6.31pm. At every single Open University residential school I have been to, there has been a guy wearing a cowboy hat. Granted at three OU schools it's been the same person, but just like the others, the guy wearing it turns out to be really sound.
This week's guy in a cowboy hat is a guy called Alexander Odam. He's late twenties at a guess (but it's strangely hard to determine his age), pale washed out blue eyes and pale skin. What's interesting about him isn't any of that, or his Matrix coat, but his self-deprocating humour and lack of knowledge or interest in football. I can really warm to people like him.
He clearly has a story to him, as he let it slip during the conversation that he doesn't drink alcohol "any more."
At dinner, which is where I got chatting to him, I opted for the vegetarian moussaka. I'd had a worrying feeling in my colon that it might be steak night, but tonight we're in luck. It wasn't a patch on Alan's moussaka but with a little pepper and a liberal sprinkling of chilli flakes, it was very pleasant. Alexander, and the guy opposite me (whose name I now can't remember, but he studied chemistry at Birmingham) opted for something which looked close to a shepherd's pie.
The guy opposite me said, when I asked him what he thought of his food, that it was "worryingly liquid", but Alexander made me laugh out loud when he said, "the best thing I can say about that meal is that it was technically food." Priceless!
Someone across the way was overheard to describe Rupert Murdoch as "getting steadily more like Emperor Palpatine every day" which I thought was excellent.
Very pleased that the exceedingly elderly network cable that I found in the desk drawer back in my room works, and I have a reasonably good network speed, without having to even input silly randomly generated usernames and passwords.
Tonight's activity is apparently a "fun" (according to David Keen) physics quiz. What joy. I've no doubt that David Keen thinks it'll be fun, what the rest of us will think remains to be seen.
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