So long to the RAVE CAVE

"sceptrum, i, neut. Sceptre; phallus; kingship."

A small example of why I've missed Latin during the past fortnight of GREEKORAMA. The day after I make my offer for Cambridge (yeah, see how I dropped that in) I'm already translating Aeneid 9 like a good little loser. What can I say, I'm so excited.

Bryanston never had a chance. If I'm completely honest, the way I'd been imagining G(r)eek camp - as a kind of two-week long Arvon-for-classicists staying in the kind of school that apparently needs its own Greek theatre - meant that it could only ever have been an anticlimax. I mean, I had a really good time: I learnt shitloads of Greek, obviously; I swam in the pool; I drank gallons of coffee; I sang in the choir; I went on biscuit rampages; I drank in the bar, I attempted to dance on one leg in the "rave cave" (a joke of a room where they have strobe lights and one CD that they play every single night) and when I had too much work in the evenings I joined the library crew which was conveniently situated right above the rave cave. I went to all the lectures, which were mostly fantastic: they included Edith "I'm mad, me!!" Hall being her feminist self, and David Raeburn doing a reading from Homer, Euripides and Callimachus which was one of the most amazing things I have EVER seen in my life. I also sat by the pond, pratted around in the Greek theatre, played cards, and danced to the Macarena right through the building. I did not swim in the fountain, have sex in the bushes, pass out in a corridor or get hospitalised or expelled. (Some people did.) And I made lots of nice friends without actually bonding with anyone. One forlorn Plato-sodden night I texted this to Immy and she texted back saying, "Dude, you're not looking for a life partner" and she had a point.

So it wasn't the TWO-WEEK LONG BACCHANALIA a few people had hinted it would be, but I got a lot out of it and I MAY come back next year. If someone else pays...

(On the way home, by the way, our coach crashed into a car in a village called Nether Wallop. Because no one was injured this is allowed to be hilarious.)

This coming month, I have to wade through lots of Virgil and Cicero. I think Latin will always remain my true love.

Vostok

Something to be grateful for: that no one (I think) saw me by the post box on Tuesday morning, in the rain, trying to jam a soggy letter to the Greek summer school at Bryanston through the hole while gale-force winds flipped my flimsy umbrella inside out and my beret flapped around my head.

In the past year I've been through about five umbrellas, destroying them on walks to school, losing them when they fall out of my bag at bus stops/post offices. The one I have now is a pathetic polka-dot Primark thing that spends all its time blowing inside out and making ominous creaking clicking noises, as if to say "Yes! Yes! Any day, any minute now I am going to break, I am definitely going to collapse like a squashed daddy-long-legs and this is going to happen at the most inconvenient moment possible and you are going to curse and curse me and call me all sorts of rude names you know can't technically be applied to me and this will be hilarious."

In short, I need a big fuck-off umbrella, black and serious and sturdy, big wooden handle, etc. (Also: the word 'umbrella'. It used to be one of my favourite words, with the umbr bit reminding me of shade and shadows and stuff - from the Latin - and then the lovely feminine ella at the end - yeah, I'm incredibly nerdy like that. Then Rihanna ruined it.)


Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.

I'm in two minds about Bryanston. I'm scared it's going to be full of posh kids. And other people's opinions about it have ranged from "BRYANSTON WAS THE BEST TWO WEEKS OF MY LIFE OMG" to "Er. It was two weeks of Greek." We shall see.

Vostok was rejected from Bristol this week. She also turned eighteen and got a camera.