Where I Can See Sky

Two days ago it was thirty years since The Proclaimers released their first album. They are hands-down one of my favourite bands, and although their 500 miles song is universally known their entire corpus appeals to me, through its rawness, its ability to balance lyrical cleverness with the genuine and insightful, to drill right down to the basics. And at the moment I've been thinking about one of their most beautiful songs, 'Shadows Fall', which is about those moments when sadness emerges out of nowhere, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, to tint the glass through which we see life slightly and temporarily darker. Emotions are weird. The clever scientist bods at Christ's tell me that we all actually do things and then ascribe emotions to particular actions in order to rationalise those actions - I run, a physiological response to a particular situation, and only after the fact does the 'fear' that I had believed to be the motivation for my running actual...

I've just met up with my lovely friend Heather for a nice drink at the Granta, probably my favourite pub in Cambridge. She seemed really well and we had a great time, but what Heather didn't know was that my plan for the present blog post was to see what happened if I got totally wankered while I wrote. This imagined scenario is now being played out, and I have my Vinedoes Barriheulo parked upon my desk to accompany my typing. The rules - which hopefully I will remember - TRY NOT TO SWEAR TOO MUCH; DON'T DIVULGE YOUR DEEPEST SECRETS; TRY TO REMAIN INTERESTING; DON'T BE SICK (SERIOUSLY); TRY TO MAKE IT AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE TO NOTICE THAT YOU ARE DRUNK AND INCREASINGLY MORE SO AS THE BLOG GOES ON (ASSUMING YOU DON'T GO BACK AND EDIT YOUR CRAFTY MINX YOU). What's the plan, I hear you ask? Recount my activities over the past couple of days, but first I'd like to meditate on the significance of the act of drinking alone. Is this taboo? Probably. Let's...

Cambridge is full of rules. The French philosopher Michel Foucault always felt that the canny thing about modern Liberalism was that the state didn't need to do much in the manner of regulating behaviour because modern people regulate themselves so much - freedom is just the freedom to abide by cultural norms, lest you be ostracised by your disapproving neighbours or by your own pressing internal judge! And those cultural norms, by the way, often have a considerable level of arbitrariness about them, being the accumulated product of a thousand years of different competing influences, sentiments and ideas. This is how I feel about table manners. The ideological underpinning of table manners is that eating in its 'pure' form is kind of disgusting. Manners is in part there to make it less so. But why do we view this pure and unadorned form of eating as inherently disgusting? Taste is one of the few truly distinctive sensations that humans can experience in life, a source of ...

I am sitting on the terrace of Fisher House, which is the Catholic chaplaincy in the middle of Cambridge. I'm not a Catholic, for the record, but the good old 'Cathys' as they conventionally like to be called in these parts - specifically my friend Damian - have welcomed me into their peaceful quarters for a relaxed evening. It's a grand old place for the Catholites , With library, church and drunken nights, The terrace is decked with flow'rs and lights , And they've got free wifi, which is why I writes. I confess (geddit?!) that what I know about Catholicisism comes only from the contents of my degree, so my knowledge may be a little behind the times. They seem to burn fewer people now, although Pope Francis recently did get to burn Donald Trump (zing!). Other Memes are Available Actually, studying early modern Catholicism  was one of the most enjoyable parts of my degree so far, because it quickly becomes apparent that most early modern Catholics ...

Hello all. After a lengthy old exams hiatus, I am now back writing - hopefully for good this time!! What happened, I hear no one ask at all. In short, studying for the Part 1 section of the History degree at Cambridge is sort of like running a marathon, except instead of a marathon you have to run 3000 miles, and you aren't allowed shoes, and you have to memorise an impossible amount of information about dead people (and maybe like 1 person who's in their '90s). Bloody hell! One of the most difficult things I have ever done. I started revising about 2 and a half months ago (when I started this blog, which was partly designed as a way to switch off from work), but there's so much STUFF to learn that you come out the other end still feeling as though all you have had time to do is scratch the surface. It is a deeply frustrating process, especially because the great fear that despite your preparation things will all come to nought hangs over you like the aura of...

Yikes! Once again there has been quite the hiatus in my blogging. Being back in Cambridge I'm now a little snowed under with work, and these sort of gaps will probably continue until I'm done with my exams a week into June. C'est la vie, so ist das Leben, and that's the way the cookie crumbles. What's been going on in the world? Mostly work, as I said, but some other interesting things have happened. At Christ's right now we are holding our very own referendum on whether or not to keep these weird Scholar's Ballot things. Essentially, the current system is that if you get a 1st in your exams then you get an older, better room; some people see this as grossly unfair, others an acceptable reward or incentive. I haven't made up my mind yet, but I suppose I have a few thoughts: I must admit I'm sceptical about the incentive thing. Surely people here want to do well anyway without the offer of a room! I think the 'Oh yeah the room thing incentivis...

Since my last post I have made my triumphant return to Cambridge. This involved the consumption of much foodstuff in celebration. I am currently hosting a tea session at which all of the attendees have opted to be fashionably late, potentially forever, and consequently I have opted to write on here until they never arrive. They have, however, definitely missed out on having any of my exciting cake. Before I left Cambridge me and me mam dropped in on two of our elderly neighbours, Phil and June, who are both in their mid-80s. June unfortunately has Dementia (in Phil's words, 'is doolally'), although this is not immediately evident when you talk to her. She is very chipper and full of energy, but she does sometimes run into what is confusing for us but evidently fairly logical to her. On this occasion this involved insisting to me that a painting of some Indonesian huts in their living room was actually a depiction of what the area around us used to look like. Phil is old...