meta

Yo dawgs. This is all about to get meta because I am about to (shamelessly) blog about a blog. Although – is it really meta if I’m not blogging about this blog? If this were a play, and it had a play in it, that would be metatheatre, so I suppose the act of referring to the writing of a blog within a blog is metablogging. But then, blogging is not quite as immersive an experience as theatre and usually more self-conscious by its very nature. So maybe one cannot apply the same critical parameters to the two media.

That was just to prove to myself I haven’t forgotten how to speak (or write, if you’re going to be fussy about it). The truth is that while it takes a clever and creative bean to market stuff effectively (and I’m not saying I’m one of those people, just that I’m working in that field and this strikes me as being the case), said marketing bean often has to communicate at the level of the lowest common denominator. Pretty soon a marketing bean of any calibre who has realised this starts to notice that their ability to string complex sentences together is waning.

I can feel mine slipping away from me and I am fighting to hold on to it.

Which is where blogging comes in, because on t’internet I can free the kite of my writing to the winds of my imagination and let them both soar where they will (while hopefully remaining tethered to the String of Sense, and keeping far from the Hedgerow of Twisted Logic). I can witter and twitter and blather and rant, and run circles around words and stretch meanings like bread dough when it has got to the pleasingly-elastic stage and has stopped sticking to every surface with which it comes into contact.

That’s what I like doing on this blog, ohoh yes. I like picking a theme and waxing lyrical for a bit, pootling around the edges of words and getting sidetracked on things I find interesting. This blog has always been a ‘writing’ blog, far more than it is a ‘pictures’ blog. It’s more like a journal than a photo album. So that’s why I’ve started a second blog for all my foodie-experiments. Here it is: cakesbyalfred.wordpress.com

 

That’s it. It’s that simple. On this blog, I will write stuff about my life (which I don’t have very much of in any case) and on that blog, I will post pictures and talk about recipes. That’s not to say that there won’t be any crossover, of course – perish the thought! But certainly, if you prefer salivating over cake to salivating over my prose style, you’d be better signing up to email updates at wordpress, and you can, forthwith, ignore me on here. If you like both, well then you are a lovely person and I love you muchly.

Ok. Metablog over.

One final aside, not to do with this topic, but to which I will surely return: if you haven’t read Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Woman’, do so immediately. Even if you are not a woman (perhaps especially so, in that case). Not only will it make you cry with laughter, it will also make you weep with delight at her writing and surely too, it will make you think.

Right. That really is it.

For now.

feet

Hi guys. Sorry for the silence. I've been spending my evenings engaged in alternative creative activities. As you can see above. Yes, those two badboys right there are chocolate, almond and raspberry macaroons. And they are delish. 

Yesterday I made lemon macaroons - with homemade lemon curd, obvs (what sort of amateur do you take me for?). 

At the weekend I made chocolate macaroons with a hint of orange. 

What, you may ask, has occasioned this sudden frenzy? 

Well, I'll tell you. It's feet. 

Now before you go getting grammatically correct on my ass, let me explain a little bit of macaroon terminology. The crispy bits round the outside, right, are called the 'shell'. They are made of almond, two types of sugar + egg white, plus a flavouring of your choosing - eg cocoa powder, lemon rind, pistachio etc. The bit in the middle is the 'filling' (see, it's easy, eh?). Now then. This is the tricky bit. The domed part of the macaroon shell does not have a name as such (you can call it the 'dome' if you want to be fussy). BUT - the bottom, where dome meets baking tray - is known as 'feet'. Macaroons have feet. What will they think of next, I hear you cry. 

Well then, the achievement of feet on a macaroon is widely held to be the hard bit about making them. I've had a bash at macaroons before - last Christmas, with Emily, when we made lemon and coffee and chocolate macaroons, ate them all, sugar crashed wildly and spent the rest of the afternoon basically comatose on the sofa - being one occasion. I've also attempted them more recently. However, due to oven temperatures (agas are just a bit too hot for most macaroon recipes), equipment etc I have not succeeded. My macaroons have been footless. Or possibly feetless; I don't know how many feet each macaroon has. They always seem to be referred to in the plural. Anyway. Onwards. 

So. On Sunday, I trialled my new, wider piping nozzle. And lo and behold, when I checked my macaroons - glory be, there they were! Feet! Feeeeet! I nearly cried with happiness. They were perfect. Even Paul Hollywood couldn't have criticised them that much. 

I had to make more, to check I hadn't imagined it. So I made lemon ones. Now, I don't know that the addition of the lemon rind and the removal of the cocoa powder was absolutely 100% successful but nevertheless, they still tasted great and the FEET were back! Yes! 

Buoyed by my recipe altering success, I was flicking through my recipe books this evening when I realised I was being drawn, irresistibly, to macaroons again. So I added extra almond essence to just about everything, a bit of flaked almond, and then some raspberry to lighten it all up. And whaddayaknow, FEET AGAIN! Not only that, but the flaked almond on the top of the shells looked pretty dayum professional. I felt really smug. So I took an artsy picture with my posh teaset and posted it on every social networking site of which I am a member and now here I am, gloating about it. Gloat gloat gloat. By the way, did I tell you I made choux swans? Yeah. I did, too. And they looked great, with their little whipped-cream piped tails. 

My baking star is rising. My mojo has returned. And I probably shouldn't have eaten the leftover ganache. G'night, lovelies. 

practice

I've decided that if ever want to get anywhere with anything that involves writing stuff, I am going to have to work on my metaphors and similes. They are all as hackneyed as a London-based transportation system. 

Some people have a serious knack for spinning a metaphor or simile that really does catch what they mean without them having to explain it. I always get caught up in the analogy and want to show people *why* such and such is like such and such another. The trick is obviously to say something that is sufficiently evocative that no further chat is needed. 

So, as an example. I've been listening, recently, to the new(ish) Regina Spektor Album called 'What we saw from the cheap seats', which is a pleasing title to me because it sounds - well, I don't know. It sounds like she's on our side and she's with us, and we're all sitting in the cheap seats together eating popcorn and being a little bit rowdy but essentially having a good time. Or something. Anyway. Usually when I listen to a new album of something it's because I've heard one or maybe two songs from it and I think I'll give the rest of it a go. So in this case, I had heard the song 'How' and really liked it, thus off I went trawling Grooveshark, youtube etc for the rest of the songs. And there's this one called 'Firewood', which is excellent, and then there's another one called ' The Party'. 

Now 'The Party' opens with the lines: 

You're like a party

Somebody threw me

You taste like Thursday

You look like New Year

You're like a big parade through town

you leave such a mess

but you're so fun

So. Perhaps on first sight this doesn't look like Grammy-award-winning stuff. BUT. I contest that analogically (?) this is genius. Someone is 'like a party'. Ok, so we're expecting this to mean - fun, loud, noisy etc. But - the tiny explanatory tag is not related to the nature of the noun, but to the way it is dependent on the verb (in later verses the person who is like a party changes to reflect more emphatically on what 'throwing' it does). Clever, huh? The reason they are like a party is kind of because they require someone else to be in charge and make it all happen. They get all the credit for being fun when actually it's the chappy behind the scenes putting all the hard work in to get the show on the road. And this is all picked up nicely in the 'parade through town' bit. Good while it's happening, but damn inconvenient once all the happy has worn off. 

The bit I really like is the two-line middle section. You taste like Thursday. What does that even mean? How can a day have a taste? Well, as anyone who has a normal working week can tell you, Thursday is a delicious day. It really is. You have all the anticipation of it nearly being the weekend (so close!) without the frustration that Friday brings on that it's not *quite* here yet. After Thursday, you have crested the peak of the week and you can career down the other side of the wave, and it doesn't matter if you fall off the board at this point because you'll wash up on the smooth beaches of the glory that is Saturday. Thursday is full of excited anticipation and contains very little realistic gloom or bitterness. That's Friday. Friday tastes of frustration. Monday tastes of wasted time ('all that weekend and I didn't DO anything!'). Tuesday tastes of despair. Wednesday tastes of soap. Thursday - well, Thursday is great. I love Thursdays. 

You look like New Year? Depends what your New Years look like, I suppose. And also whether you mean 'the exact point at which the year becomes new', or 'a NYE party' OR indeed, New Year's day. All of which are very different looks, I posit. I think in this case it's the second one that is meant. A New Year's eve party (which encompasses, unless you've passed out and had to be put to bed, the first meaning also) is glitzy and OTT and contains more alcohol than is strictly necessary and more celebrating than seems really worthwhile considering what we are marking. How significant is a number rolling over, year after year? Why is it that a year is important? Wouldn't it be more exciting if we reduced how often we celebrated, and had a party every five years or something like that? Anyway, the point is that it's an arbitrary party. So that's what the analogy is getting at. You look like an arbitrary party. Tacky and sticky from booze and glittery and having a really great time but almost certainly going to be suffering for it tomorrow.

Scroll up to the point where I start talking about this. That's a whole lot of meaning to fit into a not very large amount of words. People talk about 'not mincing words' but I think that the opposite approach is needed if you're going to squish this amount of stuff in. Mincing is economical. Mincing and grinding and seasoning to taste, then shaping, frying lightly and serving with a little sauce. 

So I'm going to have to practice. Let me know if you think of any good ones for me to use, in my life, or in my writing. 

Oh, and here's that song, too:

Later, 'gators X

haze

Autumn is well and truly moving on in. I've felt justified in wearing long pyjamas (as opposed to just wearing them because they are blue, with polar bears on - see 'bears'). I've worn a scarf heavier than a pashmina. I even put some glove-armsock-things on the other day. I know autumn is here with a vengeance today especially because after the roast dinner we had tonight, I suggested making stock for soup and the whole family practically shivered with excitement. Anyway. There's a big dish containing an ex-chicken simmering away in our Aga at the moment and in the morning before I go to work I will skim it and refrigerate it for soup-making in the evening. This means autumn is here. 

Other ways I know autumn is here: haze. 

What means't thou? I hear you cry. Well, perhaps not in those exact words. I'll explain. 

Autumnal haze is the sort of fog that the weather seems to have a hand in creating but is not a direct meteorological phenomenon. It's a shimmery, dense quality of the air in and out of houses - inside houses where cooking of warming food is going on, and radiators have been turned up, and fugs of heat are swirling around, oozing off people and ovens and candles and baths and wood fires. Outside, this haze is a cross between mist and smoke - it has a tang of bonfire to it, because people associate autumn with bonfires and it's amazing how your subconscious can turn a sight and a sensation into a smell. But it looks like it should cling as if it's damp and it hangs in the air like low-lying fog patches. It's a bit of a magic trick, too, because it seems to affect the eyes but nothing else - it doesn't have any physical sensation; it evaporates before you can touch it - it's a sort of weather mirage. It's truly a 'haze' in that sense - it confuses and befuddles. Anyway, it's particularly a feature of autumn. 

Other hazy things: the word 'Montezuma'. Say it out loud. Sounds a bit hypnotic, doesn't it? Like if you repeat it enough times a cloud of sleep will descend 'pon you and embalm you with its numbing, blanketing peace. Montezuma. Mmm. 

Also related (especially if you are familiar with the album 'Helplessness Blues') is the Fleet Foxes song 'Blue Spotted Tail'. Here it is: 

I'm not sure what it is about this song that makes me think 'hazy' but it is, to me at least. I think it's the guitar and the humming combo. And the words 'why in the night sky are the lights hung'. Now that's a hazily-framed question, for starters, but it also seems to recall that way that stars have of looking a bit fuzzy around the edges, like their light is sort of leaking out of them into the fabric of the sky, the way a badly-dyed piece of cloth leaks its colours. Add to that the idea the lights are 'hung' there, as if they are great big bulbs or candles with moths and all sorts flitting around them, softening edges of things and making everyone a bit sleepy. 

Other things that make me hazy: real coffee. I had some today (why is it cheaper to buy filter coffee in a coffee shop than tea? Surely tea is always lower-energy?) and it was a bit like an out-of-body experience. I had the odd feeling that my brain was floating slightly above and to the right of where my head was physically located and the sentences it was forming were not ones upon which I would be prepared to stake my life that I was making sense. (In case you were wondering, I think I'm still suffering from after-effects). 

Also, port. Now I frequently have a terrible time of things when port is involved (although often that is because of the quantity of other alcohols that precede the port, and not simply the port itself). Last night Michael and I watched a film (I won't tell you what film it was because you will think less of us, but I expect its intended audience is not an alcohol-drinking one) and we finished my bottle of 21st birthday Tawny Port. Nothing terrible happened, for once (not even a hangover, to the chagrin of my poor mum, who had two whole glasses of wine last night and had a rotten headache all day, bless). But port and a sort of happy haziness of spirit seem to go hand in hand, and apparently, not always in a bad way. 

Finally, my future. That seems to be enveloped in an ever-intensifying cloud of haze. The mists of uncertainty are thickening and if I do not escape them I am in danger of being sucked into the fog of obscurity and the swirling quagmires of boredom. This cannot be allowed to happen. I need to make choices! But not now. Now I am sleepy. There is a haze over my eyes. 

And on that somewhat cryptic note, I bid thee goodnight X

caterpillar

Sorry to leave you bereft for so long. Today’s theme – well, the theme of this post, at any rate – is caterpillars. Here are a few caterpillar-related little tales (would one consider caterpillars to have tails? They’re sort of all-tail, with added legs, really, aren’t they? Anyway. I digress).

Caterpillar tale 1: I have been rediscovering grooveshark (free online music streaming sans adverts, unlike Spotify). Over the weekend, I took this to new and unprecedented levels, especially with Disney choons. I’ve been listening to ‘Under the Sea’, ‘Colours of the Wind’, ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ and ‘Zero to Hero’ almost on a loop since then; they are brilliant. I have ALSO, however, unearthed a song from my yoof, which we used to own on tape and which tended to be played on long car journeys when we were all wee bairns. This song is ‘The Ugly Bug Ball’. I like this song very much. It is about a lonely caterpillar who feels as though he has no-one to love and believes this may be something to do with the fact he considers himself an ugly bug. He is invited along to an ugly bug ball by a spider and a dragonfly, where he meets a brilliantly coloured lady caterpillar, and they dance and fall in love. All the bugs are at the ball – ants, worms, fleas, spiders, dragonflies, beetles – and all of them are there because they think they are ugly – and they all have a superawesome time and go home happy that they came. It is a tale of reassurance that there is someone for everyone no matter how ugly you are, and you don’t have to be down about not having found the right person just yet. It is also a song about caterpillars. So relevant on all counts.

Caterpillar tale 2: This is more of a metaphorical take on caterpillars and stems from the mega rethink of my life ambitions that occurred around 10 days ago. I am emerging from my classical chrysalis and it turns out that I may actually be a bakery butterfly (or moth. As I said, ugly bug). Anyway. What I mean is that after cocooning myself in classics for many years and assuming that said cocoon would condition my state as I emerged from it, I am beginning to realise that maybe the material of which the cocoon is made does not affect what comes out of it. Well, that's possibly not strictly biologically true, but whatever. I am not an entomologist. Anyway, my current thinking is rather more in the direction of 'do something you love' which is much healthier than 'do something that will atone for not doing it right the first time'. Now this doesn't mean I'm never going to do Classics ever again. Far from it. But I'm taking my time to really, really, properly think about why I want to study. So if I go back to it, then obviously I mean it, and I'm totally clear on why I'm doing it and what I want out of it. But if I discover that actually I was right to finally put it down, well, that's good too. And what am I picking up instead? Well, I'm hardly picking it up. I'm experiencing my baking as a genuine passion rather than a useful hobby. 

SO. In conclusion, before it all gets a bit too deep and I stretch the caterpillar theme too far, I shall say adieu, and you can expect many more pictures of cake. And to unite the imagery, here is a caterpillar cake I once made:

Don't be alarmed. He is a friendly caterpillar. 

Adieu!

owl

Have you noticed there are a lot of owls around at present? 

I am buying into the owl trend by writing a blog post on the theme. 

When I say 'a lot of owls around', I don't mean a 1st chapter of Harry Potter-type scenario. There are not literally owls flocking between houses delivering news of a wonderboy wizard. Well, maybe there are, but I haven't seen any. No, I am talking about an increase in the use of the owl motif. 

Now I'm already a culprit here. I have a t-shirt with an owl on (well, a stylised owl) and a hairband - an alice band - with a little owl on the side. It's only a matter of time before I buy me one of those big owl-pendant necklaces. And it's not just me. Michael came back from Oxford with an owl hat. It has a little curved beak and everything. I've seen people in all sorts of owl-y things, from jumpers to t-shirts to bags. When somebody wears an owl-look waistcoat then the owl will have truly arrived. What is the current fascination with owls? 

I mean, owls are pretty cool. My family used to go to our local garden centre far more frequently than I'm sure was strictly necessary because there was an owl rescue group or similar there. This meant there would always be owl handlers with different types of owl, all perched on their little perches, blinking at you with their big owly eyes, and sometimes, if you were lucky, you were allowed to stroke their owly heads. Have you ever stroked an owl's head? They're incredibly soft, and when you touch them they sort of narrow their eyes slightly like cats do when you scratch behind their ears. I guess the attraction of an owl is that they embody desirable human traits - they look cuddly, but they also look like they could take care of themselves (the claws, dude!) and they have big, soul-searching eyes, and they are associated with wisdom, and they can turn their heads all the way around. Well, maybe the last one not so much. But yeah. Owls. Damn cool. 

It's perhaps amazing that A. A Milne got away with what is frankly slanderous description of one Owl in particular in his Winnie the Pooh books. His Owl is revered by the neighbourhood for his wisdom and sagacity and spelling, but actually, he's a bit of a thickie, and a manipulative, pompous one at that. The drawings (E. H Shepherd, not Disney), always make him look a bit jowly (a jowly owl, what a phrase) and he seems to behave like an unprepared teacher who is trusting to his commanding tone to see him through a lesson with a class which he is fairly sure will fall under his spell. ie, not like a *real* owl at all. A real owl would never do such a thing. (although now that I think about it, I'm sure owls are a cunning bunch). 

Even more interesting is that we call a flock of owls a 'parliament'. I like to imagine that owls, when they gather, sit on clearly delineated sides of a tree, and hoo-hoo alternately at each other in between joking about the other side's manner of hoo-hooing. Or similar. I don't know whether the collective noun was applied to raise the status attributed to owls, or to denigrate that applied to politicians. Although imagine the class expeditions to go and collect pellets (or chunder-nuggets, if you will, of undigested owl-dinner) in Parliament. Hilarity all round. Turns out DC can't digest his caviar after all, ho ho. 

Anyway, yeah. Owls. 

Right. I'm going to bed. I have macaroons to fill in the morning. May scores of owls sing you to your rest X

baking

You're probably sick of hearing me witter on about baking, but the fact of the matter is I just LOVE it. Today I came home from work (sans Michael; he has gone to Oxford on the train, armed with his trumpet and his dinner jacket, natch) and once dinner and social shenanigans were dealt with I opened my recipe books. 

I had a bit of a brownie fail yesterday. Well, that's not strictly true; what I made was delicious, but unfortunately, due to one or two reasons, it was not exactly what I was expecting. I took the brownies out of the oven at 40 mins - standard - and shortly after cut into them to serve as warm pudding-type material to assorted family members (for the record, Michael is now considered family). But alas - brownies that are too warm do not react well to being deprived of their self-composed structural support, and the sliced brownies quickly turned into puddles of mush. M remarked they were like Melting Hearts, the classic dessert at ExColl formal events. They were. I mean, they were damn tasty. But a brownie you have to eat with a spoon is not exactly convenient for, eg, taking in a lunch box. After the brownies had been left to cool, I scooped what remained out of the tin and into a box to go in the fridge and hopefully rescue them at least somewhat. 

All this only stoked the fires (as t'were) for my baking endeavours today. (It's just occurred to me that pausing on the brink of opening my recipe books to tell you about a failed recipe kind of mirrors Catullus 68, where Lesbia is described stepping across the door frame to come to Catullus and he goes off and describes how much she - possibly - is like Laodamia. This pleases me. Anyway.) So. White chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting were swiftly whipped together, shortly followed by brownies 2.0. I have decided not to put faces on this batch of WCCCF cupcakes because last time my sister kept making sad noises about eating things that smiled at her. She is on the brink of vegetarianism as it is and I think the cakes were just a little bit too far. That didn't stop her, she just moaned about it. So I am circumventing this problem by keeping them simple. Anyway. They are much as you saw them pictured in 'bears'. I made the brownies in a slightly larger tin, because I think one of the problems I had yesterday was that they were too deep (as well as being served too early). I had a go at extracting them from the tin earlier but I decided to leave them where they are and I will tackle them tomorrow, when they will definitely have set. And then I will parcel selections of them up and bring them to Oxford, because I promised the Excellent Alison that I would bring tasty treats and as she's basically tutoring me in her not-so-spare-time for no reason except because she's awesome, it would be remiss of me not to have something to give in return. 

AND as if that weren't enough baking love for me to tell you about, I am downloading this week's episode of the Great British Bake Off (surely the best talent competition on television) to watch on the bus to Oxford tomorrow. YES. 

It might be a few days before I bake  blog again so til then, pip pip X

soundtrack

The accordion is symptomatic of how I'm feeling right about now, but it is also currently the soundtrack to my days. It's a bit melancholy and wheezy and associated with Europe and old-world sentiment. I've been listening to a lot of accordion-based music because I'm currently (read: for about the last three months) fascinated by the film composer Dario Marianelli. Now DM's a bit of a groovy bean because he writes music that really evokes the overall spirit of the film; in the soundtracks he's done that I especially like, he's had a book to go on as well and I think he captures that, too. 

So - there's Pride and Prejudice, which sounds very Regency; oboes and fiddles and strains of genteel ball music, with some windy, sweeping sounds for the vistas of the Lakes and intricate, delicate, tender tunes for romantic and tense scenes with Elizabeth and Darcy. Then there's Atonement (or possibly that came first; anyway this is the order I've seen them in) which is entirely based around the metronomic, fatalistic clacking of a typewriter and runs like a rather knobbly and intrusive spine throughout the film. Then there's Jane Eyre. I think this one's my favourite; it sounds like Winter and corsets and heather and being caught in a rainstorm on your way home. It's deliciously chilling and warming at the same time; it's ethereal. Then there's the one I've been pouring into my ears almost on loop for 24 hours - Anna Karenina. This is clever - it sounds like Tchaikovsky, written by a Frenchman, with street music and European folk tunes woven in like a purposely-conspicuous patch in an inconspicuous place. There's quite a lot of accordion that creeps into AK, I think because it is generally seen as the European music of the street, and pre-Revolutionary Russia, especially Petersburg, was keen to identify itself with Europe - its fashions, its music, its art, its forays into philosophical, economic and political thinking. 

So, yes. Dario Marianelli. I hope one day he'll write the soundtrack to either something I've written, or my life. Either would be excellent and lovely. My hopes are dwindling, however, because I've just had the rug slightly tugged from under my feet - apparently what I'm currently studying is just about to be published by someone else. This is a bit of a kick in the face. I mean, ok, it's probably not *exactly* the same, but it's going to be damn difficult to make it look like I didn't just write a rip-off version entirely based on this work. And I'll have to read it, so that I know what not to repeat (and of course it's not out yet, so I won't be able to get hold of it, and even once it is out, I'll have to read it over about 3 weeks on Saturdays when I can get to the library). Moan, moan. I'm sure you think that if this is all I've got to complain about then I should just get over myself. Well, that's probably true, first world problems and all that. That doesn't make it any less of a bitter pill, though. I mean, I had this idea round about January time. If I had time and resources and the faith of a big-name publisher, I could be in the same position as my rival, or at least not far behind. Ach. 

This is the point that the mournful accordion would start up in the film of my life, as the camera shot pans back from me moping over my laptop, out into the night etc. Perhaps if it's a bit more of an arthouse film the camera would stay on me, stationary, while I did mundane pre-bedtime things, like rearranging pillows and musing over the practicalities of sleeping in socks (it always seems like a good idea at the time but unless it's actually Arctic out there, it's not worth the attempt). It'd be nice to think DM would write a soundtrack for me. It's a dangerous game, though - there are tragic elements in all the stories he writes music for. Have I had mine already, or is it still somewhere en route? 

Scary stuff. Anyway, I'm off to bed, to dream in waltz-time. 

bears

The unifying thread of this post is bears. What may appear to be a sequence of random anecdotes are all related in that they have bears in common. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? (That's Catullus, that is. I'm educating you all. Look it up. Google is your friend). No, I don't know either. I feel as though I've been depriving you of my wit and hilarity (lol) for a few days and this was the first title that popped into my head. And, oddly, it seemed to resonate with quite a few little things that have been occurring recently in my life. So here they are, in no particular order. 

Today I made polar bear cupcakes. Here is a picture for you: 

They are polar bears because they are white chocolate sponge, with a white chocolate cream cheese frosting (the ones with the whiskers I think of as white mice; you can make your own decision). I once read somewhere that polar bears hide their noses behind lumps of snow etc when hunting in order to fully camouflage themselves, because the nose is the only stand-out dark feature on their body. Thus when I made a cake that was all-white, I decided it had to be polar-bear themed. And so it was. They took all morning to make but by jiminy they are delicious. I would not be surprised to learn that white chocolate cream cheese frosting is what the gods eat on Mt Olympus. I might get a little wristband that says WCCCF, like those WWJD ones. 

Next bear anecdote. The other day, before school/work/life, I was eating breakfast in the kitchen and my sister was reading. We frequently have the radio on in the mornings because actually talking to each other is a bit much to ask. As a family, we've been through a variety of radio stations, discarding ones that play too many adverts, or too much talking, or not enough cheesy music. Anyway, we had been listening to Smooth FM for a while, but our radio seems to be struggling with it at the moment. We have therefore moved to Smooth 70s, which my parents love (obvs) and my sister pretends to despise. It did, nonetheless, afford us a moment of brilliance at this juncture in time. A song came on the radio. It seemed to be about bears. Disbelieving, we pretended to ignore it for a bit, but it got to the point where we could only look in wonderment at each other. It was definitely about bears. We could only listen in awe and astonishment. We had missed the introduction; we have been hoping to hear it again since. If anyone knows a song about bears that may have been a hit in the 70s or possibly earlier, send it this way. 

Other things about bears. I have a pair of what I call my 'christmas pyjamas'. I bought these in 3rd year when I was sharing a flat with the Delightful Emily. Emily and I decided that we should get a pair of hilarious christmas pyjamas each, as presents to ourselves, to wear around the flat, for sleeping and festive-themed baking. Duly we went to Primark and obtained - for Emily, a pair of red pyjamas with deer and snowflakes; for me - a pair of blue pyjamas with polar bears in scarves and hats (now you see the bear connection). These are not alluring or particularly high quality pyjamas, you understand. They are Primark christmas pyjamas. They are what (I imagine) one opens on Christmas day, and wears for the day, and then retires for the rest of the year until the following Christmas eve. I, however, love my Christmas pyjamas. They are too heavy to wear in the summer, but now that the weather has changed, they have come back with a bang. There's something incredibly joyous about polar bears with scarves on. Perhaps that will be my next baking adventure. 

Another thing about bears. Are you familiar with the song 'the bear necessities', from Disney's 'The Jungle Book'? No? Well, you should be. It's excellent. I, perhaps, am overly familiar with it, which is why I can recite the tongue-twister-esque section sung by Baloo (the bear) about the pear and the paw and claw and.. well, anyway. I slightly alarmed Michael with this the other evening when we were whiling away the time on Sporcle (an online quizzing community, where people write quizzes of varying fiendishness in order to challenge the obscure trivia-knowledge of their peers). We were tackling a quiz about Disney songs - I think it was name the song from the lyric section, or name the film from the song title, something like that - and I was able to recite this to him. I don't know why it sticks in my head. It just does. 

Final bear point. Tut tut, it looks like rain. 

I don't think I can find a way of relating the two, otherwise I'd tell you about my bone marrow biopsy (nothing serious, apparently, they just want to find out why my blood is funny). It's really painful. I suppose being attacked by a bear would be quite painful too. Bears don't use long surgical needles and subsequently hide them from you so as not to freak you out, though. Likewise, I can't think of a way of bringing my awesome new satchel into the discussion (it is awesome. It is new. It is bright blue. I'm going to use it every day. I love it). Well, never mind. You've heard about them now.

Right, bedtime. Sleep tight, and if you dream of bears, I hope they are the friendly sort. 

atonement

Hullo all. I have a disgusting cold that I definitely picked up in Wales (that's no slur on the Welsh, by the way - two of my fellow travellers had colds already so I reckon I've got theirs', combined). I am feeling a bit sorry for myself. My nose is running and my throat is sore and my ears ache and my head is a bit woozy. The wooziness may be something to do with the fact, however, that I have spent today fasting. I have not long broken said fast. This was on purpose, and it was nothing to do with my cold. I've been in synagogue, atoning. 

A couple of posts ago (see 'honey') I mentioned it was Rosh Hashanah, or Jewish New Year. Well, it is now ten days later and today is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Depending on your level of Orthodoxy/commitment/desire for self-castigation, this entails different physical manifestations of religious activity. Some people wear all-white, don't brush their teeth, don't allow any food or drink to pass their lips from the sighting of the first star the evening beforehand until (I believe) 26 hours later. Some spend the day in synagogue, bobbing and bowing and chanting and praying. Some do all or none or a variety of these things. 

We went to synagogue for the start of the service at 10.30 (most people turn up late; it's called 'Jewish/Jerusalem Mean Time'), sans breakfast, in smart -but not white- clothes. We joined in with the singing and praying. There came a break in the service for the obligatory 'reflection' time. I had time to think of one thing for which I wanted to repent before the service picked up again. How frustrating! I know you're supposed to spend the whole period of time in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur 'repenting', but surely you can't just get to that break in the service and say 'see above' to God. Can you? Or is it the case that I am an exceptionally sinful person and that time is sufficient for everyone else? The latter may well be true. When I think about it, even over the course of the year I wonder how I can possibly maintain the illusion that I am a nice person. 

There's a passage in the machzor (that's the festival prayer book) in the Yom Kippur service which is sung, quite mournfully, as a community; I really like this bit because it's everyone, all together saying 'we are cruel'; 'we conceal our mistakes'; 'we have hurt people intentionally and unintentionally' etc. We're not apologising for not studying enough Torah or for failing to persecute the heretics; we are acknowledging our own failings as human beings. We need to say these things as a group because they are quite difficult to admit on an individual level. Few people look at themselves in the mirror and truthfully self-criticise, but group admonishment is easier and encourages reflection. When I think of this passage in the machzor - whether I'm singing it or not - I think about my behaviour and I think about how I ought to behave differently. Not in order to guarantee myself a good write-up in the Book of Life, you understand - more to save myself the shame of repenting of the same things the following year. I suppose ultimately we are all selfish beings but there are ways of rerouting one's selfishness so that it benefits others. 

I thought about writing the list I didn't have time to mentally articulate in synagogue in that brief moment of the service where I was distracted into wondering how much more I've sinned than everyone else there. But there seems to be something show-off-y in that. 'Look at me, repenting, woo! Aren't I a good person for publicly acknowledging my faults'. I suppose this whole post is a bit of that anyway (*awkward*). But it seems to me that the best repentance is simply to change. I have hurt people this year and I hope that, by thinking about how I did that, I'll remember how to avoid doing it again. 

So that was what I wanted to have time to work out in my head in that tiny gap in the service for 'reflection'. I've reflected, now. And now it is time to start looking forward again. 

May you be written down for a good year. 

recap

Hullo folks. I'm back! It's been a busy few days. 

Adam and Alice with bridesmaids and ushers

Aren't they the cutest? And look in the background - castle! I do love a bit of old stuff. Happy days. Weddings are fun. Everyone looked lovely, especially bride and groom, and everyone had a grand time. We had great fun loafing around the cottage we rented for the weekend (even though Tom made everything smell like smoke thanks to his inability to build and maintain a woodburning stove) and it was SO GOOD (again) to interact with people my age, even in a scenario that might suggest we ought to perhaps act a little bit more grown-up... 

We all danced like loons to the live band. I wore a top hat for a significant proportion of the day considering it wasn't my top hat. I fell over on the same knee twice - it's very blue now - and the first time I was completely sober. I had an extremely animated conversation about the merits of this season's Doctor Who with the ineffable Calum. I told Alice how gorgeous she looked at least three times (which is totally allowed and acceptable no matter the quantity of alcohol one may have consumed). Our table laughed much more raucously than anyone else at the best man's speech, because, let's face it, most of the jokes were in-jokes anyway. I saved my corsage from my ushering duties. I made fun of Tom's sunglasses - his gayviators, as they are colloquially known. We all had a great time. An awesome time. And after this one, Laura said she quite liked the idea of getting married after all. So there's hope for me yet ;) 

Beauty and joy and light and happiness. 

The next day dawned grey and wet and miserable, but even that couldn't dampen the mood. I had the vestiges of the fringes of a hangover - you know, where you feel a bit tired and woozy because you've stayed up late, rather than the vicious headache you get because you've been downing shots for four hours (there were no shots. What must you think of me?). So that was good. We had a lazy start and eventually set off on the drive from Wales to Oxford, getting me to Gloucester Green just in time to get on the penultimate bus from Oxford to Cambridge. I know it's not the most efficient way of travelling but given that I fell asleep between Bicester and Milton Keynes I probably wouldn't have been safe driving. 

Anyway. When I got home, MICHAEL was in my house. This is Michael. I feel this picture (nicked off facebook) approximately sums him up:

Yeah. He's fab. Anyway, he's just started a job at my office (yay!) and he's currently staying at my house until he finds somewhere to live. 

Because we have newbies in the office, mr bossman is on a mission to rejuvenate the office space to fit everyone in with maximum efficiency. He is a scavenger by nature, however, so what this means in real terms is that he has been hunting for desks that have been thrown out by other businesses in the office block in which we work. He goes off with some of the bigger software chaps and comes back with things, which he then has to arrange, tetris-like, around the office until other things have been moved out of the way to accommodate them. Today I turned back to my desk after I had been working somewhere else to discover that I was no longer able to reach said desk, because there was another desk aligned with it. So I sat on the extra desk for a while, to make the point that it was slightly in the way. It has now been moved. 

Anyway. Now you are all caught up. More banter to follow. Toodles!

crossover

Hullo folks. It's been one crazy evening. I got home to discover the egg whites I had been (mentally) saving to turn into a beautiful meringue extravaganza to take to work tomorrow for our country-themed bake-off had been appropriated by the mum and sis in order to make dinner. Alas! If I were my mother or my brother this might have been a much bigger problem than it actually was, but as I have grown up in a house with them, I was able to circumvent this minor setback with minimum raging. The day was saved by the arrival of the shopping and I was able to make a mango and strawberry meringue roulade with lemon curd and extra thick cream, and all before 9pm. Winning at life. I have also packed my bag and organised myself to go straight from work tomorrow evening to the X5, whereupon I shall journey forth to Oxford in readiness for the trip to Wales on Friday. And then it's time for a WEDDING. At a CASTLE. YEAH. So excited. Which reminds me, I must pack my camera. Thanks, blogger. 

Right. Before all this palaver occurred, I was thinking about Classics and about reception, as is my wont. I had been reading - on the bus to work, in my lunch break, and in the bus from work - various articles about reception theory; the point, the techniques, the dangers. All very interesting (and frequently verging on the really quite contradictory, but no matter). I had also been thinking about why *I* want to study reception, and what reception actually has to offer us, because I have various applications to write and people to persuade that I deserve money/a place at their Noble Institution. 

So. There I was, pondering the reception of the Classics. When, like a bolt from the blue, I realised that reception is not, of course, limited to Classics. Once you have a theory, you can apply it to - well, whatever you like. So you can study the reception of Shakespeare in Keats, or the reception of Virgil in Tacitus (actually I had this idea in about February, but whatever. Don't steal it, I might use it some day) OR - and this one I really quite like - the reception of Austen in contemporary literature. 

Now the last one especially appeals to me because, yes, there are some pretty shocking takes on Pride and Prejudice et al around, but there are also some EXCELLENT ones. Bridget Jones is an example of the latter. So is The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides. The Marriage Plot is really interesting because it uses the idea of literary criticism (which in this case includes but doesn't specifically refer to reception) as a plot device; the heroine becomes obsessed with Barthes' The Lover's Discourse after a nasty breakup with her bipolar boyfriend and later on she seeks intellectual refuge in studying the construction of female heroines in Victorian literature. This leads to the end of the novel which is itself explicitly a subversion of a female Regency/Victorian literary motif. And of course in Bridget Jones, the heroine is extremely aware of the fact that the guy her parents are trying to hook her up with is called Mr Darcy and how ridiculous this is. I think early on she comments   something along the lines of 'it's utterly ridiculous being miserable at a party when your name is Darcy. You might as well be called Heathcliff and spend all your time on the moors wailing 'Cathyyyy, Cathyyyy!'. Added to this is the heroine's own awareness of the current serialisation on television of Pride and Prejudice, and her love of Colin Firth (taken to bizarre lengths in the films, of course, by having Colin Firth play Mark Darcy). So in both these cases, the reception of the source texts is by no means a straightforward affair. 

It occurs to me that perhaps this sort of analysis and awareness of what you can really do with a bit of clever reception and intertextuality goes far beyond what many Classical scholars are currently looking for. In these examples, we can see just from the merest glance at the storylines and characters that the authors of the texts are using their sources as entities within the new texts, entities externally influencing the texts, controlling plot devices and conceptual tools to explore relationships and even literary theory. If we turn back to our Classical texts and their receptions, why should we look at them any less critically? This is beginning to happen, of course (see Steven Yao, The Languages of Modernism, especially on H.D) but Classics seems, as ever, to be woefully behind. It's time to apply some current thinking to our old texts, so we keep them fresh and don't lose the chance to use them in the future. 

Perhaps that's a bit academic for you all, oh lovely readers. Sorry. You should see what I inflicted on my poor colleagues today in my 'office' blog. You can, in fact. Here's a link. It's the one with the title on a theme of pirates: http://shorttalks247.wordpress.com/

honey

Happy Jewish New Year! Or as those in the know say, shanah tovah! (Bronx accent optional). 

I've had a three-day weekend and it's been beeyootiful. I've baked something tasty every day - lemon curd and lemon drizzle cake on Saturday, scones on Sunday and fruit cobbler and chocolate cupcakes today. I've watched films (Archipelago), bought books (Lampedusa's 'The Leopard'), changed my phone contract + phone itself (new Blackberry), visited a whole bunch of family in Leeds (granddad's 80th), been to my brother's new student house (on 3rd most-burgled street in Britain, apparently) and sat down and thoroughly analysed Anne Carson's translation of Catullus' poem 101. 

In the immortal words of Sheldon Cooper, 'bazinga'. 

I've also rediscovered just how DAMN AWESOME my copy of Winnie Ille Pu (that's Winnie the Pooh in Latin) really is. Like, seriously awesome. Here is a small excerpt. It is from ch.1. For a bit of context, Winnie the Pooh is sitting under a tree when he hears something:

Primum secum dixit: 'Iste bombus aliquid significat. Nullus exstat bombus bombans atque rebombans significatu carens. Si est bombus, est etiam bombans aliquis, et unica causa bombi bombantis, quod equidem sciam est haec: apis esse.'

Postea iterum per longum cogitavit deinde dixit: 'et unicus finis apium existentiae, quod equidem sciam, est mellificium.'

Deinde exsurrexit et 'unicus finis mellis conficiendi,' dixit, 'est a me sumi.' Itaque ad summam arboris niti coepit. 

Isn't that excellent? I think it's excellent. You don't have to agree if you don't know any Latin. But if you do know any Latin, go and BUY THE BOOK. The translation is by a v clever chap called Alexander Lenard, and it was written sufficiently long ago that the adulatory reviews for it in the newspapers were themselves written in Latin. In the front of my copy I have written my name in sparkly blue gel pen, and also my form at the time, which was L4 alpha. Yes, I bought a copy of Winnie the Pooh in Latin at the age of 12. Pretentious, moi? 

Now this post is about to simultaneously become pleasingly circular and also linked to the title - sort of tear-drop shaped, I suppose. Winnie the Pooh likes honey. And what do Jews eat on New Year? Honey! Yeah! Despite not being bears, nor having anything to do with bears. Honey. For a 'sweet new year'. And because other bear-pleasing treats, like condensed milk, were not exactly desert-friendly for the Jews of 2000+ years ago. 

Anyway, New Year. The funny thing about celebrating Rosh Hashanah as a religious festival, rather than - as is the case with January 1st - an excuse for a piss-up - is that you do actually think about the year in a wider context. Sat in synagogue (well, the Cambridge Guild Hall, because we don't have a 'synagogue' yet), you can actually reflect on where you were 12 months ago, and where you are now. And when you think about a whole year's worth of stuff you realise that actually, gosh, you've got a lot done, and achieved a fair bit, and yes you've had your ups and downs, and you will have again, but you'll always have one day a year where you can think about it all and take stock. It's like putting on a bracelet for every year of your life, but tying a ribbon around the whole collection - that ribbon is New Year, and what you do with that ribbon, that day to remember, will determine how you approach the next year. Every year you have to untie the ribbon to attach the new bracelet and you can stop and think about the old ones. 

The metaphor is getting rather strained now but I hope you get what I'm trying to say. The point is that a year ago I had no degree, no job prospects, no tutor, no plan. Now, despite having what I would probably call the toughest year for me personally of my life, I have all of those things (even the tutor, oddly). So the point of the point is that even if things are going shitly, you may well look back and discover the whole is far, far greater than the sum of its parts. 

So I enjoy New Year. Partly because of the honey. But mostly because of the thinking. 

tarts

Hullo hullo hullo. I'm back. Didja miss me? I know you did. 

It's been a fairly busy week, believe it or not. I now have a blog that I run from the office, too, which is exciting. Rach came over for dinner yesterday eve and we ate a lot of biscuits and watched some truly dreadful television. Happy days. 

Just as I was waiting at the bus stop this evening, I had a phone call from...

Emily! Hooray! We've been planning to 'surprise ring' each other for about two weeks, so it wasn't that much of a surprise, but still awesome. We talked for aaaaaages, all the way home (ie over an hour). Happy days. I expect I was one of those people who everyone else on the bus hates, but I hope that I at least provided one half of an amusing conversation. Chats with Emily AND with Rachel in two days? Winning at life. 

Mum has gone out this evening, which brings me to the title of this blog. 

My sis said, as we were washing up after dinner, 'have you got a social life this evening? By which I mean, can you do some baking...?' 

So all the cookbooks came out (hooray!) and the ingredients (hooray hooray!) and the music went on and the pyjamas were assumed (baking in pyjamas is the best kind of baking) and the recipe was selected. HOORAY!

I made (with expert help from the sis, obvs) caramel chocolate tarts. Like caramel shortbread, but tart-shaped. Yeah, man. And then we ate the spare caramel (there was rather a lot...) with ice cream. Best. Tastesplosion. Ever. Although it did get to the point where sis and I were like... no, can't eat any more. So I put the rest in a pot in the fridge. Mmmmmmm. 

Anyway. Might put a picture up here for you. Might just eat them all first. Now watching Blackadder/Mock the Week with vati so slightly distracted from actually communicating at any length. More soon! xx

borders

Today, I had another brilliant (rather in the manner of Lt George in Blackadder Goes Fourth) idea. So I thought I'd share it with you. Bear with me through the Classical (ie most of it) bits. It's surely more entertaining than me complaining? Well, try it, anyway. See what you think. 

I’ve been writing ‘case studies’ which are used as marketing material for our company and for the companies for whom we write them. In a couple of the more recent ones (ones which we are writing on behalf of another company – so requiring knowledge of even more different types of business) the point is that these companies have set up US bases in order to show a commitment to the marketplace they have already developed there through their UK headquarters.

Now, this isn’t perhaps a connection that everyone would make, but it reminds me quite a lot of the early Imperial Roman stance on Germany. Ok, so Augustus and his heirs weren’t building on business opportunities (although maybe the idea that war is a business wouldn’t be that weird to them..) but I quite liked the idea inherent in the comparison.

The Romans used to make military incursions, especially in Germany, to lay down a bit of Roman law and to remind the locals of the might of the Empire. From Augustus’ time, especially, this was also excellent propaganda material and a reason to have a few poems written about you. Before Augustus, things are a bit tricky – Archias wrote a poem in Greek celebrating the achievements of Lucullus but it’s awkward to praise Roman might when the state is not unified under one banner, let alone one leader, and Ennius’ era was a time of many significant military men. Possibly why Virgil’s epic was more of a ‘critical success’ than that written under the Republic by Ennius. Anyway (Enni-way?), off the Roman armies went, under the command of various members of the imperial family (Augustus’ sons-in-law Tiberius and Drusus were very active in Germany and Drusus died there – not before earning the honorary surname ‘Germanicus’ for his sons, one of whom became the Emperor Claudius). Now this was all well and good, because in the eyes of the Romans the Germans were a savage bunch and not to be trusted; they were a continual threat to the peace(ish) established by Julius Caesar in Gaul and could cause problems all around the alps and to the north, into areas on which Augustus was keen to make a mark. 

But despite a few years of strong campaigning, the Roman armies didn't really establish a presence in Germany at this time in the same way they would later do in, for example, Britain. Incursions were - well, incursions. Every critic from Suetonius and Tacitus to Syme to Levick has speculated or formed a different opinion as to why the Romans didn't cross a certain point, and why they didn't put down some roots once they'd arrived. And perhaps this is where the parallels with modern businesses start (although depending on the nature of the business, perhaps other similarities, like the dynastic and murderous ones, start a bit earlier...). Businesses like playing the field a bit in foreign countries; making inroads, setting up contacts, working out who are the trusted locals and who are the ones that are going to stab them in the back. They host visits from the locals with whom they are doing business, rather like Augustus keeping a few Gallic proteges lurking around Rome, learning Roman ways, like Italicus or Meherdates (see Tacitus, Annals 11-12 for more on them). Businesses make incursions and stop - not because they have reached borders, but because they have achieved the level of exposure they need. Drusus wasn't told to stop at the Elbe because it was a natural boundary and therefore a sensible stopping place - he stopped there because, at that point, the Germans were sufficiently cowed. And that's why in later years, the Elbe was crossed and far more apparently arbitrary 'borders' were created. 

Of course, after a few Emperors, proper borders did start to come into being, but they weren't so much borders as lines between more permanent positions. The first stone forts in Germany were built under Claudius, in a line which was eventually formalised by the Emperor Hadrian, that consummate surveyor of boundaries. Businesses, too, take a long time to put down roots, and they do so tentatively and only with considerable inside knowledge, if not the assistance of the locals themselves. Happily, at least in the West, these businesses are not engaged in actual warfare to establish their position, and there is rarely a slaughter of the sort that occurred late in Augustus' rule in Germany, when three legions were massacred in the Teutoburg forests. But it is a battle, even though its mostly now fought by marketing teams and not men with gladii.

I do wish I had a gladius sometimes, though. The point is, really, that businesses are reclaiming the international 'foreign policy' of Augustus - get as many people to know about you as possible, earn sackloads of cash, and maybe some nice poetry into the bargain (well, maybe not the poetry). It's not about conquest or borders or a nation-by-nation approach any more - every single consumer is a nation worth conquering, and that's why there are no longer boundaries in global business strategy. 

I've simplified quite heavily on both sides here but I really do think it's interesting how things have come full circle. The Victorians never used to do this! Who's the more classical nation *now*, eh? 

Yeah. 

Well done for making it to the end. I'll try and write something a bit more user-friendly soon. Til then, byeee! 

direction

Two whole days of the week gone and no blog post. I know what you're thinking. Maybe I've been busy. As a matter of fact, although yesterday was a bit on the slow side, I didn't even have time for a cup of tea this morning. Many many things to package and ship to exotic locations. And this afternoon - I was building hardware. I love that job. It's really cathartic. It's like being paid to build identical lego houses (and my lego houses were always identical in any case. I'd stop building them if I ran out of a particular brick colour). So, yes, I suppose I have been busy. Well! You can't expect a complete monopoly over me. I have things to do, y'know. 

My weekend in Ox was fabulous. I went to the Gladstone link and read 2 more chapters of a book on translation and Modernism. I met Alison and Jonathon for the big reveal of the new office (it's cute. It has many bookshelves. I am jealous). We ate brownies. For the record, they were probably the best ones I've ever made. Ommnomnom. We had a looooong talk about what I've been reading and how I've been getting on and where I'm at with research etc. Alison said she was 'proud' of me for how much progress I've made (*squee*). I described my job. We agreed that Masters programs could and should be looked into. We have a plan for next time. In short, the reception of Catullus is moving on up. Hooray!

The rest of the weekend I spent with Tom and Laura, visiting their new houses - Tom's is very student-y but quite nice in comparison with where we lived in 2nd year; Laura's is absolutely adorable but a long way from town. We also spent some time in good old Exeter House before Tom cleared the rest of his stuff out, bumping into a few familiar faces en route (like Sam H, my erstwhile college father, who is returning after a year of teaching for his Ancient History M.St). On Sunday morning we made pancakes. Laura and I consumed most of a jar of Nutella but it was so worth it. We also went for a drive (I know, right), stopping off at a cute little village just past Kidlington, where we went for a walk along the canal and stopped off for a drink at a pub before I returned to Ox and to the X5. 

Socialising with people one's own age does wonders for the soul. I had been feeling absolutely miserable but I think September might turn out to be really quite bearable. And then before you know it, there'll be another paycheck in the bank and winter will be on it's way. I love this time of year. I can't wait for the transition back to woollies, boots and scarves. I was definitely born to live in a Siberian climate. 

Til the next time - toodles! 

Friday

Slightly unusually, I didn’t write a blog post yesterday. Not, you understand, in order to give you more time to digest my ‘pome’, but because I was actually busy at work. I know, right. I’ve even had quite a lot of stuff to do today. In the immortal words of High School Musical, this could be the start of something new.

I’ve also been preparing for my weekend trip to Oxford in order to read exciting things (exciting for me, anyway) and to meet up with the lovely and thoroughly excellent Alison, who is acting as tutor/supervisor for my Reception project. I’ve already read a lot of exciting things, I should point out – but there are even more in the Bodleian and so that’s where I’m headed. Copyright Libraries for the win. This preparation includes reading, filling in Reader Application forms, obtaining cash and so on. Later I’m going to bake brownies as an office-warming gift and pack up my books and whatnot. I’m leaving very early tomorrow in order to get maximum library time, and because the X5 is so painfully arduous a journey.

The obtaining of this cash produced a bit of trauma earlier. In my organised, killing-two-birds-with-one-stone way, I went to Tesco’s so I could pick up a few bits (chocolate raisins for Laura; milk for the office etc) AND get cash out. Standing at the cash machine I thought ‘I’ll just check my balance’. SHOCK and HORROR abound when I realise I’m a good £530 into my (thankfully free) overdraft, which is a whole £500 less money than I thought I had. Where has this money gone? Who has hacked my account? Have I been irresponsible with my handing out of details? How am I ever going to recover this cash?

Natch, I was frantic. I messaged my dad and got him to find my internet secure key thingmy so I could access my online banking at work. Panicpanicpanic. Log on and – straightaway – realise what a tit I have been. The £500 which has vanished from my account has gone – into my ISA. It’s set up to go out on the last day of the month. Phew.

To add to the happytimes, today is payday. Hooray! It’s so pleasing to be paid <3

Almost as pleasing is that Wales-Wedding palaver has resolved itself beautifully into a sleeps 5+1 cottage for 2 nights halfway between the church and the reception venue (the aforementioned castle). And because it’s going to work out really quite cheap after all, I can even afford to obtain a new dress. I’m going to drag Laura out shopping with me on Sunday, fo sho. Maybe I’ll put a picture up for you all to consider.

Not sure what internetz over the weekend is going to be like so you may have to wait until my return on Sunday evening before you hear from me again. Tonight I will be busy packing and also swooning over the delicious Mr Cumberbatch in instalment 2 of Parade’s End. Fridays. Yes.