Don’t I look smart? Or at least, that’s the intention, though I don’t know whether I will be able to complete obscure the innate student scruffiness! I’ve always wanted a bow tie, and having to dress smartly for the dinner and final in the Welsh National Debating Tournament on Saturday gave me a good excuse, and a Marks and Spencers voucher from one of my relatives at Christmas gave me the money to buy it! Anyway, unless I was going to spend some of my own money as well, it looked like a choice between a bow tie and socks, and I know which I think to be the more exciting.

Yes, I’m off with the rest of the Debating Society to this tournament on Saturday at the University of Glamorgan, which should be fun. My debating partner is an international student from Japan, Daisuke, and although I doubt I’ll get anywhere near the finals it’ll be an enjoyable day.

And the big news at the moment is that Ben, Steve, Tom, Ian and myself have foun a house for next year! We found two we really liked yesterday, one on Mackintosh Place (which has the advantage of being wonderfully near to my church!) and one on Malefant Street. After discussing it over a meal in the pub, we decided to go for the Malefant Street house.

Funnily enough, it’s the house of Emma, though we didn’t know this to begin with. When we were inspecting the house, one of the bedrooms has lots of Lord of the Rings posters up, so I was thinking to myself “Very sensible person here then”, and we then noticed some Christian books and stuff on the walls, so I began trying to work out whether I knew them and who it was, though I failed to do so before actually seeing her in one of the other rooms. I was a bit disappointed at the failure of my detective skills, since from reading her blog I had enough information for it to be possible for me to make the connection! Ah well, so much for my Sherlock Holmes pretensions.

I now need to get a move on with my essays. Next week is reading week, thankfully! I’ve been trying to decide which essay to write for my Making of the Modern World module for History. It requires a bit of strategy, because you can’t answer a question on the same subject in the exam. I think I’ll do one on the causes of the February Revolution in Russia. I studied the Russian Revolution for GCSE History, so it isn’t completely foreign to me. Also, some of the lectures we have are more closely connected, and it will be easier to revise interrelated topics for the exam, and the Russian Revolution doesn’t really relate to the ones I think I’ll probably focus on in my revision for the exam. Anyway, I really must get off to the library to work, so here I end my post!