When did this storm begin

Alternative title: (Mis)Adventures in Oxford)

So, Wednesday night saw a small break in the standard Work/Sleep/Eat/Repeat routine I have going here, with a gig and some various shenanigans after said gig.

Me and Toby headed out to Oxford to go see My American Heart, a suggestion I made with the aid of the last.fm reccomended events thing and spurred on by Toby's desire to attend more gigs (this being only his second). Other bands touring that were considered included MGMT and Cold War Kids, MGMT being the favourite, but also sold out... I digress.

We got to Oxford just in time to dump stuff at TimDaves before hitting up the Carling Academy to watch the two fairly average standard support bands; they didn't quite get to The Walk Off territory, but weren't amazingly thrilling either (One song title made me cringe a little.. "You Broke My Heart, So I Broke His Jaw"..) My American Heart came on and played a good set, if somewhat short, and I had a nice sing along/some very selfconcious bouncing around.

Fast forward to back at Armstrong's, where there was some drinking. There were a few lulls in the conversation, so I declared that upon every noteable pause, we had to drink, which resulted in some drinking but served the better purpose of causing some fairly rambling discussions. Simon showed up for a short while, but as the oxford boys are all busy little bees he couldn't stay for long, but it was good to see him. Me and Dave walked him out, and Toby was pretty much crashed out when we got back, so there was a little more drinking, and some more conversation, some more slightly inebriated conversation by this point.

Dave went to sleep at what I am going to roughly estimate at 3 AM, But since at that point I had only been awake for 12 hours, and was a little drunk, felt unable to sleep.

At some point I decided to wander randomly around the University College grounds with a drink.

Whether this was a good idea or not should perhaps be left up to you.

The first "incident", if we shall call it that involved a statue of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and some poetry inscriptions on the surrounding walls.

Having looked into it somewhat... the Wikipedia page may be a helpful reference point here.

"It is housed on a decorative plinth in a small domed late-Victorian room designed by Basil Champneys, behind ornamental railings that protect it from students."

Somehow, *cough*, somehow, I ended up on the wrong side of these railings.

I was about halfway through the inscriptions when there was an odd clicking sound and then I heard a door opening.

In a moment of mild drunken panic, being somewhere I was most likely not supposed to be (the locks and railings seemed to at the very least hint at that) I hid behind the statue. The statue, which, if you look at the picture in the wiki, at crouching height, has a whole bunch of holes in it.

due presumably to the poor lighting at that time of evening, what turned out to be some manner of security guard failed to see me, despite going past three or so times, in and out of different doors. After he left (And I finished reading the walls.. all of which has completely gone from my memory) I climbed back through the railings and walked on towards Dave's, through some doors, and past the man I'd just been hiding from.

I even gave him a small nod as I went on my way.

The night did not end there, but mostly what happened next was just some wandering and admiring the architecture, almost getting lost in winding hallways, locking myself out into some kind of locked on all sides courtyard thing; I had to climb over a wall to get out onto an actual street so I could work my way back to the main entrance and back to where I'd started.

After that, I drank a little more, until Toby got up and went home, then I drank a little more, faffed about a bit, and when he eventually woke up, regaled Dave with tales of my travels.

Still drunk (Lets say.. around nine-ten? I forget) I followed Dave to his first lecture and joined him, doodling and writing a bit as some complicated mathematical formula stuff went completely over my head.

While Dave had more lectures, I went for a wander in Oxford, broke and well on the way to hangover town. I got "Breakfast" consisting of pita bread and water in a Tescos, and cold, tired and somewhat headachey, headed back to Dave's to collapse in his "porch". When he found me, he commented on how uncomfortable I must have been, but.. I've slept in worse places.

Thus concludes what was a rather surreal experience.

The moral of the story is: Don't leave Rory unattended while drunk?