Some introspection has revealed the real reason: A total lack of confidence in my own intellectual and acadmic abilities, not to mention ability to concentrate.
Currently, attempts to overcome this lack of confidence seem to be revolving around wearing red nail varnish, for some unfathomable female reason. I'm not a red nail varnish kind of girl (although I've always coveted the ability to wear it well.) Red is a difficult colour; get the wrong shade and you end up looking like a harlot, or just plain cheap. Get the right shade and suddenly you become a mysterious and enigmatic woman of elegance.
Since I don't want to look harlot-ish, I've always stuck to pale shades - very natural shades, or slightly shimmery translucent shades. Recently I've also acquired a very pale pastel blue, which has made me happy because I'm able to wear blue nail varnish to work. (Oooh, look at me rebelling!)
The whole nail thing has been made worse by the fact that I sit next to a girl who's only a couple of years older than me, who always, always has her nails manicured. They're fairly short, never fake, but always beautifully painted. Somehow, on some level, my feminine pride has been wounded. (This is probably also due to the fact that being organised enough to put on makeup in the mornings isn't something that happens to me.)
This weekend, however, I found the Perfect Red. It's a deep shade, blood red, but with a slight pearlescent tinge which gives it depth, and thus class. I wore it to work today, and ended up grinning every time I caught sight of my nails. It's funny how such a small thing can have such an effect.
Anyway, enough about nails. Let's make up for it by having some FIRE.
Last Hogmanay (2010), there was a Fire Festival held on the Royal Mile. Giant iron sculptures - spheres, octopods, otherworldly shapes - were covered in pots of wax with wooden wicks, which were then set alight. There were great chimneys which belched flames high into the air, but the crowning glory was the Chandelier, which swung high above the street, next to the (obligingly full) moon.
Here you can see the flames from a chimney, just below the bottom of the chandelier.
The spheres dwarfed the crowd, which was drawn to them rather like moths to a flame. They lit the High Street with an orange, flickering light that made ordinary, everyday things somehow take on a sense of power.
Little knots of people stood around the spheres, mesmerised by the flames. There was a palpable sense of...something almost unnamable. The flames made the world seem raw, powerful, unpredictable and eerie. People moved about in groups. The sense of otherworldlyness was enhanced by the heat given off by the firesculptures.
Behind St Giles monstrous mechanical puppets danced to a recorded polka, their shadows thrown up on the wall like grotesque shadow-puppets.
I found this area very eerie, and it seems I wasn't alone in that; the place was mostly deserted, with only a few stragglers clustered round the Fire Trees.
Compared with the crowds on the Mile itself:
In front of St Giles a sort of mechanical octopod had taken up residence:
The chandelier was definitely the most impressive and awe-inspiring part of the display:
As is typical of Scotland in January, it was really very windy, so the air was filled with sparks flying from the chandelier, which did look rather good on camera:
But it was the full moon which really made the whole lot look fantastic:
