Enough is enough

Taste buds are weird, aren't they. I mean, we all have thousands of them (millions? billions?) and I suppose, thinking about it, that it's inevitable that everyone's will work in different ways. But what is odd is that so many people's appear to be faulty. It is laughable to me (and I know my father agrees with me on this matter, if few others) but it seems to be an oft-held perception that coriander is not a poisonous, meal-ruining, acrid leaf from HELL but in fact a tasty herb that is effective as a garnish. I know! It's patently absurd. Of course coriander is the devil's plant, devised solely to make all food take on the flavour of water that has been used to wash up after a dinner party and then left in the washing up bowl for approximately one week, during which time a mouse has crawled into the bowl, drowned and started to decompose.

So the mystery is how coriander has found this ubiquity in the past 3-5 years when all our natural instincts are, of course, to reject it. And it is my honest belief that the herb has been promoted by insiders at Sainsbury's, determined to test the limits of Jamie Oliver's powers of persuasion, in preparation for his still-secret bid to take over the world via a threat of chemical warfare to be unleashed at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. Yes: everyone who claims to like coriander has been duped into doing so by these evil corporate hounds. Just like tabacco, everyone hates it at first, but if you try hard enough you can override your own good sense and develop a taste for something truly harmful and wrong. But there is good news! It is not too late to reverse the process. Please, I implore you, save yourselves. Train your tastebuds to do the right thing. Reject coriander and show Jamie Oliver who's boss. At best, you'll save the world from destruction in three years. And perhaps if more people see the light and face up to this herb's true evil, then local sandwich chains will catch on and stop RUINING MY LUNCH with needless, covertly-hidden leaves chopped so fine that they are IMPOSSIBLE TO EXTRACT. Rage.

Envy

This morning a woman went past me on a bicycle. She was wearing the coolest jacket in the history of warm outerwear. It had a dark grey leather body, very soft, close-fitted in a bomber style, cropped. And then it had a large floppy wool collar, thick waistband and thick ribbed woollen sleeves, made out of black wool flecked all over with silver glittery sparkles. I was so jealous that I came to a halt and stared at her as she cycled by. I don't know what else I've thought about since but it's not much.

Rivetting

The news hasn't been making me smile much of late, but one of the comments in the online Guardian this morning did make me giggle, as the poster said that Labour and the Tories are so similar that there's not a "hare's breath" between them. I LOVE it when people make sense of things in their own head. The idea that s/he'd heard someone saying a 'hair's breadth' and thought that the breath of a hare would be, of course, so thin as to provide an ideal metaphor for similarity between two items is - if I may be forgiven for being enormously patronising - adorable. I think I may have mentioned before that my friend Eva had a charming interpretation of the lyric in Paula Abdul feat. MC Skat Kat's Opposites Attract which should be rapped, 'Nothing in common with this trust, I'm like minus, she's like a plus - one going up, one coming down but we seem to land on common ground.' Eva thought it was, 'I'm like a miner, she's like a bus,' and using the 'one going up, one coming down' moment, had made perfect sense of it all. On a different level, I used to think that it was some sort of coincidence that British judges were called Justice, and that a lot of ambitious mothers had been trying to determine their child's future by calling them appropriate names to make their CVs more likely to be selected from the pile. I also love the common slip-up 'fine toothcomb' which makes me think of very delicate people refusing to brush their teeth but instead choosing to comb them with a tiny silver implement, a bit like a miniature nit comb but, well, finer.

Much as I enjoy these linguistic nuances, I get the feeling that other people want to stab me in the eyes for my smug know-it-all-ness. And I do understand their irritation. But really, I'm only trying to help. Across the road from my office, the sign outside Bagel Mania has read 'Chilly con carne' for several months. Yesterday, I happened to walk by when a Maniac (surely the employees' name for themselves?) was cleaning the sign, so I thought I'd mention that there was a spelling mistake lower down. She looked at me as if I had just asked if she wanted to drink dog sick. "It's quite funny," I said with jollity, trying to show her that I knew it was all a bit of light-hearted banter. "You've written chilly with a y! That means it's cold! Brrrr!" As I caught myself rubbing my own upper arms in a bad charade, I knew that I must commit suicide for the benefit of society. No one likes a clever dick.

Lesson learned - but only for about 17 hours. This morning, Kate sent me an email saying she was 'rivetted' by something and I replied that it sounded like she was being fastened down with metal pins. I couldn't help myself. And I justified it too: what, I reasoned, would happen if Kate were writing to someone important and made such a terrible gaffe? But then I took a deep breath and reminded myself that no sane person gives two hoots about spelling mistakes, and that most sensible people will surely see my pedanticism as a petty little pseudo-religion which is created to make adherents feel like part of a community, cultivating a failing Other so that they can feel superior to someone. Of course, inevitably, the tiny community is full of petty-minded pseuds with nothing better to do than correct people's spelling and grammar. And I'm one of them. Urgh. I need a new hobby.

Bit of fluff

Dear clothing manufacturer,

Please, I beg you on bended knee with woeful eyes, hands clasped in prayer, head bowed, drooling with subordinance, please please please stop making apparently lovely soft jumpers with fluff that comes off ALL OVER MY CLOTHES and makes me look like I've been diving into a swimming pool filled with moulting labradors because it drives me ABSOLUTELY MENTAL and the rage it causes me may lead me to do something dangerous or silly in future. I simply don't understand how you can justify the sweatshop creation of garments, such as the purple cropped cardigan I am wearing today, which look good only for as long as it takes me to leave the house and walk to the tube, and which then, as the doors of the Northern Line shut behind me, reveal their true colours as evil fibre-shedding, outfit-wrecking disaster raiments.

It is now almost the end of the working day and I have turned into one big purple woolly item. Despite the fact that at no point do I recall touching any cardiganed part of my upper body to my lower leg, I now have a smooth sheen of fluff all the way down my black trousers. Attractively, it has clumped together anywhere that there is friction, i.e. around my inner thighs. I would need a team of uniformed elves constantly and quickly brandishing adhesive fluff-removing rollers for the next hour in order to leave me untainted by unwanted matter. Admittedly the uniforms would not be strictly necessary but I think it is unarguable that they add to the drama of the scene.

I am sure your plan for ill-conceived items such as my cardigan is that naive shoppers such as myself will buy them from your stores, unable to detect the damage they inflict during our brief foray into the changing rooms. You will be laughing at our stupidity, and revelling in our powerlessness to return the items once we have worn them. And you would be right. I DO feel stupid. But I have consumer power, and I am going to wield my clout-heavy axe with all my might. Are you ready? Here goes. I will continue to shop in your store. But I will tell everyone I know, that should they come across this purple, leopard-print, gold buttoned cardigan from New Look in a charity shop in the future, do not under any circumstances buy it. Because it is a nightmare.

There. I bet you regret your choice of wool now, don't you? Eh? Eh? Who's laughing NOW, big shot?

Yours,

LLFF

Biological Crock

On the train down to Nicole's on Friday, I listened to The First Days of Spring, the new album by one of the vanguard of the nu-folk revival, Noah and the Whale. A break-up record in the old tradition, it charts lead singer Charlie Fink's faltering steps into singledom after his break-up with folk's sweetheart, Laura Marling. His voice is a bit rubbish but the music is pleasant enough; the lyrics, however, are painful - not (only) because they are (in places) quite bad, but because of the rawness of the emotions they express - the eponymous opening track illustrates Fink's optimism following the change in seasons, but then the music quietens right down and he admits that he's "still here, hoping that one day you may come back." It's uncomfortable in its honesty and, as a young lady who's been pretty honest in her time, I can't help wincing pre-emptively at the thought of how 23-year-old Fink will feel in a few years' time. Listening to the songs, I didn't think, "Oh, poor you," but rather, "C'mon lad. I know, it hurts, but don't tell everyone. You'll feel better soon and trust me, you'll want to forget all about this, not sing it night after night on stage."

It's one of life's harsh truths that it's alright to be happy and gushing about love when you're in it - but when you're not, for god's sake you mustn't appear to want it. In fact, scratch that - you can't want it at all, not even secretly, because They Can Smell The Desperation. And the older you get, the less you must want it. Instead, you must be happy on your own, content with your independence, peacefully enjoying your life, safe in the knowledge that "it'll happen when you least expect it" and "if it's meant to be, it'll be."

I can't argue with any of the above. It's undoubtedly true that on the occasions where some maniac has really, really wanted a relationship with me, I've found them needy and desperate, and I am way more likely to steer clear. Conversely, commitment-phobes are irritatingly attractive and I become moth-like in my persistence, outraged that they don't seem to be swayed by my numerous charms. Of course, should said commitment-phobes change their minds and decide they now think I am the best thing since loaf met knife, I will almost certainly lose all respect for them within a matter of seconds. It's not my fault, it's human nature, and it happens to almost all of us.

But still, it's tricky. As you will know if you've been paying attention, I have no Significant Other at present. And, as I've said before (but hopefully not to the point where I cross the line from easy, confident opining to the lady protesting too much), I know that this situation is the right thing for me right now. I'm as sure as anyone can be that my future is bright. And I can honestly, hand on heart, say that I am happy without kids right now. If I could click my fingers and be crazy in love and pregnant, I wouldn't. I have a fair bit of travelling I want to do before I have nippers, for a start. But, just like every other single woman of my age, I am painfully, daily aware that, medically speaking, I should be having my kids now, even though psychologically, I would be perfectly happy to wait another seven or eight years before producing offspring. I've always wanted to hang out with the father of my children for a while before he becomes the father to my children, rather than calculating whether I'm ovulating as I sprint down the aisle. But as I stood drunkenly over tiny Isla's cot at about 2.30am on Sunday morning, stroking her back and marvelling at the grip of her little hand around my index finger, I very nearly cried. Of course, the booze was talking, but I had a rare moment of stampy foot childishness, because fundamentally, it's Not Fair. I'm 32. I have a fantastically fortunate life. I can do pretty much whatever I want: I'm a pro-active person who Gets Things Done. But ultimately, the thing I want most in my future is unequivocally beyond my control. There is absolutely jack shit women can do about wanting kids, except make sure that they never think or talk about wanting kids, because if they visibly want them, they're desperate and thus less likely to have them. God boys have it easy. Sure, a lot of 32 year old men want kids too, and can't find the right woman to mother them. But the time pressure simply doesn't exist in the same way, and it blows.

What is true is that devoting any time or space to this is absolutely, undoubtedly, 100% pointless. When I am in a position to start trying to have kids in the future, there's no guarantee that I or my chosen partner will both be fertile. And, of course, even if I have a gorgeous baby this time in four years, I may get hit by a bus in five. There is no way of knowing or planning for the future, so the task in hand is to enjoy the present and live for the moment. The only thing I can do is be as happy and funny and pleasant and lovely as possible. And mostly I do that pretty well. Just not so much when a gorgeous 13-month-old is staring up at me through sleepy eyes and gripping my finger when I've had a skinful of wine and been emotionally charged by an hilarious dinner and a viewing of The X Factor. From now on, babies and I will only come into contact during times of total sobriety, when I will be able to see them as the selfish, demanding, uncompromising, irrational, dependent, helpless, dribbling, mucous-producing, money-draining, sleep-depriving, life-as-we-know-it-ending creatures they really are. You live and learn.

Non et in Arcadia ego

OK, so I met up with Joanna at Bertorelli's, and we sat at our table, excited about wining and dining before the showing of Arcadia. I had arrived first and thus was seated on the banquette (sp?) and she was facing me. Within about seven seconds of her joining me at the table, members of the waiting 'team' had banged into the back of Joanna's chair approximately eleven times, so we moved. Joanna, having been on the outside edge of the first table, reached the new table first and so got the coveted not-in-a-thoroughfare seat, but being nice, I didn't comment. Until now. But I'm not bitter.

At approximately 18:17 hours we ordered our food. It arrived at approximately 19:06. By this time I was about to have a hernia and had lost my appetite, although needless to say, when my tagliatelle carbonara (yes, I am that adventurous) finally reached me, I somehow managed to force it down in a matter of seconds. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't show Johnny 5 eating in Short Circuit, probably because, being a robot, he doesn't eat or have a digestive system, but if Johnny 5 had eaten tagliatelle carbonara, he would have looked a bit like me. Although I have better boobs.

The manager was very apologetic about the delay we had suffered and, without us having to ask for a discount, gave us our wine on the house, which was brrrrrrrrilliant and definitely worth the stress, although obviously I then wished I'd ordered a more expensive bottle. So we paid for our food and went across the road to the theatre. I then got embroiled in a sarcastic exchange with the woman on the door who insisted on double checking that her colleague had checked my ticket correctly and then looked at me accusingly when she discovered that my ticket stub had not been torn off, as if I was deliberately trying to enter the theatre with my stub still intact. What purpose this random act of subterfuge might serve, I have no idea. Then after a further stress (where Joanna and I were trying to order interval drinks and the announcer said 'This evening's performance will begin in one minute' and we panic bought wine and ditched the Minstrels idea, even though I wanted chocolate WAY more than I wanted booze, and then hotfooted it back to our seats only to find that the curtain didn't go up for at least seven or eight more minutes, during which time elderly theatre goers wobbled in as if going for a stroll, not a care in the world, and I wondered (not for the first time) if my perception of punctuality is actually flawed and if I should realign it so that it is more consistent with the remaining 99% of Western civilization), we were finally in our massively uncomfortable seats and the show began.

And it really wasn't that good. Everyone has been raving about it, so with irritating yet characteristic contrariness, I sat there looking for flaws, but it sadly wasn't difficult to find them. The playwright, Tom Stoppard, is undoubtedly very, very clever indeed. I mean, seriously, seriously clever. But why does he feel the need to ram his intelligence down everyone's throats all the time? Sure, do it once. Write one play so that everyone knows how brilliant you are. But then, after that, must you keep doing it? I was sad, because there were lines in the play that were brilliantly funny, moments of Wodehouse that I just wished would continue, but then he had to go all high-horsey and talk about Fermat's Last Theorum (does that Need To Be Capitalised?) and algebra and academia and science vs. nature and all these things, which are all valid preoccupations of course, but must they all be crammed into one play, along with the whole 1800s vs. modern day setting? It was all just a bit exhausting. And not that well cast, IMHO. But what do I know? And maybe I missed the best bit while I was asleep. The carbonara caught up with me at the end of Act 1 and I had a bit of a snooze during what was inevitably the key scene that had all the critics wetting their pants. Anyway, everyone else loved it and I'm glad I went.

On our way out I noticed that Dr Robert Winstone of Child of Our Time fame was in the audience, which made me perk up, but then this morning I found out that Mick Jagger had also been in the audience just a few rows further forward, which made even my celeb spot feel markedly B list. So - another night out in London. Off t'country in a minute and can't wait. See you on the other side.

Kitten

Aw, look at his little face, all covered with milk! It is a little-known fact that, when I am not being fascinating and erudite (or, indeed, paranoid and aggressive), I am often being obsessed with baby animals. Throughout 2009, I have been enjoying my page-a-day calendar of cute, featuring photos of kittens, puppies, hamsters, dwarf rabbits, guinea pigs wearing hairclips, a hedgehog with a cardboard tube stuck on its head, a tiny panda cub putting its paw up to the glass so that we can see his tiny pads, and a goat kid chewing on the plait of the girl holding it. The pleasure I derive from looking at these photographs is strange to me. But it is real, and it is harmless. Ha ha! I've just remembered the baby panda! Ah, those were the days.

So, not much has happened since yesterday except I am now crippled. I have some sort of shoulder ache on my left hand side that is spreading up my neck and will inevitably progress through my ear canal into my brain and I will be left writhing in agony for weeks in my flat with only my dying basil plant for company. It started last week, but I successfully distracted myself at first - now my life is so empty that it is almost all I can think about. I went for a Chinese massage after work (like a normal massage except you keep your clothes on and sit face down in one of those massage chairs so I feel like it's more medicinal and less luxurious and thus justify its expense) and after I left, it felt indescribably amazing for about four or five minutes and then returned to its normal state. Laura thinks I have tendonitis which sounds quite glamorous but also fractionally irritating. I'm going to take some Nurofen and see what happens. If it gets any worse I will sue my company, as I think it is almost certainly as a result of some form of RSI. One of my bosses gave me a job to do about a month ago which involved opening an Excel spreadsheet, copying an 8-digit number, then opening a complex bit of inhouse software, and pasting the number in a new box. If the number was recognised (which it normally wasn't), I had to then click a series of other links. Any one of four results were possible, so I had to then put one of the numbers 1 to 4 in a box next to the original number in the spreadsheet. The total number of 8-digit numbers I had to check was around 1200. It was so phenomenally boring that I fell asleep several times while I was doing it, even though my office walls are glass and the person who gave me the work sits about three feet away. I was beyond caring. About ten days ago, he asked how I was getting on and I lied and said I was nearly finished, when in fact I'd done about 65. So the past week has involved hours of this insufferable task, which I'm sure I could have designed some macro for, but didn't have the energy or the conviction in my own macro-designing abilities. Anyway, my shoulder agony coincides almost precisely with this task, so I'm sure it is that which is to blame. Not the fact that I carry an insanely heavy handbag, the opposite to Mary Poppins', in that it looks empty and is in fact almost empty, but magically weighs three quarters of a metric ton. And not the fact that I sit slouched down in my chair with my buttocks right on the edge, my body twisted slightly to the right to read my emails. Nor the fact that I drink with my left hand (and, additionally, write and eat and brush my teeth, although drinking is probably the Big One). I'm sure it's the Excel spreadsheet's fault. I blame my boss. And failing that, I blame Bill Gates.

Ooh, but now I feel guilty because for comic effect I said that my life is empty, and in fact it couldn't be more jam-packed. Why, just on Tuesday I spent the entire evening sitting on my sofa in the dark, refreshing my laptop waiting for Gmail to start working again! What could be more exciting? But then things picked up massively. Last night, Emily took me for my birthday treat: a manicure and a meal at the Ramsay-owned Box Wood Cafe. Lucky me. My nails look amazing and I feel like a proper, dainty grown-up lady which is a bit scary but also I suppose not a bad thing every once in a while. Plus I ate the world's most delicious taramasalata which was so exceptional that I debated licking the bowl. And tonight I am going to the theatre to see Arcadia with Joanna and I'm excited about that, although probably more excited about dinner in Bertorelli's beforehand. And tomorrow after work I'm going to stay with Nicole in the countryside over the weekend, and I literally cannot wait for that. So it's not that my life is empty. No siree. I was just being melodramatic. Can you believe it?

Honestly.

I'm going to tell you the truth now. No hilarious stories about blood on my leg or wee on my foot. I can write brilliantly about all the crazy antics up to which I get, and you'll think I'm truly astonishing and massively enviable and that everything is hunky dory - and in many hundreds of thousands of ways, it is: my life is brilliant. [Growl at unavoidable James Blunt quotation]. But in addition to me being extremely hunky dory, I'm also feeling a fraction pointless. I'm 32. An amazing talented and unfairly attractive girl in the year below me at school just had this fantastic article written about her in last weekend's Observer and it made me want to run out of the office, rip off my Marks & Spencers slacks and do something scandalous. But then I remembered (or rather, Kate reminded me) that I too have fun anecdotes from the past ten years, and that if one distilled them all down into a pert article, they'd look amazing as well. Plus I am very bad at being poor and I have a mortgage to pay. Obviously I don't love my job as much as Marina loves hers, but I do love the fact that my salary allows me to do fun things like go to the theatre and festivals and on holiday and out to interesting restaurants and to buy clothes from hip vintage retailers so I look like a kooky cool kid about town. In addition, I'm single, which is fine. Genuinely fine. Sure, I'd rather be Crazy In Love and be being flown to Prague and kissed inappropriately during the intervals of concerts and receive saucy text messages while I'm in work meetings, but I'd also rather be a size eight with permanently tanned skin, naturally blonde hair, no cellulite, a photographic memory, an uncanny knack with an acoustic guitar, a great pianist, songwriter and jazz singer with feet that are a size eight or smaller. I'm none of those things and that's fine. I just think that maybe I'm a bit... bored.

What I need is an adventure. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be terrifying. Something along the lines of a breath of fresh air. Some reinvigoration. I was thinking about taking a sabbatical, going to Thailand and training to become a yoga teacher but then I thought that was ridiculously selfish. I know I should probably do something that makes the world fractionally better. However, unless it is a) quite easy and b) ends up with me being thinner and browner, I just don't think I will be motivated to do it. I do want to make the world better, really I do, but just not if it's really difficult. If I'm honest, I probably won't do it if it's even just a bit tricky. It's disgraceful, and you're welcome to hate me for my intrinsic laziness, but I may as well be upfront about it now. Having been beating myself up almost non-stop for my twenties, I am so delighted with the idea of just existing happily, that my motivation to put myself out, to do things that are hard, or occasionally unpleasant, even when the goal is honourable, has almost disappeared. Added to that, my deep cynicism about politics and the media mean that fighting for change seems pretty pointless. I've been left as a selfish loafer and I don't like it - but I don't like any of the alternatives either. So, my perimeters are fixed. But perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps one can change the world between 9am and 6pm, Monday to Friday? I'll think on't and let you know.

In other news: my weekend was odd too - which is probably part of the reason why I'm feeling a bit confused now. The Glastocrush is sadly Glastover, as you may have gathered, which is all for the best, but meant that I was single on Saturday night when Ses and I went to the Michael Jackson Birthday tribute night at the Jazz Cafe. It was brilliant and I wore my white fedora and lots of fun people danced with us and a handsome man bought me a drink. Result. Then on Sunday I had a cold and was also very hungover and went to the Notting Hill Carnival. This was a terrible, terrible idea. I was single and ill and grumpy and emotional and needy and singularly unable to get drunk despite many beers consumed, wandering around streets full of deafening music and seemingly shielded from the fun by some sort of killjoy force field. I ended up having a massive row with the world's most annoying policeman, bursting into tears, stropping home early on my own, having a bath and going to bed while everyone else had a brilliant time by kissing attractive people, going to impromptu house parties and then onto raves in Shepherd's Bush where other people were inhaling laughing gas out of balloons. Maybe next year.

Also: my mouth is all cut as I had a tuna baguette for lunch. As if it wasn't bad enough to feel guilty about the fact that I've just eaten white unrefined flour, lots of mayonnaise and probably some butter (too frightened to look), and knowing that my only attempt at five a day was a few slices of cucumber, I now have to sit here in oral pain. Gah.

And finally: this is my 400th post.

They're (not) jammin'

Yesterday after work was a masterclass in delayed gratification: I used a voucher for a full body massage that I was given by an ex in the year 2000. I found the voucher during a clear-out at the weekend and, with no expiry date on it, I thought it was worth a go. I'm sure Charles Worthington have changed their stationery in the past nine years: I was convinced I'd be busted and was barely able to enjoy the massage, so tense was I about getting caught out at the till afterwards and be forced to pay the treatment myself. But it worked. And there was something she did on the backs of my thighs that made me want to take a sabbatical and pay her to continue indefinitely. Thanks Henry.

Then I went to meet Grania at The Roundhouse, where we were going to see David Byrne's installation, Playing The Building. This is a concept situated in the Venn diagram intersection of pointless, odd and unforgivably wanky, with emphasis on the latter. Basically, the artist had taken an old pipe organ and hooked up wires to various parts of the building. When people press keys on the organ, something, somewhere in the building, will make a tap or a clank or some sort of deep vibration. All the noise is made by existing structures within The Roundhouse. It's meant to make you appreciate the building in a new way. Yadda yadda. What was HILARIOUS was the fact that we went there, accidentally, during a 'jam' session, where people had been invited to bring their instruments along and play along with the building. When we arrived, there were people holding about thirty guitars, a tuba, a couple of trumpets, a couple of saws, one of those weird things that that man in my photo is playing, a cello, a couple of tiny ukuleles, someone blowing across the top of a plastic Coke bottle, a few maracas, some bongos, an accordian, three massively overpowering Chinese gongs and a mad woman who took a drum stick and dragged it in big circles along the walls. I don't know why I labelled only the last woman as mad. Seemingly without exception, everyone there was certifiable. This was to jam what Katie Price is to subtlety. Bonne Maman this was not. I watched everyone with wide eyes and one eye on the door, wondering if I am just desperately sad and uncreative as the cacophony made me frightened. These people had carried their instruments on the tube! To stand in a big room and try and make music - when no one knew what they were playing, no one took control and no discernable chords were played! It was absolutely shambolic, made all the more poignant by the fact that the 'musicians' had all carried their instruments on the tube and so had to pretend it was fun and beautiful, for fear of looking like they were all just wasting their time. I thought it was risible, but I'm extremely glad it exists. Everyone needs a hobby; if yours is 'playing random notes on a miscellaneous instrument while listening to others doing the same in an unconnected way, accompanied by the taps and clanks of a large circular structure' then get your ass down to The Roundhouse before the end of August.

This morning, Laura was in my office and I was looking at my leg, my right leg, near my foot, and I noticed something on my ankle. And I said, "What the hell is that?" and we both looked closer and it was clearly a few drops of a reddish-brownish liquid that had been spilled down my leg, just above my ankle and onto my foot. And we looked a bit closer, and found that it was clearly, unmistakably blood. Someone Else's Blood. I hadn't cut myself. It was not from a graze. Well, at least, it was not from any graze of mine. I looked at it in horror and amazement. What angle would someone have had to be at to get three or four drops of their blood on my leg, when I'm wearing a longish skirt? How much were they bleeding? I worry for them. I tried to argue with Laura that it could have been some sort of berry smoothie, but she looked at me as if I was Priorybund. Apparently it is far more conceivable that someone had spilled blood on my leg than that I'd been sprayed by some errant smoothie. Either way, having had urine on my foot on Tuesday and blood on my ankle on Friday, I am now rather concerned for the weekend ahead. Sperm on my shin? Snot on my knee? I'll keep you posted.

Nothing to report

I have nothing to say today, and when I asked my mum what to write, she said, 'Well, your father's just putting the final bit of soil around the new tree,' which, while gripping, wasn't really something I felt could fill an entire blog entry. I didn't do anything cultural last night - I got my hair cut and as usual no one's noticed, and then I went round to Astrid's where we had dinner with Ed and Tom, and it was really very fun indeed, and we discussed the fine line between agnosticism and atheism and ate seriously delicious food and I disgraced myself by finishing the rest of the white chocolate sauce when I was already really full, and then I went home and went to sleep and had weird dreams and then came to work and did some work and this afternoon I got an email showing me the route of the twenty mile night hike I'm going on in September in aid of Maggie's Centres, and we get to go in all these cool buildings on our way, including Battersea Power Station, and I can't wait. Then I was on the Guardian's homepage and noticed that there are now 130,000 members signed up to their Soulmates dating site and I can't understand why the number keeps going up because surely some people meet on the site and get together and remove their profile and it's a bad advert for the site's alleged success if numbers are continually sky high and growing? And I also downloaded a map for the Notting Hill Carnival and booked some tickets for something at the Jazz Cafe and made some other plans and basically I am SO EXCITED about all the fun things I have coming up in the near future so I'm feeling very lucky. But no one has urinated on me or farted near my head and I haven't tripped over in public and revealed my pants and I don't have anything vital to say about Channel 4's long overdue decision to axe Big Brother and I still haven't decided on my evening classes or my next adventure. I'm a bit in limbo at the moment. It's fine here, I have no problem with it as a location. But I couldn't stay here forever. More news as it comes in.

Ew

I can't believe it's taken me so long to write this down.

Yesterday, I was walking along Whitehall towards the ICA where I was going to meet Emily and see Shooting Robert King (recommended) and then Sara was going to meet us in the foyer and we were going to go to the bar for a drink and then Emily was going to go home and Sara and I were going to have dinner. I was a bit like a baton in a relay race, but curvier and fractionally less easy to pass from hand to hand while running at speed.

Anyway, so back on Whitehall, I was walking along in my Fit Flops, and looking at the pedestrian in front of me. She was wearing bright blue cropped trousers, trainers, and her hair looked a bit frazzled. I guessed she was a slightly muttony 55. Then I looked down at her bag, and started trying to work out what she was carrying. It was a plastic bag, within which was what looked like a plastic paint bucket that, for some reason, I felt was filled with vinegar and cockles and mussels. I don't know. That's just what sprung to mind. I didn't have much time to dwell on it, however, because after a couple of seconds, she did a sudden, unexpected lurch to one side, and then carried on walking. Then I heard the sound of some liquid hit the pavement. I looked at the bucket of cockles and mussels, thinking the liquid was coming from there. But no. It was between her feet. And suddenly, as we walked along, she started the most extraordinarily vigorous wee. To be honest, wee isn't the word for it, such was its fury and volume. It was a piss. And some of it WENT ON MY FOOT. Freaking Fit Flops. If only I'd been wearing trainers, none of this would have happened. Well, she still would have wet herself. But I wouldn't have had to walk around the rest of the evening, in the ICA of all places, knowing there was someone else's urine on my foot.

I tried to be nice about it in my head, and realise that some people are incontinent, but seriously, this wasn't incontinence of the type for which I am mentally prepared to be a fact of life following childbirth or general old age. This was incontinence that would not be contained by incontinence pants. Gasp! Maybe that was what was in her bucket! Earlier wees! And it was full, and she didn't have time to stop, so she just thought, "What the hay, I'll keep on going, no one'll notice." That was the weird thing - she just kept on walking during the pee. I've never tried to walk and pee, at least not since I was wearing nappies and expected to multi-task in this fashion, but I don't think I'd find it too easy. She made it look like a wee-walk in the park.

Then the other day there was this old witchy woman on the tube with loads of bags who sat down all flustered and got a yoghurt out and started eating it with her index finger, scooping it out and licking it off with loud smacky noises. I was nearly sick. God I'm glad I'm not mad. Yet.

(Brackets)

OK I'm back. In my absence, I have: seen Ricky Gervais perform some new material in preparation for a new tour (absolutely, unmitigatingly rubbish but I quite enjoyed finding him so disappointing in a schadenfreudic fashion); been taken rowing on the Serpentine at sunset (very, very romantic); had a few difficult conversations (unfun); hosted a dinner with my parents at my flat (very fun: terrine a success, cod less so); tried a restaurant near my flat that I've been meaning to visit for 15 months (not incredible but certainly will revisit); watched England beat Australia in the world's oldest sporting competition at The Oval (amazing); made a tough decision (tough); been sad (boo); and eaten a lot of M&S butter and sultana cookies (ecstasy followed by immediate regret). (N.B. the cookies are called 'butter and sultana cookies' (I think). I was not eating sultana cookies and M&S butter. The Faithful will know that this latter extrapolation would not in any sense be out of the question in terms of my dietary desires, so I thought it was worth clarifying).

Today I have been planning my next adventure. So far I have rejected archaeology excursions in Thailand and conservation trips along the Amazon, the former because my face wouldn't go brown and I'd get a farmer's tan, and the latter because you have to get up v. early in the morning and it's a bit too expensive. Now I'm going to sit in the sun across the road from my office and think about my future.

There's a reason it's not called Bodybook

At the weekend, I went to see Lucy and Jake in Oxfordshire. The sun was shining and Ness, Jake and I frolicked in the paddling pool with the two offspring. Lucy remained clothed at a safe distance. Everyone was very happy. This morning, Lucy sent us the Facebook album of photos that were taken. She had affected the privacy settings so that the only people who were able to see the album were me and Ness, to give us the chance to vet the pictures and decide which, if any, we were happy to be put up for general consumption. My initial reaction was to scour each picture of my bikini-clad self meticulously, pouncing on any sign of: a) fat rolls, b) cellulite, c) stray hairs and/or d) any other misc. hideous blemishes and conditions of which I'd been previously unaware. Out of the 14 photos in which I was tagged, I was happy with my appearance in one, when I am seated in the paddling pool with my back to the camera. My back looks quite brown. Other than that, facially I look very content, but bodily I look very much in need of liposuction and an assortment of other invasive surgical procedures. There are three photos where my stomach muscles are so firmly in absentia that it appears as though I've had three children delivered via C-section in the past fortnight. My breasts certainly seem to be heading south in a way that would add plausibility to that suggestion (strapless bikini, I bid you farewell). And the contrast between my bearably healthy-hued top half and my luminescent thighs is nothing short of extraordinary.

That said, I had no problem with my friends and family seeing the photos - after all, that is what I look like. No point pretending otherwise. What I wasn't sure about was whether some random guy from my office who befriended me on Le Livre Des Visages should see so much of my flesh while he takes a break from trading foreign currency. And the conclusion I drew was: no. So I phoned Lucy and told her, regretfully, that I didn't want her to make the photos visible to the rest of her friends (and, by default, the rest of mine). She was wonderfully understanding and I felt better when gorgeous Ness, whose figure is to mine as a racehorse is to a walrus, was similarly uncomfortable about her body going on show. Consequently, the album was deleted and will never see the light of day. But the matter got me thinking. It seemed a shame - the photos were lovely. We did all look very happy and it was a gorgeous day that I will remember for a long time. And, as mentioned above, I have no problem for some of my friends to see me in that state. Which begs the question - if I'm not happy for someone to see me in a bikini, why am I friends with them on Facebook? I know that some people use the site as a networking tool, and have just as many business contacts in their Friends list as they do actual friends. I can see the benefit of this kind of activity and, given that my career will, I hope, take a new direction at some point before I hit retirement age, I think I stand by the idea that more is more when it comes to Friends lists. I guess the point is to be wary - even with the security controls and privacy settings, you never know for sure who has access to your pages, so it's probably best to err on the side of boring. I guess my friends will just have to wait til I put the pics in a good ol' photo album (the kind that you hold, with pages you have to turn). Having said all that, I'm pretty sure it's too late for me: a few pics of me looking soft and curvy in a minty green bikini probably won't make any difference to people's opinions of me. But although I'm a big one for honesty right now, my future career as World Leader may make me think otherwise. I'm just planning ahead... I only wish I possess such foresight when faced with a large bowl of pavlova.

It's only natural

Must be quick as am uncharacteristically busy at work, but this is important. At lunchtime today, I sat outside on the small grassy knoll, eating my crayfish and avocado salad and trying to make sure that the times when I had to look down to create my next mouthful coincided with the cloudy patches, freeing me up to chew with my face turned towards the sun. The knoll was relatively empty, with just ten or so people around me, mostly on their own or in pairs. After I finished my meal, I reclined, resting my head on my handbag and relaxing in the heat. I breathed in contentedly and then, from a place that could not have been more than five or six feet behind my head, came a loud, clattering fart. I nearly saw my crayfish again in the shock. I rolled my neck so that the top of my head was on the floor. A man was sitting cross-legged behind me, eating a sandwich and wearing headphones. Perhaps he'd thought it had been silent and his music had blocked out the truth. Either way, it was repellent. I think. For some reason it was his cross-leggedness that I found particularly offensive, allowing a direct passage for the particles to travel from the place of emission to my head. Perhaps I'm being squeamish. But then I've never been a good one for bodily functions.

A different type of class...

Much as I might like to believe otherwise, the fact is that Summer 09 is on its way out, and, steeped in that back-to-school feeling, September will shortly be upon us. Christmas is in about a week and a half. So with that in mind, I decided to investigate my possible options for self-improvement in the Autumn term. First up was hairdressing - and this is still a likely plan, but the course I like doesn't start until January 2010. So I bought a copy of Floodlight, London's part-time and evening course bible, and highlighted the ones that tickled my fancy. Here, for your edification, inspiration and possible amusement, is the list of contenders:

• Comic Book Art for Beginners at Camberwell College of Arts
• Human Evolution at Birkbeck
• Lindy Hop Swing Introduction at City Lit
• Rock and Roll Jive Dancing at Bishopsgate Institute
• Drawing for Beginners at Camberwell College of Arts
• Drawing Level 1 at City Lit
• Folk and Pop Guitar for Improvers at Morley College
• Current Affairs Part 1 at City Lit
• Improve Your Memory at Morley College
• Jazz Singing at City Lit
• Tai Chi Beginners at Lambeth College
• Antique and Modern Furniture Restoration at Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute
• Doing Up Junk at Havering Adult College
• Developing Your Fiction at Birkbeck
• Short Story Writing at City Lit

I don't know what it says about me that my interests are quite so ridiculously varied, but anyone who's thinking along the 'Jane of all trades' line wouldn't be far off the mark from where I'm sitting. Why can't I just have one interest and commit, for goodness' sake? Why must I spread myself so thin? Don't answer that. I think we all know why - and for anyone who's really not sure, something about wanting to be liked, wanting to impress, wanting to fit in while wanting to stand out is probably on the money. Anyway. That's the way things are. Now to decide. What do you reckon? I was going to write that I'd promise to do the one with the most votes, but I panicked. I'm certainly doing Improve Your Memory as that's only a one-dayer and I need it more than any of the others. And Tai Chi is out as I am saving that for when I get too old for yoga. Jazz Singing... I think probably not. In fact, they all make me feel a bit panicked. But I'm young and free and this is the perfect time to start something new. Although I don't feel like doing anything because I have an as-yet-not-visible spot brewing on my chin that is so painful it hurts to sit still. I think I should be sent home early but I don't think it'll happen.

Oops

Well, now I've upset my mum with what I wrote yesterday. And I didn't mean to do that, really I didn't. I probably sound spoilt and ungrateful for all the sacrifices they made to put me through school and university. And for that, I apologise wholeheartedly. I know they were doing their best and I am incredibly lucky and grateful to have such loving and wonderful parents. I guess I just struggle with middle class guilt, and it's made me into an inverse snob, and I should keep schtum. But then... I do find class issues endlessly fascinating, and keeping schtum is, surely, one surefire way to perpetuate the status quo. Really all I wanted to say was that I don't like posh people who think they're better than non-posh people. Anyway. I feel better now I have got it off my chest, and I have always known that my opinions are riddled, RIDDLED with contradictions and half-baked rubbish (mmmm, half-baked...) and, let's face it, it's easy for me to say I don't want to send my kids to private school when a) I don't have any and b) I would never be able to afford it. Current fees at my ol' alma mater are £9300 a term, although you do get a £300 discount if you pay by monthly direct debit. Phew. But were I to wake up tomorrow and find myself in the possession of a toddler and a multi-million pound inheritance (the thought is strangely terrifying), I don't know what I would do. I know what I think is best for the country. But can I put my (fictional) money where my mouth is? There's only one way to find out. I better get pregnant.

Confusion leads to sanctimonious rant

Yesterday I read this article which explained how independent/public/private/fee-paying schools in Britain try to justify their charitable status. I doubt it will be surprising that I didn't agree with its contents. Then last night I went to a gig at the Royal Festival Hall. The turnout was pretty broad, fairly white, but a wide age-range had turned out to see 19-year-old folk starlet Laura Marling perform with her posse of other rising folk starlets. I have had Laura's album for about a year having bought it on the strength of the 30-second snippets on iTunes and its Mercury Prize nomination. And I really like it. She has a beautiful voice and sings with clarity and honesty. It's not the world's best album, but given her age, it's an impressive debut. I was looking forward to seeing her live. The lights dimmed, and a large screen lit up at the back of the stage. Footage filmed by Laura showed her interviewing some of the other musicians in her group of comrades. Everyone was attractive and supportive, full of mutual love and respect. It would all have been simply wonderful, except I was too busy bristling uncontrollably: the accents from the people on screen were as Sloaney as Prince Charles drinking Earl Grey in a Barbour, standing on a croquet lawn with a black Lab. I couldn't bear it. The singer I'd come to see wasn't a carefree hippie - she was a privileged toff. A privileged toff just like me. I was furious.

I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Eton. This isn't a recent problem but lately I've noticed it getting worse. The Glastocrush has just moved in from the decidedly gritty Uxbridge Road to a friend's place in Holland Park. The houses are stunning, the delis are exclusive, the pubs are full of well-behaved Harrovians, the pavements are wide, the flaneurs are carrying Alexander McCall Smith, the dogs are not bred to kill and people turn their James Blunt CDs down after 10pm so as not to wake the baby. It couldn't be more different to my hood. Most people would, I'm sure, secretly love to live somewhere so luxurious and safe. What's not to like? But for some reason, it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I can't work out why. Then the other night, when I met a guy my age who had never had a job, instead of being jealous, I instinctively went on the attack. And when someone talked about rolling back the rug in their parents' house at Christmas time and doing some reeling, I found myself panicking.

What is going on? I, after all, was privately educated, at vast expense to my parents. I know the Dashing White Sargeant. I can hold my own at a dinner party. To my distinct irritation, I don't sound or look remotely out of place in Fulham. I've been to the Feathers, the 4th of June, Boujis and Cartier Polo (although admittedly the last was as a waitress). I know not to hold a knife like a pen, not to butter the bread all at once, to tip the soup bowl away from me and pass the port clockwise. I write thank you letters in fountain pen. Several people I know are friends with members of the royal family. Despite all attempts to adopt a more estuary twang every now and then, on the whole, my rich, plummy accent would sound fantastic on Watch With Mother. So how can I be negative about posh people when I've had exactly the same advantages, when I am one of them? As a result of my spoon-fed education, I received good exam results and went to a good university where I got a good degree - all in all, a good start in life. Spending seven of the most formative years of one's life (11-18) at a small boarding school means that you make close friends - I've just looked at my phone's contacts list, and out of our year of around 50 girls, I still have the phone numbers of 20, and see most of them regularly, just under fourteen years after we left. I am incredibly grateful for those friends. And there's no doubt that, while my schooldays were occasionally miserable, and the education I received was questionable, I did have moments when I had a brilliant time.

Still, if I could ban private education, I would. As discussed when I was loving my politics course, I believe strongly in equality of opportunity, and I'm fairly clear that private education simply doesn't allow that. I can't change my past, but I can state my belief that, in an ideal future, all of Britain's schools would be run by the state. I am convinced that only with the intervention of parents will schools improve, and the more rich, powerful parents who choose to withdraw their children from the state system, the more that state schools will decline.

I guess that, while I am not exactly ashamed of the fact that I had a private education, I want people to know that I don't believe it is fair, or right, and that I do not support inequality. And I guess that, while I think it's fine to have been to public school, what is not fine is to act as if the undeniable privilege and advantage that comes from that experience is a birthright. Basically - I'm fine with toffs as long as they are, like me, slightly uncomfortable with their toffness. Revelling in the toffness is, to me, a bit gross. Never making an effort to leave the bubble is, to me, a bit gross. Whether it's the yummy mummies in Holland Park, the chummy guffaws from the men's bar at a centuries-old golf club, the chattering at the organic farmers' market in the Oval or the clink of gin glasses from inside a gated community in South Africa, there's something that makes me cringe about this unspoken preference for PLUs.

I know, I know - people will always be different and birds of a feather will always flock together. And the hypocrisy of me saying 'Love all the people' while saying 'I don't like toffs' isn't lost on me. I guess what I'm trying to say is, things aren't great now. The divides are massive. Let's not exacerbate them by saying 'My four year old's education is worth more than yours.' Different is not better or worse. It's just different. Pitbulls aren't worse than spaniels. Garage music isn't worse than Mozart. Cannabis isn't worse than yoga. Everyone lives their own life. Judgment is wrong - right? You can't live in London and ignore the poverty, the gangs, the total hopelessness of many of your neighbours. You can't live in a rural village in your gorgeous converted farmhouse and pretend that there's not shit going down all around you. Well, you can. You can be an ostrich. But that seems so sad, so final. It's giving up. And I don't want to give up. Surely it would be preferable if we worked at this together. If we can't send our kids to the same schools, then what chance do we have?

That said, my friend once told me that she was all up for state education for her daughter until she looked round her local primary schools, one private, one state, and said the difference was so palpable as to be horrific and made her do everything in her power to find the extra thousands she needed to send her daughter to the private primary. You can be a liberal all you want, she seemed to be saying, but once you become a mother, everything will change. So, like her, I reserve the right to be a complete and utter hypocrite.

08:58 this morning

I was standing in a crowded lift at work. Also in the lift were two women. One of them was holding a Black & Red notebook and a regulation pass for the building and was therefore clearly a full-time employee of the same company as I. The other was sporting a visitor's pass and was obviously a guest in the building.
Full Time Employee: "So, where is it you've come in from again?"
Visitor: "Kazakhstan."
FTE: "Ah right, I've never been there."
Visitor: [smiles politely]
FTE: "The nearest I've been is probably... well, I went to Singapore once, but that's..."
Visitor: "Nowhere near it."

In that 10-12 second exchange, I felt a wide selection of emotional responses, starting with absolute anger at the FTE's response to the Kazakhstan information. Who cares if you've never been there, you small-minded, blinkered mofo? Why don't you try and expand your horizons a bit? There's a Kazakhstani national standing in the same airspace as you. Why not ask her what it's like there? People's merry bubble existence drives me spastic. Then I felt absolute horror and the simultaneous desire to laugh at the Singapore remark. And sympathy for the Visitor who tried to show polite interest and didn't spit in the face of the ignorant FTE. I don't know where all this passion came from, given that it was before 9am on a Monday morning, but that's what happened. No wonder I'm always so exhausted when a journey in a lift is so stressful.

Plus I have admittedly been burning the candle at both ends of late, while holding it with a pair of tongs and firing the mid-section with a blowtorch. I am all out of wick. Wednesday night I went to a secret supper club in Brixton, where the host opens his home two nights a week to 16 strangers and cooks them the most glorious food I've had in quite some time. It was almost emotional - such an extraordinary hidden gem full of simple, uncomplicated sensations of love and passion without cynicism or caveat, which rekindled my never-that-latant fondness for city life. Then on Thursday I fasted until the evening, when it was Joanna's birthday party and I walked to the pub in the pouring rain and we ate oh-so-much pizza and delicious apple bakewell. Friday day was spent with the Glastocrush, doing a psychometric test at a gentlemen's club in Mayfair (you couldn't make it up) and then rushing home to face a dramatic pre-birthday-party wardrobe malfunction combined with too-many-incoming-phonecalls crisis when at one point I was completely naked except for a very fitted black halterneck top, barking down the phone at Emily while the GC stood by with wondrous dedication, wondering how he could help - but, short of developing an ability to perform miracle cellulite-busting, body-firming algae wraps in the confines of my flat, there was pretty much nothing he could do. Eventually we made it to my party where twelve of us went bowling in Bayswater and ate and drank too much more, and then three of us went on to the midnight show at The Comedy Store, and then two of us went back to my flat and talked until 4am. On Saturday we did an hour of yoga to sweat out the hangover, and then went vintage shopping for just under six hours (this is me and Grania, by the way, not the GC, who was working but would have wept openly if I'd made him shop on his day off). Despite our hangovers we managed to shop with impressive dedication and harmony, only complaining about vintage arm on one or two occasions, and avoiding an actual fist fight over a turban with admirable diplomacy. Then in the evening I went over to the GC's flat for an impromptu BBQ on the roof with two others, and we wrote messages on a Chinese lantern, lit it and winced as it flew, at speed, into a large chestnut tree, but were thrilled when the second attempt lifted high up, unfortunately then extinguishing almost immediately and coming down somewhere around a nearby sports centre. Yesterday was Sunday and I played frisbee in Green Park and didn't humiliate myself entirely as far as I'm aware, and then I went home and hoovered and tidied and wiped and dusted and ironed and now I'm feeling slightly less hectic, especially with the prospect of another night at the flat tonight. But calm or not, all of the above might help one to understand why an overheard conversation in an elevator is enough to tip me over the edge. Maybe I should take the stairs.

Full

I'm not quite sure why I feel so strongly about sharing my birthday with the POTUS, but finding out that Barack Obama is not only a lion but a 4th August lion was enough to make me gasp with excitement. Then again, I was almost dizzy when I found out while I was watching the opening credits of Newsnight last night, having arrived at my parents' house in the late afternoon to find my dad fixing four Birthday Girl balloons to the front gate, and then eating almost my own bodyweight in crisps and dip, so that none of us were remotely hungry, and then wolfing down delicious fish starter and amazing ribeye and bearnaise sauce and homegrown beans and homegrown salad and then apple tart with vanilla icecream plus extra chocolate cupcake for me with candle. I didn't eat the candle. But I did drink a lot of wine. And I woke up this morning still unbelievably, palpably full, and then came to work and went out for an horrifyingly early lunch to a really swanky steak restaurant with my boss and his right hand man, and almost got into a tussle because they were having calamari to start and wanted me to order a portion, and I could still taste the ribeye from last night, and so eventually my boss agreed to give me one of his rings, and then I managed not to be coerced into ordering steak for my main, and instead had seabass with spinach and bacon and peas and onions which under any other circumstances would have been absolutely delicious but on this occasion was absolutely the richest and most unnecessary meal I've ever eaten, and tonight I am going out for dinner with Emily to a supper club in Brixton where we are having at least four courses, and I can't cancel as it's been booked for weeks and I am so excited about it in principle but obviously in practice am tempted to take up bulimia just for this afternoon so that I can conceive of fitting in more food. I bet Obama doesn't have to go through this.

Woop

It's my birthday. I am at work. I received four birthday cards in the post this morning. I received a further card when I got to work, as well as an individually packaged slice of M&S Victoria sponge, which I ate for breakfast. As I type, I have received ten birthday messages on my Facebook wall. I have had four birthday texts and one birthday voicemail. Tomorrow my boss is taking me out for a birthday lunch. It is not clear why he couldn't do that today, on my actual birthday, but I'm not complaining. Tonight I will be cooked a delicious meal by my parents. On Friday I will celebrate with a select group of friends who aren't on holiday. And thrillingly, I have one birthday bunch of flowers on their way, which is brilliant because I can carry them home on the tube and everyone will see that I am loved. Not that I care about that kind of thing, for I am self-sufficient and a natural introvert, but I just thought you might like to be kept in the loop. Birthday love to all from The Birthday Girl.