Punt!

After getting like five hours of sleep yesterday, I got up this morning, grudgingly shuffled to the shower, and plodded out the door into the chilly, overcast weather to Marks and Spencer to pick up a batch of pain au raisins and coffee. The pain au raisins were for everyone I was going punting with. The coffee was so that I wouldn't fall asleep in mid-punt and drown in a shallow river, thereby killing and embarrassing myself at the same time.

I'd never gone punting before - and granted, since you're supposed to drink and do it in the sunshine, doing it at 9am on a cloudy day didn't seem like the best way to try it for the first time. But the clouds parted before we got to the river and someone brought wine, so that turned out okay. The water was really calm and we saw ducklings that were so young that they were still fuzzy, and when we weren't being laughed at by everyone in the Social Science Library, we did a pretty convincing job. That was not at all thanks to me, since I ran us aground about a half dozen times because it is way harder than it looks. I'm glad I lost my punting virginity with Leana because she was kind enough not to laugh at me. It wasn't just that I kept drifting from bank to bank, I got stuck in a tangle of plants in the river and then almost got swept off the back of the punt by an overhanging branch that caught my chest. If I was that bad at actually losing my virginity, I owe someone an apology.