Bread and Water and Coffee

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There was a time when I was still attempting to violently kick and struggle my way up through the bottomless swamp of viscous melted tar that is third term. Now, however, I've accepted the fact that my maths portfolio, my musical investigation, chemistry in general, and too many other etceteras to count have locked their tiny powerful jaws around my ankles like a vicious herd of water-dwelling Jack Russells and are dragging me down, as I wait for splintered pieces of myself to bob up to the surface where the champagne of my creativity continues to float on top. Luckily, though the workload is crushing, there are usually still more reasons for me to stay barely intact than to fracture completely; looking back, they tend to be made of flour and yeast, in the form of really lovely crusty loaves of bread from even lovelier places. First it was our tutor group trip to the St. Fagin's Welsh History museum, epitomised by a dark, dense boule, made using a wood-fired oven and the original Welsh 11th-century flour-milling technique; when I bought it from the tiny bakeshop, it was still warm enough to serve as a sort of carbohydrate-rich pair of mittens on that bitterly cold day. Along with stolen butter from the cafeteria (and an entire stolen bag of hot chocolate mix. No one else knows that they keep all the extra hot chocolate with all the extra tea. No one else knows why I rummage around in an old cardboard box in my carrel unit and magically emerge at coffee break with a delicious mocha. I fully intend to keep it a secret.), it got me through Maths Portfolio Sunday, also known as Nearly-Bloody Sunday. In Hay-On-Wye, I spent my last £1.50 on a sunflower-rye loaf instead of a yellow book of Pablo Neruda poetry, which I slightly regret. However, I doubt that sensuous Spanish love poems would have tasted nearly as good when ripped off in large hunks and slathered with house butter at midnight whilst frustratedly trying to translate the foreign language of vectors and rates of reaction. At least, when I find myself once again depending on my alarm clock to wake me up at 4 in the morning, when I eat some Jell-O and drink some coffee and chew some spearmint gum to wake me up and stagger groggily down the hall to the quiet room to continue working, I can still spend my three hours of well-earned sleep dreaming of London.
I think it was about three weeks ago now that we received our well-earned school-sponsored escape to the big city from the powers that be, but still I shuffle to codes forlornly at 8 in the morning wishing that I could wear heels in public again. During the first half of the weekend, clicking down the street from the hotel in Russell Square to the tube station with a valuable 4-zone day pass and three of my best friends, I could literally hear the jaunty saxophone theme to any of those shiny happy Sex and the City shopping montages in my head. However, as well as discovering the perfect Dress (a capital D, as it is actually the ideal cobalt blue silk fitted Aristotlean paradigm of a dress) and Bag (which should have just come with its own shining golden light and angel chorus), I exhausted my capacity for art for art's sake by visiting the Tates Modern and Britain, something the slightly more famous New York foursome never would have dreamed of unless there was a cute coat-check boy standing outside the Turner Prize exhibit. Though it was pretty bizarre running into other people we knew whilst out and about in real-life civilisation, savouring a crusty baguette and lemon-coriander houmous in a park outside Buckingham Palace at sunset we realised how nice it was sometimes that the infamous AC Bubble never truly pops. For the rest of the weekend the bubble floated Glinda-like to Honor's house in Golders Green, which I don't actually believe is only one tube zone away from Covent Garden (unless, in the darkness of the underground,we actually crossed over to another galaxy). It was only a seven-stop journey from thin-walled hotel rooms to queen-sized beds with canopies, from the lobby of the Grand National to Honor's pristine white kitchen with its octagonal white table containing a blue china bowl of ruby pomegranates and blushing mangoes. After all the spaghetti bolognese and apple pie on Saturday night,we spent the next day wandering around the blustery rambling acres of paths in Kenwood Park, where a Japanese (or has this place just made me even more culturally stereotypical? Sorry, but from experience all Asians really are obsessed with taking pictures) woman took an entire awestruck roll of film of me standing outside the coffee shop with Honor's comically huge Great Dane. Seriously, this dog is so gigantic that even the groups of Londoners having civilised subdued chats in Hunter wellies and spotless tailored barn coats outside the Kenwood manor house with their lattes turn around and exclaim "Wow. Look at that animal." The English, exclaiming. I almost wanted to take a picture of that, as it was so undeniably surreal. Travelling home again on the six-hour bus , I fell asleep and once again felt like I woke up in another dimension. It's a bit of a shock from central London to the two dimly neon-lit supermarkets of Llantwit Major. It's back to slightly spongy French batons bought from the reduced bakery rack at closing time now, back to the buzzing environmentally-friendly bulbs flickering on at 2 in my carrel unit when I night-ride to the castle realizing that I've forgotten my Spanish dictionary, back to the coursework war stories compared by hollow-eyed second years over our third cup of gulped double espresso at coffee break. Though the beauty of the mauve and pink strata of clouds over the wintry cobalt blue of the sea while walking to evening code remains undiminished even through eyes squinted half shut for lack of sleep, I have found myself lately imagining a warm loaf of hearty Red Hen potato bread with Amish butter from the Midlebury Co-Op, and waking up under a real goose-down duvet without dodgy yellow stains on it to see snow falling outside my bedroom window. In a wekk and a half, I will throw my alarm clock off the watchtower with a triumphant "Ha!" after handing in my completed McGill application to the college advisor (who keeps sending me emails with lots of scary red exclamation points in the subject line), in my blue silk Dress which I will be wearing to the Christmas party. Even at its worst and most defeating so far, there are still so many things to look forward to here.

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