Been a while.

Things have happened. I just haven't updated, for several reasons, none of which I'm going into. I'm sad about several of them, but they had to happen.

I have rats now. The black baby (with ordinary ears, not dumbo ones) in the last post is actually one of them - now called Briar and considerably larger. I also have Ivy, who's a bit older and also black, Berry, who's agouti (ordinary wild rat colour - imagine the colour of wild rabbits), and Apple, who's chocolate agouti (that's the same, pretty much, but a bit lighter - the technical definition is apparently that she has brown rather than black hairs in her coat).

Ivy's definitely the most sedate, quite happy just to sit in the hood of the hoodie and watch the world go by. Having said that, I just had to extract her from the bowels of my printer, from whence I didn't manage to prevent her entry. She was very good, and didn't chew anything. Good rat. Berry is slightly more irritating to hold, in that she wants to be INSIDE your clothes...she climbs up my arm to my neck and then struggles down it. This can involve a lot of sharp claws. Once inside, she'll crawl about for as long as you can stand. This is quite a while if she ends up between clothing layers, but if she's against the skin involves sharp feet and INCREDIBLY tickly whiskers. Silly rat. Apple's berserk. Won't sit still at all. Holding her requires the most attention of all of them, since she's desperately keen to be everywhere at once. Briar's a bit of everybody. She tends to be the most scaredyrat - everything makes her jump and run and hide in the tube, which is about the one place I can't catch her from, as she's well aware. I haven't managed to teach them their names yet. I have only had them a week though. I'm not sure quite how to go about it is part of the problem. Dogs have an eagerness to please, which makes them very easy to train - you're just teaching them that you'll reward their attention, to start with. I don't think rats really pay you attention like a dog does. A reward system hasn't yet been set up. I need to teach them the word 'nuts' I think. They LOVE nuts. Hmm.

Other news, I got a Real Job (tm). I'm moving back to Cambridge, though. Stumo pointed out I made 6 months in the Real World before chickening out and moving back to the Bubble. *sigh*. To be honest, if this job had been in London, I'd have still taken it. It's essentially data analysis, as far as I can tell - the job title's 'research and admin assistant'...which doesn't mean anything. It's for a company called Baker Richards, who do arts marketing consultancy. Means I should get a look in at pricing and business strategy in the arts - which ought to bode well for theatre management type jobs, if not producing ones. It also bodes well for marketing in a lot of other businesses, which should mean I have a reasonable chance of career progression of some sort in some direction. Theatre is a bit more one dimensional than that. Essentially, I'm putting off decisions, while doing something that combines maths, presentations and reports with the arts. All boxes I'll quite happily tick in an ideal job.

Fyi, I'm moving back into the Victoria Road flat. Will's living in it these days, and my old room's vacant. The only problem's the rats. Need to pester the landlord, and move.