Motoristical Maniasis

Very very very quiet, cool (as in temperature 22 degrees cool, not as in funky) day, spent reading The Amber Spyglass, and pootling on here. Duch is back from the States, but I'm still not sure if I've murdered all the greenery she ever planted, yet. I'm quite nervous about ringing her to find out....
I've updated lots of the blog entries from the last week or so with incriminating pictures of my friends, but I'm quite undecided about whether to use pseudonyms for them in future, or to continue with a mixture of real and made-up names. I suppose if they complain I should make it up - no, but the DH argued that it was an invasion of privacy years ago, so I guess I should make all names up. Arrrghhhh, that means I now have to be responsible for the names I make up - I most definitely have names ready for eveybody, but not names they would like....

Someone pointed out this truly idiotic road scheme to me on a dyke messageboard, today: I know I'm guilty of having become the world's most driver-centric bigot, in the two years since I passed my tests, but this thing seems dangerous.
Say you were in an accident, and the driver of the car that hit you had no m.o.t., then his/her car wouldn't have had this chip installed, and you'd be stuffed on your insurance (no joke, I wrote my car off in a crash in June, and my insurance now costs me #1300 per year).
The whole scheme sounds dreadful - not for the fact that it stops people speeding or driving in bus lanes (it won't, because the majority of people will simply not get an m.o.t., or get a dodgy one done, making our roads afar more dangerous place to be. Enough people don't pay road tax or dodge their m.o.t. as it is), but because of the offset invasion of our civil rights. I don't agree with i.d. cards, and I don't agree with the government tracking where and when I drive every day. It's simply too intrusive. (heck, I don't even have supermarkety loyalty cards.)
The people who are caught and fined will be a specific group of drivers - the law abiding group. Punitive rulings like this one simply ensure that this group becomes yet smaller, and that dangerous driving on our roads becomes ever more likely - even encouraged - and ever more dangerous.
If you're a cyclist or a pedestrian, your life will become yet more at risk, as in this scheme the government has created advantages to driving unsafe illegal vehicles, and simultaneously lowered the penalties for speeding, because these cars will be less likely to be caught.

Gah...simmer! And.... breathe.

Finally, if you get a second, there are three new blogs on the blogroll < == over there. Riverbend's blog, in particular, is so well written, it hurts. Do have a look.

character assassination

Had a really nice day snoozing in the sun and reading the His Dark Materials trilogy***. Then I watched some filmage, and got bored (I've watched hordes of films over the last few days, and every single one has been so awful I've left/switched off/returned the dvd unwatched, apart from this incredible 1955 Preminger / Sinatra fillum, 'The Man With the Golden Arm' - about heroin addiction, that scored his fraying nerves to a jazz soundtrack. Nothing has seemed as good since.)
And then...... I cut my hair
I'm not going to tell you anything more about that, other than this: "oh shit".

Random things 1: Terry Venables was at Belllini at the same time as us on Friday;
fmc: "is that some sort of [feigns disgust] football type?"
man at next table: "venables." I *knew* they were eavesdropping!
Random things 2: Choice has presented itself, between meeting really lovely straight blokes I know for an hour or two next week, or meeting unknown not straight women for far more hours and alcohol. Conundrum!
Anyone who read my blog entry on August 16th will know just how tortuous this decision will prove (and just how likely a duvet escape becomes.)

As promised, responses to my blog that people email to me:

You're bonkers, you must come to my party!
Well, okay, I admit I lied that I couldn't use the net to read your blog. I did read a bit. Erm, it was about... something.**
Still obsessed with site statistics, I see?
Ha, I forgot all about *that* sort of blog, one of my kids had one, *now* I remember. [is that good or bad? ulp]
My doom time is 23:23 and has been since I was 16ish. I figured, eventually, that it was usually the time I staggered in from the local pub...
I have checked the site for suitability. [????!]
Don't understand blogs and can't access from here.**
Very impressed with your home-page (is that what it is called?). Had a 'peep' at it, well... a bit more than just a 'peep'
confused by your website...do you really have kittens?
2 laz 2 typ prprly...

So you can feel less intimidated about using the comments boxes, now that you know others read it and are also appalled....

** from the _same_ person! Damn slug texters.

***I wasn't enjoying this so much on the first book, but gradually, it feels more and more like Pullman's influences are the same as some of my favourite authors: Whitman, Voltaire, Milton, Dante, Blake, TS Eliot, Shakespeare, Rilke.... 'course, I might be wrong!

This page graced by sarsparilla at 11:39 PM BST
Updated: Sunday, 31 August 2003 10:31 PM BST
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damn damn damn damn

I forgot to water Duch's copious garden area yesterday and the day before. I'm racked with guilt. I'd better dash the six miles to her house now, and write a blog entry when I get back.
Alistair keeps emailing me very wise sounding opinions about religion. I agree with most of them, and on some points I differ; the worrying point is that I only really seem to know what I think while pissed. Or while reading Paradise Lost. At the mo, I'm prevaricating as to whether beauty is ritual or whether ritual is excitement. Pffft, it doesn't make sense out of context of the direction of the daydream, so I shouldn't even be writing it.
I should have asked fmc what I thought, yesterday (she of the slug texts), she always acts as a wholly self-improving sounding board.
Anyway, gotta *run* before it gets dark and I get covered in hosepipe water AGAIN.
Had loads of funny IM's and emails from people who don't like to comment publicly on here again - will post them up later. hehehehe.

What Shall I Have To Eat?

My fridge looks damn near full to me, but whenever I go to feed my face, nothing presents itself as actually edible. So, in advance my 3pm feed tomorrow, and hoping you don't make me so sick I can't face my 'talian night out, could you have a peek at what's in my fridge and give me some bloody suggestions?

What shall I have to eat?

Note: Those two slices of bacon will be gone by breakfast time.

And just for the people who still insist they can only comment on my blog by email, I promise not to shout at you this time about it. Nnnnnnnnnnnggggg.

Other pics I just whacked up on the site include my sister's bizarre Corrie project; snapshots I took while at the ladies' nude bathing ponds at Hampstead Heath; and of course the by now obligatory cat.
Although somehow the most marvellous pic I've seen today is this car. Anyone got $78K spare for me to ride it? (pleeeeeeeeeeeeease, he could introduce me to Cordelia...)

meatal oedema, not myathlon lemur, you fool!

Another classic typing error that I thought they'd never discover.
I can't tell you how spirit destroyingly dull typing doctor's letters are. Particularly when they mumble into their dictaphones about English Graduates who should be able to spell meatal bloody oedema. My sleep habits haven't changed a jot while I've been covering Duch's job, so I've been crashing around 4am, which tends to lend a rather grumpy bad tempered flavour to the day. Got home at 5.30 tonight, then fell into a deep sleep on the bug fluffy white rug, and didn't wake till 9ish. I feel extremely disoriented, now!
Today I saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Bahrain (nice man), and Jeremy Paxman (very grey haired now, far too grey haired for the foxy chick he was rather desperately trotting alongside, in my opinion).
I also remembered the power of the short skimpy skirt to get seats on trains, stop traffic, get you free lunches, etc. Bizarre. Like cobweb covered Harley St doctor's surgeries, it's all about the window dressing, I suppose.
Anyway, it was as torpid as ever working in an office today. It's certainly cured me of any grass-is-greener work syndrome. Thank christ for Pears, who involved me in an hour long phone call from France, to save me from the typing. He gets full Samaritan points!
Tomorrow, I'm going to meet the texter of the slug text for a glass of fine Sangiovese and some choice moist Italian nibbles at 6 in Belllini, in High St Ken. If any of you lot are nearby and want to come along, feel free*! I've already hacked into jatb's udate account and tried to man-trap her date tomorrow into coming along. Hehe.

* = unless I really don't know you at all, in which case I shall tolerate you, but ask the waiter to spit in your food when you look away.

Avast

Spent the day piddling around Bluewater, and watching Pirates of the Caribbean, which is highly enjoyable camp old tosh. Hurrah! (raises sword from scabbard and swashes buckle)

Not looking forward to the job from Purgatory, tomorrow.

< # Girls Blog UK ? > Powered by RingSurf! < L DykeWrite3 # >

This is my blogchalk: United Kingdom, London, East London, Bow, English, German, Vanessa, Female, 31-35, Literature / Movies, Food / Eating / Drinking.

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System Addict

Today angelfire shut my blog down at noon, as it had exceeded 1 gig's bandwidth. I call this toss of the highest order.
Toss, sir, again I say to you, toss! I never did no sech thing guvnor.
I know I can 'yourmum' angelfire safely, as, having looked at some of the blogs on their sample pages, I feel certain there is no quality control whatsoever.

I am charged, today, with the sheer responsibility of ministering to the physical needs of Sheikhs and harems.
That and having to water Duch's garden (memo to self: you put the garden hose onto jetwash setting, you kill things; remember this.)

Duch rang me at her Harley St practice from America, to check that I was definitely living up to my promise of doing a worse job than her (I say Harley Street, so you know why there were Sheikhs and harems, and don't get confused into thinking they're some new London variety of ice cream dessert - I've never met a Sheikh - or a harem - afore today, sah, and oi can't say as it's terrible thrilling, lah.) However, I can't actually say I've put effort into my mission, as yet - it came quite naturally.
I did have to admit to her in the first four seconds of the conversation that this is the most mind-torchingly tedious job I have ever had the misfortune to endure. I'd rather pluck hedgehogs with my teeth than spend more than my allotted two days doing this.
Are all officey type jobs as frigging dire as this? Imagine watching a cobweb form. Aaaaaaaaaargh!

I've been told off at least four times, so I'm doing Duch proud.

I turned up waaaaaaaay late, without excuse or apology.
I chased a paying customer away because he had the temerity to be late.
I chased a harem's interpreter away because her English wasn't good enough.
I was caught out embellishing medical details to make a better story in a medical emergency situation ("little girls who've had tonsillectomies don't bleed from their ears, Vanessa").
The consultant has yet to realise that when I took dictation, rather than look things up in the med dictionary, I just made all the names of the ailments and medicines up. (Betrodouethylamane, anyone? Try getting a prescription for that.) I'm betting money that he doesn't spot all of them.

Entropy

>meep<

slugathon

Here, for your perusal, is a recently received text from a friend, in all its glory:

AAARGH MAKE IT
GO AWAY! (BIG
Scream) SLUG in
the house hide
under the duvet.
Horrors! Spineless
creatures -
like having a Tory
in your home.
I may have to
move.

Sigh.

Ten points for anyone who can tell which friend sent this text... Here's a false clue.
(thirty points wins you an introduction to SEXYMALE87 on udate; Vic already won 10 - be scared)

My alarm clock is cursed

Problem: Have to go to work and cover for Duch's job tomorrow. However, I habitually stay up late and wake up within a tight window of 1.30-3.30pm. It shouldn't be too difficult to wake up at a normal hour, (especially since I have to start getting to work by ten to 8 next term) except I decided two weeks back that my alarm clock is cursed.
No matter what time I set it for, it wakes me at 11.30am, broadcasting spooky psycho-static, and flashing "14.21". Shades of Final Destination / The Omen.....
It did the same when Mushu stayed over a few weekends back, and I began to have recurrent nightmares that maybe 14.21 is the hour of my doom. So I'm too scared to switch the alarm clock on.
Solution: I could go out to the 24 hour store and pick up a cheapy one, but no, I decided it was a far far more realistic plan to drink lots of white wine, fall asleep early, then spontaneously awaken in time for work. Ah well, at least it will make Duch look like Employee of the Year in comparison.

jatb made me log on to Udate today, so we could stalk the chaps on there while simultaneously sniggering at their photos by email. Yes, chaps, what your paranoid inner voice said would happen. A 21st century version of makin g gagging gestures in the ladies toilets.
It's quite a revelation what some blokes will describe as "very goodlooking", though. If 1 % of those neanderthal sub-literate octogenarian meatheads count as "very good-looking", then I'm bloody Marilyn Monroe. Even these guys look better!
Apparently my most perfect match on their international database (criteria: human, over 27, taller than five feet 8) ..... ?
Me. Sheesh, the DH coulda told them that without the bloody fuss!
Anyway, if you get the chance to log onto udate, look out for "1Mermaid", and message her about how good-looking you are when you rattle your wheelchair, she hates that. Tee hee.

The Indian Festival of Randy Drunken Uncles

Oh blimey, Bhangra-drumming uncles have come to visit my downstairs neighbours. Again.

Previous experience tells me this means loud bhangra caterwauling until 4am, at which point bhangra-drumming-uncles' dancing and drumming become disco-ordinated and confused, eventually, petering out. Oh joy. Is it some Bangladeshi festival today? I really ought to keep a calendar.
Time for loud dance-music-headphones.

Blimey, it was fine, I had a great time, then went out to swim in the ponds at Hampstead today and bumped into some of the people from last night. So much for fear.

details, details, details: the precise odour of this room

Just been reading an online pontification about 'how to weblog' by some prat, and read this:

Do readers really want to know how miserable you are? Yes. But they?re going to want details, the precise odor of your room, why you haven?t showered in a week, or how exactly somebody broke your heart.

I'd been wondering what to say today, while my head is thumping thumping thumping with a hangover that was totally self-induced, and absolutely silly. But the odour of my room? My room stinks of garlic.

Tonight I'm going out with a bunch of lesbians. No biggie.
Tonight I'm going out with a bunch of people I don't know. Again, been there, done that.
Tonight I'm going out with some people I've messaged once online. Hmmm.

Might be weird, if I hadn't already spent a year doing that in the hopes of meeting weirdos (some successes there, mostly failed).
I admit: I met up at least 24 different times in one year with assorted people I had chatted to on usenet, between 2001 and 2002. It was a hobby of sorts - well, more of a collection. It became boring in the end, like most collections, and now I only meet up for a drink with people I mostly already know well from online, or people I actually like. But this lot: I have no idea who they are.
And somehow, that makes it feel scarier - like some sort of weird online dating service. More threatening. They don't know me at all. I have something to prove. Christ!

The DH had contacted a load of them at the start of the summer, when she was unemployed, and they'd invited her out to various gay parties in the East End. All sounded terribly flirtatious. Hmmph.
What's good for the goose.... in the spirit of meeting new blood, I signed up to go out for a pizza with these guys, some time back. Pizza then a club. What could go wrong?

Things that could go wrong:
They're all totally self-absorbed, and nobody talks to me.
I'm totally self-absorbed, so no-one talks to me.
They're hideous, facially, and personality-wise, and they all love me and want to be my friend for ever.
Okay, this list is scaring me now.

To make sure I didn't get the collywobbles and crap out, I dared myself that I wouldn't, couldn't do it. I know myself, an attack of self-recrimination is rare, I usually beat most dares I set myself. A scare dare. Great!
So, tonight's the night. I'd really really really rather go out for a meal with jatb. In fact I thought about inviting her to the same restaurant, so we could spy on these women, from a comfortable distance. Then I realised I hadn't done enough reading this summer, yet. That there are work projects I need to finish by next Friday. Slowly, the excuses form in your head, like a cloud of stuff that means it's okay not to go.
Eventually, I realised that I had a hangover, I felt tired, it's not a good idea to drink again tonight, my feet hurt too much to dance, the dvd needs taking back to Blockbuster's, my sleep patterns are disrupted enough to be on a different time zone to most people, and I'd actually prefer to spend the entire evening under a duvet.
Red alert: duvet-comfort-zone warning. I really must be scared.

So I dared myself more aggressively. Are you a woman or a wimp? Knowledge that I'm definitely the latter is enabling; it makes me want to improve.
So, I'm going to go out with these lunatic strangers. And I'm going to either speak too much or ruin their evening through baleful silence, who cares? I'm going.

Passive-aggressive defence strategies that have kicked in so far:

Drinking till I pass out the night before, to ensure HUGE hangover: it's okay, they didn't like me cos I was boring.
Stuffing myself with fried food both in middle of drunken frenzy, and then the next day again, to counteract hangover: it's ookay, they didn't like me cos I was boring and looked shit.
Eating aiioli. Repeatedly. It stinks to fucking high heaven of garlic: it's oookay, they didn't like me cos I was boring, I looked shit, and I smelled.
Spending waaaaaaay too long online writing a blog: it's ooookay, they didn't like me cos I was boring, I looked shit, I smelled, and I turned up late.

Of course I don't really think these things: I know I'm normal smelling, normal looking, normal levels of interesting or gregarious. But it's interesting, innit: the scared insecure teenager who still lives inside....

Shit, is that the time?!

< # Blogging Brits ? >

Manhattan Transfer

Oops. Oh dear! I hadn't looked at the news for a day or two, and just waved a *slightly* hysterical drama queen type friend off at Heathrow on her Air India flight to Manhattan. We failed to notice the power shortage that blacked out most of North America, and East Canada.
Whoopsy! She's never been to the States before... wonder what kind of impression an emergency-zone, looter-laden version of NYC will make on her today?

48 hours later:

Units of alcohol consumed: 42
Nightclub dancefloors trampled in a self-absorbed dragtastic frenzy: 5
Times accused of dancing 'like a whore': 2 (fucking cheek)
Hours spent sleeping: 3 (on floor while being tortured by new naughtykittens, not deep sleep)
Number of cats cuddled: five (including two naughtykittens, awww)
Varieties of food eaten: Cup of coffee in Surbiton, Chicken burger in Kingston, Panini in Epsom, Frites in Mayfair, and Sushi in Piccadilly. Cramptastic!

Contextual info: Next week I start work as a practice manager in Harley Street (for an Ear Nose and Throat consultant). It's going to be such a bloody laugh, that is. The customers are all sheikhs and opera singers.

New jobs I attempted to learn how to do while still pissed: 2
New jobs I succeeded in looking even slightly competent at: zero.
Drunken phone calls to America from a mobile: 1
Insincerity of same: total.
Amount of crucial information relating to the safety and well being of others that will be retained from today's healthcare professional orientation: 1 item (knowledge that I cannot work a fax machine)
Items of knowledge I was specifically instructed to keep from new employer: 3

(do not say: I've never touched a fax machine before;
do not say: it's fifteen years since I did any office work;
do not say: I've decided to pretend to be deaf while I work for you.)

Number of times screamed in a shrill fashion upon seeing a surgical implement, or the word 'skull': 6 (could be better)
Most effective (successful) excuse for a day off before having even started a job: I have things to do

And they're going to give me money for this!

Gifts For You

For a short time only, three gifts (there's another blog entry coming down within twelve hours, so make the most of them.)

Something to try: lift your right foot off the floor and swing it around in a clockwise circling motion. Then with a finger on your right hand, draw a "6" in the air in front of you.

Can't do it, huh?
Nor me.

link for Vic to follow, join, compete, and win.
A link for each and every Maths amongst you.

Yidaho helped me update some more of the mp3 reviews.

Calcha

Things I've been listening to:
Radio 4 (oh how tedious...)
Jezza's Confessions on Virgin Radio (car crash radio)
Coldplay: A Rush of Blood to the Head (felt maudlin)
Foo Fighters: One by One (for waking up to loudly)
Goldfrapp: Felt Mountain (music for quiet moments)
Royksopp: Melody AM (when I want to listen to Sigur Ros, but know I'll get annoyed by the Icelandic wailing, this lot do more inoffensive bleeps)

On the CD player right now:
Tricky: Maxinquaye (this sort of 90s trip-hop stuff always reminds me of Gary Clail, OnU Sound and growing up near Bristol *cough*)

Things I've been drawing:
Pictures of eyes, mostly.
My scanner's linked to the dead computer, so you can only see not particularly good digi-photos of them. In the making of which, my hand always shakes.
Ten points to anyone who can tell whose eye?

People I wish I'd spoken more nicely to yesterday:
5 (bad)
People I was proud of how nicely I spoke to them yesterday:
2 (could be better)

Things I've been reading:
Phillip Pullman: Northern Lights 5/10
Reginald Rose: Twelve Angry Men (screenplay) 7/10
J.M. Coetzee: Youth 9/10
Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist 8/10
Pawel Huelle: Who was David Weiser 3/10
Malcolm Bradbury: The History Man 4/10
William Irwin: The Matrix and Philosophy 6/10

I may be an English, not a Maths, but book reviews bore me, so all you're going to get is numbers.

Favourite Quote of the moment: concerns the lack of poetry inherent in modern life

"Yet he cannot accept that the life he is leading here in London is without plan or meaning. A century ago poets deranged themselves with opium or alcohol so that from the brink of madness they could issue reports on their visionary experiences. By such means they turned themselves into seers, prophets of the future. Opium and alcohol are not his way, he is too frightened of what they might do to his health. But are exhaustion and misery not capable of performing the same work? Is living on the brink of psychic collapse not as good as living on the brink of madness? Why is it a greater sacrifice, a greater extinction of personality, to hide out in a garret room on the Left Bank for which you have not paid the rent, or wander from cafe to cafe, bearded, unwashed, smelly, bumming drinks from friends, than to dress in a black suit and do soul-destroying office-work and submit to either loneliness unto death or sex without desire? Surely absinthe and tattered clothes are old-fashioned by now. And what is heroic, anyhow, about cheating a landlord out of his rent?
T.S. Eliot worked for a bank. Wallace Stevens and Franz Kafka worked for insurance companies. In their unique ways Eliot and Stevens and Kafka suffered no less than Poe or Rimbaud. There is no dishonour in electing to follow Eliot and Stevens and Kafka. His choice is to wear a black suit as they did, wear it like a burning shirt, exploiting no one, paying his way. In the Romantic era, artists went mad on an extravagant scale. Madness poured out of them in reams of delirious verse or great gouts of paint. That era is over: his own madness, if it is to be his lot to suffer madness, will be otherwise -- quiet, discreet. He will sit in a corner, tight and hunched, like the robed man in Durer's etching, waiting patiently for his season in hell to pass. And when it has passed he will be all the stronger for having endured.
That is the story he tells himself on his better days."

I typed that lot out because Mike's been stressed. Everyone I know wishes they were downsizing to a darkened hovel in a medieval bog, but is too scared to do so without amassing a small fortune first. I think it's a London condition.

MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC

music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music
et cetera.

Okay, this isn't my taste in music, but that of others, to start with: here's some of the mp3 reviews I wrote over the past three years of other people's music choices.
It was part of a game on futb that lasted a few years (would still be going if the notoriously tardy Mushu would get her finger out and post up the latest track!), and the idea was to listen at least three times to tracks of music that you'd never normally get to hear, because it's totally outside / beyond your personal taste^^^comfort zone. I'd have to say that some of the tracks I heard in that game totally changed the whole way I feel about music, got me buyinng music again, going to concerts again, and in doing so, influenced huge parts of my life.
Anyway, there's about 60 or so reviews missing right now, and you'll have to trust me that they were the well-written ones, till I break the safe open to update the page later tomorrow.

Things you overhear

Not always unintentionally, but sometimes removing the context is fun:

"Who needs a blow job when they can have a medium-paced key repeat rate?"

I met her the other day > for the second time in two days, when we don't normally meet each > other that often. She said "Ha! You must think I'm stalking you." > "Oh that's alright," I said. "Take it to the next level if you like." > There was a bit of an awkward silence and she walked off.

"We did used to wonder if you were really gay or just trying to get attention"

"Wonderful news! I'm going on holiday, and I've arranged it so you can do my job instead"

"oi teacher! stop trying to make us feel sorry for your 8 week summer holiday, get out and run around a park or something."

"I had a very rude dream about you last night. Unfortunately, you turned out to be more interested in your Thai prawns"

"You rambled on drunkenly for eight hours? Oh well he'll forgive you for being boring, you're quite sweet when you're drunk."

Anyway... it's baking again, and I've not recovered sufficiently from drinking too much to cope. Apparently the humidity will drop by tomorrow morning, for good. Spent all of yesterday either driving people around London in boiling heat, or drinking in Dave's garden in boiling heat, or boring people with my drunken revelations about the nature of atheism in boiling heat.
I'm meant to be drinking and eating in Edward's garden in West London, right now, but the thought of both clothing and public transport is too scary to contemplate, so I'm merely going to spend the evening loitering by chiller cabinets in the local supermarket, instead.

Itinerary coming up:
Tuesday: visit Winchester Cathedral and learn to put oil in the car.
Wednesday: go clubbing in South West London with yidaho.
Thursday: sleep.
Friday: stalk Seanie. Worry that DH's flight back from NZ is going to land in a jungle and after 20 years lost to civilisation, she'll have to lead the apes out of there.
Weekend: can't remember at all. Sure there was something. Oh, that's it, lightning strikes, I signed up to go out for food and clubbing (Freudian slip, I just typed 'blubbing') with 30 non-straight women whom I've never met before. Yup, quite scared about that one.....
Next Week: do two days of Caroline's job, as a Harley St ear consultant's secretary,while trying to be crap at it, to impress upon her boss that she's a good worker after all. A bit of communist worker type intransigence should do it. Then Suzanne and Simon are visiting, so I need some scary Londoney activity for scaring purposes. Any suggestions? (:D)

This is quite diary-ish, isn't it? I'll knock Alex's Diarist crown off his bonce yet....

My my my, Ermintrude ....

It's Pride in Brighton today. No, I've never been. Although I discovered my (George Michael-obsessed, 20 something) neighbour is the LGA rep for the NUS yesterday, when six million leaflets got delivered.
My freeholder 'repaired' the front door (that hasn't had any fastening at all for 9 months), yesterday - 'repaired' in the sense of disabling the intercom system, locking us all out of our flats, and giving out 3 keys, only one of which works ( .... mine! ....)
For the inexpensive sum of #9K.
Words couldn't express how much I loathed the bloke already, but everyone else in the flats thought I had some sort of unbalanced psychosis about him. Hah! No-o-o-w they get it......

Spent the afternoon chatting to Andrew - apparently the temperature in Paris has been in the 40s all week, and calmed down to 38 today. Boy, now do I feel like a whinger.
Although not half as much as when I pointed out that I was bored, and his was the first human voice I'd heard this week; his response: "I read your blog; it shows". This much is also true.... :D

Realised there's no mention of music at all on this blog. This is wrong. Will sort this out tomorrow.