My resolve to submit one of the pieces that I wrote about Never Again to a rather reputable London-based literary journal did not last long. Perhaps it is the fatigue that I have felt for the whole day after a too-early start to the day: tennis at 8am at Paddington Recreation Grounds with someone who turned out to have also just left Cambridge, a ( Read more... )

Tennis

Elijah is very enthusiastic about tennis. Like I told him today, I think the reason I have been so tired in the mornings and having major difficulty getting out of bed before 9am is because our tennis sessions are so intense! We play two sets, sometimes three (like on Monday morning!), if there aren't people waiting for a court; and after ( Read more... )

It's been a pretty productive day despite my spending too little time on Chapter 5 and getting up way later than I'd planned (i.e. 1.5 hours later). There is always time to make something of your day as long as 1) you are alive and 2) you are willing ( Read more... )

While at the train station in Cambridge, waiting for the 10.30am train to Stansted after the 10.11am one I had initially wanted to take was delayed by disruptive passengers (read: drunk chavs), I felt a distinct regret at choosing to visit Venice as a means of 1) getting out of Cambridge and taking a break of the bubble; and 2) mending my broken ( Read more... )

The wretched English weather wreaked havoc again today. It was gusty; it had rained the day before, so that the carpet tennis courts at the club were soaked with water when I arrived at 11am to play a match against Felicity. I had checked the weather forecast the day before, as I always do throughout the day and certainly before I leave the house ( Read more... )

It was 26 degrees today: cloudless blue sky, the sun shining loud and bright. When the weather gets like this, the only thing that I want to do is to play tennis. I don't care about sitting in the park under the sun, or having some shitty barbecue in the park, or some other banal thing that only people who have had the misfortune of spending their ( Read more... )

I woke up on Monday morning feeling angry and spent all of Monday feeling angry. On Tuesday, I woke up feeling deflated and spent all of Tuesday feeling deflated. On Tuesday, I went to Bould Brothers in the morning (by 'morning' I mean 11am) to have coffee and read Marilynne Robinson's utterly beautiful Housekeeping; and I came across this passage ( Read more... )

I'm having a massive plate of pasta as I write this. Mmm yummy carbs; definitely need them post-tennis. The last 40 minutes were a good work out when I was hitting with one of the guys at the club who plays really well - and this was after my mini league match with Olga ( Read more... )

Today has been one of the best days I've had in weeks. Having finished and sent off my Chapter 1 to my supervisors; having sent off the first volume of the Cambridge International Law Journal to the publisher last Friday; and having survived chairing a session of the Cambridge legal and political philosophy yesterday (over which I was, as usual, ( Read more... )

Even if it doesn't work out with Thomas for whatever reason(s), there will be significant positives to take from it. Self-improvement, for one; or rather, a conscious self-reflexive effort to lower, if not completely drop, my defences, in order to trust my early intuition about the kind of person that he is, and to trust in the person that he's ( Read more... )