h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Quite a lot of this year's intake of new students have arrived already, and all the rest will be coming up this weekend, ready for 'formal admission' on Monday. I love this time of year: it's exciting to see the freshers arrive, when we have been following their progress through application/interview/offer/A-level results for a whole year, and it's also great to see the second-years coming back looking oh so grown-up and confident and ready to mentor the new ones!

A young fairly distant relative of mine is starting at my college this term; she and her mum arrived yesterday and were staying last night at the newish Hotel du Vin in town, and invited me to have dinner with them. Much posher eating out than I'm used to, but it made a pleasant change. I had salmon rillettes, followed by rabbit, which was delicious, but presented in a way that made it totally unrecognisable as rabbit. Their room was also pretty posh, like a mini-suite - the bed was up a little staircase and there was an ensuite shower room with a 'rain' shower and a freestanding bath.

We've had some lovely sunny days this week, but it has suddenly got *much* colder - I finally gave in and put the heating on yesterday, although I usually try and hold out until the end of October.

Hey Annie - yes I gave in on Thursday, put the heating on for an hour in the evening and caved in completely last night.

Offspring's best friend finally disappeared to Cambridge on Thursday. Farewell nights on the town for all those departing have been going on for so long that some of them have returned with a fortnight's washing before the last have shifted a single suitcase - I think there were thirty of them out last weekend. So far a gap year is not all it's cracked up to be.. or not for the parents anyway.

Superficially this bunch are so much more sophisticated than I was, but they are also socially wedded to each other in a way that I associate with student friendships rather than school. And oh a couple of hundred pounds student grant spelled freedom to me - for many of them it's payback time for their entire twenties.