I hate New Year.

Not for any good reason, really. Lots of bad ones. The most acceptable being the pressure to party and the general post-Christmas blues being incompatible. Less acceptable reasons include aforementioned objections to the passing of time, which as has been pointed out to me are just very pessimistic ways of looking at time. I might indulge, though. We'll see. For an upbeat beginning, the picture was taken on the Garret Hostel Lane bridge, with Trinity Hall and Clare on the left, and the Clare bridge in front. This was about half past 5 yesterday, but it was BITTERLY cold - I assume that the two punters were staff members of some sort taking boats from one end of the river to the other, because nobody ELSE would be punting along the Cam in the dark and the icy cold for fun. They came up as perfect silhouettes though, I was quite pleased, and the river went glassy in the photographs. I like the colours, too, not that they existed in real life. You could call it slightly over-exposed, since this was full dark, and the purples weren't there and the glow on the wall on the left came from a streetlamp on the path on the right, and wasn't nearly that bright. I was pleased though - been a while since I took a picture that I thought was even slightly interesting. I like winter light though, it does nice things to ordinary views. I took some on the beach on Boxing Day which were rendered a little more engaging by the light. They need some editing though to really make them fun. Even the one above needs some cropping - there's too much wall on the left, and I could bring the trees and the bridge into better focus by making them more central and so on. I'm going to have to invest in Photoshop for the Mac. At £600 though, I'm going to bribe a student who doesn't need it to buy it for me, I think... Gah. Or make more of an effort to learn the Gimp. Need time. Never have time.

I appear to be on the downward trend of whatever mood swing I've been on the hyper side of for the last month. It's been nice to have a few days off work and a change of scene and everything, but it's probably the whole having space thing that has dropped me off the end of whatever high I was on. I'm fine, just sleeping less and staying in bed a lot more, due to wanting to sleep more, and all of that. But Eleanor came up yesterday and we had a lovely drift-around-Cambridge day, and then I went to London today and had lunch with Hugh and I did a bit more shopping and stuff and it was nice. I did actually go to London for a reason, which I completely failed to follow through due to being a wimp, so I'm feeling bad about that, but it WAS nice to see Hugh and I DID get a jumper like I've needed for a while, but all the same. I was enjoying the high. I was feeling the get-up-and-go and it was keeping me going. Grr. Will have to find ways to get it back. And it is for this reason I'm about to go to a party with Carl and a lot of people I either know very vaguely or not at all. I wouldn't be if I wasn't most of the way down a bottle of cider. I wouldn't be if I didn't feel the need to go and mix with a whole different selection of people to the ones that I'd be with tonight if I could hand pick them all (if you're reading this, you're one of the people I'd pick, no worries...). I just hope I can be well behaved and nice to them, and stay awake until midnight - this is usually a problem I face at New Year, too. Anyway. Right. Bravery. Need to put on clothes that aren't tracksuit. Gah. I can put on my NEW clothes. Gah. Wish me luck...

P.S. Nearly finish Sexing the Cherry but not quite - more soon...