Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

I woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon today – such a decadent student lifestyle, indeed – after a somewhat alcoholic friend’s birthday party that involved an early morning trip to Homerton (a cab ride away, which is rather unheard of in our little town), chosen largely because it was the only one of our rooms with more alcohol. I think the thing about drinking is that one doesn’t take it as the principal thing (or at least one shouldn’t) – it is drinking in good company that makes the difference.

I spent the afternoon blearily talking to those whom I love in different ways, and then took myself out into the rain to run errands and grab a coffee in my favourite coffee haunt, Caffe Nero in Heffers bookstore, ostensibly to work over but I ended up carrying on reading Alexander McCall Smith’s “Friends, Lovers and Chocolate” instead. It was a pleasing read. Philosophical, gripping. Not words one normally puts together (especially not I, anyway, one who is often dismissive of philosophy in a way that really bemoans my inability to quite get to grips with it – too much fuzziness for a scientist). I value these peaceful afternoons more and more, snatched out of final-year madness – I think moments like these are needed, are good for whatever soul I may have, although I am aware that it may only be a vain justification. But what good can come of going on and on like the Duracell bunny without ever pausing for breath? There is a roundedness to character that comes, I think, or taking time to absorb words and thoughts crafted lovingly in novels and books.

I love, too, the whole atmosphere of an afternoon spent reading – is it perhaps unique to a university town? I suppose not, I suppose the lovers of books and coffee are everywhere now (and really I am only a fraud because I only read fiction and mostly current fiction at that), but forgive me if I take a certain pride in this town I have come to love, a town where people have thought and written and read and learned for eight hundred years. I was raised to believe in tradition and history; I am drawn to the old and sedate and dignified (and crumbling), and I don’t really see that I should need to apologise for it. (I think I feel the need to apologise for far too much, really. Must we really take the burden of the world onto our shoulders?)

So it was time taken out, and much like something I wrote also about coffee (my poison of choice really!), I refuse to feel guilty for it. Tonight I must plunge back into final-year madness, and contemplate the joys of population biology – not really such a chore as the greatest thing Cambridge has given me is a true love of my subject matter, something I feel truly lucky to have – but I thought I would try to capture the moment while it lasted, and share it with some of you.