Deep South

I'm in Cornwall, in the middle of nowhere again. The weather's not that pleasant, but it's nice to be here. LOVELY to have my pets around too...the kitten has grown even more - proper sausage cat now. Cleo his mother appears to be becoming more relaxed all the time, though she's still hissing and spitting at the dogs. Rocky is friendly and beautiful as always, though he's beginning to show signs that he's not the baby dog any more - big shame, he was a fantastic puppy. The new Labrador (Cassie) is beautiful and such a sweet little creature. She's quite shy, but full of love once she gets over that. Full of beans, too. Kiri always was, but I'd forgotten what it was like to have what amounts to a puppy around. There's still the possibility she might have puppies - she escaped with the Jack Russell from up the road on several occasions while in season. I think we're all hoping she might be pregnant...would be SO much fun. Won't know for a few weeks yet.

The blackberries are all ripening, but if the weather continues this wet they'll rot on the branches. I took the dogs walking on Polly Joke and the dunes behind it earlier, and dawdled along eating them. Cassie loves them, too - she was picking them herself! Apparently she's already eaten all of the ones in the garden. I'd like to get out and pick some, but they aren't quite ready down here and I suspect they'll just rot on the branches in Cambridge even if I COULD find time to go out for them in the next couple of weeks.

I've been prepping for my big barbecue tomorrow all day today. I've made The Best Brownies Ever (something arrived at with much taste testing and long suffering work colleagues...), two heat levels of a new caramelised onion tomato relish I'm experimenting with, the rosemary cracker bread from the Smitten Kitchen blog (I have a growing obsession with food blogs...) AND I made mushroom risotto for tea. I'm going to post the risotto recipe, because it the only one that's mostly mine that I've had a chance to taste yet! I love risotto. Simple to make. Comforting to eat. Endlessly variable. Contains rice. I like rice. My recipe has a few nods towards authenticity, but I wouldn't want to serve it to an Italian. They will know better. It's just a nice thing to eat on a weekday evening.

For 3

250g Arborio/Carnaroli risotto rice
Half a cup of dried mushrooms (porcini would be great)
1 glass of white wine
One large red onion, finely diced.
2 sticks celery, finely diced
Butter and olive oil, for frying.
500g dark gilled mushrooms - the better the mushrooms, the better the dish - chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Good vegetable stock - homemade, or a good brand. You can use hot water if required, it would be better than cheap stock, which mostly seems to taste of salt in my experience. If you're less finicky about where your meat comes from than I am, good chicken stock would also work. Make sure it's hot - keep it in a pan on the side, or only mix what you need for each addition with water from the kettle.
Black pepper - you shouldn't need salt because of the cheese
A good handful of grated parmesan. About 2 cubic inches of a block, at a rough guess.

Soak the dried mushrooms in enough boiling water to cover before you start all of your chopping. Gently fry the onion and celery in olive oil until soft but not coloured - this will take a full 10 minutes, so you can chop the mushrooms while it cooks. When the veg is soft, add the a dessertspoonful of butter and allow it to melt, then add the rice and stir to coat. Fry for a few minutes until all the grains are well coated and the pan has heated up again. Add the wine and stir until the rice has sucked it up. Remove the dried mushrooms from the water and squeeze them out. Add the mushroom water to the pan and stir again until the rice has taken it up. Start adding the stock around a ladleful at a time, stirring between additions and only adding the next ladleful when the previous one has been taken up. The stirring massages the starch out of the rice, giving you a creamy sauce. Meanwhile, fry the mushrooms in another dessertspoonful of butter and a slug of oil (oil for heat; butter for flavour!). Allow their juices to run out and then evaporate off, concentrating the flavour. When the dark liquid in the frying pan has more or less gone, sprinkle in the garlic, stir, and turn the heat off. Keep adding stock to the rice until it's around 3 times the volume it was when you started - taste a grain of rice. It should be al dente, with a tiny bit of crunch to the middle. If it's too hard, add more stock and keep on cooking... When you reckon it's done, add about two thirds of the grated parmesan and stir. The sauce that looked a bit watery will magically become silky and slightly gelatinous. Add some good grinds of black pepper. Chop up the now reconstituted dried mushrooms from earlier and stir them in. Stir through the fresh garlic mushrooms and warm through. Serve on warm plates, with more parmesan and black pepper to throw over, the rest of the bottle of wine and a green salad on the side. Ace.

Autumnal busyness.

It's been a while, hasn't it? I ought to be better behaved about keeping this up. Lots of things have been happening, not least that I got promoted. Yay! And I'm moving house AGAIN. Third time in 9 months. I hate the graduate life. Being a student was SO much better. For the next three weeks I'm living in North Cambridge with John (Christian's old housemate) and Andrew... Techie house extraordinaire. Then I move BACK, get it BACK, to the road I was living in before - this will be the THIRD TIME I move into a house on that road. Dammit. At least it's not the same house. The rats are going on holiday to Christian's for a bit while I build them a shed in the garden to live in and work out how to get power to them so that I can plug in their heater. That house is rapidly becoming more and more like a zoo.

What else? I've spent every weekend for the last month in a capital city. 1) London, 2) Edinburgh (where I made a brief appearance at the Fringe, where I made the famous lemon cake as ever, and saw some great shows, got drunk with Matt and Chris and had an amazing curry), 3) Belfast with Elaine (where we made pasta and went to the seaside), and 4) London. I'm in Cornwall this weekend, then the Scilly Isles for a bit, and then I come back and go back to London to cook for the crowd of friends that live there - three of whom have moved to BOROUGH HIGH STREET, putting me within 5 minutes walk of a certain Market. I've already claimed my weekly sleeping spot...

It's getting autumnal over here, without really showing us a summer that was anything more than sticky. The shops are beginning to get over the summer veg, (I had to hunt for peppers from a reasonable location in Tescos yesterday), so I guess I must regretfully abandon my hopes that the sun was going to come out in September. I did find butternut squash, however. Yay squash! Andrew bought a monster one a couple of months ago that sat in the fridge for AGES until I came up with something to make from it. Squash makes amazing soup (roast chopped up squash with thyme/sage/both at 200 degrees C until soft (about 40 minutes-1 hour, depending on age of squash and how much chopping you did), fry some chopped onion and garlic for 10 minutes or so until soft but not coloured, add the squash and some good veg stock, bring to the boil, puree, and add a hefty quantity of grated parmesan...), but I'm bored by soup most of the time. I opted for curry that time, instead. It came out quite well, but we did eat it for about a week. This time I went for pasta, and made sure that I bought the smallest squash I could find!

Squash is pretty keen on thyme and sage as platefellows, teamed with something salty - like parmesan or bacon - to complement its sweetness. Hence my pasta, really.


Creamy Pasta with Squash and Bacon
(veggies, just leave out the bacon and have more parmesan at the end - when frying the sage, do it gently but for long enough that the leaves go crispy or they might be tough)

For 2

- one very small squash (about 300g, at a very rough guess...something about 4 or 5 inches high, probably)
- 4 rashers good organic smoked bacon
- 1 dessertspoon chopped fresh sage leaves
- 100ml single cream, or a couple of tablespoons of full fat Greek yoghurt (I'm not sure actually which comes out less fattening, if you can find the lower fat single cream that Elmea make, of which I approve)
- about 150ml white wine
- black pepper
- olive oil
- 200g sturdy pasta shapes, e.g. caesarrece or penne
- salt for the pasta water
- parmesan to serve

Chop the squash into fairly small dice no bigger than 1inch cubes (no need to peel - that way there are more vitamins and more texture...), and mix with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Spread it out on a baking sheet and roast at 200 degrees C for around 40 minutes, until soft and crisping around the edges. If you clean the seeds off a bit, spread them on another baking sheet and roast for about 10 minutes until brown and crisp, you'll have a snack to eat while you wait.

Put the pasta on about ten mintues before the squash is going to be ready. Dice the bacon and fry in another tablespoon of olive oil with the sage, until the fat runs and meat is crispy. Add the white wine and allow to reduce for a minute or two. Add the squash and turn it over in the juices, so it can soak up the flavours. Turn the heat down and add the cream. Drain the pasta and add that too, along with a good grind of black pepper. Stir together and allow to heat through for a minute or two before serving with plenty of parmesan and the rest of the bottle of wine. Some sort of green salad would be good on the side.

Wet.

I've just been swimming in the Jesus Green outdoor pool. In the Outside. It was ace. One of few things I've done in the last few ages which has actually been added to by the rain. Not too many people, grey sky and rain to watch. Unheated, so actually a pleasant experience to swim in, as opposed to the vastly overheated indoor pools, where you sweat in the water and it's yukky. Not too chlorinated either. It must be the largest pool I've ever swum in - a full 100 yards. You only have to swim 20 lengths to have done considerably more than a mile. Satisfying. I was, and indeed still am, shaky after I got out. It's been FOREVER since I did any concerted upper body exercise. That was the thing that started giving out...my stamina was fine, and (at least while I was in the water!) I felt like I could have kept going for ages, but my neck ached and my arm muscles ached from the unaccustomed effort. I was doing backstroke, which means that you actually have a lot of tension in your neck - hadn't really noticed that before. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed that stroke though, because it lets me breathe properly. Singers don't cope well with not being able to fill their lungs properly each breath, which is what happens in crawl, and breast stroke is disappointingly slow. Was tempted to play with butterfly, but thought everyone else would laugh at how bad I was, or think I was showing off. Which I probably would have been, for the first 5 strokes, until I got tired, and then they would have laughed... I think I'm going to have to invest in a swimming hat, despite how stupid they look and how uncomfortable they are. Damn hair. There is NO way of tying it up so that it doesn't come straight down the second I put it in the water.

And to cap all the watery experiences of today, as I came back over the bridge, there were canoeists jumping into the river in their kayaks from off the top of the lock - 5 or 6 feet above the water. It looked ace, and since I was already dripping I stopped to watch. Splishysplashy. Hee. It's nice to see the British enjoying their national weather.

I've noticed how rambly this post has become. I'm going to have a very hot shower and some food asap. And then I'm going to see how the rats are.

Antivegetarianism.

I think I just managed not to get a job through being semi-vegetarian. Great. Ah well. Just feeling slightly under-valued at work and looking for ways to make them think they have to work harder to keep me. We shall see.

For those that should know these things, I'm single for the first time in years and thoroughly enjoying it. It's much less hard work than being in a relationship. I'm thinking about getting a cat and using men as playthings when required. But I'm ALWAYS thinking about getting a cat. It'll be a Siamese, with a silly name. But I need to (a) find somewhere to live/work that I don't intend to move from/leave in the foreseeable future, (b) a cat-friendly landlord, (c) cat-friendly housemates and (d) money.

Bah. Right. Time to go to work.

Whitepark Bay tideline

whitepark tideline.JPG
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

I was pleased with this. Taken slightly to the west of the Giant's Causeway, on a beach that faces the Mull of Kintyre, with my old Minolta. Getting back into the film trick. Need things to take photos of in black and white, now...

Ireland was lovely. We have a new puppy. I'm between houses, for what looks like the rest of the year. Chaos. But it's May Week, and many brothers are around, including one with a bonus broken ankle (from jumping out of a plane (with parachute) and hitting the ground harder than he meant to). Johns' fireworks are going off as we speak, and I can hear the Water Music all the way across the city.

I need to find a way to heat the rats. I'm thinking about a heat lamp like they use for chickens, and some sort of thermostatic switch. They'll be alright until it starts getting colder, then I need to find a way of keeping them warm.

The world's a bit crazy at the moment. I could do with a hug.

So it's been a while...

I've been busy...sorry. Not sure doing what exactly. Stuff. Turning the garden into a garden. Looking after the fish and the rats. Going to Cornwall. Seeing the last of my beautiful beautiful Kiri dog, who died suddenly last week, aged only 9. That kind of thing.

Job's going quite well, actually. Been in Southend today for a meeting, which was really good fun. I'm just debating whether or not working in an industry I'm quite interested in with people who are lovely makes up for the fact that it's really not very well paid. The arts are great and everything, but the things I enjoy about this job are nothing to do with the arts - they're the data analysis and the solving problems for people. So I don't know. I'm certainly going to stay here for a year or two, because less than that would be silly, but I'm really not convinced I'll be staying. Who knows.

I'm off to Ireland in a couple of weeks with Elaine and Carl and Christian and some other friends of mine and Carl's...looking forward to it. Might head down to Cornwall for the Bank Holiday at the end of May, but that just depends.

I'm also rediscovering how much I adore crime dramas. Especially the old ones where the slightly crooked but good hearted copper beats crime to the annoyance of authority. So excuse me, I have Frost to watch.

Cornwall is far.

Llamas are awesome, kitten vicious but gorgeous, cat vicious and nervous but coming round, little dog wonderful, big dog poorly, family all alive, accidents on the A303 irritating. Going to bed in a sulk. Possibly with sitcoms. Maybe I'll update sometime soon. Probably good for me.

"In November, [Lindsey Lohan] served 84 minutes in jail for drunken driving and cocaine possession charges."

How do you serve EIGHTY-FOUR MINUTES in jail for anything?!

Article is fairly unconnected to that, but see here.

Also, still alive. Lots of singing. Thinking about doing my diploma, but I've been thinking about it for ages. I have gone one step further, in that I've got the repertoire list. Now I need a really good teacher, somewhere with a real piano to practice, and an accompanist. The latter two might be solved by GSM, and possibly the former as well, but we'll see.

If your 'Hazel' stops working for any reason, or fails to give satisfaction, please return to manufacturer with original packaging, and a replacement product or full refund will be forthcoming. This does not affect your statutory rights.

Life ok. Job reasonably interesting. First meeting with clients on Wednesday. Meh. Should know what I'm talking about by then. Erk. Might have joined GSM choir. Not sure. Bit hard to tell. Will find out Wednesday. Rescued Carl from A&E yesterday, where he was because he hurt his wrist. Christian in States, so am animal sitting, and occasionally scrounging the double bed. Am actually spending Time at home though. Eating shit. Always do when it's just me. Run out of money. Can't pay Feb's rent until I get paid for Jan. Crap. Went running yesterday, because it was gorgeous - stiff as a board today. Went for AGES, rather than just being unfit (am that too, but it's not like I've done no exercise at all the last few months (coffee shop job on feet all day, fair amount of cycling)...if had gone for the normal 15 I'd have been fine, but went for 45...), but still.

/ramble

New Job.

Since the last post, Andy has deleted himself from the internet. I suspect I managed to imply that I thought the whole thing had been a waste of time from the beginning, which I didn't feel at the time at all. It's just that now, it's clear that it was always going to work out like it did. But we had to try and make it work in order to find that out. I understand why that might come across as 'I wish I'd never started it', but it's not exactly what I meant. Anyway. It.

New job's quite good. I spend ages in Excel un-mangling box office data and making it readable and understandable and then turning it into graphs for PowerPoint presentations. That sounds really dull, but it's actually quite good. At present, anyway, it's pretty interesting. I hope when I've learnt how to use Excel properly it's not going to get boring, but I don't think it will, because hopefully then I'll have started going to meetings and talking to clients and that kind of thing, and it'll be interesting in a different way. So yes. It's good. And disconcerting similar to what Melissa's doing at Merrill Lynch, and being paid Lots for. Ah well. She won't get to wander into interesting theatres, and I don't have to stay at work til 4am several times a week.

I think Christian was feeling guilty this week, cos he bought me flowers AND took me out for dinner at the Vietnamese place on Magdalene Bridge. Both were awesome. Maybe he was just feeling nice, but it was still great. He had no real need for guilt - he's just been really busy, which I understood, even if I would have rather he was around...

Kate, Melissa, Lee and Graham T and me went to the Natural History Museum yesterday. Was FANTASTIC. I had bullied them all there to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, which was absolutely brilliant. It's made me keen for sitting in hides waiting for birds and things. I'll keep my eyes out for beautiful days and pretty places to go, I think. I'm also likely to negotiate for a decent camera from one of the two friends I've got who have spare digital SLRs... The NHM is the kind of place you could go to every week for 3 months and not go through the same room twice - I'm quite keen to go back AGAIN, despite the fact that this was the second time in about 2 weeks (I went the week before very briefly with Eleanor when we went shopping on Oxford Street and got caught out by the 'you can't use cheap tickets in rush hour clause'). I'm also keen on the Science Museum AND the V&A, and am planning a champagne picnic in London Zoo in the summer. Will be fantastic. I know it's expensive, but I don't mind donating money to the zoo, because they do good stuff with it. It's like paying for the Eden Project.

I got to see Graham's new flat, too, which is lovely. Doesn't have the view of the previous one - which was about 10 feet from the south bank of the Thames. This one looks down on a panorama of Elephant and Castle. Not so pretty, but still a great flat. Also really near a rather nice indian, which was dinner. Was nice to catch up with everyone, and enjoy the book I bought from the NHM (Extreme Nature - I KNEW I wouldn't be able to go back without buying books. I also bought Darwin's account of the Voyage of the Beagle, which looks pretty cool.). I'm going to see them all next weekend for Leigh's birthday evensong at GSM, which I'm looking forward to. I'm tempted to ask Leigh if I can join GSM choir - they have adult female altos, which is something. Would give me a chance to find out what's what in Cambridge singing, and I'm going spare with nowhere to sing.

Well. I came home for chillis and red onions. Off again now. I nearly have housemates again. I've decided that it's less weird that I'm back in this flat, and more that Will and Tom live here too...

New Year.

I hate New Year. I say this every year. I think it's mostly because I'm shattered by the holiday season by the time we get to it, and this year was definitely no exception. The yukky antibiotics (second installment - better be it) didn't help, it's true. In some ways, I really ought to feel quite pleased to be seeing the back of 2007 - there've been some pretty horrible bits to it. There were some awesome ones, too, like RTTFP and getting a choral award among others. I never feel quite content admitting things are over, though. It's supposed to be pretty childish to cling on to things when they're finished, but I always do. I guess this year it's partly the fact that I have the new job to start after Christmas, doing something I know very little about, and, for a change, which I care about doing right. I don't usually care about the shitty little jobs I get in order to pay the rent or feed myself or whatever, but this time I do. I think. What if they don't actually LIKE me? What if I can't do what I'm asked? What if I just sound really stupid? Meh. This sounds really pathetic written down, but it's probably still true.

I'm trying to look at the New Year as a way of erasing the bits of last year that made it so bad. I'm not talking about Andy and me, the relationship, though I do mean the way that things ended. Contrary to what I'm fairly sure he believes, I do feel sincere regret for the way things turned out between us. The regret I had is that I badgered things into starting when I should have thought more honestly, right at the start, about how far I could see things going between us. I don't mean that I thought even then that we wouldn't have a future, but I do think I should have taken it more seriously. I was (am?) in a place where relationships are more fun than serious, but I think I put over the opposite message. I don't know. I have a suspicion they need to be both, but that's pretty hard. I don't really mean that I regret we ever started, because I think if nothing else we both learnt a lot in that relationship and that we supported one another through some bad things. I do mean that it would have been better that nothing had happened than for stuff to happen and then leave us both where we are. I think, anyway. But if it hadn't happened, then neither of us would have learnt what I think we have, and I, at least, wouldn't have found a relationship that I'm happy with. I wish, really really wish, that Andy could let things go. Just allow that they've happened, and that such things are complicated, painful, and necessary, sometimes. Then he'd stop tormenting himself, and by proxy, me. Some of the things he's saying now prove how badly he actually knew me. Stuff about deliberate cruelty, for a start, which I completely resent. I would almost mind less if he thought it was unwitting, but he doesn't appear to. Is it selfish to believe that I have never, or very very rarely, been guilty of deliberate cruelty? Unthinking, possibly, but I'd be mortified if I ever found anything like that out about myself. I don't think I lack self-knowledge, but that maybe wrong. Anyway. I really didn't start this to talk about Andy. I've been avoiding the subject because I still don't really know how to talk about it, not, as he seems to think, because it matters that little to me.

I was going to talk about New Year's resolutions. There's the standard 'lose weight and get fit' one, to be achieved by cycling to work every day. Shouldn't be an issue, I hope. Having spent a considerable portion of my life playing sport, the fitness thing is not something I really find difficult to engineer, but losing weight is always harder. Other things include 'join a good choir' and 'make some effort'. Generic and dull. Sorry.

Christmas.

Christmas was quite good, actually. I had fun singing - my voice has been enjoying a break and so was really rather nicely responsive when I came to use it for high descants. Unfortunately, this didn't last for long, because the 6 hour drive down in the car with my dad, who had a streaming cold, meant that I ended up snuffly. I made it just about to Christmas lunchtime though, by which point the singing was over, so I guess it could have been worse. Me and the brothers took the dogs to the beach at Perranporth. I tried to take some pictures of the Christmas tree someone had put up on the rock that's in the middle of the sand, but they didn't really come out. And then Kiri fell in the swimming pool. It had muck in the corner, and she thought it was solid and tried to walk on it. She felt a bit silly.

We had beef for Christmas lunch, from the farm up the road. Properly fed, properly looked after, properly killed, proper beef. It was absolutely lovely. It's not often I rhapsodise about meat on here, for the sensibilities of the orthodox vegetarians who drop by, but this was really lovely. It's ok. I'm stopping there. Presents was good too. I had a watch from my parents, which I must go and get shortened, probably on Friday, and a proper ice blender for making smoothies and crushed ice, among other things. My brothers bought me rat things and a plant. My parents seemed to approve of the things we got them, and even my brothers seemed reasonably pleased with the things I'd got them, which I hadn't been sure about. Ooo and I had glasses made from half wine bottles in my stocking. Really nice.

I enjoyed being in Cornwall this time. Kiri was really upset when I left. She hates watching you pack the car and goes all sad and pathetic. I actually found myself wanting to be able to stay a bit longer. I headed up country on Boxing Day though, with Rocky in tow. He was much admired at the dinner party Christian had that night, and then came up to Derbyshire with us the following day. We had a tiny little cottage that looked like it had once been a stable, right on the edge of Bakewell - it was lovely. Sadly, the weather was less so when we tried to go for a walk the next day. We managed about half of what we'd been intending to do, but we and the dog were so cold and bedraggled that we gave up and went home for curry.

Christian decided he was brave, or foolhardy, enough to join in my mum's family's Christmas in Coventry. Not really sure what he made of it, or how much gossip we've now created among my somewhat peculiar family, but it could have gone worse. Rocky, however, loved it. LOTS of people to play with, yet another new house to explore, AND a big game of football to impede. Auntie Helen kept up her usual tradition - she gave me what I believe is called a 'snood'. In the last three or so years she has given me a pair of gloves, 2 scarves and a hat, as well as the 'snood', which is a cross between hat and scarf... All very nice, but I do find it rather funny. Could have been worse, I suppose.

Then we brought my brother Ed back, so he could meet the rats. He liked them. Then I finished moving house. I'm now back in Cambridge, in a room that at least feels homely. And somewhat full of stuff.

Cats.

This is probably Graham's fault. The one of Cleo's less good, but I quite like the shapes. Too dark and too far away.

Tolly in a bag

Tolly in a bag 1
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

One extra-large, extra-sharp kitten, sir? Here you are then.

rats

rats 10
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

Either Ivy or Briar with Apple or Berry. Hard to tell.

Never rains but

I'm fed up now. I'm ill, and on killer antibiotics that make me feel sick. In fact, I just managed to put them through the washing machine, but they appear to have survived. I've had a mare of a week anyway, with moving house and trying to organise Christmas and see everyone and everything - half of Christian's present got lost in the post, so I had to chase up the people I ordered it from and get a refund, and I had to chase up O2 who appeared to have over-charged me, for them to tell me that in fact they hadn't and they were reclaiming money I owe them because of some mistake they made. I've just been out to replace the rest of Christian's present, and discovered I've lost my wallet. I know I had it yesterday, but it could be ANYWHERE. I've just rung work and got them to look for it in the cupboard where I put my bag - it's not there. I'm really, REALLY hoping it's in St Albans somewhere or I'm screwed - Fish is going to look for me later. We like Fish. I've got money to tide me over, thanks to being paid in cash which wasn't in it, but there are some things in that wallet that will be bloody difficult, and bloody expensive, to replace. Fuck fuck fuck. :-( So I'm fed up now. And the arguing's already started at home and I've been here 17 hours.

Kitten's grown, but has essentially grown bigger claws.

Not Briar, Ivy, Apple or Berry.

See here.

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.

Rat-tat-tat-tat...

Went to the hopera on Friday, with Christian, Joy, Michael Nabarro and Anna, whom I didn't know beforehand - very exciting! Was Carmen at the Coliseum, which is a good sort of thing to start with if, like me, you're not that familiar with the genre. It was in English, which I hadn't been expecting, but which was actually fine apart from the occasional cringe-worthy pieces of translation. I did slightly object to having it in English AND with subtitles, though - entirely unnecessary, given that the diction was superb. I found them rather distracting, truth be told, though that was probably partly to do with the fact that they were set at the top of the pros, and we because we were in the cheap seats were looking down, with them effectively between us and the show.

The performance itself was sung very well, and there were some lovely design touches, like the bar scene that Fish blogged about, however there were a lot of things that didn't quite hang together. There were random touches like a couple of girls in flamenco dresses stuck in that bar for no apparent reason. It felt like they'd suddenly remembered it was supposed to be in Spain and wanted to remind us - it felt awkward and director-ish and silly. The other thing that made it a bit frustrating to watch was the sheer lack of energy in the physical performances - there wasn't any electricity between the lead performers. I wanted passion and power and to feel the love and the tragedy and I just didn't. It's possible that that's perennial failure of the genre, but if so it bothers me, especially as this company represents the cream of the talent in this country. I don't know. Maybe we were just too far away - right in the very back row at the top of the theatre. We could hear beautifully, and had full stage view, but it was just a bit far away.

I had Hugh and Lara and Carl round on Sunday to have food and watch a film and stuff. Was fantastic to see everyone, it really was. I felt afterwards that it might actually begin to turn this place into home, if I can have my friends around and make it feel like a location in our lives, then I'll feel less cut off from everyone. I don't know. If I get the job I went for an interview for today (internship at the Gate in Nottinghill - nice, but unpaid...), I won't be moving to Cambridge. I hope I get it, because it's the answer to my job worries, even if I'm going to be very poor by the end of it, but I really would like to be able to go back to my friends in Cambridge if I can.

I went to see some rats today. They're awesome - behave like mini dogs, loving to explore and playing with their humans and everything. I'd love to have some. Parents aren't keen though at the moment. I'm trying to persuade them. My mum's gone so far as to suggest I get a CAT, which she was really against before. Apparently she's said that I could get a cat and lend it to them if I have to live somewhere I cannot have a cat. This would be awesome, though it would make life difficult in other ways. I do live in a flat, for a start. It's odd, because getting a cat would mean I'd have to have a litter tray, which would be smelly to a certain extent, which is currently the worry about rats, as far as I can tell. The thing about rats, pragmatically, is that they only live a couple of years and therefore the commitment is that much less than a cat. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm going to talk to my mum and see what it really is she doesn't like about them. I really don't want gerbils or anything - the rats have personalities and everything in the way that other small animals just haven't. Bah. Decisions. Anyway. It appears that today has been a good day. :-).

There's a book about Morris Minors under the counter.

And I saw someone writing a real letter.

This really is about the extent of today's news.

Actually a reasonable day, for all that. Managed not to get snapped at or to ignore it if I did. And I was in a good mood until just now. Couldn't tell you why it changed. I'm not really used to living on my own again is part of it...I just feel lonely. Meh. I keep dreaming about possibly maybe maybe moving back to Cambridge. There are people (you: please read that properly - I'm not talking about that, I really mean everyone up there whom I go up to talk to; of course there's that person, but they aren't in any way the be all and end all...I could even see you, if we could ever cope with that.) I could see all the time, and I could live in a shared flat again, and frankly while I'm doing what I'm doing, i.e. filling time and writing job applications, why NOT do it in the town where all my friends live? Because of rent, is why, but I'm wondering if that's really a good enough reason. I COULD get better temping than this, even down here, and I could probably get enough up in Cambridge to make it nearly feasible. Would require more effort job hunting wise, but I COULD.

People keep pointing out that if I've left, I should leave, but the amount of time I'm up there, I clearly haven't left. I'm told not to become one of those people hanging on to their student days with all their effort. I don't feel I'm doing that, and frankly I've always liked being around the old Sods, so I'm a bit torn about that, really. I've ALWAYS hated moving house, with an absolute passion. And no matter how many times I've done it, and in the last 5 years alone that's been a hefty number, I don't get any better at dealing with it. I hate the displacement, and I hate the losing people and the not knowing the place and the sense of trying to break into a community that's already formed. I know I KNOW St Albans, but it doesn't know me any more. It's weird the way it's so the same but that absolutely everything in my world has changed.

There are many many reasons why it wouldn't be a clever idea, of which the most pragmatic is money. Currently, I'm going to try and stick this out for a few more weeks and see where I get to. It's only about 7 weeks to Christmas, which is scary in itself. Maybe I'll get that far.

In other news, Nationwide put a stop on my card because of a random fraudulent transaction. Which was good of them, in that I didn't lose any money, but distinctly awkward just the same. I currently have no cash card with any money I can use (I need to shovel some money into my other account or sort out an overdraft on it in case this ever happens again) on it, and this weekend needed to pay an overdue council tax bill (for the last month of residence in Victoria Road when I wasn't a student) and a SoD dinner cheque. Fish paid the latter, and I had to get Andy to pay the former, and I had to borrow some money to see me through until I got paid (in cash) yesterday. That money hasn't been paid in. I was going to go to the supermarket tonight - slightly glad I didn't now because I wouldn't have remembered to pick it up and thus could have had a very embarrassing moment at the till.

Other slight worry re wages: I got paid the full £200 for last week's work. Which is all very nice and all, but I really ought to be missing a fair amount for tax. I also didn't have a payslip. I mentioned this to the manager, Lawrence, today, who told me that we apparently never GET payslips, and to talk to the owner Götz about it. This worries me a little - surely I should get a payslip every time I get paid? It's like a receipt, and you'd always get a receipt for something when you spend that amount of money. Also, it makes me wonder if he's fiddling the tax a bit. If he pays everyone the full £200 every week, and paying the tax properly, we're actually being paid more like £7 an hour, which is nice, but distinctly lots for the work we do. I'd EXPECT us to be paid minimum wage, which is what £200, properly taxed, works out to. I can deal with cash in hand for once in a blue moon, and because it'll all come out in the wash, but I'm going to be slightly worried if it goes on. I haven't asked the other girls, because you don't do that kind of thing, but the envelopes I saw were lacking in coins, which would be necessary to make up random numbers. I haven't filled in the relevant forms yet, which might explain any perceived irregularities, and if I'm not being properly paid by next week I'm not going to have much choice beyond making a fuss. Meh. Might be my excuse to leave...shouldn't leave.

shifts: 6
rejection to interview ratio: 6:1 Gah.

...ditching school staff served. I get the impression it's all going to be the same ones until I happen to work an early Wednesday shift, when they're ALL in during house assembly.