Not much has happened in the last ten days except 1) I have had a mild social life and b) I have been stiff and achy and generally suffering from the lousy weather. This has finally culminated in me sitting at home for much of the three day weekend, and at this precise moment I am watching a rather fierce hailstorm going on.

Yes, a hailstorm.

I am sick to death of this country and its weather and the fact that I cannot function properly while I am here. I'd have thought that with the fact that it is almost June things might be improving, but there hasn't even been a day with weather good enough for me to wear a tshirt yet.

On the plus side I have been curled up in bed with some good books (Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell). The weather is better in books - except, perhaps, in David Maine's The Flood, but at least in that story the rain stops eventually.

Also Ian's little car failed its MOT and it isn't really worth the money to repair, so he is now carless. This makes life slightly more exciting as I continue to forget to buy washing up liquid, and stack the dishwasher in ever more complicated ways, just to make everything fit.

* posted by nat 6:00 PM

Saturday, May 20, 2006

On Friday Ian read my previous post over my shoulder and got all injured. "Ok, I get the hint."

"That," I said firmly, "was not a hint."

Hints have included: making comments about how nice the flowers look whenever we go past them in, say, the supermarket. Or dragging him into the florists in Borough market, saying 'wouldn't it be nice to have some flowers at home?'. Or saying, while sitting in the living room, 'I do like having fresh flowers at home.'

Such are hints, and they have evidently been far too subtle.

That was an ANVIL.

It worked, however, because he arrived back home on Saturday afternoon covered in mud and clutching a bunch of flowers. It might have made more impact if I hadn't been in bed asleep at the time, but it's the general moulding that counts!

* posted by nat 9:12 PM

Friday, May 19, 2006

I trailed over to the Camden centre after my last exam on Thursday to find most of the people on my course in the pub, and a few more sitting in a doorway opposite the pub sharing a bottle of tequila. So I had a cupful of tequila, before all the boys went off to watch football, and the girls all split up into smaller groups and went for dinner. I ended up in Wagamama's with Ayesha, Miranda and Spela. Afterwards we dropped in to Borders and made impulse purchases.

On Thursday morning I was intending to sleep in late, but I had a phone call at 7:40am from Ian wailing that he'd broken down and his car was dead and wah. To which my response was "Ghnufferrblegh." This did not deter him from contining to talk but eventually I managed to convey that I wasn't very happy with being woken up. so he called me again an hour later. And again a bit later. So eventually I told him to come over so I could grumble at him in person. He turned up around lunchtime and sulked about having to watch the Airbus A380 on the TV instead of being able to see it fly over from work. I managed to get a massage out of him and he cooked me dinner (without needing too much direction even!) - redeeming himself! - and discovered from the mechanic that his car was not as dead as he had thought, which cheered him up enough to beat me comprehensively at Monopoly.

We were listening to the radio and on came a report about a judge being killed in Turkey and demonstrations taking place in Ankara demanding that Turkey stay secular.

"Secular?" says Ian. "Which ones are they? Sunni or Shia?"

He then looked very injured when I fell about laughing.

I caught up on sleep today and Ian came back later in the afternoon bringing me the old broken pipe out of his car. One day he will turn up on the door with something nice, like a bunch of flowers. I still hold out hope...

* posted by nat 8:19 PM

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

You know you've got an exam tomorrow when:

you put something to cook in the top oven and turn on the bottom oven.

Stupid electric split ovens.

In other news, as long as the following questions come up I will be ok, and if I don't I won't:

* Anything about preventive diplomacy

* Anything about bilateral relations

* A vaguely broad question about multilateralism with room to waffle

Also I can probably write about economic sanctions and why they are useless if I really need to. Or even about NGOs in negotiations. Or at a push I can go on about SC reform. But I'd rather not. I have decided a good strategy is to put in lots of quotes by Hocking and Berridge, as they are two out of the three markers, so at the very least agreeing with them is vital. You always get more marks for agreeing with academics; they have egos.

We have a drought order in place. All it does here is rain and we have a drought order. Sigh. A piece of paper came through the door saying "let's beat the drought together!"

I've got a better idea, dear water company. How about you fix your leaking pipes and then work out how to collect this rain stuff that falls from the sky?

Anyway, off back to the conduct of modern diplomacy and stupid statements that Hedley Bull wrote. I don't have any more emergency chocolate, so this evening will eb quite painful.

* posted by nat 5:17 PM

Sunday, May 14, 2006

On Friday I had an excessively lax invigilator, and managed to do 15 extra minutes of writing on my second exam paper. Fun! Afterwards Rose and I wandered through the back streets of Bloomsbury to the pub where the others were, had a drink, and then I went via Alara for lunch and met up with a different group of people sitting outside the Institute and had a drink with them.

It is bizarre when I sit down with the Brit part of the course. I don't normally hang around with them, and it feels like being in another world, a rather dull and uncomfortable one at that. So I picked up with Kaoru and Jom and we went to Starbucks for frappucinos and life was instantly better.

Then I did some money spending (new summery trousers, until I can lose enough weight to get back into my old summery trousers - grr), and books for 99p at Waterstones. Then I sat on the tube and read fiction (it's such a rare occurence this year it rates a mention) all the way out to the airport, where I sat and watched planes and read for a little while until Ian finished work, and off we went to Nando's for dinner, which is becoming a bit of a Friday night fixture. Ian continues to exhibit boyfriend tendencies, such as ordering something slightly different from what I want to eat, which he managed again when going down the bakery on Saturday morning.

I worked vaguely for much of the afternoon, with a brief phone call from Tina to moan about achy joints and cramp and not feeling your toes and exams, and all the other things it is much better to moan about with someone else who has random health problems, because you both start off so much further up the scale of empathy.

I ate strawberries while watching Doctor Who (a-wimoweh!) and afterwards noticed a missed call from Ian on my phone. So I phoned him up.

"Why phone me when I am spending time with my TV boyfriend?"
"I just wanted to check you weren't missing it," he said lamely.

He then spent several minutes trying to get me to concede that his glasses were better than Ten's glasses. I do keep trying to persuade him I am not going to leave him for an alien time traveller who shows a marked preference for blondes, but I don't think he's always convinced!

Two down, one to go.

* posted by nat 10:16 AM

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Argh! invoked.

I know nothing!

I am trying to go to sleep and dream of the Rome statute. This is not easy.

* posted by nat 11:58 PM

Saturday, May 06, 2006

The last two days have been almost warm - lovely and sunny, and I have spent them all in the library writing notes in purple pen and round friendly letters to others, and reducing everything I know about international law onto sheets of A4 paper - Crawford, Brownlie and Cassese peppered with SCRs and cases. Connect:

Montevideo; EC Guidelines on the Recognition of States in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union; EC Declaration on Yugoslavia; Badinter Commission (Ops 4,5,6,7,10); Tinoco Concessions; Deutsche Continental Gas; Southern Rhodesia, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Transkei, Palestine and Great Powers

1514(XV);1541 (XV); Friendly Relations Declaration; Vienna Declaration; 1244; Western Sahara; Namibia; Reference re. Quebec; Katangese People's Congress vs Zaire; Badinter Commission (Op.2); 1244; East Timor and Great Powers

1(1), 2(4), 51 (39, 41, 42); 678, 687, (688), 1205, 1441; Caroline; Nicaragua; Nuremburg and Great Powers

If those three do not come up, then at a pinch I can do Nuremburg; Tokyo; ICTR; ICTY; Cambodia; Sierra Leone; Rome Statute and Great Powers.

And if things get really desperate it'll be ICJ 38(1) - and Great Powers - all the way! Easy really.

I have soya ice cream in the freezer. Thank goodness.

There is a nice UN job in educational policy in Trinidad and Tobago. Now if only it were a paid job...

* posted by nat 4:37 PM

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Gone revisin'. Back soon.

In the meantime, this explains a LOT:

Where you died in your past life:

'Where did you die in your past life?' at QuizGalaxy.com

* posted by nat 12:07 AM