Request

My slightly slapdash blogging means I have no idea who, if anyone, still reads this, but I'm thinking of moving to a new blog - not least because wordpress is just better, but also for various other reasons I'll explain when I get there. So, if you are reading this and would like to carry on doing so, please drop me an email (or otherwise let me know) and I'll keep you posted.

I have spent my Friday night unravelling the world's biggest knot.

x

List time

Here is a short list of things it is currently TOO HOT to do:

• eat anything more substantial than a salad
  
• sleep
• go on the tube
• go on buses
• walk home
  
• run after ice cream vans
• menstruate
  
• touch the mouse pad on my laptop
• shout at Vodafone.

"If this is living, how come I never feel alive?"

Barring unforseen emergencies, I am no longer a vagrant and should be moving, hmm, as many of my worldly possessions as I need for a month (and can carry) into a lovely little flat in Kennington. The place with the piano fell through and the Auberge Espagnole place was nice, but a bit far away from my comfort zone (friends, places I know, train to Wokingham)... maybe in future... But the place I'm meant to be moving into is very pretty and in a superb location, so yay for that. Am terrified I'm jinxing it now!!

This week has been more sedate than last, in a good way and a bad way. I went to intermediate/advanced yoga on Tuesday, and it was inspiring to see people doing fabulouly bendy things, but a wee bit intermediate for me to keep up with. I also ache... I've never ached after yoga before... And there were men doing yoga... duly added to my list of 'things you see in London that you don't see in Wokingham'.

Yesterday I went and played at beekeeping. Due to an administrative cock-up (whose, we aren't sure) Sarah wasn't on the list and very disappointingly couldn't go, so I was on my own... but that notwithstanding bees are VERY COOL. I want some (but not imminently... a) I wouldn't be very good at looking after them yet, and b) it would probably alarm my new housemates if I turned up with a beehive). I won't bore you with boring bee facts, of which I know many, but it was amazing seeing the hive. Just the sheer quantity of bees!! They're fascinating creatures! We also tasted lots of different kinds of honey... Like with wine, I could kind of taste that they were all different, but was unable to describe how...

My new flat is near the bee place.

And today was promised to be stressful but was actually kind of okay. I'd asked Nik to send me a dictaphone which I Really Really Needed for the work event I was going to, but, typically, the postman delivered it while I was in the shower, so I had to trek to Brixton to pick it up today. This involved borrowing Liv's driving licence, in case they wouldn't accept my proof of ID as it wasn't my house, and getting there obscenely early so that if it all went tits-up I'd have time to leg it to work (or to Liv's work) and borrow a dictaphone. This meant I had an enormous hiatus between picking it up and the actual start of the meeting, so I took a bus into central London and did a bit of shopping. Bought a cafetiere for Liv and Sarah as a thank-you present in the wonderful Algerian coffee house which I'd never have discovered if it hadn't been for Thomas, and also some henna. I let the man in Lush talk me into buying the 'rouge' rather than the 'marron'. I sputtered something like, 'Doesn't it say "For shiny, bright, orange-red hair"?' to which he replied, 'Yes, but your hair is so dark it'll probably just go a little bit redder. The 'marron' won't really show up on you at all.'

Hmmmm. Watch this space, people.

And the meeting was fine, and very short.

My friend's hen party is this weekend, which promises to be fun, if a lot less demure than Mairi's... Tomorrow night is a sleepover, which is a fantastic idea, and for Saturday I have to somehow concoct a St Trinian's themed fancy dress outfit. Suggestions? There will also be cocktails, badges and probably penis-shaped tat. (I am sort of anxious about it... I don't know any of her other friends and what if I betray my snobbish distaste for fancy dres and penis-shaped things?)

But in the meantime I have a work-related day trip to Swansea, which involves getting up at some ungodly hour tomorrow morning. Groan.

Vagrancy, with added hummus

'Replace Wokingham with London as my weather home page.'

Oh, BBC, you have no idea how happy you made me.

I have, not as spontaneously as it appears, actually done what I've been threatening to do since late 2007 and buggered off to London. Been staying with Livvy and Sarah for a week, which has been a) great fun and b) really useful, because the enormous sense of obligation I feel has forced me to do things like wash up after myself and the fact that I'm sleeping in their sitting room has forced me to get out of bed, neither of which I was doing particularly efficiently or with any regularity in Wokingham. Am now hoping the people at one of the flats I looked at over the weekend will allow me to rent a room for a month while I find somewhere long-term. One of them has a piano and one of them would essentially involve living in L'auberge espagnole, which would be equally exciting and I can't choose.

I've drunk lots of coffee, which feels very urban, and eaten mainly hummus and olives. I shall go and buy some vegetables this afternoon, because hummus and olives, while delicious, do not constitute a particularly balanced diet. I'm forcing myself to take buses so I can learn my way around better than if I'm on the tube, seeing lots of my friends and generally starting to feel like a Whole Person again, which is a distinct improvement on the previous few weeks. Have many exciting plans for the immediate future, including (but not limited to) a yoga and massage weekend in Wiltshire and henna-ing my hair. (Hair also needs cutting. Gaah.)

Unfortunateness

"bed available for girl to share with other girl in prime location"

From gumtree.

Who'd'a thunk?

Well, my 17-year-old self would never have believed this, but you know what?

It's even less fun trying to explain what 'The Anthropology of Food' is than it was trying to explain what 'Linguistics' was.

No, really.

--------------------

I really need inspiration for dinner. It should involve broad beans, but not pasta, and be quick. This cider is REALLY STRONG. REALLY REALLY STRONG. I feel it would be unwise to wield knives after much more of it.

Not economics

I was (and still am, just not today) going to share with you some of my thoughts on, 'What I have learned recently about economics.' Not a lot, but I'm proud of it. However, this is my life atm (aside from the moping, and stress, and crying):

Today - get up 6.3o, go to London, yawn through meeting on energy stats, furiously make notes, come home, drink pot of coffee, type furiously, eat Chinese take-away, type furiously, reassure freelancer, small glass of wine to counteract coffee, small sleep.
Tomorrow - get up 5.30, go to computer, track down and shoot freelancer if he hasn't emailed me his transcript, proof-read, coffee, proof-read, breakfast, proof-read, coffee, reheat take-away for lunch, collapse into bed.

So yeah, a happy combination of extreme tiredness and need for accuracy and, hence, intoxicants.

In the meantime, an article which I first reacted to by rolling my eyes and saying, 'God, yeah it's soooo tough being young, rich and clever, isn't it?' but by the end I was thinking, 'Ohmigod, I've never achieved anything, why did I give up the violin, why haven't I taken singing lessons, I've never read Said's Orientalism, there is so much stuff I need to do, everyone expects me to do this stuff, I have to do it well!'

Which kinda proves the point.

I have a FUCKING FIRST FROM OXFORD! And know SHITLOADS MORE ABOUT ECONOMICS than I did six weeks ago! Someone please SLAP ME!

Linky

Ack....

Right now, because the weather's kind of gloomy, and I have no energy, and I am unable to summon the inclination to get up and find some shoes, and I just want to stay at my desk and drink tea and not have to go outside and see people, I am totally, pointlessly procrastinating about getting my arse down to Boots to get some St John's Wort, which I'm going to take in the hope that this will help give me the energy and inclination to do something other than procrastinating at my desk and feeling gloomy, without me needing to take The Scary Drugs.

I'm noticing a flaw in this plan somewhere.

"The fact that he's a giant purple hippopotamus should have tipped you off."

"Well, you know, I'm tempted - if for no other reason than to keep 'Bulldog' from further alienating the Asian-American community. I just want to make sure that I don't compromise my principles."

I love Frasier so much it hurts.

Awesomeness

http://www.savagechickens.com/2009/06/coffee-is-my-muse.html

*chortle*

Hey! They're learning for free!

It is rare that living in the modern world makes me feel full of joy, but I picked up my copy of Oxford Today magazine when I was staying with my parents. From my limited perusal, Oxford Today appears to be a magazine for people who have proved they can routinely read ten books a week and are now content with a thrice-yearly magazine. (The adverts which fell out of it were: 15% off Homebase stuff, a discounted subscription to The Economist, a flyer for the Ramblers, another for an investment trust and a plea from Amnesty International to help them stop rape as a weapon of war. Make of that what you will.) Anyway, in amongst all the articles was, ohmigod, a pointer towards this. Podcasts! Clever podcasts! Free clever podcasts! Many, many, many free clever podcasts! I think I am going to have to go on the trans-Siberian express in order to listen to them all.

So much free knowledge. The internet is wonderful.

Incidentally, I have started reading The Group by Mary McCarthy, a sex-and-anxiety-filled novel about eight Vassar graduates in the 1930s - quite apart from the pertinence of reading about lots of intelligent and angsty women, beginning their adult lives in a time of economic recession, I have also learned a LOT about pre-Pill contraception, both technically and sociologically. Fascinating.

"God! I must pack and take a train"

I am not unaware of the indignity of wailing into the internet about how my parents are so mean and don't understand me, so I shall skip over that, despite it occupying much of my headspace this week...

Had to go to London yesterday, and I can officially declare that there is nowhere in the whole of Canary Wharf to buy a copy of 'Country Smallholding' magazine. Also, that the first time I've actually been chatted up on the Tube, I was reading a radical feminist text. Go figure.

Unearthed some bees on my allotment and sent an email to the council saying, 'I have bees... get rid of them... but please don't kill them... we need bees, and they're in trouble.' Apparently they're digger bees rather than honey bees, and they're going to be taken away and released in some woodland. Yay!

Also, I have to get yet more time off work, despite possibly being over my limit since I'm leaving halfway through my 'year', to go to a wedding in July. However, both my friends who are getting married within a week of each other in July have very considerately conferred with each other and arranged to hold their hen dos on different weekends. Which was most thoughtful of them. ;-)

Off to Northumberland later this afternoon to spend the weekend hopefully not sniping at my parents. I have:

• a big pile of exciting books
• gorgeous yarn, needles and pattern
• a week's worth of Farming Today podcasts (note to self: get antidepressants)
• potatoes boiling for salad for dinner.

=)

Computer woes

Please, geriatric laptop, I know you're suffering. But if you could just bring yourself to open Outlook attachments, that would be really peachy. I kinda need them for work.

Also, if emails I delete could please stay deleted? Also helpful.

This thing is so not going to last me through my MA. Curses.

Help!

Can I really commit to spend the rest of my life with someone who talks about having a baby as 'an opportunity cost'?

*gulp*

Stuff wot I've done

Have just received a leaflet about swine flu from the government. I wonder if their advice to 'set up a network of "flu friends"', taken out of context, could be counter-productive.

I have also been reading many interesting books which I splurged on last week on the (middlingly spurious) basis that they were course-related, i.e. not set texts but the sorts of things that would turn me into a well-read person. On the plus side I have learnt an awful lot of exciting things about beer and class and urbanisation in the Victorian era. On the other hand, my dreams of having a smallholding have been more or less crushed. Boo. I wanted pigs and an orchard.

I went to a farm in Devon to learn how to make wine and ate lots and lots of yummy things. I also went to a fab, myth-busting talk about the Special Period in Cuba - yes, they were all growing organic vegetales and yes this probably kept people alive, but most agriculture still used pesticides and was very intensive.

Once I've written up these minutes for work, I've finished helping oil companies sack people for the forseeable future. Huzzah.

The allotment is also shaping up and soon I am going to plant some peas out in it. Yay! Peas! Nik has been heroic doing Heavy Lifting and Ferrying of Things to the Tip on the allotment while I am floored by a mysterious fatigue. I don't know if it's physical or psychological, but I had 11 hours' sleep on Friday night and woke up feeling like a normal person again. I then slept badly on Sunday and now feel like a rubbish person again. Boo. This has been going on, on and off, since February and is probably Not Healthy. Unfortunately my doctor is on holiday and I can't get an appointment until 2nd June. Boo.

Anyway. Lunch.

I wonder....

I wonder if.... if Nik and I eat the rest of the cannelloni that I made yesterday for my dinner... does that mean that technically I cooked and he has to do the washing up?

Blah, I said I was going to write a proper post, but I spent all today wandering around Reading trying to find a thing that would connect my computer to, well, some electricity so that I could actually, well, work and stuff. And I'm tired. And I'm going to eat cannelloni (when Nik gets back) and drink more shiraz (hey, we need three more screw-top bottles to put our home-made wine into, so technically this is a public service) and read my new book ('Surviving and Thriving on the Land - how to use your time and energy to run a successful smallholding', since you ask) and cuddle my fiancé (you know about him, he doesn't need parentheses).

Said fiancé has been away since Tuesday morning. In the intervening time, my dalliance with Charlie Brooker has kept me more than occupied.

Historical flu precautions

On last night's Case Notes, they looked at some coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Not only did the newspaper report encourage people to keep reasonably calm and not worry too much, in sharp contrast to today, the following "practical precautions by a medical correspondent" were offered:

• Keep a stout heart. Don't expect to fall sick.
• Eat as well as possible. Drink half a bottle of light wine or a glass of port at dinner.
• Take a hot bath each evening on returning from work.
• Smoke in moderation.
• If there is any tendency to sore throat, consult a doctor at once.

How times change....

Mild-to-moderate angst

Aargh, I'm doing that thing again, where it would have been perfectly possible for me to complete all the things I am supposed to do before going out but, because I am anxious about the social situation in question, I procrastinate so I can then say, 'Oh, I haven't finished my work... can't go out/come camping... sorry...'

I don't want to give in to my conniving subconscious by allowing myself to ring and cancel, especially as I probably would regret it, but on the other hand I do need to do my work. And, because I wish to spite the Sleazy Bastard by writing watertight minutes that record the hearing accurately but yet make it clear I think both he and his behaviour are/were despicable, I also want to do it well.

Argh.

Also, I've rashly committed/been hustled by circumstances into committing to get married on 10th April next year. I am very fond of this time of year, and so this decision was bolstered by a glorious gardening-filled day on Monday, but now it is grim and pissing it down and I'm tempted to totally screw Nik's family's plans up and ask my parents to un-book the church by defaulting to the summer. Someone remind me this could equally happen in July and it's not the end of the world if it rains anyway.

Ire

RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The world is crap, misogynistic, and crap.

I have drunk 3/4 of a bottle of rosé and overused the word ire.

That is all.

Scratch the whining, week got better

Okay, aside from the tea thing and the still-having-no-money thing, my week has actually dramatically improved. Not only has one of my deadlines been extended, but, thanks to a felicitous and somewhat unlikely combination of incompetent bankers and violent protesters, both the meetings I was supposed to attend tomorrow have been cancelled. Hurrah. So not only do I have to work like stink today to get my other work done today, I also don't have to get up at stupid o'clock tomorrow.

Why I hate this week

• I have to get up stupidly early 4 days this week for work and am absolutely knackered
  
• I have, in fact, to do a stupid amount of work full stop, most of which is grim and depressing
  
• HMRC have actually taken all of last month's pay away from me so I have no money, even though I wasn't the one who cocked up (although I can still have fun on the joint account!)
  
• Nik bought fizzy strawberry laces and ate them all before I got home
• tea prices are going up (linky)

Please send gin!

Hmmmm

Dear Facebook,

Using 'unlike' as a verb has really given this descriptive linguist pause for thought.

Yours sincerely,

Fighting-my-inner-grammarian (Berks.)

Another boring tax return post

The ongoing saga of the only real down-side to being self-employed continues... HMRC have helpfully sent me a letter telling me I overpaid in tax last year (which I told them on my actual tax return). This letter kindly explains, in great detail, how I should go about paying my tax, but is surprisingly unilluminating on how to reclaim money from them.

Harrumph.

Well whaddya know...

Apparently I 'lack [...] a sense of humour (citation needed)'.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Feminist_style

Dear lord... Go to the main article on feminism, if you dare. It starts by essentially saying that the suffragettes were more-or-less okay because they were 'predominantly pro-life' and, y'know, wanting to vote is probably just about acceptable, then starts blathering about co-ed submarines and then cherry-picks loads of all-sex-is-rape quotes to illustrate that all feminists are man-hating, bra-burning weirdos.

On 'pro-choice':

The "pro-choice" position in the abortion debate maintains that the decision to give birth is entirely a personal one for the mother, literally a "matter of choice" with no one else, including the father or child, having a say. A doctor may advise, but only in a limited capacity. He ought not try to influence the pregnant woman, even if she's just a girl. He should not inform her about the long-term medical harms of the operation, or the emotional or social consequences, but simply let her make up her own mind. Advocates justify this position with the materialistic idea that a human being does not exist until after his complete birth (see partial-birth abortion).
(my emphasis)

And at the bottom: 'Categories: abortion, deceit.'

Also, 'The atheistic worldview has a variety of effects on individuals and society at large...'

On Barack Obama: 'Obama used his Muslim middle name when sworn in as president and chose not to use the Bible for his real, private oath. Elected by claiming he's a Christian, Obama has since avoided attending church on Christmas and Sundays.' Really? I thought Obama was elected by, mainly, winning the election... 'Obama refers to America in the third person, as a foreigner would.' (As a linguistics geek, this is interesting - do they mean, 'that is what a foreigner would do and, since he is a foreigner, he does this,' or, 'if he were a foreigner, which he is not, that is what he would do'?)

Oh, oh, I could go on, but it's too painful. Please someone tell me this is a piss-take...

False economy

Walking an extremely circuitous route back to Waterloo, in four-inch heels and carrying my enormous laptop and overnight bag, to avoid paying for the Tube, only to be too tired to walk home from Wokingham station and having to take a taxi.

Snow in Northumberland

I want to go hooooooooooome........

Fab quotation from 'The News Quiz'

"The private sector is just incompetence combined with greed. At least the public sector is well-meaning incompetence."

Sleep

Oh dear lord, I am SO TIRED. I had been having difficulty sleeping again, but that appears to have lifted for the time being (*hammers forcefully on wooden table*) and now the accumulated sleep debt of 24 1/2 years appears to have hit me all at once. I have been in bed by 10 every night this week and asleep usually by midnight and habitually woken up about 10 minutes before I'm meant to start work. And I'm still constantly tired. Argh.

Meanwhile, Nik has turned into Mr Sprightly, and woke me up this morning by bouncing on the bed at 7.30 and saying cheerfully, 'I've just been for a 6-mile run!! I've been up for an hour and it's a lovely day and now I'm going to go and pro-actively do lots of useful things!!'

In fairness, it is a lovely day, but that's still no reason to be unneccessarily chirpy.

Still, this peculiar role-reversal has upset the balance of forces in the universe. I find it deeply unsettling to be the one who goes to sleep first and gets up second. Hmmm.

Self-indulgent Bob Dylan-fest

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge

An Open Letter

Dear institution at which I was 85% certain I would be studying next year,

When you offered me a place last week, your tuition fees for the coming academic year had not yet been finalised. You kindly enclosed the fees from 2008/9 to give me an idea of what I might be expected to cough up and I was reasonably confident that if the money I am expecting to inherit had not come through by then, I could liquidate my savings in anticipation of said funds, pay for the masters and reimburse myself later.

This morning I received a letter advising me of your fees for 2009/10 and I notice you have spontaneously decided to create a separate category for MAs in Anthropology, which means I will be paying £1000 more than if I were studying Linguistics, Music or Small Melanesian Island Studies and approximately £1000 more than I have saved, which I would not have had to do last year.

I will spare you my rant on the failure of the education system to promote social mobility in general and MA funding in particular, but I can sort of, maybe, at a pinch see the justification in charging more for things like Law or Economics which offer a much better return on investment than Gender Studies with Zambian Literature. I can even, at a pinch, see why cinema/media students might be charged more as they probably need to use expensive audio-visual equipment and, well, if I had to pay to insure stuff I was routinely lending to students I'd probably pass on the cost if I could too. I am sure you are, as you claim, 'synonymous with intellectual excitement and academic achievement' and there may, in fact, be an enormous array of employers waiting to entice Anthropology graduates with offers of astronomic salaries and fabulous benefits, but, as a prospective student, I have done a small amount of research into this matter and failed to find evidence that it is anything like as lucrative as, say, Law or Economics.

I will not project any issues about how I should have had the courage to do something funky two years ago instead of rotting in suburbia onto you, nor take out on you my slight annoyance that my parents are willing to pay stupid money for a wedding while adamantly refusing to support me, even morally, in moving into the career I want (gift horses, mouths and all that, not to mention that it means we won't now have to feed our guests baked beans off paper plates just because my MA is costing ££££ more) but, still, YOU SUCK.

Yours sincerely,

She-who-is-furious-yet-grateful-she-is-neither-an-international-student-nor-doing-International-Relations

Yes, this post is about boobs...

A lot of the photos in the Bravissimo catalogue, it must be said, are rather twee, but I can't help feeling there's something deeply appealing about them nonetheless. So much underwear is advertised by pictures of women with heavy eye make-up, teetering on the boundary between 'sultry' and 'drugged', who are, quite clearly, sending us the message that we should wear this underwear because it will make us attractive to men and help us conform to some unrealistic idea of beauty. Somehow Bravissimo's marketing doesn't scream 'sex' at all, it just shows loads of women who look like they're having fun on the beach with their friends, or hanging out in their bras feeling fabulous about their bodies. As you do. Which is, paradoxically, much sexier.

And their pants are sexy without being annoying and uncomfortable. And I really want this dress. I could not buy it in purple, to go with the purple shoes I'm not going to buy.

Musings on Facebook

I have huge respect for people who aren't on Facebook, almost as much as I do for people who don't have a television. To be honest, if I didn't live with the boy, I wouldn't have a television, no question about it, but I have fallen hook, line and sinker for Facebook. I know I'm essentially typing all my details into a massive database, that potential employers could see all the photos of me poncing around in posh frocks with numerous glasses of wine (mostly one at a time, though) and read my unbearably pretentious status updates, that adding any of those silly applications gives my data to some corporate sponsor and that the whole thing is funded by pernicious targeted advertising - if I didn't have Firefox's adblocker, I'm sure I'd have been seeing nothing but weight loss adverts since I got engaged. (More on the wedding industry another time.) And rationally, it is better that Clairol don't have access to information about me than that I can play some silly game called 'Geo Challenge' and feel smug that I kick arse at recognising countries from their outlines without seeing them in context. But... I just can't resist...

After they shut down Scrabulous, I almost took all my information off there with the intention of using it as a tool to get in touch with old friends, who could then contact me by message and subsequently email me, and wrote a post here about it. I ended up not doing this, largely because it seemed silly to object to having my info on Facebook and then post it on a blog (a Google blog, no less) as if that was making some kind of point, and it sits in my draft folder to this day, but this is what I thought, and still think, about Facebook's usefulness purely as a medium of communication:

Back in the days before mobiles and internet, I used to be able to remember people's phone numbers, I used to ring them to chat, I used to write proper letters. Then, communication got compressed into 180-character texts and short emails, but at least I used to email people. Since all-you-can-eat broadband and 'social networking', however, I don't seem to do that any more. I have the illusion of connectedness - I feel constantly in touch with hundreds of people, yet I spend less actual time maintaining relationships than I did before targeted advertising made any of this worthwhile.

(The draft also ended with an invitation to people to visit me in my actual house and play with my actual Scrabble set. This offer still stands, with the caveat that I actually know you and you give me some warning.)

Recently, though, I've started taking some information off there, a little at a time. Last week I purged my friends list, mostly of friends of the boy's that I was trying to get in with when I came back from Africa, but whom I never really knew and whom he doesn't speak to much any more either. I've been trying to publish an article or two under my actual name and while this hasn't been an unmitigated success, the process of it made me more aware of what is in the public domain and attached to my name. (An egotistical self-google reveals little connected to me - the bad adolescent poems have fortunately been taken down and even the Facebook result is some person in Tulsa with the same name as me.) It's also made me conscious of who I freely and willingly allowed to see all this info through Facebook - as it turns out, a lot of people I don't know very well at all!

I suppose fundamentally, I see Facebook as trivial and frivolous - I use it to keep in touch with friends, share photos and not for self-promotion or professional networking - and when it intersects with something that is serious, I don't know how to handle it yet. Someone I knew passed away last year, and I find it incredibly freaky when her picture pops up in the 'friends in common' box, or to know that she made several incredibly self-deprecating remarks about some of the most recent photos of her.

Like much of the internet, the curious juxtaposition of transience and permanence has yet to settle down. I suspect people my brother's age will grow up absolutely fine with it, whereas people of my parents' generation (and particularly those who share my mother's technophobic leanings) just think the whole thing is bizarre, and there's a bunch of us in the middle torn between, 'Wow, that's really weird,' and, 'Wow, that's cool.'

Why am I thinking about this now, particularly? We were having lunch with Nik's mum yesterday and she decided to join Facebook! I think my complacency about Facebook privacy is largely because I don't think there is anything particularly incriminating on there, but nevertheless I had a quick scan before allowing her unfettered access to my profile.

In other news, I saw the film of Brick Lane and they managed not to totally obliterate the wonderfulness of the book. It was close, though.

A surfeit of wit

Well, the good news is that I managed to complete all but three clues of The Times crossword in under two hours. The bad news is that I'm still an insomniac.

The snow lingered for a while, but has now gone. Nik went ski-ing, but is now home. While he was away, I threw myself into madly socialising to distract me from the fact that I'm still a little edgey about being in the house on my own. There was, I am pleased to report, only one morning when I woke up at 4 a.m. and heard someone opening the front door through the letterbox and moving around downstairs. And that was only in my imagination. Huzzah.

In other news, I taught my friend Helen how to knit and she was very good at it. I made an enormous shepherd's pie and didn't cook anything else until Friday when my Oxford friends descended en masse. I trekked to Ascot in the snow and had a v sophisticated evening with Nicky. I thought the frisson of underage drinking was over once I could wave my ID at the folks in All Bar One and successfully buy pomegranate juice, but this place had an over-25's policy and I felt that illicit thrill and slight terror* all over again. The Oxford massive was also great fun, and tried their best to clean me out of tea and cake as usual. (But I have too much tea. And put my foot down about the cake.) It really was like a wonderful grown-up sleepover: classic girly squealing and gossiping and talking about sex and periods and all that, only with roast lamb and a decent bottle of red or three instead of pizza and Coke. And we didn't stay up till 5 (though we did sit around in our pyjamas until mid-afternoon the next day).

I don't know if I'm just noticing it more, because something in my head is going, 'Omg, you're getting married, you won't be able to have all this girly fun any more!'** or if we were all just on particularly good form in this particular week, but it seemed like I had even more fun than usual with these various people.

I also watched epic quantities of The West Wing, courtesy of Livvy, and thanks to that and the fab ladies over at Kvetch I have been indulging in a true surfeit of wit. So... much... wit... Now Nik is also hooked. (On The West Wing.)

Things seemed a bit more humdrum last week, with no snow and less socialising. My job currently consists mostly of helping big multinational companies sack people, which is rather dispiriting, and my weekend largely involved making soup. One of them was bright orange though.




* I have a morbid fear of getting into trouble. Christ knows what my parents did to me...
** Not sure quite why this would be the case, but my subconscious is a strange place.

snowsnowsnowsnowsnow!

Up and doing rather earlier than usual this morning thanks to concerns that the snow would prevent me getting to the meeting I was meant to be minuting. They rang earlier and I get to stay in bed for a bit longer and do it over the phone. Hurrah for teleconferencing.

News stories I have been obsessively overanalsying are:

• Childhood is harder now than when children had to work in factories or up chimneys and might have died of innumerable diseases. Wealth redistribution is too complicated and politically loaded, so we'll just have to blame women instead of trying to solve the problem.
• The south-east can't do snow. Again. Nor can the internet. Not only are all the rail networks down, their websites are also overloaded by people trying to check whether the rail networks are down. John Humphrys was particularly amusing just after the 7.00 headlines: "Now, I wonder if we're going to get the usual complaints: 'a few flakes of snow in London and everything grinds to a halt and it's national news'. Let's have the impact on travel. We'll have the broad overview first. Actually, let's have the London report first, because that IS a problem."

*rolls eyes*

No mushrooms this week =(

Well, judging from this week's veg box it looks like the menu for Friday might look something like this:

Starter
curried parsnip soup

Main course
something from the freezer with root veg mash/gratin and a.n. other green vegetable so as not to get scurvy

Pudding
carrot cake

I wonder if I could whip up an exciting swede-based cocktail to begin with...

In other news, Nik has departed for ski-ing with much enthusiasm. If I didn't know better, I'd take it personally. I am feeling rather dejected, not because I'm incapable of entertaining myself without him (I have two series of The West Wing, three scheduled social events, an array of interesting books and the whole of the internet) but because I'm still a little funny about being in the house on my own since the burglary. Rationally, I realise this is silly (and, furthermore, it's impractical for future life and I should just get over it, so it's probably just as well that I haven't buggered off home for the week and am instead learning to be a normal person) but, well, meh...

I am currently occupying myself with gratuitous wedding-porn-viewing. Amusing results from googling 'spring weddings' include (but are not limited to):

• pastels, pastels, pastels (bleurgh)
  
• instead of rice or confetti, ask your guests to release butterflies (?!?!?!?!?!)
• calling each table after a spring flower instead of numbering them.

and, my personal favourite:

• dress your bridesmaids in yellow dresses and get them to carry Easter bunnies instead of bouquets (bleurgh)

Oh. Dear. Lord.

Ski-ing...

I am getting the impression from my Facebook news feed that everyone in the entire world is going or has gone ski-ing except me.

More body issues...

Unfortunately since I've bought underwear that actually fits, some of my clothes fit differently and don't look good, and this, unfortunately, includes all of my formalwear. Bearing in mind that I have no money and common sense suggests purchase of new dress and/or new underwear is unwise, and also that there will be dancing, should I:

a) concoct some cunning arrangement involving double-sided tape and resign myself to having to keep adjusting my clothes all of tomorrow evening and realise that once I'm on the outside of my complementary 1/2 bottle of wine I won't really care;
b) wear something rather frumpy;
c) scour the south-east for new underwear or clothing, expense be damned?

Tbh, if this is the shape of things to come, the last option might not be such a bad idea as at some point in my life I will need to reconcile my underwear and evening wardrobe, but I should wait until at least next month. Also I cannot face the prospect of purchasing under pressure, as I spent more of last week in shopping centres than I would like and want to spend tomorrow on the allotment.

I have been wondering why I so frequently blog about this. I think it must be because I no longer live with other women and Nik's response to any angst over this is, categorically, that he thinks I'm gorgeous so it doesn't matter. This is quite sweet, but not particularly nuanced, leaving me with the impression that he thinks it's all silly, and I don't think he's fully appreciated that, really, dressing up has more to do with female bonding and/or bitchiness than being attractive to men (and that's over and above just liking playing around with colours and fabrics and celebrating your body for your own sake).

Worrying insights into my subconscious

This week I have impulse bought two wedding planning books - 'The Offbeat Bride' and 'The Anti-Bride Guide'* - and 'The Edible Woman'. Freud, eat your heart out...

Also three pairs of boots and one pair of shoes (I returned one of the pairs of boots) and I am still lusting after a pair of purple suede shoes. I lusted after a pair of purple shoes a while ago (they still had them, I nearly splurged). Maybe I should just buy some and realise they don't go with anything and that'll be that. I think all my difficulties buying clothes are totally reversed with shoes - I can go into almost any shoe-shop and try on almost any size 5 shoes and be reasonably assured they'll fit. Doesn't mean they won't be inherently impractical and painful or poorly made, but buying shoes is a joy that buying clothes just isn't.

I've been making progress on sewing this week, though. Livvy rigged up my sewing machine properly in exchange for tea (roll on the economic revolution) and it now works like a dream and I've made more progress on my suit in the past week than I had in the previous year! And I've made curtains and our house looks like a normal house now. Wooo.

(Ooh, my new comfysexy boots would look fab with my suit wot I'm making. Had not considered this.)

Exciting as-yet-unmentionable plans are shaping up nicely - god willing I should soon be able to shape them into something concrete. One slightly depressing up-side of being engaged is that, with the exception of the Happy Few, everyone seems to have totally lost interest in my dissatisfaction with where I live or my professional life (indeed, in anything about me as a unique thinking person rather than a thing to be dressed in white taffeta) and only talks to me about cake and photographs, so hopefully I can slip my rather drastic plans under the radar and then present them as a fait accompli, avoiding much of the anxiety-inducing wrangling over not offending people. And, because everyone assumes that engaged women are all raving lunatics, they will simply assume I am a raving lunatic and not be offended or say anything in case I strangle them with ribbons. Huzzah.

I am going to learn Italian and take up swimming on Wednesdays. Please nag me and hold me to these.



* From the blurb on the back: 'Possible signs you may be an anti-bride: Budget for wedding is less than future down-payment on home; Never gave a thought to china patterns in your life (until now); Recent meeting with caterer made you want to elope.' Oh dear god yes....

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

I thought I would take respite from tax return HELL by writing up my annual triangular winetasting tour of Britain (aka Christmas). It seems to have gone on for a very long time this year and also, oddly, to be only five minutes ago that we left. Before we left, there was a week of carol concerts and services (during which I sated my choral withdrawal by squawking the descants as discreetly as I could), combined with much partying and frantic dalek-knitting. I also seemed to spend most of my free time travelling to London and back, which provided much opportunity for dalek-knitting and also confirmed my suspicions that it would be a more sensible place to live. I concealed my excessive drunkenness until I left the work Christmas party and stayed up until 4 a.m. after Livvy and Sarah's party talking about Deep Things with Livvy and giggling a lot, while Sarah babysat the drunken gatecrashers.

After a premature birthday celebration for Nik with his family, we set off up north, again via home because he'd left the Christmas cakes behind and there was no way we were eating them all on our own until June. Last year we had to go back and set the heating to come on for an hour at night so the pipes didn't burst, but one year we will be able to go from Surrey to Northumberland without a detour.

My parents, thanks to having been flooded back in September, are currently in a rented house which is Much Fun. It is enormous and old - it has a cellar, a cupboard where you could smoke things, many, many outbuildings and a moat (of sorts). Nik and I were having many fantasies about living somewhere similarly exciting. I made it into town to do something sociable and had brief drinks with Sarah and Thomas before a wonderful meal at the Grainger Rooms. The following day we had another wonderful meal at the pub in my village (which is now no longer in walking distance and we had to pile six of us into one car) - I find it deeply unsettling to think that this tiny village in the middle of nowhere is now a beacon of culinary excellence, but it is, so there. All you need is a pretentious arty cinema and there is no need to live in a town! It was astonishingly cheap as well - my dad and I can't decide if this is wonderful, as it brings good food to the masses and proves that it needn't be expensive, or foolish, as you could easily charge twice as much and you'll never make any money selling a fab 3-course meal for £15 a head...

Nik became the same age as me again, which is always reassuring, cooked a spectacular Swedish banquet (minus the traditional cabbage) on Christmas Eve, which impressed my parents greatly, and has apparently retracted everything he said about weddings being pointless and unnecessary. *grins*

On Christmas day, my dad, possibly feeling the need to compete with this wonderful, competent 'new man', cooked beef Wellington, which was excellent (though there was a lot more attention-seeking stress) and we are petitioning him to instate it as an annual tradition, finances permitting. He and Nik went shooting on Boxing Day, and came back with a pheasant, a proud fiance and a new cocktail. The 'Backworth Shandy', my friends, is a Northumbrian concoction, consisting of sloe gin and sparkling wine. It is positively lethal and utterly delicious. Some southern ponces apparently call it a 'Sloe Royale'.

Then we came back down south, where it was much colder, and drank more obscene quantities of bubbly with Nik's family and he proudly told everyone that we were engaged... AND, he shot a PHEASANT!!! *rolls eyes* Granny turned 80 and there was more fizz. I fear permanent damage to my stomach lining.

And then we got home and some thieving scumbags had broken into our house and left mud all over our carpets and stolen Nik's family jewellery, among other things, and I now feel somewhat deflated.