A Short Emission, Library Style

Since York University library has taken to changing the DVD rules without telling ANYONE so that I am charged the usually daily rate PER HOUR now (and have racked up an iceberg of fines), and since the internet will soon be rerouted from my house to some other impoverished student, no doubt a soon to be delighted youtube commentator with an unholy knowledge of sports statistics, a lack of even basic grammar and with a predilection towards his right hand...I have now taken up residence in the AV room of the library. I have control of the one HDMI remote in the library, the one (working) DVD player, one of four computers, a litre of orange lucozade, 3 weeks of wakefulness and every supplementary disc/booklet/item of paraphenalia to Gilliam's Fear & Loathing.

The room has emptied quickly, possibly due to the setting of the sun but equally possibly due to my muttering to no-one in particular in Old Icelandic about the ragnarok at the end of Kiss Me Deadly, an otherwise odious film if not for the spectacularly nihilistic flavour of light at the conclusion.

This is my winter office, as of now. If I ever become a professor of any calibre (.45 upwards) I'll bring a sleeping bag and mark the whole place with the delightful musk of my primal urges.

(Except I've just been informed that this place no longer remains open until midnight, so there are no more knowledge ghouls hoovering up stray and errant facts long into the night.)

Things That Have Changed On Campus

• Working automatic doors (think Star Trek), as compared to the antiquated and swinging thresholds that swept out and hit you in the nose like the iron wings of some gigantic mechanical albatross who really hated your face.
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• Carpets. Everywhere. As compared to...well, concrete; floorboards; dirt.
• Pictures of shiny happy students holding hands, seemingly as some kind of desperate attempt to prove that this IS a university despite the very High School surroundings.
• College mottoes and whatnot, as opposed to "Where do I live again?"
• More/Less asbestos.
• Some buildings that aren't exclusively concrete.
• A union shop that looks more like a tiki stand as opposed to a student shop that looked like a rather mundane student shop.
• A few thousand magic mushrooms surrounding the car park, as compared to grass verges.

Time to get a basket and start talking to colourful smells, kids.

"No guns, notice this a safe neighbourhood/where everything is okay and alright and all that " An emissary from the Comfort Zone

I'm young, I'm fresh, I'm a nervous wreck. I've been back in York a total of about 25 hours and it already feels like my mind has been filled with the kind of mineral-wool-insulation material that the leaflets sent to me by my slumlord keep going on about.

Being a mere mile or so from where I was previously ensconced and a similar distance from the more distinguished areas, I seem to have holed myself into Eborian suburbia.

Examples

• I've just seen four different paper boys cycle down our road.
• People leave their bikes and lawnmowers in the front garden.
• A woman's dog leapt out of the house barking at me, but didn't try to dine on my trachea.
• There has only been one person being taught to drive on our road so far.
• All the food seems to be delivered by Tesco/Sainsbury vans, except for one fellow who seems to have found a supermarket so utterly inaccessible to me I've never even heard of it. The driver could well have been described as wearing livery.

The result of this crime-free comfortable non-threatening utopia, with bills not included? I'm jumpy as hell. The fact that the place is silent at night is disconcerting enough, but during the day you don't even get traffic. I'm also prone to getting lost and staring off into space. The cotton wool is either being funnelled into my eyes and ears or out of them, like some kind of fluffy exchange. I feel like I'm wearing one of those isolation bubbles, but inside out.