I finally made a concerted effort to pin Dr Mac down, worried that if I left it any longer he would forget about me and I would no longer have an Honours supervisor for next year. So I rang and left a message that I would be there between 3 and 4. Upon reaching his office, I found a note to myself, advising that he would be back at 3:45. I wandered out to Union Court and sat, buffetted by the wind, my fingers freezing as I wrote in my journal and thought the sort of random thoughts one thinks on a cold, quiet autumn afternoon.

When I came back I was loitering at the top of the stairs when one of my other lecturers came past and hailed me. We chatted a little, and I mentioned why I was loitering. At which point Dr Mac came up the stairs. He was carrying one of those square boxes of wired geraniums. Or rather, he was holding it at arms' length as if he was afraid it would bite him.

"This is what you get when you give a presentation to a bunch of admirals' wives," he says with his usual bluntness. You either love Dr Mac or hate him.

"It's very pretty," my lecturer comments.

Dr Mac grunts, and we all laugh. I feel briefly as if I'm in a sitcom. We meander along to Mac's office and I cut to the chase, saying that I'm basically there to let him know that I'm still interested in being Honoured, if he's still interested in supervising. He says he is, puts my name on the official card that is held to his filing cabinet (extensive) with magnets. I cheer inwardly.

We move on. What I'm studying. Whether I should do International Law even if I was allowed to (which I'm not). He bags out the law faculty in an amusing fashion. (His bluntness is his most defining personality trait. He has a sticker on his filing cabinet that reads: "Fuck Authority". I like this man.) We move on to talking about Thirteen Days, which he also though represented the themes well, though he is not a big fan of anything that glorifies the Kennedies.

We end laughing about Kevin Costner, and I trip lightly out of there. I have an Honours supervisor. WooHOO!