I did go to the reggae disco last night. I wandered down to the Cellar and stood about feeling conspicuous, but gradually the place filled up and was packed. I got talking to a dark haired lad in a combat jacket who asked me if I was alone, as he was. We talked all night, a friendship struck up through necessity rather than any great mutual attraction. But it got too loud to talk and much of what he said I couldn’t hear, and as I kept getting regurgitated by the sheer crush of bodies out into the dance floor I spent most of the time dancing. By the time I left my T-shirt was literally wringing wet.
I spent this morning lugging beds and mattresses up and down stairs; me and another ‘giant’ from no. 77 have got special seven-foot beds, and we had great difficulty maneuvering these into our rooms. I was late for an introductory lecture for EAM students but, as chance would have it, I ended up meeting a lad Neil who hails from Northampton.
With his pointed leather boots and chinking buckles I’d assumed he was a typical poser but he wasn’t; we had a lot in common and got quite friendly. I went back with him to his room in Lovett which is amazing compared to our squalid quarters. We had dinner in the Cellar and he insisted on paying. I showed him my dingy Wollstonecraft room and he borrowed my Charters Kerouac biography and the Moody Street photocopies.
We bade one another goodbye and I wandered off for my guided tour of the library. Entombed between the narrow towering shelves I found the silence comforting and familiar. I’ll grow to love that library, I'm sure. It has everything.
I reserved Bertrand Russell’s Basic Writings which is in heavy demand and I’m only allowed 3¾ hours with it. I find the prospect of my Knowledge & Reality course slightly mind blowing.
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