Fiasco in Falmer

This is being written on my way back from an aborted weekend reprieve and the sad demise of what was once a bright hope. What follows is, with my usual sense for melodrama, my attempt to rationalise it.

It would be a lie to claim that Edinburgh was not getting to me. Aside from an intellectual sinking feeling I have also suffered something of an anti-climax on the social front. Edinburgh is the home of four universities and a fifth if you count St Andrews which is an hour north. It has a vibrant student and international culture. Many people say that Edinburgh is more of a ‘continental’ city than most, complete with countless little bars and coffee shops hidden in nooks and crannies around the city centre. This is one of the main reasons I came.

So it is a little disappointing that I have yet to find my way into the pot smoking, beard growing and pretentious philosophising crowd I had hoped would embrace me with welcome arms. Instead reality is all to real for my liking.

Throughout my time here I have been in daily contact with a bright, young and pretty something who I had the fortune to meet during the summer. A chance to see her and visit another part of the country for the weekend, if only to enjoy good company and get my thoughts straight, seemed to good to miss.

Alas, I find myself beating a hasty retreat across the entire length (and width) of the country two days earlier than expected.

This has been a slightly puzzling experience since the person in question was, and still is, perfectly ideal. For the first time every little box on my long and detailed criteria sheet had been ticked. This should have been a demonstration in textbook romance. But it wasn’t. For all the green lights nothing was moving. Something was missing, and that something was that most important of somethings.

Perhaps the very fact I am capable of entertaining such a cold notion as ‘textbook romance’ indicates a deeper problem I need to address, but as I return to the trickiest set of deadlines I have yet faced, that will have to wait for another day.