I came back the Tuesday following Greek Easter, which was the week after ‘normal’ Easter, simply because us Orthodox types like to be different.  It never fails to amuse me how the dates grow a week apart for about four years until, after reaching nearly a month away from each other, the following year snaps the calendar back to having them on the same day. Rinse and repeat.  So I was unable to return to campus to continue revising until I’d eaten my own body weight in family cuisine and Greek delicacies (and also beaten my extended family at Mario Kart, too.).

What did my glorious alma mater have for me upon my return?  Well, a nice bit of sunshine and lots of frantically stressful meetings about The Orbital.  Good news about the weather, though, right? No, once term had officially started a week later, I was well on my way to having one of the worst weeks ever.

My fantastically little, yet expensive, bus-powered FW400 LaCie Rugged 500GB HDD failed.  Yep, failed. Inexplicably.  And, of course, seeing as it was filled to the brim with 19 years of accumulated music, torrented movies, TV shows and a little bit of precious data from The Orbital, I hadn’t backed it up. Of course.  Cue frantic Googling for ‘forensic data recovery’ and subsequent posting of my drive to Rapid Data Recovery.  £97-£170, they quoted me.  95% success rate, they told me. I thought I’d stave off my breakdown for a bit, in the vain hope/faith that everything would be alright.  After some frantic phonecalls every day for three days, well after my drive was Specially Delivered by Royal Mail, I couldn’t get through to this company.  What?  I’d spoken to a nice Welsh man only a few days previously! Well, on Tuesday I received a phone call in which my dear old account manager informed me that

“….your drive was a bit like a record player with a broken needle.  Every time we tried to recover the data, the needle effectively scored a new layer on the disk – resulting in 98% corrupted data.”

Why did he sound so jolly?

“Our affiliate, however, assures us that they can recover 100% of the data, and mail it to you on a new drive by Friday.  However, it’s a little more expensive.  £454, to be precise.  Now, if I could get your card details…”

In some sort of giddy stupor, drunk on the promise that my precious, precious data would be recovered, I gave this man my card details over the phone.  I have received no invoice to date, and my phone calls to the company have resulted in me learning their hold music off by heart and various staffers telling me that it’s in the post, that they’ll re-email me the invoices….If it’s not delivered by 6th May (seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday Weekend), and I don’t have sufficient communciation/a courier tracking number, I will be strapping explosives to a handgun and marching on their headquarters.  I’m now also over-budget by £150 for the entire month of May.  Already. Drinks are on you.

I thought my terrible week would end there, except my Slingbox also gave up the ghost, putting my procrastination at peril – no live TV, no downloaded content!  I had to live on iPlayer and 4OD.  Disaster.  That is of course, assuming I could actually get into my room – I lost my keycard on Monday and with nobody to let me into the flat and our buzzer-system not working for some of the other members of the block, I was stranded outside Tuke Block F looking quite folorn.  Luckily, someonehad located and handed in my precious CollegeCard and I retrieved it first thing Tuesday morning.  I only had my phone to then misplace later to fully complete Possession-Loss Bingo.

On the upside, my bad-news meetings regarding The Orbital are still in full swing, and I had my first official InsanityRadio Board Meeting as Head of Training for 2009-2010. If my Students’ Union were a lady….erm, I have no idea where I was going with that, but I’m going to leave it in – feel free to finish the sentence.

Oh, and there was the small matter of my EN1107 Inventing The Novel exam.  For three hours.  On Wednesday.  Given my inadequate preparation, I was living on borrowed time for that one, definitely repeating the 40% pass-mark mantra.  Considering I got nearly full marks in my A2 Gothic Synoptic paper, the most difficult question by far was the one I decided to answer on Frankenstein. Silly.  Lesson learnt?  Don’t assume Summer 2008 knowledge stays with you longer than it absolutely has to.  I did manage to work in the phrases ‘bastardisation’ and ‘not to trivialise murder, but…”. Little else, though.

What to do after that?  Drive home and have a roast dinner, of course.

Just when my week couldn’t get any worse, I left my house, full of chicken and potatoes to return to the Egham residence I call home.  I was making brilliant time!  I got to Guildford in eight minutes!  Passing some parked cars on the way to Woking, I noticed that the last in the line was almost multi-coloured…oh, hold on, they’re following me.  Blue lights?  Right.  Pull over. Where?  There’s traffic lights!  Fine, just pull over!

Shit.

I might’ve been going a tad fast, but the dialogue between the good officers of Surrey Police and myself was completely ridiculous.  I’ve seen enough Street Wars programmes to know that you stay in the car until you’re told otherwise.  Apparently not, in Surrey.  Once in the freezing cold, I handed over my license and registration, responsibly responding that “no, this car is not ‘nicked.’”

Playing some sort of tag-team game, the officers kept swapping over and asking me the same questions until I asked whether I could get a jacket during their prolonged conversation with each other in their nice warm squad car.  Have I had a drink tonight, officer?  No, sir?  Oh, you’re going to breathalyse me?  Good.  Well, of course it’s negative.  Sigh.  After dismantling the breathalyser for the kind officers, I’ll just wait here in the cold for a bit longer, shall I?

Police officer number two comes out and the dénouement of my encounter with the police finally begins.

“Your insurance expired last year.  And you’ve told my colleague that you haven’t renewed it yet, which means that we’re going to have to impound your car.”

“Um…no (points to certificate of insurance) that’s 28th May 2008 to 27th May 2009.”

“Oh, right, but see here it says 27th May 2009 and it’s the 29th today.”

“Um…nope, it’s the 29th April today.”

“Right, let me just make some enquiries….”

What, that April comes before May?  I freeze my arse off opposite the Magnet kitchen place and get an expected mini-lecture on speeding.

Another lesson learned – Mario Kart may not have police, but real life does.  Although I’m sure that even Yoshi knows the correct date.

I’m actually typing this on my iPhone, because I had to send in my beloved MacBook Pro to have its fan replaced.   I first discovered something was up when my usual torrenting of whichever Gilmore Girls season I didn’t yet have was accompanied by the sound of a tractor driving into the blades of a jet engine.  I know enough about Rory Gilmore to know that’s not normal.  Never fear, AppleCare was there to pick up the repair tab.

The Ambassador’s Theatre Group coupled with lastminute.com meant I went to see New Boy with Nicholas Hoult (Trafalgar Studios), I went to see La Cage Aux Folles starring Graham Norton (Playhouse Theatre, Northumberland Avenue) and I finally went to see On The Waterfront starring Stephen Berkoff (Theatre Royal, Haymarket).  I also hung around the Stage Door at each theatre like a groupie, collecting autographs like a seasoned fan. After studying Berkoff’s work during my A2 Drama & Theatre Studies syllabus, it was quite an experience to meet somewhat of a textbook idol.

Mr. Hoult, also known as thatguyfromskinsyouknowtheonewhat’shisnameohmygodTonythat’sit, was annoyingly charming. I’m just jealous.  I was a little disappointed with the production, though, which was in a tiny, tiny studio, showcasing none of the classical theatre-acting traits I wanted to see the actors cope with.

Mr. Norton was a bit smaller than I anticipated (although not as short as when I met Dawn French), yet my mum still managed to compliment the lead actor on his ‘lovely legs’, of which we saw a lot during the performance, seeing as there was a lot of drag-queen activity involved.

Mr. Berkoff casually dresses in oddly ghetto-subculture attire.  Think slack trousers and a large gold gangster hoodie. He also drives a Volkswagen Beetle.  I found this all so surprising that I missed out on an obvious Metamorphosis-jibe about his choice of vehicle.

No, actually, my night-time London pursuits didn’t stop there. I also went clubbing at 54London‘s Commercial Street venue, on one of their monthly Light nights.  That just sounds like another set  of buzzwords, doesn’t it?  To be honest, you’re probably right.  Along with two friends (Sahar & Morgan), I was there from 11pm until about 7:15am.  We’d had dinner and been to the pub beforehand, so by the time it came to leaving the venue, we were pretty worse for wear.  Not to mention Morgan and I were a little sick of the last-gasp attempts for the sexuality-questionable 95% male population of the venue to locate a breakfast mate.

The shock to the system upon seeing the bright light of day and hearing the sudden absence of a DJ in London’s East End meant it was probably time to go home.  Walking with Sahar to Aldgate East tube station, Morgan and I decided we were hungry.  Not realising that it was now 7.30 in the morning, we walked down the entire length of Mile End Road.  To find nothing open but ‘Billy’s 24hr…’ roadside shack.  Morgan chanced a ‘survivor bap’ from this one-man-stand while I decided I wasn’t that peckish after all.  The good news is that Morgan hasn’t got E.Coli. Yet.

Oh, and in a fit of SURHUL-inspired despair, we sort of broke into Queen Mary, University of London’s campus and tried to get into their spankingly-pretty Students’ Union building.  It was locked.  Now time to go our separate ways, I found that there were even fewer services operating on Sunday morning from Mile End than there were from Aldgate East almost an hour previously.  With my hatred in Transport for London renewed, sitting on the red-eyed Tube with various other shameful ‘shouldn’t-be-up-this-early-in-the-morning-normally-don’t-ask-me-where-I’ve-been’ citizens, that was the end of another chapter.

With some thrilling sights posted to Flickr entitled In which I discover the early-morning East End, (all ofwhich seemed far more fascinating at the time) and the everlasting quest to reach a photo-a-day in How I Spent April 2009,  I can safely say I don’t really want to post something this long from the iPhone WordPress client ever again.  Proofreading was…problematic.  Twitter‘s certainly on to something with a 140 character limit.

Now, I may have spoken ill of WordPress in the past, but it’s really pulled its socks up – I’m certainly a stickler for anything with a ‘Dashboard’. Let the Easter Holidays commence full of tweaking, polishing and adding content.

Oh, and…er…revision. Yes, Mum. Of course.