, which was absolutely brilliant. Karen's brother is a DJ and has lots of DJ friends who provided the music. Oh it was just lovely.

Except somebody left Cava lying around, which is always a bad idea because I felt compelled to drink it, and now my tent is somewhat the worse for wear.

So that took up most of my weekend, what with all the sleeping I had to do when I got home. But we also went to a concert by the Irish Chamber Orchestra last night in the University Concert Hall. The ICO often plays quite boring programmes of popular classics, but this one featured Janacek (whose 'String Quartet after LN Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata' was the subject of one of my final projects), Hindemith, Mendelssohn, Bruckner and a new work by Rachel Holstead. The Janacek piece ('On An Overgrown Path') was originally written for piano, but had been arranged for string quartet. The conductor (James Boyd) had orchestrated it for the ICO, and it was absolutely magnificent. So creative. I'd love to get a recording of that.

Now my dogs are barking. But I had a lovely weekend. I couldn't have liked it more (bonus points for identifying the song).

Today I bought some new shoes. They don't fill me with as much joy as other pairs of shoes I have bought in the past (such as my pink ones and my pink sparkly ones and my red ones and my black ones) but they're nice all the same. I suppose I'm not very excited about them because they're high heels and I hate wearing heels. They're no good for standing up for ages or for running around or anything. But I needed a pair because my ball dress is too long without heels. Maybe if I'd spent hours trawling around Dublin or Cardiff (which has a huge number of shoe shops) I would have found heels I could get excited about, but not today.

I did see some nice flat shoes in Wacky Shoes, though. I could get excited about them. But I really have to stop spending money or I'll have to sleep on the couch in the SU during July, eating leaves and poking through rubbish bins.

Dad has brought my attention to a major dilemma: what am I going to wear for my graduation? I hadn't really thought much further than the black gown thingy, but apparently one is expected to supplement the gown with some other clothes. What a dilemma! I'd go for the obvious choice (the ivory jacket) but I'm not sure whether jackets will look quite right under gowns. Quick! Find me someone who has graduated who can advise.

I've been reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I needed something nice and gentle to re-engage my brain which I had done such a good job of switching off. I thought to myself 'Ah, Bill Bryson. The very fellow. He writes in a nice easy-reading, witty style'.

But as I plough my way through the weighty tome I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by the mighty task dear old Bill undertook. How on earth has he managed to take the history of multiple scientific disciplines over several hundred years and turned it into an extremely readable narrative? I'm sometimes stumped by structuring 3000 word essays; I can't even begin to imagine the immense task of sitting down and figuring out how to tell the story of the world in a logical and interesting order.

The huge amount of research he's done is quite mind-boggling too (although Dad points out that he did have a research team). Imagine just sitting down and trying to make sense of countless scientific papers: it's like mastering a zillion different disciplines. Well, not mastering, perhaps, but getting enough of a grasp to be able to draw conclusions without sounding like an idiot.

In other news, I've been researching postgraduate study options. I don't know whether to go for the precise course I want in Britain or one that isn't quite right but is in France, which would allow me to learn two things at once. Hmmmm. MAs in France take two years, and I only want to spend one more year studying. At least for now.

Even within Britain I'm confronted with difficult decisions. Do I want to do an MA in Radio Production? Or do I want an MA in Radio? Radio Production is more practical and in Bournemouth, while Radio is more theoretical and in London. I wouldn't really like to live in London, but maybe I could enjoy it for a few years and get a good (temporary) job with the BBC before coming back to lovely Ireland.

Or do I perhaps want to do a sort of joint honours MA in Radio and Print Journalism? I'm not so much into the journalism side of radio, although I really like print journalism, and it could be quite fun combining the two disciplines. Most courses combine radio and TV, and I really don't have any interest at all in TV.

Oh, decisions decisions. Good thing I have a year to decide.

From Wikipedia:

The Committee Game

Any large organization has day-to-day tension where management desires to make decisions while the managed want their concerns voiced and "fair" decisions made. This tension plays itself out at all types of committee meetings: faculty, stockholders, staff, and milestone meetings just to name a few types.

Game Rules

In these meetings, it is in the best interest of the management and the managed to protect their current positions and resist change. Therefore, it should be noted that beyond (or behind) any stated reason for the committee meeting, the overall objective of meeting participants is to score points for their side by:
Blocking, if at possible, the development of significant decisions, and
Offuscate, diffuse, delay, or somehow make unrecognizable any issue before the members.

It is possible for any number to play, but larger groups from five to 15 members provides the greatest satisfaction for the accomplished player. Generally, playing is an individual sport, but be prepared for spontaneous teams of two or three to form.

Committee Game Strategy

First, slow the proceedings as much as possible. These meetings offer a perfect opportunity to promote yourself. Inject gossip about high-level management or administrators (everyone loves to hear it and they judge it as valuable information). Proudly announce any award or recognition you may have received no matter how trivial. Finally, if there is a lull in the conversation offer day-to-day stories which show how you helped someone.

Second, be suspect of any proposed changes, especially if there is a call for a specific plan of action. Use phrases like "if it already works, why break it," "this is too mechanistic," "why is this structure necessary," and "this has all the trappings of the cult of efficiency."

Third, if a decision seem imminent, defer the decision to another committee. Best of all, defer the decision to a higher-level state or Federal committee. Otherwise, form a sub-committee of just two or three members with yourself as the head of the sub-committee.

Committee Game Score Card

The committee member with the highest point total wins.

For 10 points: In the middle of a group discussion, use the pseudo Robert's Rules of Order phrase "I make a motion" to give an air-of-authority for a somewhat related (hijacked) course of action. 25 bonus points if someone seconds your motion. Zero points if the correct form "I move..." is used to solidify a consensus.

For 5 points: Interrupt the current speaker in mid-sentence, inject a quip, and get a laugh. 10 bonus points if the speaker continues the train of thought, but subsequently distracted with a second quip.

For 25 points: Use a metaphor from the previous speaker as the basis for a new (hijacked) direction in the conversation.

For 15 points: Bring up a decision passed earlier for renewed discussion. Ten bonus points if the group continues the renewed discussion.

For 3 points: If none are present, criticize administration. Explain how their lack of vision has led to sorry current state of affairs.

For 4 points: Criticize any service branch of the organization for inefficiency. Five bonus points if you mention the janitoral service or the IT department.

For 0 points: Question the morality of a discussion topic. 50 bonus points if the group agrees there is a moral problem.

For 25 points: Ask the group if there is a possible conflict-of-interest among the individuals being considered.

For 15 points: Demand to bring others in as participants into the group discussion.

For 10 points: Move that the meeting go into executive session.

For 50 points: Phrase a motion so that those opposed to it on a previous vote, vote in favor of the motion this time.

For 100 points: Have the opposition request adjournment.

I won't rant again (at least, not today), but Dad pointed out this interesting study showing that markets are cheaper AND create more jobs than supermarkets.

I'm glad someone's keeping an eye on Spencer's world-killing outrages while I'm at home. Cat's latest (and very thorough) blog post points out that Spencer is so strapped for cash that he has to buy eggs laid by battery hens, thus saving himself 30p. SPENCER! That's naughty! Didn't you see the signs all over the University showing that each hen gets less than the size of an A4 sheet to live in? Not nice. Not nice at all.

Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not into making myself suffer. I like to do my bit for the environment, but I also like it when going the extra mile has some sort of tangible benefit for me (not just the general feeling of well-being). Free range eggs are one of the products I support not only because I can't morally force chickens to live like that, but also because free range eggs taste better. I don't agree with Spencer that battery eggs are "damn good eggs".

This applies not only to eggs, but to also to chickens themselves. I was shocked when I moved to Wales by how difficult it is to buy free range chicken. I haven't conducted any kind of scientific study into this or anything, but it strikes me that it's far easier to buy free range chicken in Ireland than it is in Britain. Indeed, free range eggs are much more standard in Ireland than in Britain.

Now Spencer himself said the chicken I cooked last week was perfect. Yes, I cooked it nicely, but there's only so much you can do with poor meat. That chicken was not poor. It was a beautiful free range chicken from the butcher on the High Street.

Paying more for meat products is a good idea for three reasons, two of which I've already mentioned:

1) it tends to be reared and slaughtered in a more humane manner

2) it tends to taste nicer

3) producers of cheap meat cut corners everywhere, and the hygiene standards leave an awful lot to be desired in major abbatoirs (see the book I keep citing, Felicity Lawrence's Not On The Label [chapter about chicken particularly] for more on this).

I say 'tends' because there is of course the chance that the meat is just expensive because you're being ripped off, but I think it's worth paying more for meat when these three points are what we're getting in return.

One final point about paying for good quality products. To quote Ms Lawrence,

We spend a much lower proportion of our income on feeding ourselves than previous generations. In the 1930s the average proportion of income spent on food was 35 per cent; today it is less than 10 per cent, although for the poorest fifth of the population the figure is still around one third.

At University I spend about 20% of my income on food; sure, this means I have to make sacrifices elsewhere (I don't go out or eat out very often, for example), but I think it's money well spent. If my tummy's happy, I'm happy.

Thank you to Cat for blogging so interestingly about this.

Oh, and sorry to Spencer for using him as a scapegoat. The rant isn't really directed at you, you just inspired it.

Hallo!

What an exciting day it has been. I feel guilty for watching so much television today (Dad says it's my Protestant work ethic shining through), but there's been two ultra-exciting events.

First we had the Heineken Cup Final, Munster vs. Biarritz. Limerick, being the capital of rugby in Munster (if not Ireland), was like a carnival today. It was such fun! I nearly went into town to watch the match ("the biggest screen in Europe" was set up on the main street), but I couldn't be bothered phoning around to see if any of my friends were going and didn't want to go alone. So I watched it at home.

It really was frightfully exciting. Very close. There were just four points in the difference in the final few minutes, and Biarritz really looked like they might score. But they didn't, and Limerick is (in the words of Terry Wogan) floating on a pink cloud somewhere over the Shannon. I may have missed watching the match on a big screen, but I'm going into town tomorrow for the return of the heroes in their open-topped bus. Chris often slags me for not having a football team to support; I'll have to remind him that, unlike Middlesbrough, Limerick/Munster actually won in their European final.

Anyway, carnival atmosphere all round. Several of the players interviewed after the match said they were overwhelmed by the clips of crowds on the streets of Limerick. We were in town earlier and absolutely everyone was wearing Munster shirts (Penneys was selling tshirts saying "Irish by birth, Munster by grace of God"), music was playing over speakers and the entrepreneurs amongst us were selling hats, flags and ice-cream. It's quite possible that the atmosphere was more lively in Limerick than it was in Cardiff.

Then of course the second exciting event is the Eurovision! While Terry himself is excited about the Munster win (we're watching it on BBC to avoid the ghastly Marty Whelan on RTE), one can't help but be excited about Eurovision. We've been rating each act using four categories: costume, special effects, song, novelty value, dancing and Eurovision factor (like the X factor but better).

I need to go now so I can tot up the averages for each act before the voting results are announced. Just time to quickly say that I've decided I'm not going to wear my purple dress for the ball after all, I'm going to wear my red one with elbow-length ivory gloves and ... (drum roll) my ivory jacket. How wonderful.

Wow our Internet connection is a million times faster. And it was surprisingly easy to set up. Hooray!

Went to my old school last night for a charity concert. The last concert I went to (before that one) was a 40-credit degree recital by Gary, who will probably get a high first for his performance and is going on to do an MA in performance. But this concert had just as much talent and pzazz. It was so good! There were a few dodgy acts who clearly hadn't put much effort into practising their pieces, but there were also loads of really talented people.

Normally the school hires a grand piano for concerts, but hadn't done this time, so the concert was much less piano-centric than usual. And since the fundraising is for the guitar teacher Cormac Kavanagh (and sports teacher Ms Cody) who is taking part in the Africa Project, the programme was quite guitar-centric. Personal highlights were Luke's version of The Entertainer (I've never enjoyed a version on an instrument other than piano before); Luke, Orlando and Drew's version of The Monster Mash (surprisingly effective with just three performers!) and (as usual) the Chamber Choir. But best of all was the jazz quartet. They're absolutely fantastic. They're led by a superb saxophonist (who is hoping to go to Bangor after his year out), with a superb pianist, a superb drummer and a superb bassist. It was a really tight performance, just wonderful.

It was nice going back to the school. I saw two girls from my year, and had a lovely chat with my piano teacher. She's so lovely! What a great school.

In other news, I missed the cygnets hatching by about ten minutes yesterday. I arrived at the footbridge to see if they'd hatched since I'd last been home (you may remember the eggs appeared when I got home last time) and there were two women there all excited because the cygnets had just hatched. They're so cute and fluffy and tiny. I didn't realise they would be big and strong enough to go swimming straight away. Yesterday there were two cygnets swimming around and (apparently) another one tucked under Mommy Swan's wings. I went back for a walk with Ian today and he spotted another two under her wings (I was playing with the dogs on the other side of the bridge because they kept barking and I didn't want to distress the swans). So that was exciting.

I spent most of Monday in a car with Sam and Steve on our way to and from Carmarthen. We went to an information day kind of thing about these new NUS Extra cards.

For those who haven't been following NUS Extra, here's what it is. Basically, at the moment NUS cards are free and entitle holders to discounts in big chain shops like HMV and Topshop. But NUS has lots of debt, so they're trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of students. As a result, they've come up with this NUS Extra card. The card costs £10, and is the new discount card. The old card is now just a 'democracy' card (i.e. you need it to vote).

In theory, nobody who doesn't have an NUS Extra card can have discounts anymore. In practice, people will probably continue to give discounts to students with normal NUS cards.

Now, this NUS Extra card also contains all the benefits of the current ISIC card (especially useful for cheap travel) which costs .. oh I can't quite remember, it's either £8 or £9. So that's a good start on the value-for-money road, because now all the extra goodies the NUS Extra card theoretically provides only really cost £1 or £2.

But this is where the NUS Extra card falls short. When the card was being sold to us as a concept, it was claimed that the card would have a whole load more discounts than are currently available. NUS was even trying to negotiate a discount with Tesco, which really would have been worthwhile. But none of these major discounts have materialised. In fact, it doesn't seem much different to the normal NUS cards at all.

Now, of the £10 students pay for the card, £6 goes to NUS and £4 goes to the student's own Students' Union. So if we sold 5,000 next year we'd get a nice little £20,000 extra income. Nice little earner.

But do we want to sell these cards? We need to either do it whole-heartedly or not at all, because the sale of the cards will take an awful lot of resources. There are three ways to sell the cards:

1) fill in the cards and application forms by hand. I don't like this idea because it means having loads of people sitting there filling in forms and it means the students don't get a particularly nice card; cards ordered on the Internet are MUCH nicer.

2) order the cards online through the SU. This would mean having lots of PCs set up somewhere on registration day so people could just sit down and fill in the form themselves, but since it's through our server (or maybe the Uni's) NUS knows for certain that they are members of our SU. Also, this allows us to override the payment thingy so people can pay by cash.

3) order the cards individually in your own time. This is quite nice and convenient because it doesn't require any Union staff (except when people come to collect their cards) but in all probability not many people will get around to doing it this way.

Now the really irritating thing is that the website used in options 2 and 3 doesn't have a Welsh version. English-only. I find that incredibly annoying. Sure, Gerallt can approve it anyway, but I think it's completely the wrong message to give Welsh-speakers as soon as they arrive in Bangor. How hard can it be for NUS to translate the site into Welsh?

So I don't know what to do. The money generated from the sale of NUS Extra cards could go into things like giving Canoe Polo the money they need, or paying for the increased cost of printing Seren fortnightly, or something. But there's a really large amount of paperwork to be done, we'd have to invest quite a lot of resources into making it look like an attractive offer and into actually selling the card, AND you can't get the snazzy online-only card if you want to order it in Welsh. Thoughts?

... I'm at home. And it's great. I had a Lush bath last night (while reading Private Eye) followed by a 12-hour sleep. Today I've done pretty much nothing. I had a shower, preceded by twenty minutes sitting reading with a Lush hair moisturiser (Marilyn) on my hair (on the first in my series of Carolan Lush ratings, I'm going to award the Marilyn 8 out of 10). I'm going to bring my dogs for a walk as soon as it stops raining; as usual, they're wandering around wagging their tails and jumping on me. Although Goldie is whining very slightly at the moment: he has heard the shower run so presumes that means he's going to be walked right now. But it's raining! Dad just cooked me a delicious fry-up so I'm feeling sated and/or satiated.

It's slightly odd having nothing planned for the next couple of weeks. Where are my targets? Goals? Deadlines? Sarah has suggested setting myself nice acheivable, relaxing goals to ease the transition from working hard to relaxing, like:

1) make a cup of tea by four o'clock

2) finish a book by the end of the week

3) take dogs for a walk.

Nothing too taxing. My ickle bruvver's coming home today so no doubt I'll be spending time hanging around with him tomorrow, perhaps watching some Jeeves & Wooster, although that's a bit too like planning for my liking.

I haven't been home in this part of May for a while. The beech hedge in our back garden comes out in the second week of May, and it's now the third week so it's good and green. And my favourite tree in the world, the big beech tree in the graveyard, that gets its leaves in the first week of May, so it too is looking green. Although not in a Conservative kind of way. And the creeper thingy draping our pergola is in flower too: it's so pretty! I can't remember what it's called though.

This finished-my-degree thing is fun.

Today I went to the beach with Spencer and Tom in the morning. Spencer made a picnic, so we ate that, washed down with ginger beer. Lashings of it. It wasn't sunny or warm or anything, but it was a really pleasant walk. Very relaxing. I do like a bracing walk by the sea.

I went home and slept for several hours, then I cooked a lovely big roast for Sam and Spencer. And Robbie and Chris. And Simon ate some chicken too. Sam made a most delicious fruit salad, it was quite wonderful (and he left the leftovers for me!). The whole meal turned out very well: the chicken was spot on (it was a good-sized free range chicken: I rubbed butter over it, squeezed some lemon onto it, stuffed some garlic cloves into the breasts and put lemon and garlic inside) and the vichyed (I'm not sure I can turn that into a verb ..) carrots were scrumptious. Oh, and because it's asparagus season we had some lovely fresh asparagus with a lemony butter sauce. Mmmmmm. I do love sharing meals: today I had Spencer's picnic, Sam's fruit salad and shared my roast with them.

Yesterday was also rather exciting: I went to Chester to see the azoo. I saw the lions but not the kangaroo. There was he-males and she-males of every hue. Up in the zoological gardens. I also bought an awful lot of stuff in Lush. It's just so wonderful. My room smells marvellous. I got Mum the bath ballistics she wanted (isn't it nice to see my family leaving nice comments for me?), and I went to the cheese shop to get lots of Cheshire cheese for Dad.

Tomorrow it's off to Carmarthen (if that's how it's spelt) for an NUS Wales thingamy telling us about the new NUS Extra card. We nearly didn't make it because poor Rob (who was going to drive us) has had to have his appendix taken out (get well soon Rob). But Steve's going to take us instead. I do love days out.

Right, it's time to do more sleeping. Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to set off on our grand adventure, and as soon as we get back I'll have to get scrubbed up to go to the societies awards.

Sam very kindly blogged for me, so you probably know that I've spent the morning lazing in my back garden reading the Guardian and eating strawberries. Strawberries are so delightfully decadent. I also have croissants, freshly squeezed orange juice and cream to put on the rest of my strawberries (the first round was eaten with some nutritious oatty cereal).

I think this is quite possibly the hottest day of the year: it was t-shirt-warm before 9am. A good day to be finished everything. Chris and I broke our wonderfully retro deckchair though. He sat on the extendable leg-rest bit and now it's all bent and won't retract.

I'd better scrub up a bit before going to this DAP assessors meeting. Emma is kindly lending me a dress for the AU dinner tonight, so I won't have to turn up in jeans. Should be fun.

On Saturday I'm going to Chester to visit Lush, buy elbow-length gloves and go to the zoo. It's going to be wonderful. I was planning on going sailing on Sunday but apparently sailing isn't on so I might see if anyone wants to go to the beach instead. I'm cooking a meal for Spencer and Sam in the evening .. although if it's really sunny maybe I'll drag them to the beach too and we could have a delicious barbecue with yummy freshly-baked bread and salad. The salad's not freshly baked. Obviously.

I'm not going to write about the AGM. It was well-run but boring (such is the nature of AGMs) and anyway you can read about it elsewhere if you care.

What I'm mostly here to do is remind everyone that in less than 21 hours I'm going to finish my degree. In fact that's a fairly random target, because I'll probably finish all my work in about five hours, and despite the deadline for the essays being tomorrow, I have to hand in a folder of coursework on Friday. It's not any extra work, it's literally just handing in folders, but the people in the office will only accept the folders on Friday morning. Which is a pain because I'd quite like to get rid of them now.

It's a sunny day and I'm feeling somewhat relaxed. I'm nearly finished. Come tomorrow I won't have anything to be stressed about. My bad mood which lurked all weekend and continued into Monday has finally lifted. I had a nice cry on the phone to my mum which made me feel much better, and I got quite a lot of work done which also helped.

I've just been for a walk to the SU to buy my copy of Ink. I flicked through Sam's copy yesterday, but I needed to go buy my own. It is Absolutely Superb. Now I'm not one for superfluous capital letters, so when I capitalise adjectives like that you know it means something. I've been encouraging everyone to buy their own copies, not to just share other people's, because Ink don't yet receive any money from the SU so they need every copy to be bought.

It really is going to shake things up a bit media-wise. I really can't wait to get working on the media next year. It's going to be great. I think I'll start by running thinking sessions with each media group where we analyse strengths and weaknesses, figure out exactly what each group is supposed to be doing, and set targets for the year. Seren needs a constitution and a committee structure, so we'll need to work on that too. Y Ddraenen needs an editor apart from anything else. And Ink needs money.

I must admit that I'm quite pleased Ink is taking over the feature side of Bangor life. As Spencer says, it means Seren can focus on being a newspaper, not a feature magazine. It'll give them a bit of direction, having that competition.

Now, must go finish my work. What a concept.

This is just a quicky because I've got some Beatles books on short loan .. they're like gold dust so I should really use them, not blog. Nevertheless, here I am.

I'm feeling calmer about my essays: I have now written 2100 of the required 6000 words. Now I feel like 6000 words is something I can achieve, unlike on Friday and Saturday when the sheer sense of panic was making me very grumpy indeed. I was startlingly grumpy last night, too. So grumpy I was having difficulty speaking to anyone. It's very unlike me, and I do try to suppress my grumpiness so normally it's difficult to detect, but I think my flatmates probably guessed from my curt, one-word answers that I wasn't feeling full of joie de vivre.

Don't worry, I cheered myself up by watching Top Gear. I don't know what it is about that programme. It's full of things I'm not interested in, like cars and Jeremy Clarkson, but it's absolutely compelling. They did a wonderful thing on yesterday's show, making a convertable people carrier. It was SO cool. I thinnnk it might be the same kind of people carrier the SU has ... anyone for an open-topped people carrier?

Anyway, I'll be so full of happiness on Thursday you won't be able to shut me up. Imagine finishing your degree. What a concept. I think yesterday's grumpiness was fuelled by tiredness and hunger, having completed the Race For Life in the morning. Go me!

On Saturday morning I ran 3.9km in 31 minutes. Yesterday I ran 5km in 28 minutes. Hoorah! It was a gloriously sunny day, and the course ran along the Straits, so it was very pleasant. I've remembered how much I love middle and long distance running. It's just so satisfying feeling that you've done so much exercise. Quick! Find me another race to run!

Now, I must go back to writing about Sgt Pepper and Falla's keyboard music. Funderful.

Just been to see the very entertaining BEDS production of 'Allo 'Allo. Duncan (who lives with quite a lot of music students) particularly shone as Rene. I'm thinking in a bad French accent now.

Went for a meal with Spencer's family, Spencer and Sam in Parc Britannia before the show. It was rather delicious, and I managed to eat the entire giant Yorkshire pudding filled with sausages and mashed potato and onion and stuff. It was very delicious. AND I had a healthy and nutritious salad for starters with strawberries, mango, chicken and bacon. Mmmmm. Except the actual lettuce leaves didn't taste very nice.

Apparently the Storm Exec don't want the SU Exec to have our own lunchtime radio show. Actually I may not have told you about this idea before: I want the five SU sabbatical officers to have one lunchtime radio show each per week. Sam's bagsed Wednesdays, and I'm having Fridays. I think this'd be a great way for the student population to get to know us in an informal kind of way. We'll play whatever music we're into, and talk about whatever we've been doing in the SU this week: much more fun and interesting than reading minutes. It'd operate in much the same way as Storm in a Teacup has been running this year: I'll make sure there's someone there each day and occasionally get everyone to meet up to talk about the lunchtime slot as a whole, but in general people can put their own stamp on their own days.

But apparently the new Exec don't like it. I'm really upset about that: I can't believe they don't trust me to ensure somebody turns up to present the show each day. It's kind of hurtful having spent three years putting enormous amounts of time and effort into the station. I also think we're just as entitled to have a show as any other student. And I'll submit a show proposal next time I see Mike, since it's ultimately up to him to decide.

It's Chris's birthday today. We went to Roman Camp to sit in the sun yesterday: the plan was that he'd start celebrating at lunchtime and keep going til after midnight. That obviously didn't happen. By four o'clock he was too drunk to do anything except lie on the grass furled up in a blanket. He was in bed by half eight. The night before his twenty-first. What a rock and roll lifestyle.

I've been a bit grumpy the past few days, and will probably continue to be grumpy until Thursday. I have far too much work to do and people keep demanding I do other things. I just don't have the time: I have 5,400 words to write by midday on Thursday. It's almost more frustrating only having five days left: I know I should just keep my head down for the last five days but it's so sunny and there's so many SU meetings to attend.

The Race for Life is on tomorrow. I've been making it very difficult for myself by only starting exercising yesterday. Yesterday I ran 2km, today I ran 4km, so tomorrow I should be able to run 5km. That'll be fun. Anyway I must go to sleep now, toodles.

We had Council last night. Oh I do love a good Council. It was great, people got properly wound up about things. As you might have seen on Spencer's blog, there was an exciting moment when 13 people voted in favour of a motion, 7 voted against and 7 abstained. Initially the Chair rule that the motion had not passed, claiming that 13 is not a simple majority. However, a neat little procedural motion from Sam overturned his ruling, so when a re-vote gave us the same figures again, Mr Chairman ruled that the motion had passed.

I'm glad he let it pass the second time, otherwise we'd have had a serious miscarriage of justice. According to Wikipedia:

A simple majority simply means more than half of the votes cast. It does not include abstentions or absent members. It is more strict than a plurality vote, but less strict than an absolute majority vote. It is the most common requirement in voting for a measure to pass, especially in deliberative bodies and small organizations.

I think the problem was that Steering was defining a simple majority as a majority of voting members, and saying that 27 people were voting, but in fact people who abstain are not voting members. And 13 is clearly the majority of 20. However, big up to Mr (temporary) Chairperson for bringing pink wafers.

Anyway, it certainly got me fired up. I went to the pub afterwards with ROSTRA Tim, Seren Emma, Sam, Vicky, Spencer, Tom and Dizzy, and (happily) the debate continued there. Had a nice chat with Vicky on our way to the cash machine about JCRs and whether they should be formally linked to the SU or not. We both agreed that if there was to be a formal link it would have to be one shaped to suit JCRs, not throwing them in with the higgledy-piggledy jumble that is Standing Committees.

Stage Crew also became a Standing Committee last night. I think the Standing Committees need sorting out. It doesn't make sense to have lighting and sound technicians in the same category as Nightline or a radio station in with the Elections Committee. We shouldn't be afraid of putting additional structures in place to deal with the diverse committees currently lumped under this one category.

Oh and the great news is that the procedural motions have been updated, so we can now amend policy motions in Council instead of having to reject them outright. Hoorah!

Right, I have an hour and ten minutes before my lecture. Maybe I'll just sit here imagining I'm playing tunes while taking personality tests and reading news websites. Or I could go to Morrisons for some nice fresh croissants (I bought four stale croissants in Late Stop yesterday: don't do it!).

For the second day in a row I'm up ridiculously early with nothing to do. I dragged myself out of bed and chose a whole load of music for my radio show this morning (I've been itching to play music at people for weeks) only to find when I reached Main Arts that A Certain Someone (COUSpencerGH) hadn't returned the Storm keys to security, so I can't do my show.

I know, I know. He's so cruel. But don't you worry: I rang Spencer just so he could share that feeling of being awake early for no reason.

Well I've finally completely finished my dissertation. I'm sitting in a computer room on Normal Site waiting for it to be bound. Should be ready in about three-quarters of an hour: I'll take it to the Music Department and go home to bed. I probably shouldn't have stayed up til 1:00 last night since I had to get up at 6:30 to get to the bindery on time.

The finished beast is 79 pages long. Okay, so the main text of it is double-spaced and over twenty of those pages are appendices, but that's still a lot of work. The main text is about 14,500 words long (waaaayy over the word limit of 11,000 but never mind, eh?).

I really don't have anything to say, you know. I'm just entertaining myself by typing things. Somebody's left their car keys in the computer room .. I think I might give them to security in a bit. I'm talking to my friend Adam in Japan which is nice. He's eating bread filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream. I'm not sure I approve.

Okay so two more essays to do by Thursday week, then I'm completely finished everything. One's on Sgt Pepper which should be fairly easy since I studied it for my Leaving Cert. But the second one's on Manuel de Falla's keyboard music which I know absolutely nothing about. Challenging ..

No, look, there's no point writing about nothing. I'll go read the Sam Burnett report instead.

Just a quicky to tell you all that I met someone else who makes and eats nettle soup on Saturday. Ha! It really is delicious. If I wasn't working away like a busy busy bee I'd make a huge vat of it and force everyone to eat it. Full of nutritious iron, you know.