Chapter 1 - An Inauspicious Start

It had been raining on and off all day. Which is to say that it had been raining "on" me every time I walked outside, and had turned "off" whenever there was a roof over my head. Walking to UCL's Registry in the tipping rain, a less rational person would have believed that this was a sign that all was not going to go well with this whole PhD business. Not me though. I was too busy sulking about the fact that the rain had now soaked through my Converse.

Arriving, I dripped my way through to the main desk and proceeded to complete all the necessary paperwork that would once again make me a student after seven years without an NUS card. Payment of fees, signatures... all remarkably easy following the comprehensive online pre-registration. Then I proceeded to get lost on my way to the Security offices to collect my badge. When I eventually arrived there (if you've never been on UCL's Bloomsbury campus, it's like another world in there; and a confusing one at that), I was soaked to the core. I was asked to stand unwillingly in front of a camera and be snapped for the badge that would grant me full access to the hallowed halls. With hair a mess and glasses streaked, it was never going to be the greatest photo. But that hardly matters. It'll matter in a year's time when I need a focus for my misery.