At Holy Hogwarts

So, I'm here. It's started! Nearly 62 hours have passed since the long-awaited Thursday-22nd-September-at-3.30pm and I'm still alive!

On Thursday we gathered in the Common Room at 3.30pm as per the plan. It was a very shoulder-to-shoulder affair, 38 students starting this year along with spouses and children, and several continuing students and their families. And the Common Room really isn't that big.

After drinks, we went to the Parish Church for a music practice. Slightly bizarre, they admitted, but it's just to get us used to singing the responses in the service. This was followed by a service itself (hurrah!) In which the Principal preached and the Vice-Principal presided.

Then - food! Brilliant! This is what I was looking forward to (the service and meeting people too of course, but I do like my food...!) It was a buffet like you have never seen before. Not like some buffets, which repeat themselves (oh, here's another bowl of green salad...) but one that went on and on and on with a hundred different dishes. And then - pudding. A selection of puddings! This will not be good for my weight...!

After the buffet, more drinks in the Common Room, then I went to bed pretty early. Amazingly, even starting at 3.30pm, all the meeting (and eating) had really taken in out of me.

And I needed an early night. The next day, Friday, I was up at the chapel at 7.30am!!!! for Morning Prayer. Which would turn out to be the first of four church services of the day (Morning Prayer, Eucharist, Evening Prayer and Compline - luckily or unluckily, depending how you see it, only two of them are compulsory.) Friday was really interesting. The morning sessions were about the history of the college and practicalities of college life, and the afternoon sessions were about the social side of things. A bit of being bombarded with information, but all interesting stuff.

Yesterday was a rest day, and I needed it. We went to a drinks thing in the gardens of the college for an hour in the middle of the day (yes... more drinks... I know!) but there were no services to go to, and we didn't eat any meals in the college (although, amazingly, we could if we had wanted to!) I managed to speak to the Principal at the drinks thing, who confirmed that the MTh signing-up thing is all sorted now, so that's a real relief.

This morning we had a welcome service at the Parish Church followed by a drinks reception and a buffet lunch, now Paul is asleep on the sofa and I am typing this. Oh, and we had our photos taken for the Common Room wall. I am grinning inanely in ours.

So things are going OK so far. If I'm honest, I'm not a fan of the mix-and-mingle sort of social events. The ones where you move around the room with a glass of wine, making eye contact, asking the three standard questions "so, where do you come from? Where are you living here? What course are you doing?" I think I'm getting better at those sort of occasions, but I don't think they're particularly good for getting to know people, names and details blur into one! I think it's when you really start doing things together, learning alongside one another, that you really start to gel. Apparently there are 6 other people doing the MTh, although bizarrely I've only met 4 of them, and I'm sure I've met everyone! They all seem really nice. In fact, everyone seems lovely. I think it's going to be a good couple of years.

Weirdly, Paul, who hates big groups of people he doesn't know, seems to have been largely OK with all this. He fears these sorts of events, and then when he gets to them he's fine. He always seems to find someone he has a common interest with, and goes off chatting like mad. He's playing cricket tomorrow, 1st years vs 2nd/3rd years. I think he'll really enjoy it.

I don't know what we'll do this afternoon. Chill out probably. 7.30am again tomorrow. And every weekday. For ever and ever and ever........