Today so far:

couldn't sleep. at all. all day.
got to sleep, for about four hours.
got up, hungry. heated rice & mushrooms. started eating. weird gritty crunchy things happened that were neither rice nor mushroom. felt ill. went off whole 'food' concept for a while.
developed headache.
and now it is nearly two in the morning and I don't even know which day I'm attempting. It had better be Wednesday, unless I get to sleep before the cleaner is here. Wednesday needs things moved around and made ready.

essay progress: none.
chances of needing extension this time: 100%
:eyeroll:

random thoughts about characters and relationships and stuff

( Read more... )

words where you wonder if they really needed that word

( Read more... )

Empire

I realised, while reading up on this 'orientalism' and 'imperialism' bit, that I know very little about the British Empire. We had one, apparently. Back before I existed. My understanding of pre 20th century history is skinny and kind of leaves off around Shakespeare to turn into brief dips into topics like 'the industrial revolution' and 'the poor laws'. And I probably wasn't paying attention anyway. So, I looked on the internets, mostly wiki, for I have not the knowing to look anyplace else yet.

We decided we were the boss of really a lot of the world then. A lot. I vaguely feel like apologising to all of it.

I've seen a little animated map of places that were decided to be British. And I've realised this isn't a topic I can dip into and get any proper understanding of. It's not like it was a straight line of building things in one big place, it was a lot of fights all over the place and picking stuff up and giving it back and having fights with France that end up meaning we're the boss of even more places and I don't know what all else.

It's really embarrassing every time I look up and realise how small me and my bit of knowing is.

So I'm just going to have to add it to the list of things that clearly need studied, and go back to reading about poems. And feeling kind of stupid that I can have an opinion on imperialism without proper knowings of empires.