St Patrick's Parties

Well, despite being left home alone, I wasn't go to stay in and do nothing on St Patrick's day. I went to two parties: First my friend Leo invited me to a lawyer friend of his, who lives in the mock Jacobean Belsyre Court on Woodstock and Observatory Rd. It was a place I'd often been past, when I lived in Stevens Close, and they were fantastic flats - especially on the top floor because, although it was dark and windy, we got to go out on the roof and had a fantastic view of the whole of north Oxford. There was a real mix of people very, from very interesting different backgrounds, so I got to talk to a couple of people from publishing and one who works with film-scripts, as well as several students (including Jesus undergrads I'd never met).

I made my excuses soon after 11 because one of my friends from the department - Ian, who'd done the MPhil a year below me - was having what (despite his being Irish) was billed as a belated house-warming over on Osney Island (about the furthest west I've ever been in Oxford, despite being misnamed East Street). I was hoping to see several friends from the department that I haven't seen in a couple of weeks, but by the time I got there things were already surprisingly quite - half a dozen or so people sat around playing cards and drinking games. In the end, it was just me, Ian and Chris - another recent MPhil leaver - staying until around 2:30. What I caught probably wasn't so exciting or varied as Leo's party, but I quite like the low-key format - I'm not big on having to make lots of small talk with people I don't know. While neither were wild excesses of hedonism, both parties were interesting in different ways. And it certainly beats sitting around the flat alone!