Of all the things I lost, I miss my mind the most

Actually, that's not completely true, but it is a definite sign of me having settled in that my mind is going back to wanting to study. I was browsing a bookshop the other day - I went in knowing that I would not come out empty-handed, I rarely do - and found myself drifting into the non-fiction section. What I really miss is the University Library where I spent so many hours among all the books, looking idly out of the window and waiting for the day to be over.

The good thing in my current situation, with my PhD being indefinitely shelved, is that I can now follow my interests freely. And boy, do I have varied interests... and I already found out how to do intra-library loans from my New Cross branch. My first two of those are a history of the London Underground and excerpts from the diary of Samuel Pepys.

Oh, yes, the books I bought in the bookshop - two of the Penguin Great Ideas range, "Books v. Cigarettes" by George Orwell, and "Days of Reading" by Marcel Proust. Apart from good content, they have the most lovely covers - I grinned when I saw the one for Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Thunder and Lightning

There's a huge f**koff thunderstorm in the sky over east London, and it's headed this way. Of course I went out to see the lightning, very impressive!
There's also a sliver of moon in the sky on the other side, hanging very low and looking big and close enough to touch.

You know, there's something here I do miss, apart from the university library: The stars. I have yet to see more than a solitary Venus, and compared to what I can see from my window in Germany, that's nothing - and compared to what I can see from my grandmother's place, insignificant. There, I have seen the Milky Way - and have been scared as a little child by it because I thought the stars were watching me.


And as curiosity of the day, I give you this find from the Oxfam shop (I don't know how long it'll be there until someone grabs it, so have a look!) - it's a "6 inch cream statue of two males fighting in very good condition". I'll say they are in good condition!