Thursday

Today (or yesterday, as I now post) I rose early - though not quite as early as yesterday - with the intention of cycling to town avoiding Magdalen Bridge, which will be closed 3-9am on Monday because of the May Day celebrations. I don't know if I went the most direct route - cycling up Headington Hill a bit - but I found the route through the University Parks (a nice pleasant area, which you can punt to, north from the Magdalen boathouse), and it took me just under 20 minutes despite not knowing my way.

I still almost missed Liz Frazer's Classical Political Thought lecture, but that was due to a sudden room change that seemed to have caught all - including her - unawares. At one stage, the lecture had a majority of grad students (me, Karl, Peter, Chris) in it, but more people trickled in as they found it...

After that, I popped into the Bod to read five pages of Susan Hurley that Raz had suggested. I figured it would be a good way to spend a bit of dead time before lunch, but now fear I'll have to go back and read chapters 8 and 15 of the book (another 70+ pages), which was pretty hard-going... Needless to say, I soon decided to leave the library; I'd forgotten how dangerous they were!

In the afternoon, I went to Myles Burnyeat's class on Re-Reading Republic Book I. The third year now I've been to some of these sessions - and this time I hope to 'complete' the course. Also John Filling gave another Hegel and Marx-based talk to our Grad Student Research Seminar, which of course ended up in the KA. And then me, John and Sarah back in Teddy Hall - still talking about Marx, liberty and Rawls - until 1:20ish, when the porter came to lock their MCR(!) Then we went on to Corpus, where we ended up staying (akratically) until around 3am. I'd only had one more glass of wine since leaving the KA, but I think no one could be bothered to move, despite knowing we should go home to bed... When I finally got back to Jesus the nightporter asked if it was an early start (not likely).

Note to self: Don't stay up so late again in a hurry. And stay away from smoky pubs.