Restful early evening

7.30pm. After having something of a rest, I rang home. It was lovely to speak to Alan; I just wanted to reach down the phone and give him a cuddle.

I finally went for dinner. The carnivore option looked suspiciously like the remnants of the lunch food rehashed, so I went for the vegetarian option, some brown lentil thing. It seems to be the same guy who serves my food every time I go for a meal in Bramber House, does he not sleep? But it's the first time I've had vegetarian, and he looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo. Which is probably not too far from the truth.

I ate in the company of Kirsten, and a couple of guys that she was chatting to. One was (I think) a Geordie called Andy, who also has a beard like mine, although his was much darker (I seem to have gone a lot greyer this time). The other guy turned out to live in the room next to mine. He's in 25C, I'm 25B. He had an Open University hoodie on, identical to mine (which is back in Birmingham), and a hat rather like our Akubra ones. Take those two things away and he was in vision and sound a brunette Boris Johnson. Very surreal.

After they left, Kirsten and I had a glass of red wine each, and then we had a very serious conversation on the subject of HIV. The subject had reared its head a couple of nights ago, and Kirsten has an interest in the field because it is so prevalent in Africa, especially her 'home' country of Zimbabwe. This lead onto subjects such as the Kontinuum, African social attitudes towards condoms and safer sex, and the apparent apathy of drug companies to continue to seriously fund preventative or therapeutic vaccine programmes.

My head feels a little better than it did earlier, less clouded with a whirlwind of today's practical work. It's hard not to be on edge; I find that I have been concentrating so hard during the sessions that I am really tired by mid-afternoon.

I've decided I will go to Keith Moseley's optional tutorial session this evening. I don't know the exact content but I believe it's something to do with the wave/particle duality. He's also running another one tomorrow on observing the universe, which I believe ties in with SXR208 (Mallorca Observatory course, although the last thing on my mind at the moment is planning to go away again).

So I will jump in the shower again, change my top and get my pad, paper and audio recorder ready for the tutorial over in the Pevensey building.. quite possibly one of the ugliest and oldest university teaching buildings I have ever been taught in!