Write things down

I finished Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and set off for Miriam's tutorial with all my reading complete for a change.

She criticised us for our unambitious essays and told us to hand in two more for a week next Thursday. I'm planning a long essay linking Whitman, Dickinson and Thoreau. We have personal interviews with her about forthcoming essays on Monday. She also raised the alarming prospect of examinations: “If you don’t write things down you’re sunk . . .” I felt fear. I have so much work to catch up on and so much to set straight in my mind that it’s frightening.

I didn’t vote either in the Union elections nor last week’s local government elections, partly because of apathy, partly because of the question of ‘so what?’ My vote wouldn’t change a thing. If there was a spirit of mass mobilisation and mass participation here then I tell myself it would be different but as it is there’s almost universal indifference on campus. Most of the union activists seem to me to be typical middle-class liberals playing out their stereotypes of student radicalism. Once out of here they’ll probably fall into a nice Labour-voting niche.

Such cynicism! Truth is, I shy away from the consequences of my ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude.

It's been another pretty mundane day. Barry has been down in Watermouth for much of the afternoon doing something with the RCP. They've given him about a hundred quids-worth of magazines, pamphlets and Next Steps to get rid of so he’s setting up a stall at the Tuesday mini-market.

The NME said there were 40,000 at least at the CND festival at the weekend and that lower police figures had been deliberately chosen by Fleet Street.