In Which Joy is wished even unto the Fishes in the Deep Blue Sea

Unless you've more or less completely avoided me both online and off for the last month or so, you'll be aware that I had some exams last week but am now footloose and fancy free. You guys, it's pretty neat.

Since my exams, I've seriously had a lovely time every single day, and there's no sign of that letting up any time in the immediate future. I'm not sure whether it's the leisure or the charming company and activity schedule keeping it all so lovely, but all these aspects of the past almost-week have been of unusually high standard.

Firstly, naturally, I went to the usual post-exam party thrown by the Social Butterflies in charge of the Med 1 Cohort. (This time the theme was the tutorials we'd had throughout the year, which made a change from the colour themes of the ones I'd previously attended). As usual, it was all very well-executed and so on (man, whenever I write about them I wonder whether the crazies from the Red Party Debacle still really do ever read this, although at least this one dispensed with all the pretensions of charity, thus reducing the dizzying heights of the moral high ground from which the organisers previously viewed we the peons), and although these things are always a little awkward, it was actually pretty great.

Seriously, I think I am actually incapable of having an entirely awkward-free time at one of these sorts of events. No just because I've never learned to mingle, but almost out of habit. If I went to a party like this where I wasn't at all awkward, that would be so novel that I would be disconcerted and feel awkward after all. Since this would doubtless cause some kind of universe-destroying paradox of sociopsychological wossname, it's probably for the best that I'm unlikely ever to breach that asymptote of social functioning. I mean, really, the ramifications harldy bear thinking of.

Anyway, I saw some of these people again on the Saturday, which was marginally more what these sorts of things are usually like, particularly for the first part of the day. In the evening, some of us went to Popular Paul's place (ooh, alliterative) and had one of those 'sitting about discussing whatever and eating barbecue foods and suchlike on balconies' sorts of evenings which makes you feel almost like you're doing an advertisement for some kind of Student Lifestyle product. Which is to say: it was all almost implausibly pleasant.

Maybe it's tragic that I can go to so many parties and suchlike (obviously I'm not just talking about "two" here when I say "many"; there were other events wih which I have chosen not to regale you, lest I try your patience too seriously) and have such a nice time, and still come out of it mainly treasuring the memories of the compliments paid to me. But seriously, it really is awfully nice. Someone said that they really thought that "articulating things was something I was really good at" (or words to that effect) ("obviously not a reader!", I hear you cry) and I was all bashful toe twirling ans "shucks" just like I am every time someone says something nice like that. Particularly reassuring at the time, since I'd actually thought I'd been making rather a hash of it that day. He actually asked if I "wrote at all", which was kind of cool. I'm not entirely convinced that I'm actually intelligible more than about 60% of the time, so it's nice to think that people are going "that chick is saying things in a good sort of way" or something.

The great thing about this "you like me, you really like me!" approach to interactions with people (apart from it's slightly tragic air or pathological approval-craving, which is not so much "great" as "mildly unfortunate") is that even if a compliment is not entirely sincere, you can still appreciate it. Thus, even if that had been meant as a nice apeasement despite the fact that everything I'd said had been completely incomprehensible bollocks, the fact that someone would bother saying it at all it pretty nice. As in; if they're going to bother to say it, then at the very least they like you enough to want you to be happy and complimented. See what I'm getting at?

Anyway, I could carry on here, but (a) it's after 1am, and (b) this post is in very real danger of devolving into some kind of pitifully boastful list of nice things people have said to me recently, so I think it may be about time to wrap up.

Our closing story tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of a girl who recently fulfilled a long-cherished ambition of getting hold of that Three Dog Night song "Joy to the World" (you know; "Jeremiah was a bullfrog, he was a good friend of mine, I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine"). We leave you with the image of the girl in question dancing about her flat singing to herself with questionable skill but unmistakable enthusiasm. Note particularly the die-hard pep of really actually hoping that the "fishes in the deep blue sea" are having a good day. That's what you might call Holiday Buzz. Isn't it nice?