strawberrri.diaryland.com
I put my pitchfork in your dog to keep quiet
2005-07-12 | 8:37 p.m.

Today was my graduation, which was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it'd be. Having been incredibly unorganised for it, I thought it'd be a great deal of stress, which it wasn't. I took my family for lunch in my favourite pub and I ended up seeing a lot of my friends at the ceremony itself and the reception after. The only tedious part was having to applaud a few thousand students INDIVIDUALLY as they went to shake hands with the chancellor, but other than that it was an enjoyable day.

My gran also provided a suitable amount of entertainment on the way up there, as elderly folk are wont to do. Bear in mind my gran is not a racist or a xenophobe, but she does live in a small village in Hertfordshire and so seldom sees any ethnic minorities.

'Leicester...' says my gran, '...isn't it full of Asians?'

I told her that indeed, Leicester was a widely multicultural city.

And then once we arrive into Leicester itself she pokes her finger at a man in a turban and loudly says, 'Oh look, there's one of our foreign friends!'

I had to point out to her that one, he was most likely a UK citizen and two, you just cannot go around announcing that kind of thing in public. Luckily we were in the car when she said it, but who knows what else she might have said, especially after half a lager in the pub.

So I have officially graduated, which is nice.

On Friday the New Bloke's dad came and collected us from London and took us to the safety of the Suffolk countryside, which means I have now met both his parents in little over the space of a week. We spent Saturday in Cambridge, at a mini festival/market type thing, walking past the beautiful colleges and having a picnic on the river Cam, watching the punts go by in the glorious sunshine.

Every night since Thursday I have had bad dreams. Amputations, boats, London, trains. They've all been in there. It is quite reasonable I suppose (and again, thank you to the people who left me notes regarding my personal experience of Thursday). Despite being perfectly fine, it does dominate my thoughts a lot, though not necessarily in a bad way.

I feel sad because of the people I met on that day and how I will never see them again. I remember random things, like when I was on the bus, burying my head into my arm, a woman tried comforting me by telling me to spend the day at the cinema. I remember the Underground worker who gave me a cup of coffee because I was cold. The man in Starbucks who got out his map and helped me plan my intended journey by foot. Acts of kindness really. I've only really got upset by reading the papers or watching the news, hearing about the victims.

Life has gone on and it will continue to go on, because there's not really any way to stop it. And London will most likely get attacked again but I'm damned if it's putting me off going there.

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