There is a particular character, a Mr. Vince, who can occassionally be a tad difficult to get a firm hold of during the holidays. And so it was especially good to see Owen last Monday, when he joined a group of us for a binge of classic Doctor Who and then stayed on for the night. We originally went out that night for a quiet drink at Swiss Cottage, but the allure of Camden’s mango beer was too strong seeing as it is virtually down the road, and that started us out on a bit of a jaunt, which eventually led to the haven of Soho and – crucially – 24 hour cafés. It’s important, to me, to know that a toasted baguette could always be available in life should the moment call for it, and hence another reason why Owen and I agree that we couldn’t actually end up living in Cambridge, where there are manifestly no round-the-clock eating establishments. But back in London: a good night.
I then journeyed up to Cofton Hackett (no round-the-clock eating establishments unless you’re in the know 
) to see Lucy, go bowling – poorly – and see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which was, I have to say, unfulfilling by the usual Harry Potter movie standard. But the centrepiece event was Lucy’s ‘Northern’ [cough] dinner party on Friday night, which managed to bring about what is perhaps the highest state of being: drunken ABBA dancing…
Host!
Katy, Lou and Lucy
Lucy, ‘Twitterless Lou’ and Andy
Managing to control photo-autism here, actually
Dance dance!
Cofton: can you hack it?
The next day, Saoirse and Emily were able to stay on for a visit to Cadbury World. Despite their occassionally questionable historical reconstructions – either that or Mr. Cadbury was slipping a bit more than milk into his chocolate – it was a really great day out, and we all managed to form a quasi-family unit but without any of the squabbling. Oh, and let’s not forget the free chocolate! 
We even got the photo from the white-knuckle ride
(Three quarters of those tested could look into a camera)
Finally: when I got home today (OK, ‘yesterday’) I found that I’d won a prize! The ‘Cambridge Historical Prize – Historical Tripos Part 1 2009’ prize, to be exact, for my Themes and Sources essay. This is really very exciting, partly because I’m quite chuffed and so on but largely because it consists not just of a letter but of £100. Yay! This is a pleasing step up from QPCS’s book tokens (bless ’em) and could buy over 20 glasses of mango beer, which is truly a happy happy thought.
Ah, blogging neglect. This always happens during the holiday; essay deadlines are the classic procrastinational motivator for writing. (‘Procrastinational’ is not a word as such – not according to either spellcheck or the dictionary – but I’m striking out alone anyway. Just you try and stop me.) But it’s most definitely time to blog now, before I end up with a post so long it needs its own index. (‘Torchwood, see under ’emotional flattening’)
Torchwood: Children of Earth (warning: spoilers) was a brilliant piece of television, right down to the episode-a-night format, which kept up the momentum and gave the whole thing the sense of being a real dramatic ‘event’. After the final episode, Katie, dad and I sat there a little drained – there were some pretty grim moments, with none of the underlying optimism of Doctor Who, and wonderfully provoking ethical questions which gave rise to much conversation afterwards. For me, [again, spoiler alert] the scene of John Frobisher shooting his family – and himself – was one of my favourite scenes from anything in a while. Masterfully done.
It’s probably a good thing I watched some rather more light-hearted things too this week, including The Hangover with Tash on Tuesday and Brüno with Joshua, Niamh, Robert and Abbi on Saturday. Both prove that you really don’t have to do anything particularly clever to make me laugh – I really do enjoy what is ultimately just a burst of silliness Brüno, in particular, suffers from being dressed-up as something satirical; it’s not, really, although seeing just how physically pained some people are by displays of homosexuality is always interesting when it’s just not something I can ever feel. In a ranking of innocuous things, men kissing would come somewhere between ‘flight of butterflies’ and ‘the comedy of Jasper Carrott’. (Sorry, Jasper: you do seem lovely. Just not very edgy.)
Still, people are weird, and there was no better demonstration of this than on Tuesday when Sanna and I visited St Paul’s. (I bet you’re expecting something about watching people go through the Mass now, but instead I’m going to wrong-foot everybody who doesn’t also read Sanna’s blog, i.e. precisely no-one.) After we had admired what was, to be honest, about 20% God and 80% British Empire, we left to find lunch and then found ourselves captivated by the exterior glass lifts of Lloyds TSB. I’m not sure what made them so addictive to watch, but they were, and we ended up staying for ages until someone finally smiled at us and waved back. You will be shocked to learn, incidentally, that men outnumbered women in said lifts by a considerable margin. Men also vastly outnumbered women on the ‘parents vs. students’ debating event at the Queen’s Park fair on Saturday – something Sarah Teather correctly picked up on – although I am proud to say that my mum did take part and subsequently won a fancy debating trophy which now adorns our living room. Hurrah!
Colourful picnic
Yesterday we held a picnic in Gladstone Park to celebrate Saoirse’s 16th, which was pleasingly full of chocolate and other sugary things! I have to say, it is really wonderful to be doing so many things together – and I hope we’re all still around to picnic in the years to come 
(Oh, and I picked my final two papers for next year: Political Thought from c.1700 to c. 1890 and The History of the Indian Subcontinent from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. Rock on…)
Hmm… how to add value when Abbi has already faithfully blogged the holiday and my photos are adorning Facebook? Why, turn to technology of course
Newquay!
Yes, I had a totally fantastic time and can only hope to blog a few memorable moments. Like the train which failed to get up the hill, the cold-induced delirium of night-time swimming, drinking games with the gorgeously feminine voices which followed, giant scary sea creatures at the aquarium, the wonders of Wordplay, the views of the sea and everyone’s amazing company. Onward to next year!
To continue the spirit of the previous post, here’s Katie’s rather wonderful birthday present to me:
‘Without geometry, life is pointless’
Branding to the max
Furthermore, I have finally received my much-coveted Nic Parkes mug, which will be treasured in much the same way as my Uber Ninja badge. (Of course I still have it!) Now, I hear you exclaim, why all the enthusiasm? Well, perhaps unbeknown to Nic, I am pretty much banking on the idea that one day I’ll be able to invest in one of his fledging companies and live off the proceeds 
No doubt he’ll then go too far, becoming the sinister chief of a sprawling corporate empire, but then at least I could invest some of my capital gains into funding a left-wing politician to take him on. It’s all win-win!
History Part I (erm, ‘the thing I just did’) exam results came out yesterday, which brought good news all around: I got my 2.1, along with everyone else I cared about, apart from the couple of you exceptionable people who got 1sts! So congratulations everyone Can we have the paper breakdowns and the actual marks now, Cambridge, pretty please? 
Also! Last night Abbi came over for dinner and then joined my mum and me for Karoo Moose at the Tricycle. As ever, the intimate atmosphere of that remarkable theatre sucked you right into the play, which was – as Abbi said – pleasingly dark without being depressing. The energy of the actors was also incredible, and makes me wonder whether they simply collapse at the end of a weekly run. As always with the Tricycle, recommended. [Public shout-out to Diamond Geezer: next time you venture up North West on a cultural blogging tour de force, make it The Tricycle or The Lexi. Yes, I have some deeply partial vested interests here, but at least I’m not PR.]
May not blog again until after Newquay – the mega-holiday with Lucy, Abbi, Sanna, Saoirse, Robert and Emily – so have a good week and remember not to overdo your lettuce smoking! Now, off to attack my growing reading list of exciting new books…
I want to post a little bit more on my afternoon with Joshua and Niamh on Monday, and specifically our pub-based atheistic chat. The obvious immediate health warning is that people usually love nothing more than to talk to others who agree with themselves, and that self-reinforcing group psychology clearly has enourmous power. Nevertheless, the quality of ‘agreement conversation’ can vary massively: picking holes in the logic of Biblical stories may be fun, but is really rather futile, whereas I think this was genuinely more sophisticated. And after all, we’re not exactly shy about talking to those who disagree with us – it’s just that, as Niamh said perfectly, it’s immensely frustrating when people declare that such-and-such a subject must be considered ‘outside the realm of knowledge’ or ‘beyond evidence’ or whatever. I often wonder why theists seem to slip this in so casually, as if they were explaining that they used screw-in light bulbs rather than bayonets.
In addition, the comfort of talking to people who agree with you is partly that it illustrates that faith is not necessary. Plenty of people are convinced, for reasons I cannot entirely fathom, that religion is vital to human society. Usually this revolves around the observation that it has been around for ages, which makes me wonder whether they champion starvation, famine and poverty and in quite the same way for the same reasons. But we also get the insistance that people (or ‘most people’) need the sense of meaning and purpose implied by religious thought. So it’s always good to confirm that I’m not the only one who doesn’t struggle with nihilist nightmares. Joshua and Niamh both agreed that, at first glance, it is true that atheism could appear to imply ‘pointlessness’ on a grand scale. But it really doesn’t take much to get beyond this. Indeed, the more you think about it, the more you realise that relativism is actually necessary for anything to have any ‘point’ whatsoever.
I try to use the analogy of love and family. Your parents, your siblings, your children – typically they are all extremely important to you, but that it’s to you is the key point. Your love for them is not based on some kind of universal appraisal of the world’s people; it is specifically relational, and the fact that others don’t have the same love for your parents that you do is more relieving than troublesome. And it also matters. If you die, someone you loved doesn’t merely shrug in the belief that they are still objectively ‘lovable’. There is a very real loss.
Similarly, moral judgements of right and wrong are equally relational between you the judge and the thing being judged. The fact that others may disagree, and the fact that there is no ultimate moral arbitar, makes your own judgement more important, not less. After all, if it’s a simply measurable fact you’re talking about – say, that a stick is a metre long – then whether you’re around to believe it or not makes no difference. It simply is. But with morality you actually matter in a pretty fundamental way, because your determination helps to form part of a collective moral belief that defines ‘morality’ itself. You’re not just trying to second-guess what the ‘right’ (but hidden) moral answer actually is, but instead engaged in something creative. Luckily, the universe is not filled with things which are objectively ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, impervious to change. That’s the logical conclusion of all this talk of ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’, leaving your life with very little to do except to play its correct part (for a reward) or deviate from the set path (for punishment). This is real pointlessness: you have no effect on what is, but simply on your own and others’ ability to measure up.
But then, as Niamh also says, you don’t even need to go through all of this before accepting the very basic requirement that any view of what does objectively exist in the universe (god etc.) need not have any relationship to what you would personally like to exist. While theists continue to ruminate on just how amazing and true their faith is because it makes them feel so exceptionally loved by The Supreme Being Of Everything, atheists will still congregate in pubs to ask why on earth anyone believes this is good enough to explain the world as it is.
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