Tonight there are reports that up to sixty civilians have been killed in another residential area in Iraq. This is why we demonstrated. These are the inevitable consequences of war, and it can never be right. Especially when diplomacy was simply ignored at the last.

The birds here never stop singing. Never. I've been awake for every minute of the day at some point during this year and they just never shut up. At all. Tweety tweet tweet tweet. I knew that all the people are mad in Manchester, but the birds? It's spreading. Rapidly.

Tidying is a therapeutic activity. When things feel out of order, tidying orders them. I seem never to stop tidying these days. Because things so quickly become disarranged that they have to be sorted out again and again. My flat mate tells me that I go to extremes too readily, and that each extreme inevitably pulls me back the other way. Hence my cyclical tidying, my cyclical mind, my cyclical everything. It is amazing how quickly things change. Only this morning I was happy and thinking how I was in a really good frame of mind. I couldn't imagine being fed up. I couldn't see the logic in it. But tonight is precisely the opposite. I seem to have every reason to be fed up, even though it's not true, even though nothing's changed.

Listening to church music from across the ages on my hi-fi makes me realise that things progress and change in wonderful ways. Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir represents the pioneering new sound-world being explored in the first half of the twentieth century. It is inspiring for me to think that each of the many characters in the world's musical heritage have contributed a little bit to progress from old to new. Each has found his or her own voice in the sounds that we are capable of exploring. Music is the most mysterious of our human faculties. How, and why, have we developed this sense for sound? Why does it arouse emotion in us? These are questions which intrigue me and to which I do not know the answer.

However, I do know that music does have a real effect on our lives, thoughts and feelings. The challenge for me in everything I have undertaken has been to find my own my voice, to find an original expression within a tradition. I suspect that this is true for everyone in their own way. Our nature drives us to be different and to set ourselves apart from that which surrounds us. This infinitely wide world of sound and music deserves our full respect and concentration, so that we might have a chance of appreciating what it represents. I would like to immerse myself in as much of it as possible, to find out why and what it means to the people who surround themselves with it, or perhaps more accurately, who it surrounds. It is not acceptable in our relativist world to assume an absolute position, dismissing those different from ourselves. Far from losing meaning by adopting a relativist and open-minded position, we open ourselves to the full spectrum of meaning embodied by the worlds within worlds we find on our planet.

I am looking forward to getting back home and seeing people. It will be another useful period of reflection and re-evaluation, albeit more rushed. As I sit here now in my room on a Friday night, I realise that I'm not all that happy with the friends that I have. I have not met that special person. I was more comfortable socially at home, though it was a different world entirely and had its own problems. I expect that my conclusion will be that I need to let go more. I have said this to myself so many times that it makes me laugh, but it needs to happen. If I don't live it up and make some bigger mistakes I will regret it, because in three years I will be getting ready to start my career and I will wonder what this university business was ever about.

Money is a constant worry, but it's more of a neurosis. I am not in serious amounts of debt, and I'm definitely not in the same kind of debt as my friends. I am lucky that I have the arrangements that I do, which is why I feel all the more guilty when I overspend. I always feel guilty; you'd think I was an ex-Catholic. The atmosphere as I was being brought up was always so money-conscious, and the smallest things had to be foregone. I understand why now, and it makes me cry to think that life was that hard for my parents. And it makes me feel guilty for having moved on and left people behind. I just find it hard to understand what's going on sometimes. My parents had to scrimp and save just to be able to pay the mortgage and to put food on the table for us, and here I am throwing money around like there was no tomorrow. But I suppose that is me. And practically speaking, I want to go into a PGCE and then a teaching job, which will bring me money in. There is no foreseeable problem whatsoever with my finances. I have many sources of help and support, and I am lucky, and I realise this, and I am grateful for it. Don't ask me what I'm trying to say, because I don't know. It's just a few silly thoughts that swirl around in my head.

It would help if I could just take things with a pinch of salt more often. Recently I'm quite well-humoured but I could laugh more. Lots more! Life is funny after all, n'est-ce pas?

There have been more protests against the war in Manchester today. But each time they take place, the numbers that attend dwindle and dwindle. This could have been foreseen. As soon as action starts, people always get behind it. It is a shame, because it is so predictable, and it makes a farce of the anti-war movement. In the end the voices of opposition will die out completely and the US and UK will never be brought to task about the way they have gone about this war. The UN has been left discredited and paralysed by the US and UK disrespect for the aims of international diplomacy. Diplomacy is in place to avert war. To legally prevent nations who wish to declare war from doing so until there has been international legal permission given. That permission did not materialise, because the countries who have authority in the international community did not see the reasons for immediate war.

If the US and UK can get away with this mistreatment of international law, what does that say about an international organisation existing at all? If, as a body, the UN has less power than one of its members then it has no meaning or authority except that which the US chooses to assign to it, as suits itself.

The US demand for Al-Jazeera television to tone down the broadcasting of its graphic images is symptomatic of the misunderstanding and lack of appreciation for cultural difference which is at the heart of this conflict. The Middle East is home to utterly and fundamentally different cultures, which, from our own cultural landlock in the West, we cannot hope to grasp. To say that the images being broadcast are unacceptable is to put into our terms and our standards what is outside of our world.

It is half past one in the morning and I am sat tapping away at my iBook in a dark room, listening to something on Radio 3. I cannot determine what it is. I have not heard it before, and it sounds like an old recording. The window is slightly ajar and reality comes in with the draught. Today I wrote a list of things I want to do, so that if I get bored I might do one of them. Or two. No, one at a time is usually best. It makes for a simpler existence, and simplicity feels quite attractive. The world has just got a bit too complicated, recently. I can't let things wash over me like I used to. Perhaps I never did. Perhaps I just wish that I had. In any case, I think I should. In the future. So that when people ask me the question, 'So, what did you do in Manchester?' I can reply, 'I got quite drunk, laughed, and shagged a few people,' rather than, 'Well, I actually spent most of my time wondering how I should be spending my time.' Which would be silly.

Moving to Manchester was a big decision. It is amazing how the passage of time changes. The first week I was here felt like an age. Even the first twenty-four hours were so hard to fill. But the year has hurried by. I feel settled in now. And just as I get used to that feeling, I realise that I'm out of here in two months, and the first year of university is over. The first year that is so hyped, so talked-up, so over-rated. It has been much different from what I expected. I expected too much. I expected everything to fall into place. I imagined that once my environment was right, once I felt the freedom to be who I want to be, everything else would just follow. But of course, it is not that simple. Nothing is as simple as people would have you believe.

But it has been a great time so far. Many highs and many, many lows. But it all makes for a lot of experiences, and a lot of stories, and a lot of memories. Very much has changed. I have changed in ways that I would never have realised unless I'd gone home and sensed how different everything feels. I've met some new friends. I've been to many new places. Kro Bar on Oxford Road will be an abiding and pleasant memory. The morning coffee and pain au chocolat, the banana bred beer, and the gallons of real ale in the garden. The epitome of urban. Home Front all the way; even the budget, even the decking.

There have been disappointments. Nothing will come without waiting and working. I begin to realise this. And it is not a negative idea. But it is challenging, and I'm not sure how to embrace it. But one day I will work it out. These are early days.