often seen in the street without a hat

I went shopping this morning and bought:

some hair dye
a maternity dress (this is not an Announcement, it is pretty, has room for my belly, and was in a charity shop)
some new glasses (using my JSA voucher, and they came with a free pair of prescription sunglasses too)

What have you bought in the last week? Other than groceries, rent and bills. I am curious about your purchases though.


Tonight I am going to the campus comedy thing, and Jon Richardson is headlining. I think he is one of the funniest people currently working. Also I have been mildly obsessed with him for about three years now. In any case, I am very pleased. Andi Osho is also going to be there, apparently, and Jimmy McGhie who I've never heard of. I thought Andi Osho was good on MTW.


[Poll #1536801]

[Poll #1463738]

I'm not teaching this year, and now the freshers are here I'm rather sorry. I was sitting outside the new "Learning Zone" next to a girl who was leaving a phone message for her friend: "Uh, sorry about last night, I'm fine, really I am - I met some of my flatmates, and I'm going out tonight, and it was just a bit much, but I'm fine, it's okay. Um, I hope your lectures are going okay, um, it's fine, bye", which made me feel rather tragic. I hope it is okay for her, I'm sure it will be.

A poll for a morning, a Thursday morning, apparently, which means that I must remember to buy the Guardian to get the booklet about Freshers Week.

[Poll #1446248]

And I would have posted about this horrible review in the Independent before if I'd been here. I haven't seen The Girlfriend Experience, though it sounds interesting, and I've no idea if his other criticisms are valid, but this:

One of them, the elephantine Tessa (Debbie Chazen) giggles nervously about going to see a play that she's in.
There's no point in not saying that these huge and unappetising women come across as being incredibly sad and curiously stupid, with their whale-like lolloping around

is fairly vile no matter what.

[Poll #1423882]

AAM - As a matter of fact (CLEARLY it's not)
BYKT - But you knew that
CID - Consider it done
CMI - Call me
F2T - Free to talk
HAND - Have a nice day
IAE - In any event
IYSS - If you say so
NRN - No reply necessary
PUKS - Pick up kids from school (I really think that this should be spelt out - the consequences of misunderstanding the acronym are not good).

I much prefer all the guesses in the last entry though, especially the idea of updated Abbey Girls.

[Poll #1253092]

At the weekend we went to see Step Up 2 The Streets and Son of Rambow. ( Films. )

When we got back we watched the first episode of the new Australian series of Gladiators, which was bizarre. It's the same as ever, which is good. I suppose I actually mean that it's the same as the British version, as I haven't seen the Australian one before - the main differences are the accents, and on the Eliminator both the men and women do the monkey bars, and they rope-swing through water instead of paper, which upsets me a bit as I really liked the paper breaking bit. Anyway. The gladiators are ODD. The women are mostly blonde and look the same - there is one with blue hair and one with huge brunette hair, but apart from that they all look freakily similar. One is called Angel and has feathers in her hair. ANGEL. What kind of a name is that for a gladiator, hmm?? The men are slightly better, but all of their costumes look the same, and don't fit terribly well. My man was a tree surgeon and won. I am looking forward to the new UK series now.

This poll is quite intrusive, so obviously people should feel free to skip it altogether or only answer whatever they feel like. Also people who don't menstruate probably don't have anything to say to the first two questions. Basically, I have never even tried to keep track of my periods, and am never expecting them to show up, and have lately been wondering if this is a dire failure at womanhood. Then I thought that as I was being nosey anyway I might as well add in the question about nipple-licking that I had been pondering for some time.

[Poll #1167715]

[Poll #1084483]

I think the main thing that would make teaching immeasurably better is if the students didn't. to a woman, have much better skin than me. I demand a return to spotty eighteen year olds!

When I was younger and watching Fist of Fun on TV, I thought Stewart Lee was the most beautiful man who ever lived. Then a few years later, watching This Morning With Richard Not Judy, I still liked him (obviously) but decided that it must have been a childish infatuation and he was perfectly normal looking. In the last few weeks I watched the FoF live video, and I wasn't wrong, I wasn't. He was heavenly.

[Poll #982795]


I have lost my bus pass again. This time I am positive that I put it in my pocket before I left the house, but when I got to the bus stop it was not there. Last night I dreamt that I found it, and was really pleased until I realised that I was still asleep. I would like to think that it was a prophetic dream, but it turned up in a place I've already looked, and I was wearing thigh high bright blue patent stilletto boots at the time, so I can't easily replicate the situation and hope for the best.

ETA: Can anyone recommend a good Australian/New Zealand (what's that adjective? other than "kiwi") online bookshop that ships internationally? I want a few things that I think are only in print there.

[Poll #730761]

I got my Amazon order today, which contained the new Jaclyn Moriarty, and it's HUGE. It's really wide, but because it's B format, it looks enormous. And I am a bit cross that I didn't realise it would be trade, because why would it? It's a huge waste of paper, and it's to try and make money before the A format, as far as I can tell. When I worked in Dillons it was always the literary and popular fiction that came out this way, and there were so few that they were in a special bay. Now they're doing it for children's books? Why? They don't match the rest of the books on my shelves, they're a lot heavier, and I don't like it.

I also got The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street. I am in the middle of reading Laura Thompson's biography of Nancy, which I am finding rather irritating. She criticises people for using Nancy's novels to infer details about her life, and then does the same thing for huge chunks of chapters, claims that Decca was mostly interested in communism because of Romilly (I thought she was mostly interested in Romilly because of communism), keeps saying that Nancy was "penniless", dismisses other people's recollections as mere conjecture and then presents her own assertions as plain fact, and has an insanely annoying style of setting up straw men to knock down (often "these feminists" who apparently devote their lives to disapproving of the Mitfords). Also, I was amused that the page of photos of all the girls has everyone posed as a youthful beauty, except Decca, who has a more candid picture from her late middle age. (Obviously this is mostly because of her elopement, but it's so representative of the representation that it makes me laugh.)

I am at home, having completed everything, and left my keys, id card and job behind. I don't quite understand it yet, but I will probably go to the job centre in the next few days, and then it might sink in. I should have lots of time to read all these books. Unless I go a bit strange and do some phd work.

[Poll #592135]