The queen of procrastination is back.

 

I carried out some cleaning experiments this morning, and concluded that on the Scale of Cleaning Satisfaction, the closest match to taking a file to the space between long nails and skin (10) is the attack of the laptop; the hoovering away of baby dust bunnies and cake crumbs lurking beneath the keypad, the refined art of scrubbing-without-scratching at incriminating fingerprints besmirching the screen, the washing away of sticky coffee stains, of contact lense solution and tequila, and the final inch-by-inch fine polishing. My father’s special blue laptop cleaning cloth (five months on, and he has still not removed his protective plastic laptop cover) comes away satisfyingly, disgustingly grey. My fingers don’t peel reluctantly from the keys anymore; what once was a breeding ground for student germs and diseases is now no more.

 

On the downside, I can no longer use dangerously reduced-visibility as an excuse to further procrastinate. I have dug my own grave, probably about time as I’m back in Cambridge on Tuesday. I have bought unkillable felt flowers and a dust-disguising rug, dream in rhyming couplets and have been shifting dauntingly tall, wobbly stacks of weighty tomes from room to room for almost a week. I have almost erased all outward sign of indignation at the inforced two months of ‘quiet period’, (no parties, no films with loud noises, permission for ‘any activity’ must be granted by head tutor, grass-cutting at 7.30am, etc etc), and have mentally and emotionally prepared myself for a week of being sequestered away in a dark corner of the University Library, perhaps shoulder-to-shoulder with a crumbly academic who goes home only for weekends, or a third-year, Ritalined-up-to-the-eyeballs.