Observations made in the top corner apartment of a Kent mansion.

It's been a week. I've moved the computer an odd-fifty times, just to feel that there is something punctuating my day.

I closed the windows after a wasp stung me, and I killed a further seven. Occasionaly I see their fat abdomens shimmying up to the glass, and as they move on I think: 'Not today, old friends.'

My sportsbra is lying on the bed, and the underwire wire is poking out at an impossible angle. The last time that happened, the friend who is no longer my friend sewed it up for me. Now it's lying there looking pathetic, and I may just have to throw it out.

The apartment can be entered from a corridor full of teenage boys. The other entrance is by way of the fire escape stairs. Both the rumbunctious bounds of the boys, and the shonky, rickety cast-iron steps make for a cacophony of shaking windows and shuddering foundations. This and 7:30am fire drills have slowly pushed me into a state of permanent anxiety, and the outside world has become threatening

James has been bringing up trays of food from the Dining Hall, so that I don't strain my ankle too much. Often I won't eat it all at once and just end up coming back to it every few hours, sometimes for the rocket, sometimes for the beetroot. The illusion of choice leaves me delirious.

I've started reading about five different books of critical theory, plays, holocaust survivor stories and a satirical novel by the New Yorker writer David Sedaris, called Me Talk Pretty One Day. Sometimes I roll over onto the other shoulder.

Years from now, I will come to see this as a formative experience.