Tuesday, October 4, 1988

Burning the Midnight Oil with the Guy Who Looks Like the Lead Singer of Midnight Oil

I woke up and went to class this morning. Not much exciting there. I spent the day just dogging around until around 6 p.m., when I went out for another run on my own to visit Karin. She wasn’t at her flat, but I left a note for her to stop in later. All-in-all, I ran five miles today, and felt pretty good afterward. Maybe I’ll be able to stick with this.

Later on, at about 9 p.m., a girl named Vicki and an friend of hers stopped by my room. I had met Vicki earlier in the day, and she told me she has no place to stay at the moment. I told her I’d talk to Karin and see if she possibly had an extra room in her flat. However, since Karin was not in when I visited, I had no news for them, so alas, they were out of luck. I offered to let them stay in my room until they found something. They then left to look at another place (located on Karin’s street.) I haven’t seen them since, so hopefully they did OK.

Well, it wasn’t 10 minutes after they left when Karin stopped into my room, and we sat and talked over coffee until about 1 a.m. After our excellent conversation, she left to return to her flat, and I went up to the community phone to attempt to call Mom and Dad again. After two attempts, I got through… but once again Dad wasn’t home. I talked to Mom for about 10 minutes, and we determined that on Sunday at 11 p.m. (GMT, or 6 p.m. EST) she would call me at the residence phone. (So don’t forget!) Hopefully the phone will be available at that time.

After our phone call, I started talking to Steve, who is the “resident assistant” for St. Martin’s Hall (the main entrance to St. Martin's is pictured above). Friendly fellow… tall, bald… he looks a lot like the lead singer of Midnight Oil. He has a habit of starting sentences and greeting you with “OK…” He’s from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, a few hours north of Hull, and though that’s not too far away, the difference in his accent verses the local accent here is staggering. I’ll admit, it was difficult to understand a lot of what he said. Still we sat in his room and talked over tea until about 3:30 a.m. He is big into history (especially war), and appropriately enough, accents. When we were finished talking, I was good and knackered, so it was off to bed.