A lot of focaccia for someone who doesn't like the stuff (and quite a bit of alcohol too)

Alcohol: it's a funny thing. I've had quite a bit of it over the past few days: Thursday was a bottle of champagne* that Ginger brought shared with her over a DVD (The Big Easy, which she also brought), Friday was CRUSH (my first time) and today was a third of a bottle of white wine which I drank watching Sex and the City with L. What's so funny about it is that today I actually had the least to drink of all three days, at just a third of a bottle each (the other third was saved for a flatmate who wanted to share the wine but didn't want to see Sex and the City as she has all the episodes)- Thursday was of course half a bottle and at CRUSH I had 7 drinks- and yet I definitely feel drunk now whereas I didn't feel more than very very slightly tipsy on Thursday or Friday. Anyway.

My plan for Friday was to get in to LSE by 10 or 11 and help on the stall pretty much till it closed, but with a break to go and see the Surveys and Experiment Design lecturer about a book which he said he'd lend me which was one of the key sources used by the paper I'm doing my presentation on, and probably a break for lunch too. It was kind of annoying to want to be in comparatively early (considering I have no lectures on Friday) since for once Ginger didn't have to be in for 9 o'clock, since she has what I would call Reading Week but which actually goes by the name of Study Leave; we could have stayed up very late inded watching more than one film and still got plenty of sleep if I hadn't needed to go in. But I really didn't want to miss out on helping with the stall; I'm not quite sure why but for some reason I like manning stalls, especially stalls selling things. Never mind the masters in statistics, sometimes I think I'd be quite happy working as a checkout girl...

Anyway, I got to the LSE area at ten thirty or thereabouts, but didn't go straight onto campus as I'd forgotten to pack any sanitary towels and thus needed to get some for use during the day before getting dug in on the stall**. I thought Tescos on the end of the Strand would be the nearest place to get them, but it turned out they didn't stock them so I walked up to Boots at the Holborn end of Kingsway, and before I'd got halfway there I felt ravenously hungry to the point of being slightly dizzy- well, I hadn't had any breakfast, and I hadn't been eating as much as usual recently***. I decided I needed something to eat as soon as possible, so after I'd been to Boots I went and had a buiscuit cake bar and a cup of tea at Pret a Manger on Holborn. I lingered over it, and it was about 20 to 12 before I got to the stall.

I was by myself on the stall for a couple of hours- to begin with I was with a girl who had been there on Tuesday, but then she had to go, and at the end Z was there for a few hours- but it wasn't nearly so much of a problem this time because we'd sold a lot of the stock in the meanwhile and it was down to a small enough amount that we had it all out on the table or in a couple of boxes behind it, so that there was no need to run to the Communications Officer's office for certain sizes. It did mean I couldn't go and get lunch, but that was fine because a bake stall to raise money for a volunteering trip to Morocco was doing business about three metres away and I patronised it extensively. They had amazing foccacia made with half wholemeal and half white flour- I don't usually like focaccia but this was excellent, more like home-made pizza base- as well as sweet crepes, cakes and rice crispie cakes. The people manning it were really nice and even gave me a free piece of cake after we'd both been there a few hours (and I'd bought quite a bit off them), presumably because they felt sorry for me! Anyway, as I say, we had all the stock at the stall, but actually we'd run out of many sizes of the more popular design- annoying for people who wanted that one, but I suppose it was very good news from our point of view as it meant we wouldn't be looking at too much unsold stock at the end.

It was nice over the last few hours talking to Z and a girl I hadn't met before who I don't think was helping officially with the stall but advertised it for us with a loud hailer and stood on Houghton St trying to sell some of the bags of sweets that were also part of our merchandise (along with pint glasses and wristbands- neither of which were selling great, particularly the wristbands, in spite of their allowing the wearer to jump the queue at CRUSH, but as the year wasn't written on them anywhere I suppose they can just hang on to them and get them out again next time, which means they won't have made a loss).

I did manage to get to the lecturer's office before he went home****, and got the book and sat reading it in the Quad*****, waiting to meet R whom I was going to CRUSH with. In the course of just a couple of pages it turned out to be a pretty racist work, inasmuch as it was stating that different races have different average IQs. Of course I don't really know much about it, but what I've seen of that book so far and of the Kanazawa paper- I finally read it about a week ago and it is deeply deeply flawed in at least three major ways which I will go into later- leads me to suspect that IQ is a measure of education rather than native intelligence (in which case the statement that different races have different IQs while still by definition racist would probably not be erroneous or a bad thing to say, since sadly in the world as it is at present different races almost certainly do not get equal quality of schooling), something that I hope to do a bit of reading on to see whether this is correct, because it's something I vaguely recall hearing in the past, and everything would make more sense if it was (which is not to say that I will approach matters in an unscientific mind-already-made-up manner of course- I will look at what is said on IQ generally rather than specifically hunting for books that claim it is a bad measure, but I expect to find in the course of this considerable opinion to the effect that it is). In any case, even if IQ does turn out to be a good measure of intelligence there are still two fundamental parts of the design of his experiment, or method of drawing his conclusions that are simply wrong through and through.

R and I went and had supper at ULU- the first time I'd been since last summer (when I went there with a couple of my UCL friends although technically only one of us was at that time a student of the University of London (I hadn't started at LSE yet). Sadly they no longer do the rather bizarre veggie nuggets with sweet and sour sauce wrap that Ginger and I used to have quite a fondness for, but the food was nice enough if not outstanding, and the orange juice was excellent (it wasn't diluted and really hit the spot). And it was nice just to be back at ULU again.

We went back to R's halls, theoretically to get changed for CRUSH, but actually we ended up spending ages jotting stuff down on paper and then doing extra research on Facebook, due to the compulsion we'd suddenly acquired over supper to draw up a chart showing the relationships/ would-be relationships among a very large number of our acquaintance- a grand work which sadly had to be abandoned for the day due to lack of data- we'd got to the point of making most of it up by reading far too much into stuff on Facebook- and the marching on of time: it was already almost 9.30 and my free tickets were only valid till 10. So in the end we barely changed at all, but both went for jeans and RAG Week T-shirts- it was RAG CRUSH after all, and no make-up (certainly in my case and I think in R's). We did get there for 10 in the end, and after a bit of wandering from room to room settled down at a table in the Three Tuns with DS and some other mostly hacky people. We played a game I'd never played before (I don't think) which involved going round in a circle counting and making one gesture for most numbers but different special gestures when it got to certain numbers, with the possibility at each turn of changing the direction of play******. I thought this was brilliant, since it was social interaction ideally suited to the setting: conversation over a background noise level high enough that you have to shout and get everything repeated three times is apt to be somewhat wearing. Later we went and danced; R turns out to have a fine line in comic dancing. They had rather too much of a tendency to play R'n'B and hip-hop, but there was cheese too and it was good fun, especially when they played that song I've forgotten the name of, the one with 'climb every mountain higher' and 'Never, never forget that I've got you and you've got me' and 'Reach for the stars', and Wake me Up Before you Go-go (if that's how you spell it, which I'm not at all confident of). I think this could be the most fun I've had dancing- besides having over the past year or so finally mastered dancing to the point of being able to convince myself I'm amazingly talented (it really doesn't matter if other people don't share that opinion), on this occasion the logic finally came together, prompted by the lack of care in dress and make-up, and I realised that if, as is the case, I not only don't actively want random guys to start trying to dance with me but in fact actually want them not to do this (given that I'm not looking to sleep with anyone on so short an acquaintance), it in fact really doesn't matter what I look like, and I finally understood that in this situation I would do better to take as little care over my appearance as possible, and just enjoy myself. Not that it stopped a few people... fortunately R was there to bail me out by suggesting we get another drink. I suppose what I've been thinking in the past is that although I wasn't looking for anything that night it might be possible to exchange numbers and meet up with people in a more taking-it-slowly way- but I'm not quite sure how that managed to seem like a possibility given that the volume in these situations is always of a kind not to permit actual convesations, and I wouldn't swap numbers without one- and that I tend to reject out of hand anyone who strikes a conversation up out of nothing. The only reason it might make sense to dress up, coming from this position, is in case one met anyone there that one already knew and wanted to impress- but even then it wouldn't be so crucial surely since they'd have seen you on an everyday basis anyway.

There were some not so good moments, but on the whole I'd definitely go to CRUSH again. Which is just as well as I have two more free tickets. But next time I'll remember not to wear woolly tights under my trousers... I had to take them off early in the proceedings, but after I'd put my bags in the cloakroom, so I folded them and left them on a window ledge in the loos- it was a risk but worth it as I wouldn't be completely devastated if they weren't there when I got back. However as I anticipated they didn't go anywhere so that was ok.

This morning I went with D and a friend of hers, B, to Portobello Market. I'd vaguely agreed to go with her on what I believed was some unspecified future occasion, but then yesterday she was passing by when I was on the stall and started making arrangements for meeting this morning and there didn't seem to be a chance to say that actually I had a lot on this weekend, not least working on my presentation, and could I go another time? so I accepted it as my destiny. Usually I don't look forward to plans made in this spirit and am just anxious to get whatever it is over with, but this time I really was anticipating it with pleasure, even though getting up early after CRUSH didn't seem like the most pleasant idea ever (though actually, even though when I'm asleep I don't want to get up (I've reverted to needing my sleep again), at the moment I'm actually suffering a lot more while asleep than awake: I can breathe fine when I'm up but in bed my nostrils seem to get all blocked and I have to sleep with my mouth open, which means it gets all dry and my throat starts to tickle causing my cough and sore throat to flare up.. Get this cold over with already!).

It was really nice strolling down Portobello Road- very relaxing, very chilled weekend taking it slow (even though real taking it slow would have been lying in bed till the early afternoon)- and very summer. Had I been pitched into the scene by some kind of time travel and had no idea of the date I would never have guessed February- I would probably have gone with May or June. There was blossom out on the way down and the air was barely chilly let alone cold. The same goes for yesterday- it definitely felt like after-the-exams-weather. So today I was in a real summer wardrobe mode, and in fact it was mostly clothes stalls that we looked at. I hadn't planned to get anything- indeed, I'd pretty much specifically planned not to get anything, but I came away with a dress in a nice soft flower print fabric and an unusual design that had apparently been used in the interests of not needing any sort of measuring on the part of the maker- front and back were basically rectangles with a ribbon drawstring that the wearer tied to create the waste and two more on the shoulders which when pulled formed the sleeves. It was a lot nicer than it sounds, the only drawback being the back, which reaches all all the way up to the neck (a little frumpy though good protection from skin cancer from exposure to sunlight) and is quite saggy/baggy. I could possibly alter it though. It was £25, which is perhaps a little expensive for a second-hand home-made dress, but I gave in. I also got some material- a total of 7 1/2 metres over four different fabrics for £7.50 which is a jaw-dropping bargain compared to John Lewis, and even if some of John Lewis' stuff is nicer than anything on the stall, what I got is pretty much the same kind of stuff I would have got if I was shopping there. B also got some fabric, to make a throw for her sofa (or it may have been her mattress) and D got a dress, a kind of 80s style sailor dress. Looking through all the clothes this morning, I understood as I never had before what a wide ranging concept clothing is even considering this country alone- something you don't see if like me you generally just go to the high street shops.

Another thing that was nice about the trip was that we spent a couple of hours looking and buying things, but didn't hang around to the point of saturation so that looking at things was exhausting and one just wants to go home. D and B went back to D's house, which she had to move out of today (she's been squatting with a group of other people but now they've been ordered to leave), and they invited me to come along- I would have liked to have a look, especially as this would be the only chance, but I felt I really had to get back and do some work. However I didn't actually do any in the end- I spent a while on the Underground platform eating some lunch I'd bought from one of the stalls after we separated (two kinds of focaccia) then got the train, planning to get out at Holborn and retrieve the book and some of the other stuff I needed to work on my presentation, which I'd left in my locker in the Old Building last night so as not to have to lug them around. But when I got out of the train at Holborn somehow I really couldn't be bothered with all the hassle of getting out of the station, walking to LSE, going up to my locker, getting the stuff and then getting a bus back, and reflected that anyway it'd be cheaper just to go all the way to Liverpool St- and that I could still do a bit of work, but in any case as I felt really tired I'd probably have a nap for a while anyway.

I actually slept for more than an hour, untill L came round to cook with me and Flatmates 3 and 7 (to celebrate Chinese New Year). L and I had originally been planning to watch Sex and the City together this evening over some wine, so when Flatmates 3 and 7 suggested cooking supper together we decided to invite her round as well, and watch the DVD after the meal. We started cooking before 5, but didn't eat till 8- L and I were just making gyoza and spring rolls, while the others were making a kind of soup/ stew plus Flatmate 7's amazing spring onion bread, but it took ages. It was worth it though.

We spent ages sitting around talking after supper (Flatmate 1 too, who had cooked separately but ate with us as we were finishing off), putting off the washing up, but in the end L and I went back to my room and watched Sex and the City (Flatmate 7 passed and Flatmate 3 apparently has all the episodes so didn't really want to watch any again). Now I'm feeling very tempted to buy a season, any season... Must be strong.

*apparently her mum didn't like it so had given it to her

**Too much information? I'm sorry, I can't think of a less direct way to put it under the influence of all of a third of a bottle of wine

***for the same reason I hadn't needed as much sleep, plus I didn't get a chance for lunch on the days I was manning the stall

****After packing up the stall, in the process of which somehow Z ended up carrying all the heavy boxes and I didn't seem to be able to get an offer to do that myself in, which I felt quite bad about

*****Where I spotted the case to the SU banner, which we'd had up behind the stall but when I brought the banner back I couldn't find the case anywhere, in spite of the Communications Officer's belief that it must have been there originally. I'm not quite sure how it came to be in the Quad- maybe it was something to do with PuLSE fm, who were doing their RAG Week marathon broadcasting session (constant broadcasting all RAG Week with none of them allowed to leave campus) from there- but anyway I took it to the Communications Officer's office, where he and the Treasurer were just about to see whether it was in the Quad...

******Brain not working well enough to explain this in a clearly comprehensible manner