The Oxford Student - Official Student Newspaper

Finals of a Diarist...

As a finalist, your conversation becomes severely limited. You spend most of the time in a library, and when you escape to squander a few precious hours in the afternoon sun the only question people can ask you is "How's the revision going?" It's not their fault. They know there's nothing else in your life. In the second year, at the peak of your powers, your chat was so good that in the streets the passers-by slowed perceptibly to hear your wit. And your life was so good that people asked you "How's the sex going? or, "How's the ongoing party that is your life going?" or, "How's your plan to take over the world going?" (although I think the latter question was because of my physical resemblance to Brain from the children's TV series, Pinkie and the Brain). Now you can only say, "Its alright" or "It will all be fine once I've shoved those pencils up my nose." The most exciting thing that happened this week was the appearance of two pigeons in our library. I think they had come for sex, but were embarrassed to find the place occupied on a Sunday night, and just performed a few fly-bys. Then they forgot how they got in and flew around a bit more. I attempted to anaesthetise them by reading them my revision notes, but after this failed we opened all the windows and they finally escaped. More than one of us saw them fly away and were consumed with jealousy. They may have only been pigeons, with less developed brains, a reliance on scavenging, and the company of mad women, but damn-it, they were free.

A week