The sea as quiet as light

It's been a trundly sort of week (classics-related heart attack on Tuesday aside), just building up to going to Moscow tomorrow. I read Christopher Logue, found the above line and thought it was brilliant. I had a dull and overpriced haircut in the tiny hairdresser's just outside Krispy Kreme, made one final attempt to read Caesar and gave up. I spent Tuesday morning listening to recordings of Allen Ginsberg on the Poetry Archive - I don't really like him but the recordings were quite good, although what Ginsberg himself would say if he knew I was calmly doing the ironing while listening to Howl: Part 2 ("Moloch!") I don't know. I also stared out of the window at the rain and ate strawberries, and so in the afternoon ended up writing a Ginsberg-esque poem about rain and strawberries. This isn't as interesting as it sounds. I also went to the Tate, and bumped into Lorraine Mariner in the Royal Festival Hall toilets.

And then, yeah, exam results came today - I say that casually, as if I haven't been worried AT ALL. Went swimming this morning to take my mind off it all until the school opened, and played little mind games with myself at first: "If I do x lengths in y minutes, I'll definitely get an A in Russian" etc. But then I just forgot about it and swam.

The results? Well.

A in English, which I got the least number of marks for in all my subjects, weirdly enough.
A in History - only losing 4 marks in that godawful Russia paper where I babbled on and on about Anna Akhmatova.
A in Russian - FULL MARKS. HOW? I'M NOT COMPLAINING BUT SERIOUSLY, HOW?
And A in Latin - full marks in Literature 2 and Unprepared Translation.

So that's that. Now there's A2...

In the meantime, I'm off to Moscow tomorrow, for a week's work experience with a medical journal (do I want to go into medicine? Do I want to be a journalist? No and no. But maybe it'll be interesting), and then another week of just relaxing in the city. Sorry. That's wrong. You can't relax in Moscow, it's actually too insane for that. And that's why I love it.