In The Night

Justin Bieber is so amazing (:

I'm not even going to bother with an apology this time around, here goes a run through of the highlights of the past 3 weeks, a photomontage-esque whistle-stop tour of why I'm 300% right now, and in no particular order:

M.I.A and Sleigh Bells were insane. I saw them in Oxford with Emma, and I don't think I've ever been in a room filled with so much energy, nor a show where people scream along to the support too., nor danced so hard and with everybody else in one night. Going to the Zodiac again, for the first time since March, was the first time I've felt like I've properly moved away from Oxford. Since university I've always still thought of Oxford as home, the place I could walk with my eyes shut, but stepping into that venue for what felt like the hundredth time, after what seemed like a hundred years, felt like past tense itself had hit me over the head... I used to go there all the time... how strange.

Next up... a few weeks ago, Olivia, Tim, a few others and myself went out to Camden, and with the intention of just going to the pub, we ended up going to the Cuban, a semi-Latino club in the stables. Enter the salsa skills I've been building up, and a lacking in any feeling of potential humiliation, and a very stacked guy who looks like he can dance. He can.

It was quite a surreal experience, very much like every dance movie I've watched to be spun and, well, danced I suppose, almost effortlessly, by a total stranger, who at the same time kept telling me how rubbish I was, and teaching me real salsa, and wouldn't let me go until I appeared to have passed some kind of test, a rite. I'm definitely going back.

The weekend after that, Jo, Tom, Milly, Milly's friend Rachel, and I went over to Milly's house to have dinner with her parents- this is not that odd an occasion, and always really fun- and having insisted that I had too much work to do to come over in the first place, Tom and I ended up staying until about 2 in the morning, having won a game of scrabble as Ravenclaw, with a lengthy list of tactics and sly moves from Milly's mother, Carlo (Slytherin), graceful play from Gryffindor, Milly's father, and Milly and Rachel aptly beginning their losing streak, reluctantly as Hufflepuff: ' How do you spell Gryffindor?'

'... And that's why you're in Hufflepuff'

We left with the last of the sparklers from the fireworks earlier that evening, and cast spells on walk-of-shamers, late-night wanderers, and various inanimate objects the entire way home. The life and times (:

And for a week now, I've gone back to doing what I love the most, what defines the places I go, the words I right, the dreams I remember. It's all thanks to one person, and for the future I hope, the world's greatest team. Thank you.

All will become clear soon (:

Orchid