Dude, where did my winter break go?

backtoschoolI have a mind to crawl under the bed and wail, and take the dogs with me to protect me from being dragged out from under it by people that think I’ve gone quite mad. The reason for this misery is that it is just two days until I have to be back at school!

Yes, on Monday I have to get up at seven, and then I have to bike away to school, and then I can sit there and mope and ask the highly pertinent questions to myself and everyone: Dude, where did my winter break go? I feel like I haven’t had any, and I want a refund of free days. Like another month or so.

Yes, that should be fine. Please deliver the refund ASAP. I shall eagerly wait here, under the bed, with the dogs. Unless Mark pulls me out from under it by the leg. Or because I start to sneeze because the dust-rats under the bed is bigger than they ought to be because we’ve been lazy here when we should have tidied the house at some point during the last few days.

Now it feels like a clock is ticking at the back of my head; tick tock tick tock; counting down to the inevitable end of this winter break. And what lies ahead? The rush to the finish line; stress, anxiety, nail-biting about university. Oh, and once the university situation have cleared, there will be the offers from these universities that I have to live up to. Demands, requirements, grade levels – and the ever present fitful hope that I actually reach whatever is demanded of me.

I understand what The Doctor must have felt like when he regenerated from David Tennant into Matt Smith, and I can only say what he did at the time, in the same tone of voice: “I don’t want to go!”

***

homecountiesThis break has been characterised by not being that much alone, so for two days Mark and I have shut off the telephones, unplugged the internet. For two days we practically went into hibernation, the two of us, away from everything – and it was good.

It was not a little cottage like during summer but rather our own house, but it was close enough, and while I distinctly remember having cabin fever quite a few times during Mark’s stint as an employee in Sweden, this time there was none of that.

It was just the two of us, taking long walks and sipping hot tea in the miserable no-weather that we’re having with threats of flooding one day and clouds coming so low that it might as well be called mist the next. But the weather also made us stay inside, and thus kept us chained to what we were supposed to do – which was to be anti-social after all the social interactions.

The Home Counties can be a beautiful place, if you get away from all the people. While I’m at heart a city boy, I do appreciate the odd tour about the countryside – and there’s been quite a bit of that these past days. This is often evident when I’m off to run, and I can stop somewhere and just bask in the view of some place.

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20 thoughts on “Dude, where did my winter break go?”

  1. Pity about the stolen winter break, but good that you managed to get some US time in before the return to school.
    As for Uni offers… have you had any kind of response from your second- or third-string unis? Or do they not do the interview thing? I had expected you’d also be sucking up to dons in Oxford, beadles in Aberdeen and coalminers daughters in Aberystwyth – or whoever characterises those august wannabe institutions.

    • I think I’ll get responses from everyone at about the same time. So, by the end of January I should know who wants me, and who does not.

  2. I agree with Tony, it’s great that you got some alone time with your partner before your break finished! Mine ended this past Wednesday (I only got a week off) so I know how bad it feels to go back to school. Good luck with the Uni offers and school in general!

    • Ugh, don’t remind me. I’m almost afraid to log into our university administrativ system, UCAS, to check. Of course I do that every day anyway. Who knows, someone might respond early. I prefer not to think about it. :D

  3. On the subject of “getting out” – not all that far from you in Hampshire is a cute little place called Selborne, which was relatively unknown until 1789 when the good Rev Gilbert White published his seminal work of natural history The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.
    I’ll dig out a few choice snippets from it in the hope I might spur you to do a daytrip in that direction – just take the A3 towards Petersfield but turn right at Liss! (Liss used to have a wondrous little 2nd-hand bookshop where I bought many a volume. Sadly, it seems the bookshop is no more.)
    White was the first naturalist to place the emphasis of research on observing animals alive in their natural habitat rather than shooting the damn things and dissecting the remains. He was the first to recognise, for example, that earthworms were a critical element in soil health and fertility.
    (Sometimes, though, he fucked up spectacularly… on finding a frozen swallow buried by leaf litter under a hedge during a particularly bitter winter he decided that swallows must hibernate – explaining why they disappeared in autumn.)
    The Gilbert White museum there incorporates a Lawrence (“I am just going outside…”) Oates exhibit. I have no idea why .

  4. Getting away from people in the Home Counties is quite an achievement but yes, it does have its beauty spots. Take some time to walk in the Chilterns for instance when the weather gets a bit better. The trouble with the Christmas break is the festivities get in the way of really being able to relax and enjoy yourself – cutting off the outside world for a couple of days sounds like an excellent idea!

    • Well, it is possible. There are big swaths of land where there are few people even here. There’s a national park, for instance, not far from here.

    • Unless you become a teacher, at which point the rhythms of life you’ve established over the last twelve years will become permanent.

      By the way, those dust-rats used to be called slut’s-wool, a name that gives me great happiness.

      • My teachers have tried to persuade me to study writing rather than teaching, although I’ve had this fuzzy idea that I could teach as a job while writing in the evening because, you know, there’s no money in writing. I’ve decided to wait and see what I do. I won’t study education at university, so maybe I’ve already made the choice.

        • Stephen King said that the only time he could not write was when he was teaching. When you spend all day thinking for ninety-five other people, it’s difficult to come home and think for yourself. He had more success writing when he worked at a prison or a laundry. Hands busy, mind free.

          I’ve never studied education, but here I’ve been, teaching for how long? You study what you want to study, then you get what job you can. Maybe it’ll be related to your degree, maybe it won’t. Some employers just want to see that you have a degree to prove that you can stick with a program of study and make it through–the qualities that you develop in college are more important to them than the subject matter you learn. You know how to learn, and that’s what counts.

  6. I don’t have any travel recommendations or indeed any recommendations at all. So, I’ll just wish you all the best as you enjoy your last day off and then head back to school. I found a way for a permanent break but it involves pain and becoming permanently disabled so I wouldn’t wish it for you.

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