sheldrake

I'm sorry, i can't type properly on this tiny keyboard. i'm sticking to lower case because trying to negotiate the shift key just prolongs the torture.

anyway, thought you might like to know i've cheered up now, which is nice. sitting at my mum's house, looking after the dinner while she does the christmas morning service. her kitchen is like a barren wasteland. three million types of tea and half a wooden spoon. the garden is full of blue tits, flitting around the feeders hanging on the old eucalyptus. a grey day, the odd patch of snow still here and there. listening to woman's hour.

have a lovely day, everyone. :)

It is now Christmas, so I shall raise glass to you, my friends.



Whether you like it or not!

Happy wotsit thing.

ps. This is not even my wine! It is my mum's! She went to midnight mass and I stole it! Hahahaha!

I tried to take a picture of the cat but she keeps wandering off. :(

I might go to bed now.

In retrospect, I think yesterday went downhill when I put the telly on to wrap my presents in front of... only I didn't wrap any presents, I slouched under a blanket watching Catherine Cookson's A Dinner of Herbs on UKTV History. Thank god my dad phoned to complain at me, or I might have watched Bugsy Malone as well.

This year's Christmas comfort reading is The Children of Green Knowe. It's working a treat. And now when I read it I remember the real house. Here's the website, if you want to go there. You can arrange an appointment, and Lucy Boston's daughter-in-law will give you the guided tour. It's very cool. You can touch the rocking horse omg!

A letter to Neil Gaiman's blog really made me cringe today. ...I told her that I don't have any brothers, just sisters, and that I didn't know the gentleman she had named, and that I was sorry. Ooh. Ouch. Not quite the same thing, obviously, but someone once contacted my cousin, who is a record producer, pretending they were me. It was during his brief period of being mildly well-known, after he worked with Madonna and had a record in the charts. I still have no idea who the person was, or where they got my name, or anything! Weird. Quite fun for me though, heh.

I like stories about really bad Christmasses, they make me feel better. Here's a sad little memoir by Will Self. The last Christmas we had spent in my natal home, two years before, had been distinguished by my brother and I having a stand-up fist fight in the street, smiting one another until we fell into the privet – a small suburban nightmare.

My mum came round for a cup of tea and decided she wanted to play with my iPod. This led to her squinting at it and saying things like: "Nancy Boy Sex Mix? Er... Bruno Mindhorn. Is that Tom Baker? No, no, Colin Baker. That's Tom Baker. No, it's Colin again." It was odd.

Went into town again, got trapped in TK Maxx, but managed to escape. It was very windy and there were odd things. Like... a large and shapeless person of indeterminate gender coming out of the joke shop, Games and Giggles, and... well, giggling, very softly, as he or she passed me. An elderly lady standing and watching the dancing puppets in the window of Harpers Bazarre (they are helpfully labelled 'Giraffe', 'Ostrich', 'Gorilla') and just watching and watching, for ages... In the park, round the the back of the mansion, two tall, bewigged footmen in full 18th Century costume, just standing about.

Anyway. Don't quite know what happened to the rest of today, but it appears to be over.

Well. Interesting day. Actually that's not entirely true, it's been mostly very boring with the odd interesting bit. Sent faxes, checked addresses, drank coffee. Etc. I managed to leave the house without my iPod or my USB memory stick, both of which items I usually count as basic necessities for my survival. But I managed. I am reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, which is excellent, and I would have finished it today but I left it at work.

A while back, Boss J went to New York and came back with, of all things you could come back from New York with, a Twin Towers memorial fridge magnet. Yes. That was a Twin Towers memorial fridge magnet. With the result that every time I make a cup of coffee I now feel somewhat nauseous. It's not even a good fridge magnet. S said, "Do you think they'll get a Number 30 bus memorial fridge magnet next?"

My brother is in hospital, having taken an overdose of Paramol tablets. dandywalker realised and was kind enough to ring me from work and let me know that he's been on the ward since Sunday (I'm still not quite sure whether my parents were actually planning to tell me or not -- I imagine it probably would have been mentioned in passing in about six months' time). Apparently he's fine, it wasn't a suicide bid, he was just 'trying to make a point'. Basically he was just trying to get at my dad, because he was angry that he couldn't get any more of whatever drugs he's taking at the moment, and somewhere along the line this has become my dad's fault. Which, I have to say, it kind of is, because my dad allows himself to be manipulated and he's colluding in my brother's self-destructive behaviour. He (brother) is complaining now because he doesn't like being in hospital and wants to go home. *sighs heavily* Families...

Oh, but I forgot to mention -- they had Belgian waffles back in at the shop near the bus station!!! this is a cause for great celebration!

So after work I came home and redeyedea was here briefly, and we discussed men using their cocks to dust ornaments (no, really), and a package had come for me from eBay, hoorah, and then I had pasta and watched Due South (omg it was emotionally devastating and Ray cried!). I calculate that there are nine days left of the ITV3 Duesouthathon.

Ok, I have to get an early night tonight, or I will not survive tomorrow. Today was pushing it a bit.

Yesterday it was galactic_jack's birthday. He went to see Brokeback Mountain. Tomorrow it's my birthday. I'm going to see Brokeback Mountain. Both of us like to be emotionally devastated on our birthdays. Jack compounded this, however, by following the film with a session sitting in a car listening to Radiohead and watching a funeral procession. I don't think I can beat this, unless I can get hold of Morrissey and that pet charity advert where the dog's been abandoned in the rain and you hear his thoughts in a Yorkshire accent.

There was also some late-night living room dancing, of course. I think next door really hates us now.

Anyway, I must go. I'm off to see family today, so I must put on my special armour.

Thank fuck that's over for another year.

Went out for the dancing but there was no dancing to be had. :(

Have no chocolate. It is Christmas. This is wrong.

Have bottle of wine, present from work. Has screw cap. Screw cap is welded on. Cannot open bottle of wine.

Am trying to use BitTorrent, fairly unsuccessfully (have run out of SGA eps). Download has stuck at 3.9%. Do not know why.

Cannot be bothered to move from current position on unmade bed. Need to change sheets.

Have comments to answer but they are on other computer which is switched off. Maybe tomorrow.

Hmm, family Christmas. Hmm. *frown*

Hope you all enjoyed that.

Well. It's amazing what a mere six-and-a-half hours sleep can do for a person. I tackled today head on like the tricky bastard it was, and now the rest of the week looks, well, survivable, if not exactly full of myriad pleasures and delights. Ha! And I did driving this evening and everything and I did not collapse weeping at ANY POINT during the day! Hooray!

I think I've been having one of my mini mid-life crises this week. Luckily it didn't last long.

Last night I dreamt my dad showed me his novel, and it was really terrible and I didn't know what to say. I think it was about spies in the future, or something. Which, on reflection, sounds ace! My dad actually has written at least two novels. He won't show them to anyone, and he won't send them to publishers because he claims they're 'not ready yet', and anyway, he's incapable of writing a synopsis. Things have remained in this state for a decade, if not longer.

Um ... in case you were wondering, this is all part of my attempt to Post More, so as to in some way justify the money I just spent on 12 months paid journal time, in addition to eventually spamming you all to death. Look out for parade of pointless polls and garish icons coming your way soon.

In conclusion, someone needs to stop sophrosyne31 from leaving the country, because I say so.

ps. I've got a Black Books box set, so ner.

You know, sometimes I think of myself lying on my deathbed and thinking, "Right so that was my life. What have I actually done with it? Well ... I seem to have spent the vast majority of it reading my Friends List..."

That's not right, is it? Ok, so I need to get rid of all the silly, pointless communities and feeds I added purely to entertain me when I'm bored at work. Thing number one. Thing number two: er... I dunno. Help, LJ is an evil trap! :(

And I'm sorry if I missed your birthday or haven't answered your comment yet. *grovels*

Went to see my mum yesterday. I spent some time hoovering vast swathes of cobwebs off the floor, ceilings and walls, as this apparently been done since my visit last Christmas. I gave her Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex for her birthday and she really enjoyed it. It enabled her to bond with another vicar who also happened to be reading it, and they discussed the idea of suggesting hermaphrodites for congregations who don't approved of women priests. Good old C of E.

*panics*

Where is the day going? It seems to have been sucked into LiveJournal! Oh bum.