Only Slightly Bent

CDC Ball was OK, although a bit flat compared to some previous ones. Various LJ folk have mentioned the lack of things like the snowball waltz (where you start with one couple, stop the music, they pick new partners, and it starts again), or the elimination waltz ("leave the floor if you've seen Strictly Ballroom more than three times and are not wearing a real bow tie"), which I agree was a bit of a shame. However, the demo couple were excellent, and there was no shortage of people to dance with.

I went back to Churchill on Friday, to exercise my dining rights. Many of the old gang went. It was all very civilised: disappointingly, there were no undergraduates in Hall and no Pav. Instead, there was an after dinner talk on the democritisation of the British Museum, which was pretty interesting, although some philistines in our party ducked out to go to the bar instead.

My friend Nathan Barley (Nathan Barley may not actually be called Nathan Barley), from London, was asking me about losing my religion, and in particular whether I was bitter about it all. I am, a little. Some days more than others, of course, like when I encounter some particular stupidity perpetrated in the name of Christianity, or when I think back to how much time I wasted worrying about being a good Christian. It's hard enough being a nervous intellectual at university without that to worry about as well. We also mentioned the community aspect of religion. Nathan reckonned that it wasn't worth having people following an illusion just to maintain a community, but with the increasing fragmentation of society, I wasn't so sure.

In other exciting news, Come Dancing is set to return to our TV screens in a prime-time slot (fronted by a still-not-dead-yet Bruce Forsyth). I wonder if it'll cause an upsurge of interest in ballroom, like Strictly Ballroom did.