Just Around the Riverbend...

It's been a while. Sorry about that - term has been incredibly hectic, I've had to write even more essays than usual, I had a death in the family, and I just haven't had the time to post. There are so many things I did that I'd have liked to blog about, but there's no point dredging them up now. So I thought I'd share some photos from when I went punting yesterday! They're terrible phone-quality photos, because I was paranoid that if I brought my camera I'd drop it in the water or my bag would go overboard with the camera in it, so I settled for bad photos rather than the stress of wondering whether my camera would make it out alive.

Yesterday wasn't the best day for punting, being fairly dull and cloudy, but it at least wasn't actually raining by the time we went in the late afternoon. While I'm fairly good with most types of boat (my mother ensured I could sail effectively by the age of 10 or so, and yet at 20 I still can't drive...), I'm terrible at punting, so I left it to more capable people and just lounged around eating and drinking. Also a lot of these photos feature Abbey (in the light blue jacket) because she was sitting opposite me in the punt.

A view of the lovely river, looking far too cloudy for bloody JUNE.

My lovely friend Abbey, my purple DMs, and my friend Jenny's boots next to me. The other punt on the right contains my other friends; the punts have a maximum of five occupants so we had to rent two.

More river.

Our snacks, a Polish... THING... which I found very confusing taste-wise. They're the exact texture of Cheesy Wotsits, so I ate them expecting something very savoury, but they're chocolate-flavoured. Nice, but odd.

 A third punt arrives, captained by Liska! I wish I'd got a proper photo, because she looked amazingly dramatic, up there all in black and barefoot, confidently steering the punt down the river.

This is from the point we took a break to drink Pimm's and eat more Polish snack food. The girl sticking her tongue out in the top photo is Judith; also present is (l-r) Francesca, Essi, Judith's friend Anna.

Ducks! Bridge!

A glimpse of St Hilda's in the very background of the first photo, and Abbey's mad rowing skills in the second.

Abbey took some photos which are much better than mine and also feature me and Jenny, so here they are, ripped off Facebook.

I'm the one with the glasses, by the way. And WOULD YOU JUST LOOK AT THE DUCKS?!

Anyway, after we got the punts back to the boathouse it was 7 PM and Jenny and I went for Malaysian food (she's half-Singaporean Chinese, so she grew up on what is essentially Malaysian food). OM NOM NOM MALAYSIAN FOOD.

And now I have to sadly drag myself through the last time, featuring not one but two essays due within two days of each other! One is fairly easy (oral history) and involves recycling a couple of first-year essays, but the other is on the collapse of the Byzantine state and the Ottoman conquest of Asia Minor and the Balkans, which I really want to do justice to, but I simply don't have the time.