This week has largely been characterised by Strange. (Not least because I've just realised I posted the thing about medical trials twice. Not that it wasn't distressing, but it didn't deserve to be immortalised more than once, if at all.) "Strange" has, incidentally, become an entity in itself (try saying that out loud!) which has been tormenting me pretty much since my arrival.

My housemates all disappeared over the weekend, leaving me to wallow in self-pity, watch countless episodes of 24 and lose myself in Syntax and Human Experience, which is definitively not better than sex, but in the absence thereof has at least provided many delightful hours spent contemplating weather expressions and idioms. This all resulted in me starting the week in the throes of pessimism, leading to insane moodswings and many stressy emails and MSN conversations about how upsetting it was not knowing what country I would be spending the next few months in, whether I was going to find a job here or come back and look in Oxford, why I was happier reading syntax books than earning money, and various other existential issues such as What To Do With The Rest Of My Life and Whether I Am Ever Going To Pay Off My Overdraft. I apologise to everyone on the receiving end of one of these. (The pessimism also led to me being mean to people who didn't deserve it. I'm sorry for that too.)

I spent two days bemoaning the general rubbishness of life (conclusion of existential meanderings: I want to come and work in Oxford, but I really ought to stay here) then yesterday went to the interview I was pinning all my hopes on, was told after 10 minutes that they needed someone to start in September who had lots of professional experience, went home, cried, called my mother, got pissed off with my mother for not being there when I was so clearly in distress, decided to do something productive, called people and magically got another interview. I think there may be a lesson in here somewhere.

So, true to my mental pattern, I went immediately from the slough of despond to... some happy literary allusion, and bounced around the house in a frenzy of omelette-making. However, just as I was working out how to open the eggbox (yes, it was complicated, the hinge was on the short end, I was very distressed) the phone rang. Thinking it was another magic interview, I picked up immediately, to speak to some guy wanting to ask me questions about young people's [something I didn't hear], so, being bored, I thought I'd indulge the market research guy who was probably also bored out of his skull. Unfortunately, it transpired that the crucial yet unheard Noun Phrase of the sentence was in fact "sexualité", and I found myself mumbling confusedly about contraception, while trying to think of the French for, "I'm not comfortable anwsering these sorts of questions." Doubtless I should have hung up before, "When did you last have sex? Do you miss it? Do you masturbate?" but it took too long to think of an appropriate get-out line.

Which leads me to the observation that you can't really slam down mobiles in an effective way. (Particularly if you can't work the buttons and it's a particularly knackered phone, but that's a different story.)

So, having disposed of the creepy man, I got back to the omelette, and then had a lovely MSN conversation with Livvy, who was having a similar direction crisis, and we had a good old moan, and then started comparing various people's attitudes to relationships to the foreign policy of Middle Eastern states, which cheered us both up no end, but does leave me wondering if we are, in fact, mad, and if this may be related to the unemployability in any way.

I then took 3 metros and a tram (Lyon's metro system is very pleasant, efficient and clean, but unnecessarily complex for actually getting anywhere, particularly from La Croix-Rousse) to meet Literature Man, who does have a name, but I wasn't sure what it was, and as everyone now knows him as Literature Man, it would seem silly to switch now. Literature Man is doing a doctorate in comparative literature, and very kindly offered to teach me French literature in exchange for English conversation. Well, he briefly asked if I could perhaps teach him some Henry James instead, but as I've never read anything of his, the "instinctive understanding" that comes from reading in your mother tongue may not be enough of an asset to overcome the gaping vortex that is my knowledge of "les auteurs un peu modernistes", so we're going to be discussing articles on BBC news. And I have homework, which involves reading Le rouge et le noir, which fills me with fear, as I haven't read anything written before 1900 for quite some time, and Literature Man is clearly quite intelligent; but hopefully some discussion of Stendhal and Mallarmé will give me a heads-up next year for my tutorials which I unwittingly (or 2/3 unwittingly) chose on my (also quite intelligent) tutor's three specialities.

In the evening I got a phone call from my mother, who had just learnt how to use voicemail, and then called the boy, who is now on first name terms with comedians. At least when their surnames aren't on predictive text. I then went out for dinner with my housemates and drank lots of an odd concoction involving wine and cassis, (far more palatable than Sarah's and my experiment with vodka and Ribena in Edinburgh) which I thought was about half and half, but, I discovered four glasses later, clearly wasn't. So, yes, I gave another drunken exposition on French phonetics.

And this is too long and wordy for anyone to still be reading, particularly as you've all noticed I have some odd subconscious connection between syntax and sex and have resolved to treat me with the extreme caution I deserve in the future.