Not often, but sometimes, it occurs to me that I am very, incredibly, out of touch with the rest of the world.  It has always been thus, but living in Oxford makes it easy to forget that once I was a geeky Converse-clad girl with a bad hairdo. (I am now a geeky Converse-clad girl with a better hairdo. And sometimes I wear boots.)  My life has become something completely ridiculous, in a rather wonderful way.  Take this, for instance: one of the highlights of my existence is the rush I get when I swipe my card at the Bodleian and open my bag so that they can check to make sure that I’m not trying to smuggle a bottle of water in and walk up the stairs and smell the books.  And there are all these other people there! Doing the same thing! Loving the books! And outside (this is the best bit) there are a bunch of tourists who can’t come inside.  It’s a perverse (and very British) revenge of the nerds; and I’M PART OF THE CLUB!  I actually have a special walking to-and-from the library swagger.  Just so that everyone will know that I belong. (Sometimes, but not often, I even manage to swagger without tripping over my own feet.)