try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms.

I spent the tail-end of the bank holiday weekend circling things in red pen and writing down masses of phone numbers and so on, keying myself up for all the ringing around I was going to do on Tuesday morning, in an attempt to sort out some goddamn private accommodation already, goddamn it. Luckily, I decided to check my emails on Tuesday morning before I launched, head-first, into the cut and thrust of the thing. This is what I found there:
"Dear [lozopus]

Re: Room Offer

We are pleased to offer you a room in University Halls of Residence at Liverpool.  For security reasons we are not able to give you details about the offer in this email. To view and respond to the offer please login to the University Student Portal..."

Oh dear, I thought, how terrifying. I'd already made up my mind to turn it down if it was another catered offer, not reapply through the university and utilise all the scouting around I'd done over the weekend. Luckily, I didn't have to bother - in just over two weeks I shall be moving into some self-catered, uni-owned halls which are, to boot, the ones I wanted all along; the ones that are close to campus and right in the heart of the city.

Frankly, I'm so excited now that it's unreal. In all my life, I've never lived in a city, only in (fairly horrible) towns - I know that seems a silly thing to matter to a person, but the thought of not having to get on a fucking train to see good comedy or music or theatre is just a little overwhelming. I'd been reluctant but resigned to spending my first year of city-life two miles out of the bustle, a bus ride away from everything, but now I am within actual walking distance of everything cool - within WALKING DISTANCE. Bearing in mind that I am willing to walk quite a long way for things and not, er, expecting it to be ten minutes across either way or something.

I saw a group of friends during the week who asked if the accommodation thing had sorted itself out; I replied in the affirmative and received a very lovely cheer in the middle of the street. What a good bunch. Then we went to the London Tombs and nearly had a coronary, which would have been a shame, after all that fuss.

On a semi-related note, my dad visited Liverpool this week - he had booked his train tickets back before we knew I'd missed my grades for my first choice uni, so it was just a coincidence really - and spent a happy day wandering about on his own, geeking out. My dad's a huge Beatles fan, and his obsession made a weekend in Liverpool one of the first holidays I ever had, certainly the first I can really remember, when I was eight or nine years old. The entire reason I chose to apply to Liverpool was that I'd fallen in love with the city during visits past, so him calling me up to go, "er, is it John Moores you're going to?" (no) had a pleasantly cyclical feel to it. He made me love the city, and now I am going to live there, and the fact his only child is going to live there has, I suppose, made him look at the place in a different way.

He found my future campus (verdict: "massive") and took a photo of the map they supplied, which he sent me in a text. A rather touching gesture, all told, particularly in light of the fact that I had been not a little concerned in the past about how he viewed my going away; he's made no secret of being happy that I didn't get into my first choice, though - further away geographically and with a year in a different country - so I suppose it's really all worked out for the best in that regard.

Oh, look at that. It just turned midnight. Exactly two weeks to go, now.

For all the time, all the years I've spent looking forward to this and preparing, it really has rather snuck up on me. But these things have a way of doing that, don't they?