Oh bloody hell

I'm not entirely sure this makes the spending cuts bearable, but it helps. The tail twitch at 0:25! The reverse! The joy.

The drought continues

Nothing to say. Again. I think the combination of the boyban and meditation might be making me externally dull. Internally, I'm fascinating. I'm just not sure that the major psychological breakthrough that has been taking place in my grey matter will be as gripping in black and white. Once I've got everything sorted into a convenient bite-sized summary, I might give it a go. But for now, you'll have to put up with the fact that I have little to give.

I do think that the people panicking about the wheelie bin cat woman need to get a grip though. I mean, it's bad. I am not trying to claim that the cat secretly got a kick out of the experience, or that the woman is a modern day Dr. Doolittle who should be honoured with a place in the Ultimate Big Brother house. It was an unpleasant incident. But when you have a list of issues to get upset about that goes something like this:

• Tories utterly screwing public services
• LibDems completely capitulating like a bit of paper in a force nine gale
• No viable alternative in the Labour leadership elections
• Worst humanitarian disaster of recent history unrelenting in Pakistan
• Terrible drug cartel deaths in Mexico
• UK interest rates forecast to rise to 12% in the next two years

and then you have:

• Slightly unhinged woman puts cat in wheelie bin; cat now absolutely fine

anyone who has spent more time being upset about the wheelie cat than about any of the other issues should be put in a bin and mailed to Pakistan.

Tales of the unexpected

I had arranged to meet last night's date outside Detroit, the Covent Garden bar he'd suggested. I arrived about 46 seconds early and saw a quite sweet little dog outside (with its owner). I went over to talk to it and then, noticing a vacant seat nearby, sat down. The dog ran over and got quite frisky with me. I tried to calm it down but it kept jumping up and then, at the precise moment my date arrived and stood opposite me, the dog burrowed itself underneath my maxi dress and jumped up and down in some sort of frenzy between my legs, trapped by navy jersey fabric. I was giggling hysterically, bright red of face, blonde hair fully awry, as Steve stood opposite me, smiling. It was quite a greeting.

Sadly, in spite of the fantastic material I'd already accrued for the Best Man's speech, the date never got any funner. It was an odd one. He was absolutely charming, interesting and interested. We had a lot in common and chatted easily, and he was kind, humble and thoughtful. Additionally, he was empirically attractive - tall enough, a gorgeous face, a good T-shirt and excellent trainers. But - and this is a totally new one on me - I just didn't fancy him. Not one part of me wanted to kiss him. When I say it's new, of course there have been boys I've not wanted to kiss before. Many hundreds of them. But not one with all those boxes ticked. It was extremely odd. I'm guessing he felt the same because when we parted ways at the oh-so-familiar Northern/Central Line split at the bottom of the escalators at Tottenham Court Road, he held out his arms straight, perpendicular to his body, fists loosely clenched, shoulders hunched, a big toothy grin on his face. As invitations to romantic, lingering kisses go, I'd give it a zero. I played my part in the quick hug, which was about as sensual as a burp, and headed home.

The one extraordinary thing about this guy was that - and I'm aware that the Faithful will immediately conclude that this is why I didn't fancy him but I SWEAR it wasn't - he doesn't drink. Of course, I assumed that he was AA, but he quickly explained that he just doesn't like booze. I was, it is fair to say, utterly gobsmacked. The guy has never once in his life been drunk. He tried to do it in his late teens, and got through half an alcopop before deciding he'd rather be drinking apple juice and gave up. Initially, I'll admit, I thought, 'Well, that's that then.' It is true that me going out with a teetotaller would be like Roseanne Barr going out with an anorexic. But as I talked to him a bit more about it, I knew it didn't have to be a dealbreaker. He just didn't drink. It didn't stop me drinking. That said, knowing I don't have to go out with someone who doesn't drink is a bit of a relief. I mean... No boring, poncey discussions about wine? No getting pissed together and behaving badly or having drunken rows? Every restaurant bill meaning an extra £15 for me while he gets away with juice? No shared hangovers? Hmmm. It's not how I imagined my future.

As far as I'm aware, I don't know anyone who doesn't drink out of choice. I know people who don't drink for religious reasons. I know people who don't drink because they are alcoholics. And I know people who don't drink because they don't like the effect booze has on them. But to have never got pissed, not even once? When everyone around him is drinking to excess and (seemingly) loving it enough to keep on doing it week after week? What kind of person resists that sort of unspoken peer pressure? What kind of person is so uncurious that they don't even try to see what everyone else is going on about? I mean, I've never tried heroin. But that's because it's heavily addictive, massively bad for you and illegal. I know I'd love it, and that's a slippery slope I'd like to avoid. Alcohol is addictive too - but psychologically rather than physically, and it's absolutely unhealthy in large quantities. But it's legal and the majority of adults in the Western world have, at one time or another, enjoyed its effects. And anyway, Steve didn't say he wasn't drinking because he was worried about the health impacts. He doesn't drink because he never has and it's been too long to take it up now. Plus he likes being able to drive everywhere.

I found it intriguing and, ultimately, a bit weird. If he'd tried it (and by 'it', I mean the effects of alcohol. Not just taking a sip of Hooch, but actually drinking enough to experience the buzz), and for some reason not liked it, then I could understand. But to have never tried it... That's a lonely path, surely? An odd path. If pretty much everyone you know is saying something is brilliant, and you don't even try to see what they're experiencing, isn't that weird? Respect is due, perhaps, but it won't come from me.

I really do swear that wasn't why I didn't fancy him though.

Rein 'em in. Seriously.

What's brilliant about this holiday is that it's not only amazing in every conceivable way, but I'm also learning, which alleviates most of the normal I'm-on-holiday-and-achieving-nothing-and-even-though-that's-the-point-of-holidays-I-still-feel-guilty guilt. Here, in bullet form, are some of the nuggets we learned yesterday about huskies:

• Huskies eat dried nuggets of raw salmon and meat
• They start racing aged one and normally retire around ten years old
• The intelligent women go first in the racing pack, with the stronger men behind
• They can run happily up to 25 km a day but race even further
• The ears of the puppies are very soft

And today, we went to a reindeer farm. This was brilliant for many hundreds of reasons, but here are the educational highlights:

• Each reindeer-owning family has its own recognisable series of nicks that it cuts into the ears of each of their reindeer in order to identify them. These nicks are recorded in a detailed local book for everyone's reference.
• The fluffy slivers of skin that are removed from the ears during the nicking process are saved and threaded into curious mobiles for interior decoration. Why waste?
  
• When the babies are born, it's hard to tell whose mummy owns which baby, so instead of putting the nicks in the ear, they put a leather necklace with a carved wooden medallion around the neck of the baby to identify it tentatively. After a year, they come back and make sure they've identified the right baby, and if all the families are in agreement, they put the nicks in the ear to mark it as theirs.
• The reindeer people make shoes out of reindeer fur. The fur at the front of the sole lies facing the centre of the foot, and the fur at the back lies the other way, creating a gripping surface. It's really clever.
• The shoes hook up at the toe end so that straps can be passed around the front and attached to cross-country skis.
• There are two breeds of reindeer - mountain and forest. The former have really short legs. We didn't see any of those. The forest reindeer are more common in Lapland.
• The farm we visited wants to make its livelihood from growing reindeer feed, which it makes in the summer. This does not create enough income, however, so in the winter months they make more money by hosting tourist parties like ours. They also sell the reindeer to third parties to be killed for their meat and skins. They make 5.40 Euros per kg of live reindeer, but once dead the meat is sold for around 20 Euros a kg and the skins fetch around 50-70 Euros each. I asked why they don't kill the reindeer on site and sell them off if it's more valuable that way, but apparently the EU regs are so strict that it's not worth the effort.
• Each town in Lapland has a slightly different local costume. The styles are all similar but the colours and trims vary. The men wear a hat with four corners, each representing one of the four winds (N, S, E, W). The hats have tassels down one side. If you wear your tassels on the right, it means you're married - on the left and you're single and looking. Women's hats do not indicate their marital status. Brilliant.

After our gripping and edifying lecture, we went out and met our reindeer. We were in convoys of four sleds, with a reindeer separating each of us. We were in the front convoy. So it goes: reindeer, sled, reindeer, sled, reindeer, sled (containing us), reindeer, last sled. They are all tied together and each reindeer pulls the sled behind it with sticks attached to a girth round their middles. We set off. Just like the first few seconds with the huskies yesterday, it was hectic. The reindeer are going full pelt through deep sled-width tracks in the snow. Our sleds are low, and we're lying down in them with a blanket over us, fairly helpless. It's like being in a bobsled. Suddenly, we notice a reindeer running alongside us to the left. This should not be happening. It is the reindeer from the sled behind. He is trying to overtake. This will not be successful but we're going at quite a lick and it's not clear how it will play out. Then Grania yelps. We turn to our right. The front reindeer from the second convoy has barged past the back of our group and is making a bid for freedom. He has prodded Grania in the back of her head with his not-inconsiderable antlers. The face of the Lappish woman driving the runaway reindeer is one of abject terror. We realise the situation is not ideal but dissolve into uncontrollable giggles and shimmy down in our sled, paralysed. After thirty seconds, we recover and turn around to see what has emerged. The Lappish woman has driven her convoy into a snow drift in an emergency effort to control her fleet. Then we turn further and, with horror and hysteria, realise that there is no longer anyone in the sled behind us. The two Germans and their blankets have been deposited somewhere en route. We are incapacitated with laughter. It is now eleven hours later and I am still basically helpless with hysteria. The sight of the unexpectedly vacated sled, which had previously held a bemulletted woman, her absurdly high-tech Canon SLR and her clearly gay husband, was too much for us to bear.

When we arrived at our lunch venue and approached the lady who had been upturned, she was determined to make it seem like nothing remotely unusual had happened, saying 'Bof, it was nothing,' or the Deutsche equivalent, which made the whole thing even funnier. Then we fed lychen to our reindeer, which is apparently their special treat, and were taught how to lasso antlers. I was unexpectedly brilliant at this and was the only member of our group who managed to throw the loop over both the left and right protuberance. Unfortunately these antlers were not attached to a reindeer but were sitting, static, in the snow. When we were then ushered into a pen with two sprinting deer, we weren't quite so successful. Then a lunch of reindeer burgers in a hut, back to base, a tour of Levi, the local ski resort, and returning to the hotel for saunas, snoozing and a delicious dinner. Now: a screening of When Harry Met Sally. Hey hey.

Puss in plaster

Aw, look at the tiny kitten with the broken paw in a cast! This is shorthand for saying that I don't have much to write about today. That's what happens when I spend three consecutive nights in my flat watching Celebrity Big Brother. I was meant to be going to the first class of my six week Beginner's Ukulele course in Soho, but it was snowed off. Tonight I'm going out on the Southbank and to a new restaurant, so I'll be able to report back tomorrow. But for now, I'm afraid Limpy the Kitten is going to have to suffice.

Meddle of nowhere

About two or three months ago, when Christmas was a pale speck on the horizon and my energy levels were somewhat higher, I bought two tickets for Grania and I to attend a singles party with a twist. The idea was that, in a room full of singles, there would be people called 'Meddlers' who would help to orchestrate that first meeting with the handsome guy standing by the bar. It sounded quite funny and I was looking forward to it. Then I woke up yesterday morning and realised that I wanted to go to the Meddlers Ball about as much as I wanted to force rusty skewers under each one of my toenails.

Still, a promise is a promise, so Grania and I dragged our sorry asses along to the bar at the arranged time, went in and sat down. The lighting was pleasingly low and we bought some revolting white wine and sat in the corner with a plate of deep fried mezze. Around us on the tables were blank Christmas cards and biros for us to send a festive flirt to a fellow singleton. I examined our options. The crowd was ok and the music was reassuringly familiar, but more than that, there was something extraordinarily liberating about being in a room full of people like us, young men and women who still hadn't yet made the decision to settle down. Going to a bar on a normal evening is, of course, an exemplary way to spend a few hours, but there's little more frustrating than wheeling out your most winning anecdotes to a man who, after forty-five minutes of flirtatious questioning, casually mentions that he's also been to India, and in fact proposed to his wife in the gardens of the Taj.

We finished our food and stepped into the throng. I'd early identified a boy who looked a little like a mustachioed Heath Ledger, while Grania pointed out a lovely tall man with excellent jeans. Mr Denim was first, and I accosted him by the bar and we chatted to him for three minutes, which was long enough to make it perfectly clear to both of us that he was very dull. It's self-evident that not every gorgeous person one sees on the tube or in the supermarket is possessed of a wondrous personality, but it's always nice to receive hard evidence of this. We moved on feeling buoyed.

The next hour or so was spent chatting to several small clusters of uniformly unremarkable men, one of whom had said that he loved Jeremy Kyle and another who'd said that he'd come to this same event in April and met a Brazillian who had dumped him after five months, so he was back for another go. Honesty perhaps not the best policy there. Suddenly, one of the Meddlers ran up and excitedly told me that he'd found me a Guardian reader, as though all my woes were cured. He pointed out two men who looked quite nice, and Grania and I spent a bit of time chatting to them later on in the evening. They were indeed good company but not quite right, and we drifted off before too long, leaving them dancing to Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal. To be honest, I'm not sure my rapping along was doing me any favours although Grania seemed to be loving my work even more than usual.

Cut to an hour later. We are sitting down, chatting about nothing, because talking to boys is exhausting. Suddenly, a small notepad lands on the table in front of us. We open it and read 'Two girls talking to each other? That doesn't not fair on us lads!' We look up and see a small man who I know for certain that I will never love. Grania starts to write but I get impatient and take over, constructing our reply, which reads 'But you need to be cool enough to justify us standing up.' Grania changes the full stop to an exclamation mark because she's nicer than I am, and we send it back. Two or three more exchanges culminate in the pathetically depressing request, 'Stand up and give us a twirl' to which I reply 'I'm trying to be nice here, but that is LAME.' Grania does not alter my punctuation.

We spot another guy behind us, sitting on his own and writing intently. 'What are you writing?' we write, and throw the notepad at him. He reacts as if shot. Eventually we get a reply, 'I try to write the beginning of a play.' 'Can we be in it?' we ask, coquettishly. He ignores us. Grania starts chatting to Mr Give Us A Twirl, while my interest levels are waning. I pick up one of the Christmas cards and start writing a message to Grania's mother. Later, I go to the bar and find myself standing next to Heath Ledger, who tries to kiss me almost immediately. I look displeased and tell him I'd singled him out as a potential hopeful earlier, and now retract that. He looks crestfallen and mumbles 'Sorry' several times. A few minutes later I spot him on the dancefloor with his shirt half unbuttoned, rubbing his chest, seemingly in an attempt to arouse the two girls he's jigging with. To their eternal discredit, they appear to be enjoying themselves.

By the end of the night, Grania is talking to a guy who looks like he'd rather be sucking a vomit lolly than chatting at a singles party, while I'm trying to persuade his lank-haired friend that I don't want to sit down next to them and that I'm fine standing. Eventually we decide that enough is enough, and scamper back down to the tube, suffering an emotional parting at the Northern Line / Central Line junction at Tottenham Court Road. The boys may not have been up to the lowest of our standards, but it was an extremely fun night and I left with my self-esteem almost buoyed, which was odd given that I had started the evening saying 'There are going to be 100 single men in here. If you don't find one you like, you need to change your criteria.' If there were some nice guys in the throng, we didn't talk to them. Still, I'm glad I went.

And now, this.

I don't like writing, I just do it to avoid going to the gym

I am in some degree of shock about A.A. Gill. Not that I ever thought he was a flawless character - rather, it was his arrogance and swagger that made him so appealing. But "I wanted to know what it felt like," is an acceptable justification for smoking cannabis, or getting in to a bath filled with warm maple syrup. It is not an acceptable justification for harming another creature, let alone killing a baboon for no other reason than to experience the sensation caused by the act of killing. If he'd eaten the baboon, I wouldn't have minded nearly so much. But he didn't want to eat it, he just wanted to kill it, in all its harmless, defenceless glory. Sure, it's 'just a baboon'. It's not like he tried paedophilia. But I find his behaviour gross and I no longer want to marry him. I'm sure Nicola, his life-partner and the mother of his children, will sleep easier at night as a result.

Sorry for the slight hiatus in LLFF - I really have been quite lost looking of late. It's all been a bit much, to the extent where I had to curtail a perfectly pleasant social engagement on Saturday afternoon so that I could go home and re-don my velour. Last Thursday I went out to see Dizzee Rascal in Brixton, an event that warrants an extensive blog entry in itself. Points of note were a) EVERYone was white. That must have been weird, no? To be a black guy, pretty urban, grown up in South London, come back to your turf to play a gig, and most people who feel your music are of a completely different demographic? Or is it just that concert-going is a white thing to do? It surprised me, anyway. b) I couldn't understand a single thing he said, which made me feel weird and old. Lucy and I tried to interpret the lyrics to each other. At one point, I came up with something like 'I don't wanna be a cyborg' which sounded reasonable but wasn't, I don't think, accurate. c) Two boys flicked my ponytail repeatedly so we had to move. Well, they weren't boys, and we didn't have to move. They were men, and I chose to relocate, because it was distracting. d) I danced like I haven't danced for literally years. The perspiring began almost immediately and it was clear that staying unsweaty was absolutely out of the question, so I gave into it and danced my trainers into the tacky, beer-stained ground. My t-shirt was soaked, my hair was plastered to my head, and it was fantastic.

On Friday I met up with Lilly from choir and we sat atop an open-topped bus to film an ad for a mobile phone company. We sat on the bus, without food or 'convenience stops' for about six hours. Our role in this pantomime was to be a guy's backing vocalists, so we sang and harmonised obediently, ignoring the cameras, shaking our percussion (no euphemism intended) and smiling at strangers. After an hour or two, my hangover became quite unfunny but, meh, you know, I was there, there wasn't really time to go home before I had to leave to come out again for the evening, so I just stayed where I was, getting more and more grumpy, as the bus drove us around London and we wooped and waved at passers-by. And I tried to smile at the production crew, but they just weren't engaging at all, and initially I thought they just didn't like me, but then I realised that they saw me as one of a herd of tragic idiots who are either a) unemployed or b) have (more worryingly) taken a day off work to sit on a bus with strangers, all in the name of what will be a maximum of 1.5 seconds' screen time. And I thought "You know, you're right. I did this for the experience, to see what it was like. But I've got the idea now. I'm going." So I got off the bus, went to the UK's first Anthropologie, where it appears they have carelessly forgotten to change the price-tags from dollars into pounds, and then had my fringe trimmed.

On Friday night, I went to see Singalonga Sound of Music in Leicester Square with about twelve people from choir, and laughed so much I was nearly sick. It was an exceptionally fun night. Highlights were Rob, whose gran had made him a fantastic pair of lederhosen especially for the occasion and the fact that Harry was also in lederhosen, but not a pair he'd bought for that night - no, he had them already and, it emerged, these were actually his spare lederhosen. His favourite pair stay at his friend's house in Austria. Extraordinary.

On Saturday morning I woke up and my body spoke to me clearly and firmly. "Stop," it said. And I realised I had no energy left. So I stopped. Well, I still went to the Tate Modern to look at the big black box (verdict: good) and met a boy and we went for a drink, but it was all in the afternoon and I didn't have any alcohol and then I went home and rested.

Sunday was my choir concert so the day was filled with tension and drama, and we rehearsed and performed and it was all OK in the end, although there was very nearly a crisis when one of the hook-on straps of my corset-topped catsuit pinged off as I executed perhaps my third handclap of a very vigorous gospel number, and I wondered whether the audience were going to get a bit more than they bargained for, but fortunately things stayed mostly in their intended places and I escaped without too much humiliation. After the concert, we all went to the pub and 'let off steam', and I was just about to go home at about 11, when a wizened man came up and said in a Texas accent, "Are you Jane?" and I said, "Yes." He said Grania had sent him, he'd bumped into her by her bike outside, and she'd said I could help him. "What with?" I asked. He explained that he was writing a book called 1000 Strangers, where he asks 1000 strangers the same four questions. So quick, you can do it too and beat him to the publishers. Anyway, the four questions were:

1. If you could be anywhere, right now, where would you be?
2. Who do you most admire?
3. If you had one wish, what would you ask for?
4. What do you fear?

I was drunk and it was quickfire. I said:

1. Japan.
2. Anyone who has a goal, sets out to do it and then achieves it.
3. A secular world.
4. Early death.

Yesterday, Grania and I compared notes. Her answers were:

1. Right here.
2. Someone who strives to make a difference.
3. A magic carpet.
4. Loneliness.

OK. I think that's enough for you to be getting on with.

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?

Second time lucky

Bloody hell that's annoying. Yesterday evening I sweated it out in a horrible internet cafe, while the butch German lady next to me exhaled red Marlboros in my direction and had an irritating conversation over Skype with her ponytailed German boyfriend, and I wrote what, I am sure, was the longest and funniest blog entry I have ever written in the history of Lost Looking For Fish. And now I revisit the page to find out that only the title made it live. I don't think there's much that annoys me more than having to retype a work of brilliance. It's never quite as good the second time. I am spitting with rage. But here we go again. Heavy sigh. And begin.

I can't remember much of what I've been doing since I last wrote. All I seem to recall is applying suncream and then complaining to myself that I haven't been turning brown. Tan update: my feet are brown apart from a few red spots that have appeared along my flip-flop line as a result of some sort of heat rash. Sexy. My lower legs are, I have had to concede, immune to the sun, and are as pasty and white as if I'd been wearing a pair of gaiters for the duration of my holiday. My knees are brown. Result. My thighs are also brown, but fat. Irritating. My stomach is the colour of molton Galaxy, but, as discussed previously, this is entirely useless. My chest is uneven in hue and a bit blotchy. My face and arms seem to be turning a healthy shade, but I refuse to be lulled into my customary false sense of security, whereby I become convinced I am bronzed, spend hours looking at myself in my hotel room mirror to confirm the fact, and then fall for the conspiracy that is doubtless agreed among all airlines to make the mirrors in aeroplane bathrooms make everyone look at least seven shades darker than they are in reality, so that I waft through the Gatwick arrivals hall convinced that people are falling over with envy at my perfect sun-kissed appearance, and allow myself a few moments of concern lest my friends and family fail to recognise me, confusing me instead with some unnaturally blonde Native American Indian, and then I arrive home and look at myself in my non-conspiring mirror and realise that I am precisely the same shade of off-white that I am in midwinter.

In the brief moments when I am not busying myself with tanning, I did something fairly momentous: I followed in the footsteps of Moses by climbing Mount Sinai. Should you ever attempt such an expedition yourself, let me inform you that your trip will go roughly as follows:
1. Take seat in minibus at approximately 11pm. Drive through Dahab to another hotel, to pick up collection of assorted tourists from multiple countries. Leave Dahab and travel for approximately two hours to the base of Mount Sinai.
2. Exit minibus and meet guide, Mohammed. They are not all called Mohammed. But mine was. Set off up gently sloping path, lit only by moonlight. Think to yourself 'This might actually be fine,' but then look up to your right and see Mount Sinai towering above you and wonder how you will make it to the summit in the three hours Mohammed says it will take. He should know. He has walked up it pretty much every night for the last two years.
3. After 7km of winding and gradually steepening paths, reach the foot of the 750 stairs that will take you to the summit. For the forty-ninth time, refuse Mohammed's offer of hand-holding and bag carrying, trying not to get into some Germaine Greer-influenced row with a man whose few words of English probably don't include 'patronising' or 'chauvinist'. Take a rest with your group. Glower at the really weird Australian girl, Angel, who has the body of a gymnast but the face of a wizened old hag and nicotine stained teeth that make her look half-female, half-drug-addled-rabbit, because she has happily allowed Mohammed to carry her sizeable rucksack and hold her hand since we left the carpark.
4. At approximately 4am, begin climbing the stairs, still lit only by the light of the moon and stars. Wonder at the Arabic definition of 'stairs' - in the UK or the US, these death-traps would be cordoned off immediately and all tourists banned from attempting the climb. Frequently wobbly, uneven stones with perilous drops down one side with the added frisson of not being able to see a freaking thing you're doing. Marvel at the two mountain goat-like Hong Kong boys who skip upwards, nattering animatedly and chain smoking. Draw comfort from the fact that the two Egyptian men behind you are wheezing to the point of hospitalisation. With each step, become convinced that you are travelling further into one of the world's most inaccessible places, and then marvel at happening across a well-stocked shack selling cold drinks, biscuits, refrigerated Snickers bars and a selection of tourist items including Bedouin headscarves and postcards. Feel guilty about not giving Moses more respect, but become gradually more convinced that the ten commandments and the burning bush were probably heat- and altitude-induced hallucinations.
5. Reach the summit and breathe in the awesome view for several consecutive seconds, before realising that your sweat-soaked T-shirt and wet hair is combining with the nippy summit air to provide ideal conditions for rare Egyptian hypothermia. Rent a musty camel blanket from a trusty local and wrap it around yourself gratefully as though it is a mink stole. Despair as you realise that sunrise is still an hour or so away and that the possibility of dying of cold atop Mount Sinai is becoming more distinct. Lose the feeling in your fingers.
6. Remember handy snack-pack of fig rolls among possessions and wolf down with metaphorical relish. Putting actual relish on fig rolls is a mistake.
7. 5.45am. Watch the sunrise. Take a billion incredible photographs and allow yourself to be convinced that the quantity of your pictures will ensure that you have the greatest selection of Sinai sunrise photos ever taken, better even thanthose of the man behind you who has brought up an impressively gargantuan tripod and a selection of paparazzi-style lenses to capture the moment.
8. After a brief tussle with the blanket man and, perhaps, a row with Mohammed - mine started with me slipping over near one of the cafes and him saying if I'd been holding his hand it wouldn't have happened, and me trying to point out that the top of a rocky mountain isn't the best place to start a fight with me if he knows what's good for him - begin the descent, choosing with the rest of Group Ramses to take the Difficult Route down the stairs - that's the 750 we climbed, but then a further 3000 steps rather than the winding 7km pathway.
9. Reach the bottom an hour later, in beating sunlight, wondering if you will ever walk again, but somehow muster the energy to traipse obediently around St Katherine's Monastery. Then buy an ice-cold Diet Coke and a refrigerated Snickers bar, the latter almost certainly as a result of subliminal messaging, and consume both like a crazed American dieter who's fallen off the wagon in Disneyworld. Climb back in the minibus and collapse.

That was Friday night and Saturday morning. Since then I've been walking a little like a cowgirl, not aided by the fact that yesterday evening I went riding at sunset, galloping up into the desert behind my hotel and loving the smell of hot horse. The evening would have been nigh-on perfect, were it not for the tiny, tiny ginger kitten who'd scampered up to me as I walked along the beach over to the stables, shouting its little head off. I tried to give it some water but it was slightly hysterical and wouldn't concentrate, so then I took its picture and tried to walk off, but the little thing followed me like a puppy for about ten minutes. I was striding pretty fast, trying not to get emotionally attached, but every time I looked behind me, there it was, bounding along on its tiny ginger legs, its tiny ginger tail poking straight up behind it. Finally we came across a group of children. 'Brilliant,' I thought, 'here is the solution to my problems. These charming street urchins will delight in the little creature and will surely share some of their local produce with it. I need worry no longer.' My sense of well-being lasted for a few seconds, until a fat Bedouin child with wild hair threw a tennis-ball sized rock at the kitten, and narrowly missed. I reprimanded her pointlessly, knowing that adorable ginger kittens are ten a penny and profoundly unwanted, and that I was singularly unable to rescue it myself. Steeling myself and feeling like a bitch, I walked on. And I never saw the little kitten again.

I don't know, it's a funny place, this. As a relaxing holiday destination, it's perfect. The weather has been unrelentingly wonderful: I've seen one cloud in the ten days I've been here, and even that was a pathetic attempt which came nowhere near the sun and in fact served only to emphasise the depth of the blue surrounding it. The people are friendly. The yoga has been great. The coral has been unforgettable. The hotel, especially the pool, is truly fantastic. Without hesitation, I am thrilled to have been here and feel like one lucky bunny. But would I return? I doubt it. Although Egyptian cities are apparently far more cosmopolitan, this is a Bedouin area. I have seen around ten women in all the time I've been here. All the workers in my hotel, all the workers in every restaurant, cafe, internet shop, dive centre - they're all men. It's simply not right. Obviously their treatment of animals leaves something to be desired. There is a lot of rubbish about - if you like your beaches clean, your tap water purified and/or your sewage systems efficient, stay well away. And the corruption is laughable (as long as you don't live here, when it's perhaps a little less hilarious): the police system makes Sicily look like a Quaker commune. Police arbitrarily decide laws on a week-by-week basis, enforcing them entirely at random and extracting huge fines from anyone who doesn't comply, regardless of whether or not they were aware that they were contravening any rule. I couldn't live here if you paid me. And what's brilliant is, in an instance of wonderful temporal harmony, I'm coming home tomorrow.

I had a gorgeous final full day today, snorkeling round the seemingly-bottomless Blue Hole and taking endless photos that will never look good when I get home. Then I sunbathed by the pool and burned my left knee. Now I'm going to check my emails, jump in the back of a pickup and head back to the hotel to pack. I think I've been bitten. Growl.

No title forthcoming

No title possible for such disconnected topics

The weekend was blissful thanks to good weather and nice people. It was also massively competitive, as I engaged in a round of Bingo Tunes on Friday evening, where the DJ played small excerpts of many familiar songs in fairly quick succession, and we had to cross them all off our cards [see above]. I had arrived late and knew full well that my chances of winning had taken a battering as a result. Furthermore, the prize was four pints of cocktails, which might have been a little too much, even for me, and I don't think takeaway was an option. But despite knowing that I couldn't win and that I didn't want the prize, I was unable to speak to anyone or even enter into a spot of dancing, as crossing the songs off my cards (I had three as I took my friends' on the understanding that I would be better at it than them) became my obsession. Recognising each track was not enough: I had to identify it within the first bar and a half, and have it crossed out before the vocals kicked in. Failure to do so would result in a spate of violent mental self-flaggelation, inspired by the scary posh monk in The Da Vinci Code. Eventually, someone else won the prize and I was able to relax, even managing to smile at the people near me, and it wasn't long before the dancing started in earnest and the alcohol I'd already consumed began to pour out from my forehead a la the pilot in Airplane. Stunning.

Less than twenty four hours later, my blood was up again as I was in west London for a charidee pub quiz, where our team trailed by around half a point for almost the entire evening. It was particularly infuriating because we did extremely well in an exceptionally tricky music intros round, with songs by Jurassic 5, the Stone Roses, Maximo Park, Foo Fighters, Catatonia and Portishead - not your average recognisable chart fodder. We didn't win but, having supplied several crucial and typically highbrow answers including the nationality of the chef in the Muppets and which of the seven dwarves wears glasses, I felt like I'd pulled my weight.

Sunday was unexpectedly glorious, and crowned by the news that, miracle of miracles, my parents' cat, Dennis, who escaped from a cat basket outside the cattery in the middle of nowhere back in October last year, had been found and taken to a vet's. I went back to my parents' after work last night to see him and he is mental, one moment being quite happy and just the same, and then suddenly hissing and growling in a fairly hilarious fashion. What's most disappointing is that, despite having six months to learn, he is still unable to speak English; I am desperate to find out where he's been all this time but he pointedly ignores my questioning.

The other morning, I got myself in quite a pickle. I had been having a shower and the bathroom got a little steamy, so on completion of my ablutions, I opened the window. This window faces out onto a communal walkway, and is near a communal stairwell. There is rarely anyone direcly outside my flat, but the stairwell is used quite frequently. I brushed my teeth, was applying my moisturiser, and then something very uncharacteristic occurred. I did a burp. Readers, I am as disgusted as you are. But there it is. And immediately, my surprise was flooded by panic, as I realised that, due to the open window, anyone walking downstairs, or indeed up, may have heard my repellent emission. The filing drawers of my mind slammed open and I could hear my cranial fingers leafing through my options. Within a time that I would estimate to be two seconds at most, I found my solution: blame.
"Urgh!" I exclaimed, disgustedly, and then followed that immediately with a deep bass "Sorry," the grunted apology of an invented male. Staggered at the speed, dishonesty and cunning of my solution, I had to accept that I am perhaps more dark and conniving than I may have admitted previously.

Now I am sitting at my desk, nursing a burned tongue after yet another wolfed lunchtime soup. I simply don't understand why EAT must heat their soup to boiling point like that. With the possible exception of McDonald's apple pies, I am aware of no other take-away foodstuff that requires the purchaser to sit and wait for 25 minutes before beginning the eating process. The whole point of take-away is that it's fast food. It should be ready for consumption. I don't want to plan ahead and buy my food at 11.45am, so that it's at a temperature less akin to lava by the time I am hungry. I shouldn't have to. You don't have to let sandwiches 'relax', or wait while sushi marinates. Things soup should be: 1) nicely hot. Things soup should not be: 1) still bubbling when I take the lid off back at my desk; 2) able to remove three layers of skin from the roof of my mouth just from the power of the steam emanating off the spoon; 3) capable of bonding a wobbly bit on the Flatiron building. Since today's chicken and garden vegetable broth is the last thing I am going to be able to savour for the next few days, thanks to the destruction of the majority of my tastebuds, it is fortunate that it was delicious.