The benefits of a hidey-hole

People sometimes say that (as far as they can tell) I don't get angry.  This is an untruth.  Earlier this year, I've been so impotently angry about rowing things that hot tears have flowed many a time.  Last week, I was angry at myself for getting into a bad situation with a friend of mine -- angry for letting it happen and for the fact that I couldn't do anything but face the music.  (No, I'm not going to go into specifics.  I half-promised something that I couldn't deliver on, and I hurt feelings in the process.)  Times like this, it's absolutely essential to have two things: a hidey-hole and some really good friends outside the situation.  By hidey-hole, I mean someplace small, dark, and remote such that you feel no one will ever find you.  A place where you disappear off the map.  Someplace that approximates the hole in the ground that is so often proverbially wished for.  I had one when I worked at Stanford for when people pissed me off, and I have found one in Cambridge.  It's very important, that hole.  It's a pocket outside the universe when I need it to be.  I'm not going to tell you where it is.

The other item is friends outside the situation.  This is not necessarily because I want to talk to them about it or get an 'obejective' opinion.  Sometimes, on the contrary, I want to hang out with people who have no idea about the snafu/cock-up/drama.  Their very obliviousness re-submerges me in a world where X didn't happen, which is a welcome reprieve.

I'm happy to report that the particular situation in question seems to be on its way to healing (touch wood!).  Meanwhile, I had a good weekend.  After a less-than-stellar bumps campaign, my crew went to London to row the Women's Head of the River Race (WeHoRR).  Here's a photo of us taken by someone on one of the bridges.  It's a long way to go (6.8K, ~5 miles), but it's not as bad as you think it will be, since you're going with the stream, and the venue is so epically big compared to the tiny Cam.  Everyone had a good time.

The next day, the chapel choir sang Fauré's Requiem for evensong, which was a special treat in honor of our director's having been at Trinity Hall for five years.  We'd put a bunch of extra rehearsal time into it, and we performed it well to a packed house.  Afterward, we all got very drunk.  While it was a fun night, it sounds like the rooms of the two organ scholars were left in a state that could set up another rendition of 'The Hangover'.  Here's part of the email sent by the senior organ scholar to all of us the next day:

"My laptop keyboard is covered in nutella.
My sofa is covered in gin.
My floor is covered in biscuit.
My tie is covered in wine.
My JOS's door is sad."  [Apparently someone put his foot through it.]

Hilarity for all.  But it seems I also may have left some of my dignity behind in the carnage, and tonight's rehearsal will be an interesting test of how much I will have the piss taken out of me [= be mocked mercilessly] for the rest of the year.  Trinity Hall is a very small place, in ways both good and bad.  I don't think it's that good for undergraduates, because there is absolutely no escape from any eyebrow-raising behavior.  The chapel choir is even smaller, and you have to have good armor around your embarrassment bone if you dare do anything foolish around them -- or even if you don't, they do love imagining a good story into things that might actually be innocuous.  Sigh.  It may be time for that hidey-hole again...but hopefully not.