I was hurt and bitter: this was not how I had imagined this remarkable and long-awaited day!

When everyone started to leave, Ellie and I walked along the avenue and got to talking. It turned out that she came from a small Scottish town: she had won a grant, gone to Oxford, and lived in a university flat. Ellie turned out to be a simple, intelligent girl, and I felt stupid around her, although I guess I was. We exchanged phone numbers, agreed to meet tomorrow before class to wander around the college and look for classrooms, said our goodbyes and parted.

I went to my bike, took off my cap and gown, put them in my bag and started unbuckling my bike. It was wet, but I didn't care about that.

My mood was dreadful, and I felt like one more little thing and I would throw a tantrum. I would scream, scream, scream, scream, scream.

Getting on my bike, I rode home slowly and carefully, as much as my irritation with the day would allow me.

***

A very ordinary English grey day. I could have safely stayed at home, as I never go to such events, but I went to it because I was bored in my big old stone mansion on Abington Road. I bought it four years ago when I first got here, and I've been bored here for four years now. Of course, with my unpretentiousness, I could have rented a flat or a simpler place, but I needed to be as far away from my neighbours as possible for comfort and peace of mind. Because my house was secluded, I didn't have to hear what my neighbours were doing all the time, although I had long been able to block out the noise in my mind.

Boredom was eating me alive, and I cursed myself a hundred times for the fact that for some reason I had entered the master's programme, but if I had not done this stupidity, I would be somewhere in Scandinavia now: I would build myself a two-storey wooden house on the shore of a forest lake, paint it red, make a wooden boat, have a dog and live quietly and privately. I would eat in the nearest town or my victims would be poachers. But instead, for some reason, I re-enrolled in Oxford, for a master's degree. Why? I was surprised at the stupidity of it: I didn't need another degree, and I wasn't going to become a world-famous public figure. Yes, a vampire only needed publicity, and to be a nuisance to mortals who shouldn't know we existed. Humanity's mission is simple, to feed us with its blood.

The weather was right on order, and I thought I should get out of my smoky house and into the fresh air after all.

I smoked a cigarette, put on my bloody uniform, a black Oxford noose round my neck, a black coat, like many students, and a master's robe on top. Then gloves and boots, though such formal style was repugnant to me. I took my cap with me, threw it on the seat of the car and drove to my college of the Church of Christ, where for the fourth year I was fiddling with an unnecessary right.

Oxford is a city of cyclists, and most students arrive at their colleges on these two-wheeled toys, which are very handy in these narrow streets. But I couldn't afford such a thing, for I was already at the age where the sun gave away my true age – I had recently turned one hundred and eighty-eight, and had been living in the shade for one hundred and fifty years. So, unlike normal students, I drove to college in a rare 1975 Mustang with tinted windows.

My enthusiasm for my studies was gone by the time I was a first-year student. It was the third time I'd studied here, and I was bored to death, but I deliberately tortured myself to keep up with modern life, as most vampires do. It was important for me to stay abreast of developments in law, science, technology, and art. I always had to keep up with everything that was going on in the world, even though sometimes I desperately wanted to leave everything behind and live a secluded life away from civilisation.