No water, no internet, no LSE...

Today was quite a strange day. Once again, I was up early* (for me) and all set to be on time, nay early, for a 9 o'clock for the first time in weeks, but what should I find confronting me on arrival at 8.45 but a closed locked door? I thought for a moment that maybe I was just too early, but remembered that I'd been able to get in fine when I put all the flyers out last Thursday. A few other people turned up and began to congregate, and eventually a woman came and stuck a notice on the door. It turned out that LSE was closed for the day due to a power failure: a water main had burst in an electricity substation leaving quite a large chunk of the surrounding area without power and forced to close its doors for the day.

I should probably have been very happy. Certainly almost everyone else seems to have been. But I couldn't really see it as an advantage: true, it meant no Regression, which cannot be a bad thing, but it also meant no Government Common Room and I'd been looking forward to that all weekend. And although I was theoretically gratefull for the extra time for work, since I hadn't done as much as I should over the weekend, in practice I couldn't take advantage of it, since the work I really needed to do was reading journal articles as yet un-downloaded- and of course with LSE's computers down they would have to stay that way. I knew I should have got the articles on Friday. Curse you, Facebook, for being too addictive!

I wandered round to Houghton St thinking I would at least take advantage of being on the spot to get some good photos. And I did get some, not amazingly good ones, but adequate. Which will be nice for my own use, but any ideas I had of being uniquely placed on the spot by my nine o'clock evaporated when I saw that the Beaver photography editor was there- no point in sending my shots to the Beaver on this one.


I'm not quite sure why I didn't go home straight away; maybe it was the recollection that I still didn't have a working toilet or basin. Anyway, I decided to go and get some nice paper for a certain purpose I had in mind (now alas probably futile), at the London Graphics Centre. I first came across this shop on my afternoon clothes shopping with I, and revisited it to get the stuff to make my Christmas cards. On that occasion I walked unerringly straight to it from LSE. This time it took me about four trips back and forth between Covent Garden and Shaftesbury Avenue before I finally found it, further north than I'd remembered. I then went and had a cup of tea and a panini in Cafe Nero- I was feeling quite hungry (waking up early didn't mean actually waking up in time for breakfast), even though it was only around 10 am.

I had planned to go to John Lewis to get my mum some gold thread for the tapestry cushion she's making, but in the end I just didn't feel like it. I went back to halls and back to bed and spent most of the day sleeping, till about 4.30. I have a sore throat and a cough at the moment and am not feeling too great. The sore throat was improved after the rest, but improved in the sense of 'better than it was' rather than in the sense of 'cured'. I was woken up halfway through by the receptionist who was making the rounds of the affected rooms to give an update on the water situation. It seems that it's going to be a couple of days before it's fixed. I am doing without a shower tonight on the grounds that my hair can just about last out two days, but will have to ask one of my flatmates if I can borrow theirs (or use the shower room in Block C but that's likely to be very busy with all the rooms affected) if it's not all fixed tomorrow evening, which it probably won't be. Actually, I'm going to the dance show at LSE tomorrow. Damn. Maybe I'll ask L, who I'm going with, if I can pop in afterwards and use her shower!


Anyway, that was about it for the events of the day. AH bulletin: he hasn't poked back, so I'm assuming it was just out of politeness before. I'm disappointed, of course, but I can't say I'm surprised; I would rather have been surprised if it had turned out that my feelings were reciprocated. I hope that we can still be friends. I shall do my best to act as if nothing ever happened in the hope that he will then forget that it did. I will permit myself one last futile gesture however...


Actually, what with this disappointment and the feeling ill and the sense that I missed out a lot today- lying comatose in bed is not the best way to savour an unexpected day of holiday and if I hadn't been ill and hadn't been convinced that nothing at LSE was going to be open, I get the impression from various references on Facebook that I could have enjoyed it a lot more communally- it looked like some people did get into the Government Common Room (though goodness only knows how as it has electronic locks), though even had I gone there I guess I really would have been gatecrashing: AH and D's invitation may not have extended to extraordinary circumstances but more importantly they may not have been there. But even aside from that I think some people had the idea of seeing what friends were up to and going to the cinema or whatever- I could have done that (although it would have been harder without the internet, which was off most of the day in halls, presumably since it's provided by LSE). Still, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it much being ill, and I certainly wouldn't have been good company. I can't shake the idea that it was an event that should have been enjoyed together with many people in a spirit of LSE community, but rationally I know I made the right choice. Maybe it'll happen again when I'm better... sigh, I know the chances of that are miniscule.


Damn, damn, damn. Turns out that hiding a poke doesn't just mean temporarily moving it out of sight so you don't think it's a new one every time you see it or whatever my reasoning was that made it seem like a good idea at the time, it actually deletes it in a way which apparently sends out rejection signals to the other person somehow. Could explain why he didn't poke again... (though of course it could still just be that he wouldn't have done anyway). Damn. Can't seem to find a way of undoing it. Will have to find a way of letting him know that I was just insufficiently educated in poking...


*I know why it is that I've been waking up early, of course