694 words about being home/British Summer Time
i came home from university today, earlier than expected. due to the positioning of easter this year, the university has scheduled the first week of the summer term immediately after the last week of the winter term, so technically today was the start of the summer term. however, all the lectures in the summer term are revision sessions for the end of year exams. in a rare act of sound reasoning, all my lecturers decided there was no point having revision sessions this week two months before the actual exams, so have moved them to when we return. which left with me with sweet fuck all to do this week, especially since absolutely killing myself over my essays meant i finished them a fortnight ago and handed them in way before time.
so i decided to come home. i was planing to come home on wednesday because i’m see God’s Favourite Band Deerhunter, but i honestly couldn’t see what i would gain from sticking at university since i’m so miserable there pretty much all the time. this past weekend is a prime example - before going to bed last night i realised i hadn’t spoken to anyone since the friday lunchtime, not even a polite “hello”, a realisation which prevented me falling asleep until about 4am. (instead i went online and watched this video about 19 times in a row). indeed, this past weekend just made me want to come running home even more.
of course, the grass is always greener on the other side. after getting into the centre of manchester and enjoying a subway sandwich in picadilly gardens i went to meet my mother at work. as i got caught up on “everything” it seems my family life has turned into some sort of jonathan frazen novel: i have returned dispirited from university, my older sister is coming home this weekend after breaking up with her boyfriend and may indeed be quitting her job to move back here full-time, my father’s health is worsening (nothing too serious, touch wood, but his eyes, teeth and eyes all seem to failing) and my mother….well, you never know with your mother, do you?
i’m being over-dramatic here, of course; it is nice to think of family as being incredibily dramatic, the stuff of great fiction, when in reality these are just the little pieces of the everyday. which is strange because my other conception of home is one of great stability and calm. what makes the whole thing even weirder is it is hardly like university is proving incredibly exciting and too dramatic; the opposite is true. yet for some reason i was looking forward to the prospect of being bored in a whole different postcode, just because this is home and everywhere else is not. and the merest little bit of drama i’m already blowing up in my mind.
i dunno; someone smarter than me should read that past paragraph and try to “saying something”.
but being home does have one advantage: there is usually someone i can play tennis with. tennis is one of the few sports i partake in, probably also because it is the one sport i can actually play reasonably well. i had only been home about a few hours before i was out on the courts; indeed, calculating in my head i think i’ve spent more time today out on the courts than actually home.
the reason i could do so was because we are now in british summer time, a concept i’ve never been comfortable with, as much as i’ve often reaped the benefits of an extra hour of sunlight. maybe it goes back to that need for stability, but the fact that because someone decided so in 1916 we have to surrender a whole hour at the end of march really does not sit right with me. every time we have to move the clocks i always end up in a mental maze of trying to figure what “time” is, if we can change it just because….well, just because. just as a concept the whole thing never fails to annoy and confuse me.
but, hey, what doesn’t?
