Mucking About

A lovely morning browsing the web while everyone else slept in. Because my 6'x2'6" office is off the main room (it used to be the entry porch) I can sit like a spider on the web, alert to any filament that twitches. It is almost like a stage set, all doors visible.

I wanted to refresh myself with Have I Got News For You, but couldn't remember what it was called or how to spell Deayton. Worrying away at it produced results and I spent a happy half-hour, visited The Deep North which is like having a cosy chat with people I don't know.

Cissy surprised me yesterday, she had read my dissertation: I had forgotten she had it. I glanced through it and was flooded with memory and pleasure, I so enjoyed that time. I was sorting foreign money that evening and found my old Kings student card, there I was, so intense, so earnest, a whiff of Joan of Arc. So young, although I wasn't, forty-four.


Cissy herself is having an article published in Ex Post Facto! I congratulated her and asked about the competition she had entered to design a crest for the HSA, she then heard about it that afternoon, because she had won, with fulsome thanks and a $25 gift voucher. Multi-talented.

Felix bought prime coffee beans from his secret source in San Mateo and we now grind. Becoming foodies, maybe it is the Australian connection, since they have the best food sensibility I know. I tend to the wholesome rather than the sensual side of eating, but I still want to enjoy it.

2007 feels VERY GOOD so far, busy and productive and full of new pleasures, many of them gadgets, including a new phone as the old one interfered with the Wifi. Felix bore it home, with the coffee, and fragrant strawberries, and four new kinds of meat from Bruno's. I even have a handset here, beside my computer, there's posh.


I have stopped dyeing my hair. Stefan hates it in his heart of hearts but is restraining himself for my sake. I like it because I was feeling I was pretending (strike one), and it wasn't coming off! (strike two). I always notice the white star at the crown of the head on other women, so reminiscent of Black Beauty, reeking of poor-old-duck. So Nasrin bleached out streaks in the previously dyed - she had some nasty moments while it was bright orange - and I have a transitional highlighted mop far more sophisticated than I had hoped.

I need to work today (if I ever get on with it), but first I am twitching for a yomp over the hills. Bliss.