To continue last week's theme of using this as a vehicle for self-indulgent rambling...

Hmm. I'm plucking my eyebrows while Nik is pollyfilling cracks in a bathroom wall. Is this some form of hideous stereotype I promised myself never to become? If so, when did this happen?

Regardless, it's very peaceful. I've never been so relieved to get out of Oxford before, which feels very weird. It's only through getting out and coming back that you realise how much of a bubble the place is. That used to be part of its charm, but I spent most of the last few weeks railing frenetically against it in a desperate bid to seem happy and fun by drinking more Pimm's than anyone else. No, it didn't work; yes, I felt hugely silly; yes, the second I got outside the ring road I felt much freer than I had previously. Ah well. When I get back next year I'll have my own space, my own keys and my own life and (I hope) won't feel a huge sense of purposelessness in an atmosphere where you thrive on being manic and forever bouncing from tute to worthy activity to social to squeaky college single bed.

9th week was quite a lot of fun. I proved (three times) that it was possible to go out and enjoy myself without drinking, once in Kasbar, once for the football (people I texted for an alternative, I am disappointed in you) and once for the end of Tim's exams, and also proved (once) that curling up in bed with a bottle of red wine, some jam doughnuts and lots of episodes of Scrubs is something that must be done once in a while to restore sanity. I cooked a moderately exciting meal and swore at facebook a lot. On Friday in the Raddy, there was a large group of loud people sitting near us and one girl was insistent that it was possible to use three had's in a row in a sentence, though could not justify this with an example. However,

"The good times she had had had been behind her for ages."

This is my last week of respite before actually beginning to earn some money in July. I feel dimly that I ought to go home-home, but I've been banned until my brother finishes A-Levels and it doesn't seem worth spending a grand total of 16 hours on trains and buses for the two days I might get at home. Particularly when I can't afford a ticket. Particularly seeing as here there is wireless internet and a pool, even if I was cruelly prevented from swimming on the day it was actually warm. Damn biology.

I was feeling old, but last night we watched the first ever episode of Spitting Image. And didn't really get most of it. So now I feel less ancient. Hurrah. And today I bought a lovely birthday card for my mum and found the shampoo I used to love and haven't seen for over a year and now I have a short-haired, new-shoed boyfriend.

"Excuse me, can I interest you in buying this dead horse?"

I had such good intentions. I came to update this virtually the second I'd come into the room, and it refused to work. Grrrrr. I pressed 'Refresh' a lot and then got sidetracked listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and checking my email (oddly enough I didn't have any new ones since checking half an hour previously), and trying to destroy a paying-in receipt with nail clippers.

It has been quite a long time since I actually provided any illuminating information about my life, as opposed to pointless yet amusing quotes or photo-spam. This may be because the last posts went roughly along the lines of: "Ooh! Oxford is sunny! All my friends have finished finals and nobody has anything to do except sit on lawns and drink Pimm's or (once the bank statements come through) Blossom Hill." There have been several inclement breaks in the sunniness, but not frequent enough to prevent my back turning bright pink. Other than that, my life has really changed very little, except that Nik is no longer doing finals and is now able to watch epic quantities of 24 with me.

I could talk about various difficulties (re-)fitting into already established social groups (that I may once have been part of); or feeling like an appendage to the boy (a dull one, that gets sleepy at parties and nags him about finding a job) instead of an actual person; or not having a particular purpose now the mad Italians have gone home and finding a life of unmitigated hedonism rather unfulfilling having not just finished some very stressful exams; or general distress about The Rest Of My Life.

This last is, actually, rather unfair. I have a plan, involving postgrad funded by EFL tutoring and translation/proof-reading and then becoming a critically acclaimed novelist, and if this falls through (i.e. the idea of stringing together enough words to constitute a respectable thesis or novel overpowers me) then a helpful website has thrown up several more career options which had me raving about becoming a lexicographer (can't you so see that happening?), and it doesn't bother me at all that of the handful of jobs I liked the sound of, in 90% of them financial reward plays "no part". It is hugely self-indulgent to worry about all this now when a large proportion of my readership consists of jobless ex-finalists for whom this angst is a good deal closer than a year away (*hugs* to all in this predicament), but the astonishing number of transitions, goodbyes and departures I've endured this year has given me a peculiar twitchiness and an irritating tendency towards self-analysis.

It's just that sometimes I feel like the quote in the introduction to all the Folio editions of Beauvoir, that quote that I can't remember or translate about feeling torn between living life and writing about it; like how I updated this almost every day in Lyon, because I was bored and miserable, but as soon as Sainsbury's has Pimm's, Cava and strawberries on special offer, I can go days without stringing words together; and this choice between dullness/misery and productivity versus (most of the time) contentment, good company and not feeling the need to lock myself away with a computer may replicate itself later in life with something (I hope) of more worth than this. I feel passionate about so many things, but at some point I have to stop them, and describe them, or else I go mad.

My problem is not that I don't know what to do: I've known that since I was 5. My problem is that what I want to do scares me.

I'm scared that I'm not as good at it as I think I am. I'm scared that I won't have the discipline to find out. I'm scared the fear of rejection will turn me into the sort of person who hoards things in drawers and that all my descendents will find fourteen unfinished novels and say I could have been quite good, it's a pity I wasn't. I'm scared the ancestral curse will get me, and I'll give up being creative and notable in order to breed prolifically, like all the women I'm related to did while my Grandpa gets a CBE. (Sorry. Just had to drop that in.) Indeed, in a Shakespeare's sister sort of way, we could extend this beyond my immediate family, but that's a whole different ball game. I'm scared it may be incompatible with a normal life, whatever that may be, and whether I even want it.

There's a Margaret Atwood poem which sums up how I feel pretty accurately, but not even Google can find it. It begins "Do poets really suffer more than other people?" if you want to look it up. (And I recommend you do.)

And now I'm going to curl up in bed, with my diary, and Le Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs.


oh but now, old friends, they're acting strange
and they shake their heads
and they tell me that I've changed
well, something's lost and something's gained
in living every day.

"Francis Bacon wishes to meet the Earl of Sandwich"

For the second day in a row, I have been abandoned by the boy, and have immediately turned on Radio 4 and started to eat salad (my poor vegetable-starved body...) and today I found myself laughing so hysterically at I'm sorry I haven't a clue that I thought I'd post some gems from the opening round. (The brief was to come up with responses to traditional chat-up lines.)

Where have you been all my life?
Well, for most of it, I wasn't even born.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?
Yes. I'm the receptionist at the VD clinic.

The name's Bond. James Bond.
The name's Lost. Gert Lost.

Come on. Don't be shy. Ask me out.
All right. Get out.

Those clothes would look great in a crumpled heap on my bedroom floor.
So would you.

Your legs must be tired - you've been running through my mind all night.
Yes, it was lovely... all those wide open spaces.

Is that a ladder in your stockings or is it the stairway to heaven?
Yes, it is the stairway to heaven, but I've already got an arse up there.

And now I really, really have to get on with the washing-up...

Jo

Nik

Ali and Mairi

Mairi

Sarah as nun

Sarah and Livvy

Holly and Sally

Me

Livvy and Sarah

Sarah, covered in cat-food

Livvy and Sarah

Jo and Jen

Sarah

Sarah

Cake... I mean...

Catherine and Aloysius

It's Pimm's o'clock..... Again......

Sorry for not updating much this week. I was competing in the Regional Floor-Hopping Championships and never in one place for very long, not to mention having far too much fun.

Friday was my last day at work and my lessons went really well. I also took them to the Multimedia Centre to do things on computers, which baffled most of them and entertained me hugely, and in the afternoon I chaperoned them to Windsor Castle, which was really fun, though it was rather stressful. And I was so tired that in the evening I effectively went to Botley Road and collapsed on the sofa in front of the TV. I don't think I was much fun, and couldn't face Risk, but I was very well looked after.

Saturday was Catherine's birthday and we had Buck's Fizz and cake in front quad and then I went to meet the first of seven finalists who have finished lately. Turf, fish and chips, wine - excellent. I got talked into singing with Hertford Choir on Sunday, and subsequently recruited for a madrigal group, which was... random. But I got free dinner. And free wine. And free tea. And then Thomas bought me Pimm's in the KA and it had fruit in. Joyfulness.

I have spent the last three days in an extended Pimm's-induced stupor, punctuated by mad dashes to Merton St to cover people in glitter. It has been fun. Lots of people are very happy, and I get to join in the fun, despite having earned it neither with exams of my own nor by providing emotional support. I have drunk in four different colleges and the Parks and it is SUNNY. Joyfulness. I was going to write this post entirely using quotes and pictures, but I can't remember anything anyone said. Ever.

Except this:
"Aah, I'm so happy. I just want to talk to everything. The trees, the flowers..."
"There are no trees."
"True. There's a cloud."
"You could talk to the cloud."
"I could. Hello cloud."

Also:
One comatose, hungover, beglittered boyfriend, free to good home.

"It's three o'clock and I'm confused"

The ethernet cable is evil. It is making me update every day. I am turning into an egocentric geek. Help.

I had a to-do list for this afternoon. It went like this:

• eat lunch
• put Suba's number in my phone
• uninstall Spider Solitaire from my laptop
• plan lesson on daily routines
• plan lesson on something else
• research Windsor Castle
• pump up bike tyres

Needless to say, by four o'clock (argh, have now started writing times out in full, have been planning for so long), only the first two items had been completed.

I have been prevailed upon to go to Windsor Castle with the Italians tomorrow afternoon. From the sound of it I'll have to do very little and get paid £25 for it, and it stops me annoying Phil by hanging around Botley Road all afternoon. I stopped to share the good news with my students on the way out and was rather confused when one of them asked me if I had an Italian boyfriend. I said no, which is true, but in by baffled state, I forgot that this in itself didn't preclude the existence of a boyfriend of any other nationality, and that rather vital piece of information was lost in translation so she then proceeded to try and set me up with her son... Every day this week has been mad. I wonder if the entire rest of the summer will be equally exciting.

After I got home, I then went to Cowley Road, repeating in my head the mantra, 'I am going to Tesco for salad dressing and NOTHING ELSE, I will buy ONLY salad dressing...' I should have also included, 'I am going to Oxfam for Fairtrade tea and NOTHING ELSE, I will NOT buy any shoes, books or birthday cards...'

Oops.

Right, I'm now going to add 'eat dinner' and 'go to pub' to my to-do list, so I'll have a chance of crossing off at least two more things before midnight.

Correction

If I could get on MSN and if I'd remembered to buy some salad dressing, my life would be perfect.

"Aren't you in Africa?"

Aww. The annoying old men got shifted to my colleague's class and I had an absolutely lovely group this morning. Taught two fairly successful lessons and got called an 'angel' by half of my students. Afterwards, went to LMH to be rapturously reunited with my, er... bike and then cycled to Tesco's to stock up on food, which made me feel unclean, but I mostly bought non-Tesco stuff, and got some of those hippie bags you're supposed to remember to take next time you go, which salves my conscience slightly. I am vaguely depressed at impending student eating habits. I just decided I couldn't bear reformed ham, or Value Weetabix, or that cheese that tastes like plastic any more, and have come home with muesli, the most enormous olives I've ever seen, 'cheese with bits' (on special offer... white Stilton with apricots... Wensleydale with cranberries....) and real Tropicana. Decadent, but I'm sure it's good for my soul. And, maybe, my body, if you think about it.

And I love having a job that makes me feel fuzzy when I think I've done it well. I love how pretty Oxford is when it's sunny. I even love my tiny, temporary room. I love the ginormous olives. I love that I felt like smiling at everyone I saw on my way home. I love that my scout put all my stuff in a nice, tidy pile. I love that Crystal Light still tastes foul and dyes your tongue weird colours. I love that I had a great time last night and wasn't intimidated by Large Groups of People like I was in February. (Even if I did stay far too long, get stupidly drunk-tired and end up collapsing into bed, lesson still unplanned, after an impromptu midnight coffee.) I love playing my music without bass riffs reverberating through the house and rather spoiling Bach. I love that my phone is full of mad pictures. I just feel rather fond of everything, and everyone, around me at the moment. Thank you.

Hell, if I could just get on bloody MSN, my life'd be perfect.

Find someone who...

Have now arrived back in Oxford, where I aim to stay for over a year. Wow. Consistency.

I got here last night after a day on Megabus, which was cheap and allowed me to read lots. In fact, the journey from London to Oxford was on a normal Oxford Tube, only cheaper. And I saw a friend from school who I hadn't seen in ages, which was a very odd coincidence, but it was cool to catch up. I had dinner with Nik, sat on the balcony shivering out of some peculiar English determination to enjoy being outside when it's sunny regardless of temperature, spilt tomato sauce down my new, clean skirt that I wanted to wear to work and then went to bed and had a bad attack of insomnia.

Today was my first day teaching, which was... interesting. I had been expecting to walk straight into a lesson plan, but they just handed me a folder and a textbook and I had to very briefly prepare a lesson to teach to a group I knew nothing about, so we had a nice game of 'Find Someone Who...' and then talked about transport, cos that unit in the textbook had lots of pictures. And aside from the fact that there were two old men who kept shouting at each other across the classroom in Italian, another old man who kept trying to flirt with me and an old lady who came up to me at the end and said she hadn't understood a word and could we do primary school things tomorrow, it went pretty well. Or at least I'm still newly qualified and naive enough to feel all warm and fuzzy when they seem to be having fun even if I doubt they learnt anything. They are a lovely group, just.... mad.

I have one lesson planned for tomorrow, but the other one caused me untold panic (they're switching the groups around again) and I had no idea what to do it on, so I gave up and came home with a textbook and meant to plan it now, except I had to faff around moving my stuff from LMH to Cardo (Rami, thank you sooooo much!), and then I started settling in, and then I discovered the ethernet cable... Though I can't get on MSN cos apparently I'm not actually on the network. Grr. (If anyone wants to help me rectify this situation...) And now I have to change into something that doesn't smell and go to Queen's, and then to the pub, but THE LESSON WILL BE PLANNED. Even if I did have no sleep and want to just curl up in bed.....

Viv, the caretaker, has lent me a kettle, some cutlery and a plate. That would never have happened in Florey.

Must also acquire breakfast for tomorrow at some point. Will have to be out of here before they start serving tomorrow. Honestly. Work is near LMH. "Near LMH!" I have never uttered those words unless preceded by an emphatic negative and possibly swearing, but the one time I can say it unironically, the boy has finals.


My old man told me one time
You never get wise, you only get older

Another turning point...

My MSN homepage told me that today's 'top picks' (whatever those are) are:

• Da Vinci code: test your knowledge
• Are you the ultimate BB fan?
• Quiz: Madonna's dizzying career

I got so distressed by the state of modern society and the subsequent possibility that I may secretly be middle-aged that I forgot why I'd opened a second window.

Home is good. I'm vaguely worried my brothers are going to give me their nasty cold germs, which I will then bring down to Oxford and spread among people who really don't want to be ill right now, but it's nice to be around familiar people and have someone to talk to during the day. I've done lots of boring, domesticated things (ironing, making rice salads, sorting out my old clothes) but it surprisingly feels quite calming: like I'm getting some sort of semblance of order back in my life after a rather hectic year. Even if I do think that I'm only getting rid of things to house yet more books. My parents have developed an alarming obsession with Frasier and my brother still plays the bass guitar REALLY LOUDLY for HOURS ON END. My mum is finally getting bored with being at home all the time and is already planning for my dad's retirement. (Buying a camper van, going round Europe, turning the dining room into a spare bedroom, getting a new sink. I think his plans involve compost heaps and vegetable patches.) I'm making good progress with my reading list, which is so organised and dedicated it's frankly terrifying and I found several pages of something I wrote over the summer on a floppy disk which pushes the word count up to 1/5 of the average novel! (It's only taken me 2 years to get that far...)

So, yes, generally feeling good about having people I know and like around me, looking forward to throwing things at happy finalists, to having a job I'm enthusiastic about and get paid more than minimum wage for, getting back to my exciting course (knowing full well my enthusiasm will evaporate in 0th week faster than you can say the word 'deadline' ) and possibly, possibly to regaining something approximating sanity.

We can hope.

I have even been head-hunted! After a fashion. This TEFL malarky is fantastic. Not only have I spent all morning being interviewed 'in case we can give you a better offer' and emailing people to get extensions on when I have to let them know about contracts, but I've also had an offer from a language school in Oxford next week. It's teaching a small group of Italian adults, just for a few hours a day, and only for next week, but it'll be great experience and give me a chance to get used to teaching again before the summer. There might even be a possibility of working for them in August and September. I actually have a skill that people want to pay me for, mostly during the summer vacation, when I'm mostly looking for work, mostly in Oxford, where I live, or wouldn't mind coming back to work in once I'm in London. (I am indebted to Daily Info. Thank you.)

I'll be back in Oxford from Monday, very responsibly living a long way down Iffley Road so as not to distract certain people from Very Important Things, and if anyone wants to meet up one afternoon/evening, well, you can call me on my shiny, new phone!

I even know how to set the alarm clock on it now.

Hmph.

Ah, crap. I think I'm falling in love with Gide all over again. He's GAY and DEAD - when will I learn? It's not going to happen!

"And the weather in Newcastle is very similar to here in Paris..."

Similar my a***. I don't recall a howling gale and torrential rainstorm in Paris. How I've missed the North-East.

I spent all of yesterday in varying types of vehicle. I took the train to Paris, and was once again amazed at how France has such clean, efficient, cheap public transport, when everybody has a car and nobody uses it. Odd.

I was meant to be meeting Rachel, who was on the TEFL course with me and is currently working in Paris teaching people who work in the Pompidou Centre, who was also looking after a lot of my stuff. Unfortunately, she'd had an extra class sprung on her and had to dash off and prepare that, so I went for lunch on my own. I found a little cafe and sat for a long time drinking a glass of white Burgundy (it appeals to my sense of irony) and reading Gide, which is really pushing the boundaries between bohemian and pretentious, and then ate a sandwich on the train to the airport.

I managed to flirt my way onto my flight with 22kg of luggage and three carry-on items, which I was very proud of, and arrived home in time for a civilised takeaway with my parents and brother. I also decided to mark my return to the UK by getting a new contract with a shiny new phone, which has the advantage of being shiny, and new and all, but which has the disadvantage of me not being to use it (possibly not the phone's fault?). But it gives me something to play with, which is fun. If anyone wants to email me their number I'd be very grateful, cos I've lost everyone's!

love, pride, deep-fried chicken

Today I have:

• bought 10 books, all of academic worth;
• got a new phone contract complete with shiny new phone;
• bought a train ticket to Paris;
• read an essay by Duras about writing, love and solitude;
• cooked an exciting meal, again involving goats' cheese;
• challenged the washing machine to a duel... and won!

I also discovered a fantastic website, of geeky interest to (perhaps) a select few.

I wonder if it's a) significant and b) worrying that my iTunes Top 25 Most Played contains Don't think twice, it's all right (Bob Dylan), I heard love is blind (Amy Winehouse) and Come on home (Franz Ferdinand). This is all coincidental, and possibly countered by the presence of Drops of Jupiter (Train), but that song is so melodramatically sentimental that I doubt it. (In a good way.)

Am now resigned to the accommodation situation for next year, and instead of bitching, I've started organising a kitchen full of nice people, which is much more productive. Though it still mings. I think it's just the suddenness of it. And the fact that I was planning to use the boy's kitchen anyway, so having one in St Aldate's is not really much of an advantage. But I will be able to knock on Catherine's door and watch her giving birth to kittens on the walk to choir, which will be just like first year. =) (And, yes, I know it would be much nicer just to be able to run across the quad five minutes before it starts, but I'm trying to be positive here.)

My return is set for next Tuesday (23rd) and I shall be in Oxford from the 5th June, so if you would like me to come and throw things at you at any point after that date, please do alert me to the fact.

"I ain't saying you treated me unkind
You could've done better, but I don't mind..."

FEEL MY WRATH!!!

Bah. I don't *want* to live in a building it's actually acceptable to charge people rent for. I don't *want* kitchens and en suite facilities. If I'd wanted decent-standard accommodation I'd have gone somewhere else, but I believe it is my right as an Oxford student to live in a poky, moth-infested attic for at least one year of my life. Everyone else got to be within staggering distance of the beer cellar, panicking distance of the library and "aargh, choir starts at 5 on Wednesdays" distance of the chapel. So why can't we?

Humph.

And gallantly, she chickened out...

Well. Total about-face regarding plans for immediate future.

I have been offered a job in Oxford over the summer. It's not ideal, but I have two more interviews for other summer school jobs, which may turn up something better, and even if they don't, this sounds fun and gives me the chance to: a) use my TEFL qualification, b) earn money, c) do something towards the vague general objective of getting a degree, and d) have fun. All things I'm not doing here, even though that was the initial plan. Truth be told, I'm not hugely happy, everything positive keeping me here largely involves seeing people from home, and if I'm not doing anything to make feeling like this worthwhile, well, I'm going to come home and meet my friends and my boyfriend out of finals, and take a job I will enjoy and that might be useful to me in the future (you can apply linguistics?), and start my project that I'm hugely excited about. So there.

And I don't care if you think I'm giving up just cos it's difficult, and you can sing the 'Brave Sir Robin' song from The Holy Grail at me all you want, but I have justified this decision as a Good Thing in the overarching scheme of my life and I will stick my fingers in my ears and hum loudly if anyone tries to change my mind.

Apologies go to anyone who wanted to come and use me as an excuse to stock up on Beaujolais.

 

"A tinkling piano in the next appartment..."

Unfortunately, I do not have an airline ticket to romantic places, wild strawberries, silk stockings, dance invitations, daffodils, or indeed any of the other things mentioned in the song.

Also, to clarify, the rum was not for me to get drunk on to numb the pain caused by the inexpert, unvaried music wafting gently down from the floor above, it was for my housemate to soak exotic fruits in to create a lovely digestif. (In chorus, "We believe you....")

Since I finished Desperate Housewives on Sunday my life has seemed rather empty. I tried to fill the void with reading, writing, lesson planning, martini, facebook, but none of it worked. However, for some reason I seem to have come over all positive and determined in the last couple of days. Firstly, I deleted Spider Solitaire from my computer. I've done this before, but this time I didn't reinstall it again 2 hours later. I did all the washing up from the dinner party last night (great fun, but they started talking engineering at the end so I retired to my literary theory book) and even went for a run. It has been a long time since I took any exercie, and I probably spent more time recovering afterwards than actually doing the whole cardiovascular thang, but I still feel virtuous. I also finally figured out how to get a photo on my profile on this thing, and spent a long time faffing about with colours and stuff. I demand you all click on the link to BBC news because I ventured into html for the first time in my life to create it, AND it worked.

I am withing finishing distance of two of the worthy books I have here and will soon actually have to do the Paper VIII reading lists in a more thorough way than, 'Ooh, a train, let's read another half a chapter of Le rouge et le noir on it!' Send linguistics books. Fast.

MAN UPSTAIRS: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP PLAYING THE PIANO. OR AT LEAST LEARN A SECOND PIECE. NOW. THANKYOU.

I'm going to buy some rum.

Anyone who talked to me on Friday would have been subjected to extensive bitching about the fact that my teaching has been set back three weeks and I'd been prevented from taking another job because I was theoretically busy on Tuesdays. However, I have, in the last two days, watched so many episodes of Desperate Housewives that real life now seems like a distant memory.

I had an 8-episode binge last night, after a similarly lengthy binge of Freudian analysis of literature, and consequently took it all much too seriously. Still, overintellectualising aside, I do think there are some good moments in it, if a little too much slapstick for my liking, and the voiceovers are annoying and unnecessary - why have a dead woman giving trite summaries of things that can be equally well expressed by the writing and the acting?

This weekend my house has been invaded by rugby players who spent the whole day yesterday sitting in the living room making cockerel noises and laughing extremely loudly. They went out in the evening, came back on the earliest Métro and spent the entire morning (by which I mean early afternoon) wandering around looking hungover and half-naked.

Here is a quote from the literary theory book, which I feel is an example of why translations should be used with caution:

"The Women's Liberation movements are correct in saying: We are not castrated, so you get fucked."

And one from Le Rouge et le Noir :

"Mme de Rênal pensait aux passions comme nous pensons à la loterie: duperie certaine et bonheur cherché par des fous."

I am eating a sandwich. On real square sandwich bread. Brown bread.

I appear to have reacquired my Northumbrian inability to cope with heat, which does not bode well, as it is only the beginning of May. Maybe I should stop walking up and down hills in the early afternoon.

It's been an odd couple of days. Strange is back. Meh. Have been assiduously planning my lessons for next week, which I got rather worried about, because I don't know these people and I've never planned a 2-hour lesson before. Also, I was presented with a map of how to find the company, which was very detailed but gave no clue as to what general area of Lyon it was, aside from my boss's helpful remark that it was 'on the way to IKEA'. I met some of my colleagues, who were all nice, particularly the biker guy who told me everyone in the company was lovely, but they're still a little odd in the way that many expats are...

I am also incapable of using the washing machine. You put stuff in the top of the drum and have to close it, which I didn't realise, and I couldn't open it again, resulting in all my clothes being locked inside until my housemates got home. Then, I took my fabulously clean clothes out to discover that my French Connection black linen trousers that make my legs actually look long (I think cos the trousers themselves are too long) had been brutally discoloured by the rather alarmingly magenta top I bought in New York. Grr.

And I didn't get the car breakdown job, as I can't work Tuesdays, which leaves me back... not quite at square one, but maybe two or three (depending on how many steps there are), and my latest potential tutee stood me up. Bastard. After my perilous walk to the park. Literature lesson was fun, and he even showed me where to get second hand books, and this morning sent me an email with various attachments for next time and some job-finding website.

Went out for dinner last night and was so impressed by the flat. It's right in the centre, in a funky old building and has three floors (so I guess not really 'flat') accessed by winding staircases and trapdoors.

If anyone would like to marry me (thus enabling me to wear the absolutely gorgeous dress in one of the many bridal wear shops around where I work) and then move into a funky multi-level appartment with me, I would be very grateful.

Bah. I'm doing that annoying post-bank-holiday timewarp thing, where you're convinced it's Monday and it actually isn't. I don't know why this would affect me, as my weeks have had no structure for quite some time, but I am still disorientated. So there.

Did spectacularly little this weekend, save buying a ticket to the Strokes in July and spending rather too long doing silly quizzes on http://www.okcupid.com which is, I know, a dating site, but I was only there for the quizzes. And there are many. (Apologies to anyone whose 2:1 chances I've just torpedoed.) I also watched L'auberge espagnole cos everyone I've met says, 'Ooh, you're sharing a flat, it must be just like L'auberge espagnole, which it isn't really. (Not so many drugs.) Anyway, immediately after watching it, I found myself weeping, for it was a beautiful portrayal of what it's like going off to a foreign country on your own, and of why it's more important to be a writer than an economist, (also of the general unfeasability of long distance relationships, but we'll gloss over that) but I've now decided it's just shameless EU propaganda (the British are ruining everyone else's fun by carrying on with Americans).

I also got incredibly excited that there is a song with my name in it on the new Franz Ferdinand album. (I also have a Franz Ferdinand ticket, courtesy of the parents.) I know this seems sad, but I have never found my name being used in any book, poem or song except for the maid in Little Women (hey, it's the kind of thing you notice when you're eight), so Well, That Was Easy is now my new favourite song.

I have an eminently manageable to-do list for today. I shall start by plucking my eyebrows.

Though you may be forgiven for not being aware of the fact, I am a technological genius. There was a computer problem and I fixed it. Me. All by myself. Without the help of any male. Not even Thomas.

I didn't talk about Thursday's magic interview, cos I didn't want to jinx things, but despite the presence of Strange, I somehow managed to get the job! Which pleased me greatly, as you can imagine. The interview was very weird though. Usually, interviews start with them telling you all about the job, which you listen to with your 'that would be challenging yet rewarding' face on, then they ask you what you think, and you're so flummoxed by the new information you just mumble something stupid about challenges and rewards, and then they tend to grill you about why you should dare think yourself worthy to be part of so prestigious an organisation, and then they tell you they want someone older/more experienced/who can start immediately/more qualified/less qualified, and you go away and eat chocolate. However, the crucial grilling stage was missing, which meant we went straight to 'well, can you come back tomorrow to sort out the contract' without me getting a chance to clarify that I was only around for a short time. However, I explained this all (with the help of a small white lie) and am now spending 8 hours every Tuesday teaching people in a pharmaceutical firm how to use the telephone until the end of July.

Further potential telephonic excitement may await, with some roadside assistance firm, but this will have to be cleared with the language school, and will also depend on me getting the job. They demanded a social security number which I don't have yet. Bah. And it would be 35 hrs a week, which on top of teaching and planning may send me mad. And would definitely kibosh the Oxford teaching job, which I was perfectly qualified for. Buses. Wendy Cope. Buses.

So, I came home happy but rather confused (as befits someone trying to board three buses at once) and made a wonderfully studenty meal, of pasta and things in tins and jars, and then retreated to a 24-fest, as my housemates had gone out for dinner. Except it wasn't much of a fest. I think I'm getting old. I once watched about 18 episodes of 24 in one go (with brief toilet and food breaks, unlike the hapless characters) but now my nerves can't take it, and I have to limit myself to 2. That, or in my wisdom I have developed a sense of restraint and self-discipline and can wait a decent amount of time for the next episode. (I don't even fast forward the 'Previously on 24' bits any more!)

But this is unlikely, when you consider that I eat Nutella from the jar.

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.

I am still in Lyon, not finding a job or opening a bank accout, because it looks like there's about to be a horrendous storm outside. Also, employment optimism is fading fast, so I might just e mysee what happens at the interview on Wednesday and then maybe try my luck in Oxford instead. Bit wimpy, but prob the most financially sensible option, and can panic about my project as well.

But in the process of looking if there was anything on offer in Oxford, I did realise I had sunk to the depths of unemployability......

I am even ineligible for medical trials.

You know that malaria vaccine who seem to pay quite well and are always advertising for people? Well, they don't want me any more!

Hello,

Am now in Lyon, using my housemate's computer, as mine won't connect to the internet, which, as well as all the usual a/q, z/w confusion, has a particularly sensitive mouse, that I keep accidentally touching, that then sends whatever I'm typing to a completely different place on the screen. Grr.

Still, technical difficulties notwithstanding, Lyon is lovely. I've been here three days, and they've all been gorgeously sunny, and my housemates are lovely (though they know each other very well, which is slightly intimidating, and also the toilet is full of pictures of half naked people - men on one side, for those sitting down, and women on the other, for those standing up). Yesterday, they invited me to a barbecue at their university, which was great fun - everyone there was an engineer, so there was much excitement about building the wee toys in Kinder eggs.

Aside from that, I've just been looking for a job, which, once it became clear none of the language schools were particularly interested, has involved wandering around posting notices in any supermarket that will let me. I also signed up to various tutoring agencies online, so hopefully this will be more fruitful.

And soon I have to open a bank account, which quite frankly terrifies me.

I can also have people to stay whenever I want, so anyone who fancies a jaunt down to Lyon is very welcome.

Ow. My throat hurts. And my mother dragged me off my sickbed yesterday to take me to the emergency Saturday surgery... which has been closed since Autumn 2004... So then I got a lecture on what the modern world is coming to all the way to, erm, Morrison's. Because supermarkets are not one of the scourges of our age.

And, I really need a job (though the boy did cheer me up immensely by reminding me that I would get a student loan this term... I'm not sure why that particular piece of information had escaped me...) and I think my French phone may be trying to tell me I have messages, which may be from some of the 400 language schools in Lyon who I sent my CV to last week, but when I called the voicemail number, it wouldn't let me listen.

And Ryanair have draconian baggage policies, which mings.

That is all. Thankyou and Happy Easter.

Job search progress:
Several bookmarks of Lyon language school websites, 2 open MSN windows, reading of 1 extremely long email, singing along to the CD of Wednesday's concert (yes, I'm that sad), hunger.

To be fair (have spent so much time with Oxford students lately I've started opening sentences with all the old cliches), I am waiting for a reply telling me whether my French CV and application letter are correct enough to be unleashed on the world, and to send them off before that would, obviously, be foolhardy, nay foolish.

Anyway, due to the course actually being rather hard work, and internet access being limited, I haven't had the chance to update much, so you will now be subjected to a long account of everything I have done in the last six weeks.

I shall place this under sub-headings to show off about the fact that I have been in two different continents.

Paris.

Hurrah. I now have an actual skill that will hopefully make me employable.

And I had fun in France. The course itself was rather intense, lessons every morning, where I learnt all sorts of exciting things, like how to use the phonetic alphabet in an actual, practical situation, and why 'have to' is considered a defective modal, and that is possible to die twice in one morning (at least within the framework of a drama workshop). We had teaching practice in the evenings, which was slightly more stressful, but I discovered the trick with children is just to spend three days colouring things for them beforehand - this has the double benefit of preparing exciting visuals to keep them pacified and also stopping you panicking about them devouring you (children can smell fear).

I also went to Zara and bought two V-neck jumpers, but neither of them were black, and it was money my dad had given me, so that was free money, so it doesn't count. (See below for another example from Warped Economy for Hamsters.) And goats' cheese and wine were very cheap, which helped counteract the stress. And I took my friend to hospital in the middle of the night, which gave my French an unexpected work-out.

We had a lovely dinner at the end of the course (we all passed).... and then the boy appeared at such an ungodly hour of the following morning that the Metro station wasn't open yet and I sailed right past it and walked for 15 mins in the wrong direction and pouring rain. But he brought me a Creme Egg, so I forgave him. The next day was sunny, so we did lots of sightseeing and actually got to sit and drink in a pavement cafe (which I couldn't do last time I was in Paris as I had no friends), and the next day was a general strike, so I had to catch a stupidly early train and then sit at the airport for many hours. The airport has no seats. This complicated the whole sitting thing somewhat.

USA

Didn't that blend smoothly into the next sub-heading? (For I was in the airport in order to go to Boston to find the choir.)

I arrived extremely late after a long day's travelling and managed to pick the only taxi driver in the world who needed directions to, like, a whole area of a city. However, instructions were acquired, and I was greeted by Chinese food and lots of people I didn't recognise. The first year intake has significantly boosted the average attractiveness of the choir.

We spent 3 nights in Boston (they all had an extra one), which was very pretty and fun. We did a bit of wandering, the odd concert and the mad Irish one even managed to wangle us a free tour of the Harvard men's boathouse - it was boatie heaven. Everyone in Harvard is also startlingly attractive, including the guy who works in the second hand bookshop where I bought 3 books, which I probably didn't actually need and then had to fit in my case. Ah well.

We left Boston before it snowed, which was cunning, and went to New York, which was fantastic. I think I'd like to live there for a year, but no more. We sang at two private functions, one of which Stephen Fry was apparently at, though no-one told me till afterwards, so I couldn't look out for him, and one of which involved chumming with Queen's Old Members so the Provost could eventually extract money for them, and I unconsciously put on my posh voice which took several days to disappear and used lots of sentences like 'well, of course, if I wanted to go into business or law, languages would be a great asset', somewhat shying away from admitting that my plans for my life, embryonic as they are, do not in any way involve earning money or having the sort of job with a name your parents can easily tell their friends you're doing. After one of these events, Liv and I snuck off and had dinner for two and shared a bottle of wine, and then decided vodka mixers were a good idea, though the citrus fruits were present in name only, and hence we returned to our room rather giggly....

We also did all the touristy stuff, and the Statue of Liberty has the scariest security ever, including scanny airport machine things with air puffers (reason undisclosed), to the dismay of those wearing floaty skirts. And we went shopping. But I only bought a skirt and three tops. And a scarf. Which didn't match anything I own, so I had to buy another top later on. (But even though the second top was an unnecessary expense, it prevented me from having wasted money on the scarf, so is therefore justified.) And then we went up the Empire State Building in a torrential rainstorm and force 10 gale, which limited visibility slightly, though it was a memorable experience. We also went to a classy jazz club, which had live music and expensive drinks, and there was a comic incident involving a shoe and a nose-bleed, but it would be unfair to embarrass the individual involved by mentioning that here.

Luckily, the Virginia part of the tour resembled a hard-core singathon (nicely punctuated by sipping wine in the hot tub) so I was prevented from spending any more money, except for a traveller's cheque left over from Togo, which was already money out of my account, so didn't really count either. We did lots of concerts in lots of churches and they recorded them all for us. It was a bit small-town and creepy, but very pretty, and our host was so generous she baked muffins every morning, gave us all pedicures and hair masks and presented us with huge bags full of chocolate to take home.

And now I really am going to get back to the job search. Or change my flight. Or do something that won't involve the laptop burning my legs.

Jesus, I'm knackered!

We think I'm allergic to lentils, I've spent the last two days tracing and colouring in small pictures of animals, and last night I overexcitedly interrupted an amusing anecdote with the phrase: "Ha! You're using the present tense to describe something in the past! I was right!" and the boy arrives at 6.30 a.m. the morning after our big last-night celebration party. This requires getting up, navigating and speaking French, dammit.

So, yes, aside from the warped mind and having to overcome my fear of talking in front of large groups of people, everything is actually going all right now, though we have limited internet time and I can't waffle on too much. Still, I want to keep you reading!

Can't believe how quickly the time has gone - only just over a week and I'll no longer be busy 12 hours a day.

"Is boyfriend an object?"

Hello,

I thought I ought to update before leaving Oxford, and I may get quite drunk tonight, so it seemed sensible to write something now and avoid a slurred entry at midnight running vaguely along the lines of:
"I'm in Oxfrod and its' reeeeeeeeeally cold and everywhhere iss far away and my feeeeeet hurt but it's sooooooo nice to see everyone againn but my feet hurt and I love you all thanks forr reading...."

So, yes, I have been to Blackwells to buy books because I found a section on the course website entitled 'Recommended pre-course reading' and I'm now wondering what to wear to formal, which is kind of like I imagine my life will be for the next few years. I feel like I haven't been away.

Make it one for my baby
and one more for the road

I am adapting slowly to the harsh northern climes. I've been back about a week and it seems slightly less weird than it did last time I wrote. I spent a few days in Oxford cowering under a duvet, until my parents arrived with a big woolly jumper, which helped me face the outside world slightly better than I had previously been doing. (I got rather overwhelmed and had to be pacified with pizza.) Then we went to my grandparents' and I was fed lots of sparkling wine, and then we came home and I henna-ed my hair and made a lasagne. My life seemed so interesting last week. Yesterday we went to the Lake District to see the other grandparents, and there was more wine, and today I went to Morpeth and bought some cuticle sticks. My life seemed so interesting last week.

Still, I'm off back to Oxford tomorrow (there may be yet more wine) to see friends and then heading to Paris on Sunday, assuming I can find a means of transport from Oxford to Luton Airport. There are photos of where I'll be living here, and it's nice to have the prospect of a welcome meal and social thing to introduce me to the country, rather than spending my first night alone in a brothel and being woken by chickens at 4a.m. ...

Nothing unusual, nothing strange
Close to nothing at all
The same old scenario, the same old rain
And there's no explosions here

Rock formations

Niger sunrise

Timbuktu

Timbuktu

Timbuktu

Dogon country

Camel, Timbuktu

Dogon country

Mali 2006

Mopti port

Three days ago I had heat rash.

I wrote a post last night in which I complained about how the evil computer in Accra ate my last entry, but then I found the other entry, so given as bitching was no longer justified, and I mostly repeated myself (and as dinner was ready) I abandoned it, and now can't remember anything I said, except that I am slightly disorientated and very cold. Yes, I arrived in Oxford yesterday. Yes, I know, I apologise, and I promise to never do anything so nauseating again.

This country is weird. You get off the plane and walk into the coach park, and instead of being mobbed by touts who take your luggage and guide you towards the next bus, you have to manoeuvre your trolley to the board that tells you where your coach goes from, then find the stand yourself... Though you do get an entire seat to yourself. Oxford is full of glamorous-looking people in scarves. I'd forgotten about the scarves. I have a scarf too, a Tuareg scarf, but according to the advert in Milan airport a Tuareg is actually a kind of car, not a nomadic people who live in the Sahara.

I almost asked the taxi driver how much the fare would be, and then remembered that bargaining was not the done thing, for there are wee meter thingies that set the price at £2.50 before you've even gone anywhere.

So I have been mostly sheltering under a duvet.

I don't think I'm a student any more, cos I did the washing up before I checked my email.

"Every time you get off the plane it's like a slap in the face. It's the same when you come back."

Those were the words of the Swiss guy who took me to get take-away food on the back of his motorbike last night. How long is it going to be before I get to write another sentence like that? It turns out the Kokomlemle Guest House is actually about 5 minutes away from a really good restaurant, which makes me laugh, because when the boy was here we spent many evenings wandering around this area trying to find somewhere to eat. Still, the ridiculously spicey kebabs were probably more economical, though thanks to my appetite going AWOL when I got back to my room, I have the rest of my beef and fried rice for lunch.

Yes, I know, I know. That mings.

Well, it's been a while since I last updated. "I'm also ill and not feeling like getting buses" was rather prophetic. Immediately after the internet cafe that day I went back to Julia and Benoit's and started running a temperature of 39C and simultaneously shivering, which turned out to be malaria, so I spent most of last week lying in an extremely green room with a quinine drip in my arm, reading all my books and using up my last walkman batteries. However I have now had another blood test and I am all clean - hurrah!

So, on Friday, I left to find the nuns. They weren't expecting me. I think they were slightly baffled, but they were very nice to me, and gave me toast and marmalade for breakfast, and the parents will be happy. Their church has links with the church in Bolgatanga so I was sent as a sort of ambassador with strict instructions not to make snide comments about 'charity with strings attached' or 'the opium of the poor' and suchlike. I was very well-behaved, and they were all lovely and though I couldn't see much (weekends are not good times to visit schools) I still had a lovely day touring the region getting sunburnt on the back of a moped and saw lots of photos of people doing worthwhile things. Incidentally, one worthwhile thing was distributing lots of old Central High uniforms to local kids when we changed from brown to purple, so I saw all these pictures of people wearing my old gym kit - so surreal. Also, I stayed with some Canadian students, who were from the same town in Ontario where we went on a Pongos tour in 99. The world feels very small. The Canadians were also lovely, and told me that as alcohol was an antiseptic, 50% proof vodka would actually help to get rid of the parasites that were in my liver. I'm not convinced this was a good idea. I felt very sick.

Yesterday I came back to Accra. The driver was the only person in Ghana with a sense of urgency, and I was SCARED! Everyone I met at the hotel said, "You came from Bolga today?" with varying degrees of incredulity. I ended up paying loads more for my room cos the single room I reserved in December had been given to someone else. Turning up as a woman on your own at 9.30 at night is a sure way of getting a room, but does not put you in a good position to argue a cheap deal. And the restaurant was closed, so I had to go off with the Swiss guy. The room is cavernous though. I am currently sorting through my stuff. Even binning all the clothes and shower gel, I have too much.

Will save this and post it tomorrow when I am in Oxford. Weird thought.

I don't want to go home. Please don't make me go home. I want to stay here.

"So I said 'it'll go to penalties' and he said, 'if it goes to penalties I'll give you a guinea fowl', and now he won't give me my guinea fowl cos he says it wasn't a real bet cos I didn't stake anything on it."

Men, honestly.

I got fed up with being harrassed by people wanting to sell me souvenirs and I ran out of money, so I took an infinite number of dodgy buses and came to sponge off my friends for a few days. My father's nuns have not got in touch with me so this may be indefinite. I'm also ill and not feeling like getting buses. And having people to talk to makes the books last longer.

It's fun. They live in a funky little town and have loads of lovely friends, and I have spent rather more time than I'd like watching football (and rugby, but I mind that less) but there is lots of cheap beer and it's all good. Anyway, seeing as I'm supposed to be rejoining the real world in a few weeks (fat chance) I'd better go and ask the BBC what's going on in it.

Hannah

I wrote an email to my dad last week with the subject header "Mali is bloody cold." Nobody had warned me about this. It's in the desert for god's sake.

Still, I have now revised this to parts of it, at certain times of year. I arrived about two weeks ago, but have spent most of the time in obscure villages on the edges of cliffs, or sleeping in the middle of the Sahara, or lying on the floor of a boat clutching my stomach in agony, in none of which places email was widely available, so all the time I spent on the few available (slow) connections was reserved for things like reassuring my hyperventilating parents and trying to find out about bizarre American passport regulations, but I realised that the longer I put off updating this, the worse it would be.

So, I'll try and keep it brief, cos there's nothing worse than 4 pages of name-dropping when you're trying to revise, but it has all been very random and exciting.

First, I went to the Dogon country, where I met a lovely French couple who allowed me to go with them, and we had a great time, walking between all the little villages and scrambling up and down the stunning escarpment. There was a rather unfortunate incident when I got something in my eye, and no-one could see it, so they told me to get a grip and dragged me up the cliff, and by the time we returned, whatever it was was well and truly embedded in my eye. We got back to the campement and I lay writhing on the bed, unable to open my eye, while five men sat secretly around in a circle, and then they came over, pinned me down and shoved a handful of something in my eye. I spent about five minutes crying and clutching onto Julia and Benoît until it was 'finished' and the men told me to sit up, yanked up my eyelid and wiped about thirty black seeds off my eyeball. Bear in mind that it freaks me out to watch other people put contact lenses in... Anyway, it worked, so I have faith in traditional remedies, but, yeah, it was fairly horrific.

After the Dogon country we came to Mopti, a very touristy town on the Niger, which was very pretty but rather full of people trying to sell us necklaces. I did succumb to the temptation to buy 2.5m of gorgeous purple scarf-ness, which is extremely pretty, but transferred a lot of purple dye onto most of my neck and face the following day. It was nice to see a proper toilet again, but we left for Timbuktu the next day... which was possibly the most horrendous journey I have ever made in my life. Except, perhaps, for the trip back from Timbuktu. Basically, we spent ten hours in the back of a jeep with two more people than there were 'seats' and, well, there isn't really a road...

We were quite glad to get there, and had the amazing good fortune to meet the most interesting guy in the world on our first morning. (The guy you recommended, Sarah. Completely by accident. He's fab.) He lives in the northernmost house in Timbuktu, and you really get the feeling you could walk in a straight line north and not see much more than a few tents and camels till you get, well, to the north of Algeria. His wife is a former Peace Corps volunteer and they looked after us very well. Julia and Benoît went home after 2 nights, cos they had no more money, but I stayed an extra couple of days, went on a camel trip into the desert (it was FREEZING at night) and gatecrashed a guided tour of the town with some kindly Dutch people. He also organised my boat ride back, but that was slightly less magical. Obviously, the scenery was amazing, and looking back it's going to be a good anecdote, but certain aspects of it were rather unpleasant. Namely, it is quite difficult to spend three days on a boat, more so when none of the other passengers speaks French, let alone English. Furthermore, well, I was doing quite well with the whole fish thing (I once ordered tuna on pasta and don't mind barracuda) but, well, being in the middle of the river, there are quite a lot of fish, so three meals a day was rice with slimy fish gravy, and I think we're back to square one. In fact, I'm not sure I even want to eat rice again for some time. Also, I was eating with my hands, and washing in the river, and got covered in grease every time I went to the toilet (it was a hole in the back of the boat and involved climbing over the engine), and, obviously, the more unhygienic it got, the more I needed to go to the toilet (not to be too specific) so it was a sort of vicious cycle and I was kind of glad to disembark and sprinted off the boat before anyone could serve me dinner.

I went to a town called Sévaré not too far from Mopti (where the boat went to) and arrived at my hotel, which was run by this American guy, who didn't mind that I hadn't reserved, and I walked into a room full of Canadian medical students eating tortillas, and having people I could talk to (in a choice of languages) and food I could eat was rather a shock to the system, but a very welcome one, and there was even a hot shower. And the next day the medical students were replaced by cynical Americans (who were helpful about visa problems) and Norwegian missionaries. And there was even a pool. And pancakes for breakfast. It was heaven.

And today I am in Djenné, which has a fantastic market and mosque, and I just bought too many blankets, so I now have hardly any money, so am going to hurry along the rest of the trip to get to the bit where I get to stay with people sooner. (Have replanned route to go to stay with new-best-friends, partly cos they're lovely and partly cos they owe me a tenner.) I also had an email from my mum saying 'your father's found you some nuns in Bolgatanga' which is not a sentence you come across very often. (Unless, I suppose, your father has some sort of network of nuns who are prepared to let smelly students crash on their floor. But that is highly unlikely.)

So, yeah, only three weeks to lug my blankets round and then it's back to the boring business of real life and earning money. Meh. And this internet café was quite a trek from town (get 100 m from the market and tourist hotels and this is the most peaceful place in Mali) so I'd better email the boy to tell him when to come and meet me at the airport (armed with warm clothes) and head back hotel-wards before it gets dark and try and find someone to have dinner with. And maybe a beer, if my stomach can tolerate it.

Well, I made it to Saturday 14th in one piece! I did spend, however, approximately 22 hours on a bus, or waiting for the bus at various checkpoints. It was highly unpleasant and I must have managed about 2 hours sleep, not all at once, but once it got light I could look at the countryside, which is very flat, and dusty, and full of donkeys. The Togo-Burkina Faso border crossing, for those who shared that memorable experience with me, bears no little resemblance to the infamous "arsehole of Africa" - except I arrived there just before dawn. This, I will admit in a vain attempt to draw something positive from the experience, avoided some of the problems generally associated with border crossings in Africa, i.e. hundreds of people trying to hustle you everywhere, but did make it all rather surreal. And it was actually cold. COLD. I had been completely unprepared for that and was just wearing a flimsy skirt and top, rather like that bit in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius where he says he's been living in California so long it never even occurred to him to take a coat when he went to Chicago.

On leaving Lomé I had taken Sarah's advice and decided that wearing my 'wedding ring' as soon as I left the house would be by far the best policy, and despite the fact that it is *blatantly* too big for that finger, and *blatantly* was picked up for about £2.50 in a random shop in Lamu rather than symbolising some lifelong bond of love (well, it may symbolise some lifelong addiction to jewellery shopping in hot countries, but that's a different story), I managed to fool the random Nigerian who sat beside me (which he was very excited about because he didn't speak French and hadn't had much conversation for the past two weeks). What actually ensued was probably still more pleasant than fending off propositions for 22 hours, but the upshot of my brilliant plan was that everyone on the bus thought I was married to the Nigerian (nothing could be further from the truth: he was whiny and stroppy and started to seriously piss me off, and after Atakpamé I spent the journey listening to the much more tranquil Snow Patrol) and he spent two hours asking me questions like, 'What's marriage like?' and 'I once saw a film called Titanic - does love like that really exist?' Which at least made the journey fairly comic...

I'm staying in Guillaume's office in Ougadougou, which is v central and nice though extremely dusty. I am extremely tired, however, so I don't mind in the slightest, it's just nice to be able to stretch out in a straight line again.

I wanted to end this with some appropriate lyrics, but on googling, I've just discovered that I've been under the impression 'Catch the sun' contains the line 'I miss the way you laugh' (instead of 'lie') for the last five years, and it's no longer appropriate at all, so I'm going to go home and sulk and catch up on some sleep, and then tomorrow I'm going to lie by a pool and recuperate, and on Monday I'm going to get a visa for Mali and look at the market and find a bus, and on Tuesday I'm going to get said bus, go to Mali, and try and find a guide to take me trekking in 35° heat.

How did I get more tanned sitting on a bus than from spending three and a half months virtually on the beach? Truly, life is mysterious.

Well, this may be the last time I am in Lomé without a Lonely Planet. I have a bus ticket booked for Friday (why I am I getting a bus in Africa, after dark, on Friday 13th???) and a putative route round Burkina and Mali for the next month and a half. (Here I will pause briefly to dance around the internet café singing 'my loan has come through, my loan has come through' and generally being jubilant that my bank account is in credit once more... or will be until I transfer lots of money to my offshore bank account (or my Barclays account, something like that) to fund aforementioned exciting travels.) I am alternating between great excitement (rock formations! woo!) and fear (email from Sarah saying, 'make sure you have a wedding ring) but I sort of feel ready to move on.

Those who were aware that the end of last week was 'rather shitty' and who very kindly felt sorry for me, will now be relieved to know that this week is great and I don't want to leave. The reasons it was shitty included:

• my housemates were at each other's throats the whole time
• I had difficulty understanding an article on French syntax
• I passed the scary ex-housemate on my way home and was bizarrely troubled
• some guy grabbed my arse about fifteen mins prior to aforementioned incident
• I had no money
• the French news made Europe look all snowy and pretty
• I was having shirt issues (not my shirt, shirts for my brothers)
• STAESA were ****ing me around about paying me back my tour deposit from, like, three months ago

and various other reasons, the sum total of this all being that I felt like I was a long way away from everyone I liked. I am now upset for a whole host of other reasons, namely Lomé has been my home for ages, I've learned to be independant and self-reliant here, my housemates are no longer arguing and have been lovely to me, I've been to the beach for the last time till god knows when, Guillaume has a friend staying atm who is LOVELY and musical and funny (and 38 and a software salesman, so the boy doesn't need to worry!!).

Last night was wonderful. After the beach in the afternoon we called on some friends and they have a small pool thing (like a children's paddling pool but *just* big enough to swim in) and we splashed around in that despite the weather being freezing (or thereabouts... perhaps not *freezing* but bear in mind I haven't felt cold, bar a tropical storm in the middle of the night in early November, since Estonia) and then the friend threw Maï in, and later threw the dogs in (he has two adorable labrador puppies I want to kidnap) and we ended up staying for a lovely dinner of Lebanese chicken and rice, and extremely strong Camembert. While talking about cheese, some of the assembled company though I said 'prix' when in fact I'd said 'Brie' and (although this was probably due to the fact that I speak rather indistinctly even when speaking English and sober), inspired by the several glasses of wine I had consumed, I launched into a lengthy exposition of partial versus full voicing in English and French (fervently hope Holly is reading this or my entire reading public will have missed the funny side of this), totally undeterred by my imperfect understanding of phonetics, the haziness of my memories of prelims and the fact that I couldn't think of the French for 'vocal folds', 'vibrate' or 'voiced'. And then Guillaume and Philippe started playing chess (which I played for the first time in about 5 years last Sunday) and Guillaume's friend started playing the drum and Maï was dancing and the power went off so this was all candlelit, and, yeah, I'm going to miss this.

I sort of wish I'd just gone somewhere in October and stayed there all year. I feel like I've been leaving places and people I've grown attached to since the end of Trinity and will keep doing this until the summer. I find it hard to believe that this time last year I was sitting on a train watching 'Bowling for Columbine' with Thomas (we went first class, don'cha know!), and frantically reading Duras books, and getting horrifically drunk on a semi-regular basis, cos that was a brilliant way to cope with the fact that I was feeling unhappy, and that all seems like a very, very long time ago. Tomorrow is exactly three years since I first set off for Africa. How much I've changed since then.

Sorry for the self-analysis. I promise this will soon get back to showing off about how fantastic my life is. I was once told that Christmas could be seen as a time to reflect on how your life compared with the same time last year, and being a long way from home and the library being closed, I spent a lot of time reflecting. Hence pensiveness, nostalgia etc.

Anyway, articles on diglossia and language policy beckon. No rest for the wicked or chronically masochistic. Hope they've fixed the aircon in the library, all my clothes are in the wash, pending imminent departure.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Hope you all spent it in a more riotous fashion than I did. I have now been to an office Christmas party and watched TV on New Year's instead of going out - feel very old. I was also sober enough to remember midnight, which hasn't happened for several years. We didn't spend all night in front of the telly, but went out just after they celebrated the New Year in France (11p.m. here) to try and find some fireworks. There weren't any but we had one of our own that we lef off in the street. Then we went home and had champagne in plastic cups in the car en route. It was still pleasant, if rather peaceful, and the office party was fun, if rather surreal: kind of like a cross between a black tie dinner and a children's party (lots of people dancing round in a circle in between courses). Said goodbye to all my friends and was given a lift home by the ex-husband of the previous inhabitant of my house, who happens to now be married to my colleague Arlette. Small world.

I have now left work. For a variety of reasons, not least that I've finished my stint as a data entry clerk/emergency receptionist (when everyone else is in a meeting) and need time to learn things about African linguistics. I'm not sure what it says about me as a person that when faced with a choice between helping out in a vibrant, friendly NGO that is doing great things to help needy people and sitting in a library selfishly reading about Kabye morphology I choose the latter. I remember writing a letter to Livvy when I was in Paris saying I felt that at some point I'd have to choose between academic/literary introspection and actively trying to better the world, and I fear the former is gaining the upper hand. I am a geek, I may as well embrace the fact. It just makes me feel like I'm putting myself above everyone else, doing something that is of no benefit to anyone, just because I enjoy it, or I'd like to think I'm good at it. Or maybe it's just that the library has really good air-con.

So, as of tomorrow I will be a full-time geek for two weeks before heading off to the desert. And then I come home and my life gets considerably less interesting as I actually become engaged in the business of earning money. This will be rather a shock to the system, I fear.

Keep emailing!

Hannah xx

Hmm. Appear to have just managed to post the message I wrote in Accra last week. I am, to bring you up to speed, no longer in Accra, nor is the hole in my foot as much of a problem any more.

I suppose I should give some account of the boy's visit, as this is meant to be a record of my life, not a forum for extensive Alitalia-bitching. We spent the first ten days sitting around in front of the fan playing cards, and the last week on a mad dash to see half of West Africa, which in retrospect seems slightly imbalanced, but it was fun. He also brought me epic quantities of Dairy Milk and a supply of books (chosen, I am obliged to add, by Livvy, not by him) both of which I am trying to stop myself devouring before New Year. We did a bit of sightseeing, including some really interesting castles and forts in Ghana and spend rather more time drinking the extremely cheap beer. (Yes, Si, there will be a veritable collection of labels for you when I get back.)

Then he went home and it was Christmas, except it was sunny, and I had a traveller's cheque stolen, which mings somewhat. Christmas was very surreal, though my mother tried her best to make it homely for me by sending (yes, really) and actual stocking, filled with a bizarre assortment of presents: stollen, a gingerbread snowman, hand cream, a foot scrub and, most excitingly, a tape of Christmas carols, so my room has been resounding to 'Bethlehem Down' and 'I look from afar' and the usual favourites.

No plans for New Year yet but my housemate threatened disguises.....

This is the second time I have been in an internet cafe in Accra and the second time I have used one to bitch about Alitalia.

I have an exciting, shiny STA Travel ticket which says on it that I can change it at any Alitalia office for the fee of 40Euros. Brilliant, I thought, I can change it at the office in Lome, where I live - that will be convenient. So, one lunchtime, I sauntered into the Alitalia office in Lome where the sulky man behind the desk informed me it would cost me $100. Now, unless the global economy has *seriously* changed since I left in October, $100 does not equal 40 Euros. On further questioning the sulky man refused to show me any official tarriffs, and told me I could only pay cash. Wanting to investigate this further before parting with my little cash, I emailed STA saying 'does this sound a bit dodgy to you?' and got an email from a friendly sounding bloke called Greg (or Mike, or something monosyllabic) saying 'I don't know, what's your booking reference?' Several emails later, we established that the Student Travel Services office in Accra was the best place to sort it out, because, apparently, I have a blue ticket. Well, there you go. So, being in Accra, this seemed like a good time to change the date so I can, like, get back to Europe before me TEFL course starts. The staff there, I would like to say, were brilliant and helpful and I have no complaints. But did Alitalia *really* need to drag me all the way to their office to see the 'rules' governing my ticket and try to get 27GBP out of me, only to send me back to the studenty place when I asked if I could change it there (for 15GBP) saying it was no problem?

I think not.

Maybe they were just making my life difficult because I have dirty trousers.

Anyway I am now definitely coming home. Hurrah.

Sorry for being generally incommunicado for the last few weeks. The boy has been so I've been busy showing him the sights of Lome and eating the Dairy Milk he brought me and suchlike. The boy has now departed. And I have discovered that waving a broken shoe is a brilliant way to get a taxi. Also, that sterilising tweezers, digging bits of gravel out of your foot (embedded there by dramatic fall caused by aforementioned breaking of shoe) and waving antiseptic wipes around all over the place is a good way to take your mind off feeling sorry for yourself. It hurts to walk and I have no smart shoes at all now.

Anyway I have to catch a bus, so I'll apologise for ranting and also for missing three birthdays (or two if Sarah's is today instead of yesterday and she happens to read this in time). Also, happy Christmas and New Year and suchlike. It's all very surreal here.

Things that happened to me yesterday:

• saw a mouse in my room
• witnessed a road accident
• got pissed off at STAESA for ruining my evening
• was assertive twice in the space of an hour (yes - me -really)
• had a woman come up to me, rub my stomach and ask me how the baby was doing
• got trapped in conversation with some guy who thought he had a right to be my best friend just cos he had an MBA from America... reminded me of those MBA people who were randomly in Queen's bar one time... maybe one of the requirements is to pass an exam in being a git
• convinced STAESA I needed my deposit back and persuaded them to book me a hotel in Accra for next week and come to the airport in the middle of the night, hence no longer pissed off with them
• found a restaurant serving bacon sandwiches to rival Harvey's
• ate ice cream in the same restaurant
• felt much happier, once devoid of extraneous wildlife, pissed-off-ness and phantom pregnancy
• had catastrophic nose-bleed and had to go home

I need to name the lizards that sleep on the outside of my mosquito screen. One is named Larry in homage to the one in our bathroom in Kenya. Any suggestions for the other?

I wrote myself a list of things to do on the internet, which read somthing like this:

• email Holly for her address to apologise for not writing yet - also to see if she knows anything about extended essays
• email every tutor I've ever had to find out what the hell to do about extended essays
• find some way of contacting the linguistics department at Université de Lomé
• email booking ref to STA travel to stop evil Alitalia man trying to screw me over
• harrass STAESA for the $150 they owe me
• reassure parents am still alive
• ask the boy to bring Marmite and chocolate

I also had four missed calls this morning, and a text from the boy, so I feel very popular. Am still working as general admin bitch which is more useful and less traumatic than trying to give legal advice and went to a funky party on Friday. I am also currently using the best computer in the whole of Africa, rather excitingly, and it's also right by the door, giving a much needed breeze. Not quite sure how I'm going to cope with the climate in Burkina and Mali. It is very, very hot, with no wind at all. *fear* Otherwise I'm just being a geek - finished Germinal (something I've been trying to achieve for over a year now) and making occasional notes on diglossia in the hope that this will somehow lead on to getting onto that Linguistics and Development MA course at SOAS, should several thousand pounds just drop out of the sky to fund it. Actually really enjoyed Germinal - Karen Blixen was right: in Africa, you read books as the author intended them to be read.

Having shown off about my organised list-making I ought to go and cross some stuff off it. 'Waffle on blog' was not an item.

13 days, not that I'm counting.........

Dear people of France,

1) I know Britain is not in the Euro. I'm very sorry, but it is not my personal responsibility to make this sort of economic and political decision.

2) I don't really eat that much jam. Nor do we eat cake all the time. Really. Also, green beans are not a meal. Not on their own. Not even with lots of garlic.

3) Most of the world's immigrants actually end up in places like Tanzania and Pakistan. It's only about 1% that make it to Europe.

4) Comic books are for children.

That is all. Thankyou.

________________

PS - Would everyone who got all worried about me going to politically unstable countries like Togo and begged me to go and get a nice job in Paris like to apologise now?

Well, I haven't updated properly for quite some time, but as I am now in an internet café that hates gmail and no-one is talking to me on MSN, I have 20 minutes to waffle about palm trees and caffeine and then 10 to sit biting my nails, hoping it posts before my time runs out. Ah, it's fun.

Well, I started work on Monday, but I won't go on about it. Suffice to say I've seen a lot of people in awful situations in the last three days, and there's not a whole lot I can do for them, which is rather difficult at times. I'm helping a paralegal (an amazing woman who can make even the most distressed client laugh), so sitting in on consultations and mediations. The consultations are okay, as they tend to be more relaxed and there's time for people to explain to me what's going on, but the mediations tend to take upwards of two hours and there's all sorts of tension flying around. I've been writing lots of reports, but often people speak Ewe or Mina (a lot of women haven't been to school for very long so don't speak much French) and I don't really know what's going on, as my language skills are still limited to greeting people and hailing taxis, and a lot of the problems are very bound up with cultural issues and traditions that still seem quite strange to me. In a way I'm quite glad I didn't start straight away, as it would probably all have been a bit much in the early stages of culture shock.

It's very rewarding though, and this sort of thing always makes you bond with your co-workers very strongly, so I feel very welcome in the organisation. I go to the little restaurant round the corner and buy lunch for 40p every day - plantains, rice, beans, meat, all freshly cooked and yummy. They've adopted the continental working day which means I leave the house at 7.40 and get home about 6, but have 2 1/2 hours for lunch. I'm skiving rather, as I should be back now, but I didn't finish till 13.30 and feel justified in using my full hour here. Have also succesfully bargained myself a bitrhday present for my housemate (earrings in a wooden box) and she's having a big party tomorrow, with some Germans she knows. Went to the 'cinema' with them (Star Wars 3, no better the second time around) on Tuesday and they were very nice - always fun meeting other volunteers.

Anyhow, had better post this in good time! Hope you're all well!

Hannah x

Right, the last time I publicly announced I was happy on this blog everything went rather pear-shaped almost instantly, so I won't make a similar mistake again.

Suffice to say I have finally started work and everyone there is lovely, and I have been living in the same place for 9 days and nobody has sexually harrassed me yet! I also have a phone - a lovely Nokia 5110 (remember them?) like my first ever phone. It cost me £15 and it's got primitive Snake and no predictive text and it's my new favourite toy.

I also have a new address, which I will email you if you want it. Not sure there's any reason not to post it on here, as it's only a PO Box so no-one can stalk me, but that's not a chance I'm willing to take!!

About to get kicked off the computer, but just wanted to say hi to everyone (if anyone reads this) and will try and email people in a responsible and loving manner, as you deserve, for bothering to email me!

My brain is linguistic soup. It's weird.