paul's place

so i share a building with paul, pictured here. at night we are the only two people in the building, since the ground floor contains offices, a conference room and a library, the next floors are taken up by another library...and we live in the attic-like top. actually, our space is great. we have keys to all the rooms below, so we can go wandering about the books in the middle of the night if we want to. our living area is also pretty spacious by english standards, we each have a study room for our (numerous) books, a bedroom, and then we share a kitchen and a bathroom.
my study room is always a disaster sight as i am not a terribly organised person...i can be when i want to, or if i have to, but normally i just cant be bothered. in any case, i know perfectly well exactly where everything is located, therefore i see no reason to change my system. Paul on the other hand is the most anal retentively organsied person i have ever encountered.
evey book in his possession has its own precise place on the shelf. if you dare move one thing, he notices it within seconds of walking into the room. he especially gets annoyed if you turn a book upside down, or even worse, put it on its side. this is just unforgivable in his world. added to the organised collection of books are his collector's items. by this i mean an odd assortment of military relics. he has got a few helmets, one or two swords, a bunch of german medals, and some paintings depicting battle scenes on the wall. his room is like a shine to his research interests (in case you hadnt guessed, he is a phd student in the history of the military and espionage.) he has even gone so far as to make his study room the only cat free zone in the entire building, which i find highly discriminatory. but of course, that only serves to make his room that much more enticing!
so last night he was in a chatty mood and got out his stash of whisky, which he claims he keeps exclusively for medicinal purposes....as you do....so we sat there amongst the carefully dusted and alfabetised books and drank copious amounts of extremely strong stuff. it was the kind of whisky that tastes like rakija. like you can feel it scorching your insides as it goes down. vodka doesnt do that, it is harsh in the mouth but goes down much more smoothly. and of course, english people have this wierd tradition of drinking WITHOUT food, which i still cant get used to...
after the liver abuse, i ran stumbled back over to my side of the building and decided i had to finish a text i have been reading about postmodernism. i actually did manage to sit up for a few hours and finished the whole book. i am convinced that the whisky is to be thanked for giving me the energy to go on....not that i plan to make a habit out of it!