The Burial

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I guess I just have to keep digging; once I've shoveled myself in deep enough that I'm not able to see the sky anymore, I will become productively unaware that the balmy spring air even exists outside of my underground burrow of irregular Spanish verb tenses and bond combustion enthalpies. Unfortunately, at the moment I'm at the point where I can still kick the dirty revision from around my ankles and escape - to a jazz band concert, to a feast of a weekend in Porthcawl, to the Brecon Beacons - with puny soil clumps of the little knowledge I haveabsorbed still sticking underneath my toenails and the soles of my now-bare feet. The impetuous why-not enthusiasm of this whole daisy-dotted campus is now tempered with a brain-freezing virus of guilt. All the 'coulds' are turning into the baggage of 'shoulds': I should have possibly got through chapter 6 of my chemistry book instead of learning duets with Jordan in the music department for the Chile Project Concert , I should have memorised J.S. Mill's views on human rights instead of crafting a delectable beef lasagne dripping with cheese sauce in Gareth's kitchen, I should have just set up a sleeping bag and tent in my carrel unit last night instead of hiking eight hours to a campsite near the most beautiful place in the world that I've seen. But at the same time, I'm at the point now where the things that I choose to do truly will never happen again.When will I next visit Llanthony Priory at sunset (except for, hopefully, at my wedding. I've never actually stopped breathing at the sight of a place before. Seriously. I am getting married there), eating my emergency-ration chocolate bar in the cobalt shadows of the ruins? Where will I find another Half Moon Inn? Last night, as the first-years were washing up the dishes (seniority when camping is amazing), Martin and I strapped on our head-torches and went exploring along the Llanthony road, walking past the Priory until we saw a chimney smoking in the dusk. Checking the parking lot for the staff members' white van, we opened the squeaky white door to a dingy stone-walled room, with Dolly Parton whining from the stereo on the counter as three men looked up from the bar whose oak stools appeared to be in the process of fusing to them like another organ. Even the gossip magasines to read by the hearth were five years old, and you could imagine that, in the empty corner table, a ghastly secret murder had been planned, or a dossier was being passed in a black briefcase to a liaison code-named Rarebit. It was the sort of place - white peeling paint with a black name over the door in listing embellished capitals - that you'd never really notice, so entirely impossible to find unless you're a hiker or a local that once you walk in the door the weight of all the stories that must have started or ended or unfolded there is overwhelming. Naturally, we drank the cider they recommended, hand pressed and on tap, a sweet effervescent tonic after hiking nearly 30 kilometres. Johnny Cash came on the stereo and proved to be the favourite of the regulars. Ironically, on the way back we actually got picked up by the staff van, and after the most conscience-squeezingly slow 40 seconds of silence in my life, Nidal finally asked "So...what pub did you go to?" It turns out that the staff members had also 'visited the church' (the same thing they told us they did last year), except that they'd chosen The Priory 12th Century Bar, closer to the campsite. Expecting to wake up in the night to any one of the four staff members brandishing a sharpened tent pole, Martin and I displayed preventative measures of courtesy once we got back to the campsite, and after very attentively packing up all the Trangia stoves escaped unharmed from our little expedition. I finally brought my muddy hiking boots back up from the CAVRA hut this morning, greasy-haired and having grabbed all the extra bananas from the perishable food table for the last time. It still seems too abrupt, now that I've returned to brush my teeth after the final hike, now that I can't save anything onto the INK Editors file anymore, now that I've realised that unpacking my backpack stuffed with Easter chocolate after Long Weekend was the last time I'd ever be returning "home" to campus (though in truth this place has more than lost those quotation marks around "home" by now). As much as I'd like to avoid focussing on what really is the only remaining task at hand, I can't really escape from the glint of the metaphorical shovel in the sunlight any more. The narrower I focus in, the deeper the hole will get, and the deeper it gets the more diligent I will be in digging it. It's proving very difficult to become a mole, when I've lived for the past two years like a swallow.

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