St Albans.

So. Over the last few days, I have mostly been unpacking. It's been a long term operation. After all, I had to build a bookcase in order to unpack in the first place. In fact, I didn't really build the bookcase, I persuaded the brother to do it. He seemed to enjoy it. I got to watch Heston Blumenthal making Black Forest gateau instead, except during the difficult bits. It's sort of nice to have all my books on a bookcase properly again - it's been a while. I'll bring the rest of them up from Cornwall at some stage; I'd like them to be all together. Besides, the ones that are still at Lanner Mill are mostly the crappy easy-to-read things (not Discworld; that has traveled with me) that I actually WANT now. I actually bought books yesterday, as well, which was bad of me, since I've got loads of stuff to read at present, but I went deliberately for stuff I thought would be good fun to read. As it turned out, I bought Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh) and I, Claudius (Robert Graves), which are proper classics and don't really count as trashy novels, and a historical crime book called Sovereign (C. J. Sansom), which is not and does. Ah well. The first of the three I know as a fantastic television series (Granada, 1981, starring Jeremy Irons, but with cameos from the likes of John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier) , so should be ok. The second is a great TV series too (BBC, 1976, starring Derek Jacobi), but I've not seen it. Maybe I should - Jacobi's great. Will see, anyway.

Had lunch with Katy yesterday. Nice to see her. I've hardly seen her at all over the last few years when we've both been away at uni, so it was good to catch up. Her parents split up in April, so she's been coping with that. She's changed - and I don't think it's to do with her parents. She's much more outgoing than she ever was before, or so she seemed, but then I think I'm probably far more reserved than I was. Hard to tell. That doesn't really interfere with how well we get on; it was just a change. Still feel unsettled about being back here and seeing all these people again - it's all such hard work. The flat feels strange. I know I'm not living with my parents or anything, but it almost feels like I am. I couldn't say why though. I suppose it'll be better when I've found something to do with myself. Must buy a copy of The Stage tomorrow.

I had to buy a new air pump for the fish tank yesterday, because the one I was using died completely. I inadvertently bought a huge one, designed for a vastly bigger tank than mine. Until I figured how to limit the flow, Boris and Azrael were a little non-plussed at the jacuzzi that appeared to a come into being in a corner of their tank. I was debating taking it back, but it's only a matter of time before I DO get a bigger tank - albeit still one where I don't need so enormous a pump - so I've decided to keep it for the time being. I was admiring the fish they had though. I think I'll buy a thing called a 'butterfly ghost koi' when I get the bigger tank. I can't find a picture at the moment, but they're mostly black with gold sheen and scale tips, with beautiful long feathery fins. That is, if I can get a guarantee they won't grow too big - the smallest ones I saw were about 3 inches, but they're koi, and can end up a good foot long. I was admiring the big koi as well - the largest they have there (Hertfordshire Fisheries) are about 18 inches long and sell for about £500. I was talking to the guy, who said they'd sold one in two years. It's such a shame - they're beautiful fish and they're trapped in a completely bare tank not big enough for them. It would be great if they could have a proper pond, but these days they're an insurance risk, beside the fact that you need a pretty much a country house to keep them in. Bah.

Off to Cam today, hopefully til Saturday morning, when I head to London to see Graham. Really looking forward to having a few days up there, even if I'm going to be camping on a series of floors.

Moan.

I was going to say 'I'm home', but I'm not. Am in family flat in St Albans. Great. I'm homeless again. Noticing how much difference having the flat last year made to me. Or I think I am, though I suspect I'm just tired with the effort I've put in today trying to make this place habitable - furniture moving and unpacking is not fun with the something I've damaged in my left arm, quite apart from being in itself just plain dull. My brother's being his vilest, which hardly helps. Am slightly miserable because I can't get hold of Andy at the moment, too. I have the usual nebulous paranoia that something's wrong in some way, despite the fact that he's probably just left his phone in the car or somewhere or is busy or something, and that I know full well he has no net in his college room. I don't think I'm usually this pathetic about that kind of thing, but actually knowing the fact that we're not living together anymore, after nearly a year, makes just the week I've been away feel all the worse. I hate moving house, and I really don't see the point in making the effort to move on with anything.

Also, I know full well I'm being pathetic. Sorry. Will get over it sometime.

EDIT: Just spoke to him. Feel a bit better, but he isn't in a stunning mood either. Meh.

Don't like this post. It sounds really selfish. Hope you can read it the way I meant it, which, I think, was a little less whiny.

France.

It's wet - torrential thunderstorms and so on, such that the lights keep flickering - so I'm taking the opportunity to write this instead, while trying to get the CD player beside me to play more or less anything that isn't Dido or Jacko. I was aiming for a Kings CD I saw they had the other day, but that turned out to be entirely Christmassy, so I dug out one of those 'Classic' compilation things. Well. Don't try and get the train all the way from St Albans to somewhere approaching Geneva on the same day. It's an error. It does bring home to you the fact that the French Alps are A Very Long Way, but having driven over them a fair few times for holidays of one sort or another, I don't need that bringing home to me. The scenery is great, and the chalet/hotel place we're staying is gorgeous. Slightly random selection of other guests, but that's the way of these things. It's an adventure type place - the area is lousy with VTT (velo touts-terrains (probably got agreements wrong...sorry), or mountain biking, to you and me) centres and places to jump off mountains with curtain over your head. I've done a fair amount of walking with the parents, such that now my knees are well and truly ouch, and have also been canyoning and rafting. I wasn't sure the canyoning would have been really up my street, and it nearly wasn't - I'm not good at heights, and it basically involves sliding, climbing, abseiling and jumping down a very cold waterfall at the bottom of a gorge. I love the water and the messing about in streams bit, but am really not very keen on the jumping bit unless I know exactly where I'm going and it's not too far down. Least I didn't have to much in the way of bridges or much hanging on the end of a rope that I wasn't in control of. I only froze properly once, and ended up grabbing a rope I really shouldn't have grabbed because I now have beautiful rope burn all across my left hand. Bah.

The food's good, too - the chef in the chalet is awesome, but the area has things like a cheese that melts so perfectly you just need it on its own to make a cheese sauce. They use it to make a thing called Tartiflette, which is fried potatoes, onions and bacon, made into a gratin with the cheese, called reblochon. I reckon it could be adapted pretty easily with red pepper pieces instead of the bacon. A slightly more authentic replacement would be capers, but I don't recall really liking them, so pepper will do.

Despite the fact that it's raining now, the weather's been great. We were walking yesterday, and it was clear enough to see Mont Blanc, which is pretty rare from here. We're more or less on the Swiss border, at a place called Morzine, just south of Geneva. The clarity had its downside though, in that it was HOT yesterday, and I had a killer headache when I came home. Bah. I have a bit of a tan though, which is always something. It's pretty uneven, but a few weeks in Cornwall should sort it out I suppose. Meh.

I suppose I ought to start job hunting when I get back, but it's not really going to be practical. I'll have two weeks, then perhaps some time in Edinburgh, though that's now looking pretty unlikely, then a month in Cornwall. It's hardly a suitable set of locations for possible job interviews in London, really, though I can at a pinch drop things in either of those locations and go home to be interviewed on any day apart from the actual run at the Minack. I'm not all that sure how long it'll take for things like that to process - from application to interview to starting a job, so I don't quite know when the best time to start doing this is, if I want to start work at about the beginning of September. I still haven't got the energy for it...spending chunks of every day in a complete funk about everything at all, where the best option is just to hide under the duvet and hope it's not there when I wake up. It's not that I'm scared of doing a job, or even getting one, just that I really don't see the point in anything. Meh.

WhiteWater?

Hugh managed to get preview tickets to the first Cambridge preview of Transformers at one minute past 12 on Friday night/Saturday morning. The film's ACE - proper comic book movie, with lots of shooting and awesome aliens. Yay. You have to go and see it when it comes out. Yes. You.

Saturday was Angharad and Steve's wedding, in St Michael's Manor in St Albans. It was a lovely day, and the weather even held off long enough for them to do their photographs. I haven't seen a lot of those people for several years, so I spent the day trying to re-attach names to people I've known very well in the past and done shows with and everything, but whose actual NAMES wouldn't come out. Bah. I'm clearly old. The party in the evening was in the theatre - weird to be back there, too. I've visited it a few times, but not everyone I wanted to see has usually been there, so this was really good. Strange though - that was the place I spent more waking hours than I did in my own house when I was at school. Erk. Going back is going to be strange. I will go back to the theatre, because it can still give me things and people keep suggesting me things I could do, which is lovely. There's a part of me that's not sure about the whole idea though. The Abbey Theatre represents a massive chunk of my past and some of my happiest memories, but their from a past I don't particularly want to be stuck in. At the same time, I don't particularly want to be stuck where I am now for any length of time, either. Bah. I know I'm not making sense, here. I have an issue at the moment with wanting to do anything - like go out anywhere or do anything that's not with my usual crowd of friends (for this purpose, those are Hugh, Andy, Kate, Lara, Rob and Carl). That's not to say I don't get on and enjoy the company of anyone else, but I worry and um and ah about going out. When I *do* go out, I usually enjoy myself provided I don't drink, I just find the idea of going really unpleasant. I've lost any will to put *ANY* effort into it. Hope it comes back. Slightly worried about that at present...it's not a great symptom, really.

I took Eleanor up to Oxford on Sunday. Good job we went when we did, and I'm very glad I didn't stay longer given the chaos over there now with the floods and everything. I didn't actually see any water in Oxford, apart from in the Cherwell, which was running REALLY high. There were punts that were clearly tied to the original bank with their noses stuck down in the water at 45 degrees and their back ends in the air. It was still getting higher until yesterday - I think the warnings are in place still, but it has started going down I believe. When I was driving out, there were flooded fields, but the roads were still clear. Apparently on Friday when all the rain came down the M40 had been closed. That was what did it though - on Friday, some areas had three times the normal rainfall for the entire MONTH fall on one day. Nice.

I went up to Chatteris to see the little house on Tuesday. I'm glad one of me and my brothers has a useful memory of the place now - I doubt David even registered it exists. I suspect it'll stay rented for a few more years yet, at least, until one of us actually wants to buy somewhere. In the meantime, it earns a reasonable rent, and will earn a bit more when we redecorate it and stuff.

Other than that, I've spent this week packing. Gah. And I need to finish that today and do the cleaning. *sigh* I hate moving house.