I'm now on holiday for two weeks. HURRAH! I'm still feeling sick and went home from work early today. I got a Christmas box from my employers (haven't unpacked it yet). Reading Gerald's Game by Stephen King.

I was embarrassed by the number of Christmas cards I received from co-workers. I didn't realise it was such a thing to give them out. But I can't really see the point of it because all anyone writes in them is the recipient's name and their own signature. You hand out thirty cards and the only message they convey is what the manufacturer printed inside. When they're all standing up on your desk or your computer tower it looks like a lot of people remembered you - but when you look inside them you see that you were only a name on a list, not someone to whom they wanted to communicate anything except 'you weren't left out, I have done my duty.' I grew up thinking Christmas cards were supposed to be more personal than that, and given out of affection, not standardised obligation. Or, even if you were sending a card from obligation, that it was only polite to think of something individual to say to each duty-recipient. One girl had actually made little marzipan Christmas puddings for all of us - now that was thoughtful and impressive. I wish I could've done something like that but anything I baked right now would be pretty goddamn germy, and it isn't really Christmassy to give everyone a cold-virus muffin.

My voice has dwindled to an interesting Kirstie Alley/reptilian croak, and I detect a wheeze low down in my lungs when I breathe deeply. It'll be nice when that goes. Anyway, only four more sleeps till my family descend on me, for which I am devoutly glad and grateful.

Not much to tell you. I'm still sick. Been enjoying my new batch of library books. Should probably get home before it gets too dark and cold and horrid. I vote for fish and chips for dinner.

It turns out that, railway and airline timetables being what they are, I will not be able to meet my family at Heathrow when they fly in on Christmas Eve - they'll take the train from London and we'll meet up in Cambridge. It's annoying to know that they will be in England for a couple of hours before I can even get to see them!

Hopefully Buffy will be on tonight, and if Hugh tries to stop me watching The Sopranos, I will just tell him to piss off, he got to watch his stupid football game the last time there was something I wanted to watch, now he can clear out and let me have my show. And if he resists, what will I do? I don't know. Kick him in the face, perhaps, that would be awfully satisfying. I hate having to share a TV with someone I don't even like. When it's a sibling or a good friend, you may have fights about choice of channel or who controls the remote (my sister likes to be able to hear the ads, I detest them as an interruption of my mental involvement with the show and use the Mute button) but there's an underlying affection and understanding between you that means it doesn't feel too serious or bad. When it's someone you don't like and you know they don't like you, you can't write it off as something that will be forgiven and fine again tomorrow because it may make them decide to thwart you on principle/for spite whenever they can, and by disagreeing with them you may be making a rod for your own back.

Of course, since I have such a rotten cold I could always threaten him with germ warfare. 'Hugh, piss off and let me have this simple pleasure, or I'll cough in your face. I'll spit in every open container of your food in the fridge. You do not want to fuck with me, little accountant. My eyes breed contagion and my touch is death.'

Or if I had a big sword... that would rule.

I know toxic flatmates are just part of young adult life. It doesn't make me feel any less resentful!

I've taken today off work, because I felt quite dreadful when I woke up, and I know the volume of stuff to do can be handled by the person who's still on duty. I wouldn't have left her in the lurch if she'd be overtasked, but as it is, I was not prepared to spend another day feeling sick at work. I was scaring people all over the office with my cough.

So I slept on and off until about three PM (after phoning my boss around 8:30 AM to excuse myself) and had the usual totally freaky dreams that I get when I sleep during the day. Stuff about bovine artificial insemination. Stuff about Muppets going mad and building giant clocks. Stuff about coming home from a trip and finding that my cat had killed and dragged home about six flamingoes.

But when I became more wakeful I realised that my library books were probably falling due, and also I'd read all of them except the ones that turned out to be uninteresting. So I hauled myself up, had a meal-replacement milkshake, dressed, gathered the books and walked in to Lion Yard, where the central library is. I felt absolutely bloody by the time I got there - in a muck sweat, coughing in a way that even alarmed me, the junction between my lungs and for some reason the roof of my mouth hurting like stink. For a bit there I was afraid I might faint or something embarrassing like that. To cut a long story short I felt like a poor little thing, and that it was very unjust that I should have no-one to take care of me.

Anyway, I got some more books that look good and came on to the internet caff for my daily contact with loved ones, buying a Big Issue from my favourite vendor on the way. He does the best banter of the central Cambridge vendors. Once I finish here I'll go home, popping into Sainsbury's on the way for some comfort dinner, as it's that or a pot noodle and I feel I need something more sustaining.

Less than a week until my family come for Christmas! Hurrah! Tomorrow (which I have free, fortunately) I shall look for some nice presents for them.

I'm at work. I cough. I sneeze. I feel sick. Vexatiously, Hugh has not yet spontaneously combusted or fallen into a deep hole.

There is a man in this office who keeps starting to sing 'You Are Always On My Mind' and not finishing.

Welp, I'm at work and I have a cold. On the plus side, I managed to get that antidepressant repeat prescription I was nattering on about a while ago without revisiting the unsympathetic doctor - I found the repeat form.

I am now officially in a state of Froideur towards Hugh the annoying flatmate. I generally leave the conservatory (where the couch and TV are) if he comes in and have said to his face 'I don't like you.' That was very enjoyable. When I hear his footsteps I hiss softly to myself and mutter in tones of unutterable scorn, 'Accountant!'

The reason for this development is that, on Saturday night, I was happy to discover that the animated film Flight of Dragons was going to be on Cartoon Network at ten PM. This movie has kind of haunted me ever since I saw it on TV at the age of four or five, when it rather captured my imagination. From that point on, it seemed to exist only in my memory - no-one else I talked to had ever heard of it. I really, really wanted to see it again, if only to confirm for myself that it was real, and see whether it had anything to justify my interest in it as a small child except being animated.

Hugh wanted to watch the football. Under the impression that he was being magnanimous he offered to let me watch an hour of the movie before the game started.

Dick.

I suppose, since I've got some downtime at work today, I should put 'Flight of Dragons' into Google and see what it spits up. If information about it exists anywhere, it exists on the Web.

As you can see at the top, I found it! Google wasn't quite as helpful as IMDB.com on this front, which was perhaps to be expected for a movie. I found it almost eerie that this review started out with such a close echo of my own situation.

I hope Omaddan sits on Hugh.

This will teach me to spend any time with a housemate who has a headcold... I'm coming down with Katie's lurgi. Off to Boots for more Lemsip and that nice cough syrup that tastes like honey. And this had to come right at the end of my leave! There's no way out of going to work until Christmas break, it will mess up all the plans if I'm sick. I'll just have to try to beat it into submission.

Well, today I posted my application for a job in the University library. I haven't really done anything else purposeful... think I might go to the library now before they shut. I want to try to find a book about werewolves. I don't know why. I just feel like researchin' me some werewolves.

I think I'll have egg fried rice and prawn spring rolls for dinner tonight. Got the friz version from Tesco's. Num num. I've been eating a lot of rubbish lately. I get hooked on things like Peperami sticks, which are kind of like Slim Jims, or as Lizzard and I call them because of an episode of King of the Hill we watched together, Silence Sticks.

I miss Lizz.

Waaah, I'm bored and hungry and the doctor's is closed until Monday and I need to make an appointment to get my antidepressants prescribed again which is an uphill battle because the damn doctor doesn't believe in antidepressants. She thinks I should 'try to cope.'

I'm cooking chicken tonight so at least the hungry part will get better.

My best friend never has time to email me like she used to and I miss her. It's not her fault but it sucks.

Good news: the cancerous aunt came through her surgery fine and is recovering well. She doesn't have to have any more operations, unless she chooses to have her other breast whittled down to match the reconstructed one, which she probably will because otherwise buying bras will be just impossible.

Oh, I should say it's my best female friend who is too busy to email me much at the moment. My best male friend is regular as clockwork and much appreciated. I wouldn't want him to think I didn't love him as much.

Today I went in for my £40/£250 hairdo (see earlier posts - it was a promotion for a newly opened hair salon). Well it's rubbish. Sorry but it is. I have only myself to blame, but I think I'll blame them as well. The geese. The *red* they put in my highlights! I have little stripes! I'm a tabby Sarah! The way the idiot nickering manchild blow-dried my hair! You know Chesta from The Vision of Escaflowne? The one people call Mushroom Head? That was me. I combed it with my fingers as soon as I was out the door.

So in short, do not go to a hairdresser's in central Cambridge called Sanrizz. It is pants.

I have a week's leave from work (they told me I HAD to take a week before the end of the year or something horrible would happen, to them not me I hope) and am at something of a loss as to what to do with it. I don't have a lot of spare money so going on a trip or buying myself some treats are not sensible options. (My beloved new cowgirl/elf boots were enough of an expense.) I'm thinking about buying some gardening gloves and a trowel/fork combo at Woolworth's and attacking our front yard, which is meant to be a neat, dull gravelled space and is overrun with weeds of all descriptions. There's even something that looks a bit like kudzu but of course can't be because kudzu would be halfway across the street by now and eating cars. I just want to get the darn stuff rooted out, because it bothers me whenever I look at it. I'm not planning to spend my own money buying new plants for it, especially since it's December and I'm not sure I could expect anything to grow. Maybe I could steal some boulders from somewhere, rake the gravel into wavy patterns and have a Zen garden! But I am not very big and don't have a car so transporting boulders could be difficult.

And maybe while I'm at Woolworth's I'll get some super-glue and reattach the rubber soles of my cherry-red loafers, which are separating from the uppers at the toes. You see what kind of great fun I'll be having? Why is it that when I'm thrown on my own resources I always seem to end up doing fussy retired old lady things? I need a boyfriend! I need a car! I need money for movies and restaurant meals and drinks out of an evening! I have none of these things and don't know how I can get them.

Oh, and my favourite lip-gloss stick has run out and I can't find the same brand anywhere, even though the original was bought for me as a Christmas stocking-stuffer by my mate Anne in this very city. At Boots. They don't have it at Boots. When I asked the assistants all carried on as if it was something unheard-of, instead of Bonne Bell, one of the most common cosmetic brands in the world. LipLix lip-gloss, the colour/flavour being called 'The Last Strawberry.' I was able to buy a tube of this in ALABAMA for crying and screaming out loud. I am dejected.

Yeah, what do I ever do but complain? On the happy happy joy joy side, my family (mother, father and sister) are coming to visit me for Christmas. Less than twenty days until they arrive. We will frolic!

I'm also really happy because my housemate Katie is back from visiting her parents and I had missed her. The house seemed to fill up with Hugh-waves in her absence. He always cooks smelly things. This is also a trait of my father's, but my father redeems himself by being friendly, perky and interesting.

As a matter of fact, my father has a spring in his step. Most people don't, but you can always spot him in a crowd (e.g. if you're waiting for him at the top of the street and watching him walk up from the bottom) because he's the one whose head bobs up and down much more with each step. He bounces along. It's because he's feeling happy. It's semi-endearing, semi-embarrassing.

Perhaps I and my tabby hair should be going.

I got me some downtime at work. I'm hungry. I was in a hurry this morning and left the skirt I decided not to wear after all on the end of my bed and the thought is bothering me. Well, I'll go and get some chips from the machine.

Mmmmmmmm, tangy cheese Doritos. I can't stand the 'cool original' flavour. I don't know how they got a ghost of the taste of sour cream into corn chip form but it's just WRONG.

Pretty much nothing happened today (not counting work) except that I got an impassioned email from someone happy to find that I had re-opened the Sailor Moon romance shrine above. I started the goldurn thing in about 1997. It was my first ever fully executed attempt at a website (I'd tried earlier to make a Sailor Mercury shrine but got quite bored and stopped because most of the clever ideas had already been used by people with better web design skills than mine) and I launched it on about 10KB or something which was allotted to us with our ihug.co.nz family account. It was small, it looked rough as guts (but not as bad as some things you still see on GeoCities, I'm semi-proud to say) and it was silly. These days, it's small, silly, and looks slightly less rough than guts.

Anyway, it got me hooked on webwork, and I still think the guy is cute, so hurrah for Focus: Yuuichirou & Rei!

On the Worry and Fret Front, my beloved honorary aunt has had a six-hour operation for breast cancer today, my precious best friend has popped a blood vessel in one of her eyes and is looking at the world through a tomato, and another dear old friend has something dreadful-sounding wrong with her feminine plumbing. I have a nasty feeling in my throat. I want everyone I love to be all right!

And we've run out of things to do at work yet we still seem to be here... since I carpool with the supervisor leaving early is not an option. I wish it was tomorrow night already. I want my four-day weekend. And then I have a week's holiday. I have no idea what I'll do. I'm not that flush with money right now!

Unfortunately, I have been a slightly flopsy bunny at work today, too. Perhaps the old herbal sleep-aid is a bit strong for me. I might try just one tablet, rather than the recommeded two, next time.

My head is silly.

For alert, angry bunnies see Watership Down by that guy who wrote Watership Down. I was once browsing through a dictionary of quotations and found that someone, on being told that a civil servant had written a novel about the lives of rabbits (WD) said that he would infinitely rather read a novel about the lives of civil servants, written by a rabbit.

That's me, folks - poor memory for names. Excellent memory for snippets of information of questionable usefulness.

Dude, those herbal sleeping pills were the business. I was one flopsy bunny last night. I use the term advisedly because one of their active ingredients is an extract of wild lettuce, which as attentive readers of The Flopsy Bunnies know, is very soporific.

And when you need to go to sleep of an evening, as I said to my mother, it's better to be a flopsy bunny than an alert, angry bunny counting the hours until she has to get up and go to WORK GODDAMNIT.

I'm having a problem with my online email box filling up and bouncing my friends' messages back to them. I'm having a problem with not having a computer. I'm having a problem with not being able to sleep at night. On the bright side I've bought some Nytol herbal sleeping pills so yay.

I can't decide which puzzles me more, that my email address has got onto MLs for Russian Lolita barnyard porn, which I guess most people's do eventually, or that it's on MLs for fine art price guide companies and something called Epilepsy Answers (the answer is 'no'). What gave Them the impression that I was an art-collecting epileptic (or friend or relative of an epileptic, I suppose). How do they imagine me spending an evening? Admiring my Klimts before slipping into a grand mal seizure?

'sme again. I've spent today being Café Society, in a low-key way. First off, I got up too late to get to my 250/40 pound hair appointment (why does a keyboard in an English e-café not have a pound sign? Actually, it has a bunch of what look like Arabic option keys, but no pound sign. Dang multiculturalism, it's multi'd the wrong culture for me!), so I had to phone them and reschedule for next week. Then I went out to La Pronto (here), had green-tea-elderflower-and-ginseng-yum iced tea and a Coco Pops bar for breakfast, checked my email, went to John Lewis (department store) to buy a hot water bottle, some patterned tights and a hoof stick - you're saying what the flock is a hoof stick, Sarah? Since when have you got hooves? A hoof stick is a little manicure implement. It's called that because it has a round, angled rubber tip shaped like a tiny hoof, and you use it to push back your cuticles so they don't grow over the nail contour and make it look manky. There is also a thing called a hoof brush (bristles cut in the shape of a tiny hoof), which you use to groom your eyebrows. Really. Don't say my blog isn't educational. By now the word 'hoof' is just striking me as intrinsically amusing, not to say nonsensical. Hoof hoof!

Then I went to the library and got out a bunch of books from the children's and teenage sections because it's a sort of regressive comfort food thing for me to reread these. I even found Enough is Too Much Already by Jan Mark which I hadn't been able to read since I left high school because I only ever found a copy in the Howick College library. It is a collection of very funny short stories in the form of conversations between three 1980s teenagers from Norwich, and I was delighted to find that it still was capable of making me laugh aloud. I did my reading and laughing aloud (I read silently, it was only the laughter that was audible) in the Caffe Nero coffee house, upstairs sitting sideways in a big leather armchair and enjoying a toasted ham-mozzarella-black-olive-paste panino, still lemonade, a pain au chocolat and a caffe mocha grande (progressively). Which was really most comfortable, also warm and filling. Our sofa at home is rotten - the cover always wrunkles up and slips out of alignment, and the seat is not deep enough, so that you have to sit bolt upright. As soon as you slump comfortably your bottom slides off the front of the cushion. So I really appreciated the comfy leather armchair. My father always gets cross about me slinging my legs over the arm of an armchair, claiming that these are to put your ARMS on and that's why it's an ARMchair, I say no, they are the arms OF the chair, and I can sling my legs where I darn well like, daddy-o. He also doesn't approve of reading a bit of a book or magazine in the shop so you can decide whether it's worth buying. Fuddy-daddy!

Then I came back here thinking Kevin might have replied to yesterday's emails by now, which he hadn't this morning, but he still hadn't, so here I am typing this - I've paid for an hour after all. Being a member I pay less for an hour online than any old walk-in punter but it's still not money I care to throw away.

Sometimes in Charles Dickens novels you read about an elbow chair. I wonder very much what that looks like.

I am putting off my food shopping until tomorrow, and rather looking forward to christening my hot water bottle tonight. It isn't so much that my bed isn't warm, as that it's just really nice to have something positively hot under your feet or on your tummy and as I sleep alone, well. As a matter of fact, I'm told that the most effective place to put a hot water bottle is between your thighs, because the fatty tissue there takes in the heat well and disperses it to the rest of your body, but people snigger about that, and I actually don't like it because the skin overlaying said fatty tissue is rather delicate and objects to hot water bottles, even behind a layer of pyjama leg, whereas my feet rejoice in them and so does my tummy at times.

The café PA music right now is a Backstreet Boys album. I do not approve.

I wonder if Kevin's answered his email by now?

Little/nothing to report today... except that according to the Hobbit Name Generator, if Buffy the Vampire Slayer were a hobbit she'd be called Orangeblossom Bramble of Willowbottom. Willow Rosenberg would be Pansy Proudneck of Longbottom, Xander Harris would be Wilcomb Grubb of Little Delving, Rupert Giles would be Grigory Grubb of Little Delving (apparently, some relation of Xander's!), Dawn and Joyce Summers would be Iris and Dimple Bramble of Willowbottom, Anya, under her assumed surname of Jenkins (I think that was it) would be Rosie-Posie Boffin of Whitfurrows, and Tara whose last name I think was McLean would be Bramblerose Hamwich of Buckleberry Fern. You know, she looked like a Bramblerose. And I? I would be Prisca Bracegirdle of Hardbottle. My parents are Iris (although her real name is Wendy not Dawn!) and Sancho, and my sister is Tigerlily. My two best friends are Peony Deepdelver, apparently of no fixed address, and Berilac Sackville-Bracegirdle, also nomadic, whom I feel sure we all call Berry. Presumably he's my cousin! My grandfather who I raved about last time? Fastolph Danderfluff of Willowbottom. The oily grandfather? Bodo Bracegirdle of Hardbottle. James Lileks? Fosco Boffin of Whitfurrows. I've got to stop!

I do wish I weren't a Prisca, though. It does sound prim.

Yesterday was, to a large extent, a wasted day. Too much sleep, bad dreams, mental wigginess (did you notice how I thought it was Friday already?) - I only really redeemed it, from an enjoyable experience point of view, in the evening, by eating ramen, drinking gin and watching Buffy and The Sopranos, with a delicious bubble bath in between. Ooh, I wanted to slap Artie Bucco when he said Tony had foreseen the deal with Jean-Philippe would fall through! Tony foresaw no such thing! It's true that he *can* be a calculating bastard, but really sad that his friend who he was trying to help altruistically, in a genuine effort to do something good with no strings in his remorse at Gloria's suicide, should think he was doing so in that case.

Of course, Tony was not responsible for Gloria's suicide, any more than he was responsible for Artie's attempted one. Gloria was fnucked in the head well before she met Tony. He was a drop in an ocean.

A burly drop with a big hairy paunch who curses a lot *^.^*

So, anyway, today has been better. I had a reason to get up at a decent hour because I had plans with my mate Anne, to meet outside the library in Lion Yard at eleven and have coffee. So we did that and then strolled in the shops, and I got some nice things in Boots (bubble bath, nail polish, a bath pillow - I do like my baths) and Anne bought a black velvet cloak in the market because she's that kind of gal, and she officially asked me to be her bridesmaid when she gets married for the second time, in April - which I am all stoked about because I've never had a chance to do something so authentically girly. Anne says I may wear a garland like Duckface in Four Weddings and a Funeral, although she doesn't think she will - she doesn't like things with stems on her head.

Then as we walked back through Petty Cury (an oddly-named little pedestrian street lined with some quite nice shops and crossing the opening of Lion Yard's arcade like the bar of a T; I expect it's a garbling of an older name, maybe of Norman French origin, 'petit' something?) we were accosted by a pleasant young man doing promo work for a new hair salon, and I've booked an appointment to have highlights and stuff done which would normally cost £250 but as a grand-opening-new-customer special I get 'em for £40.(Translation: This place overcharges wildly and will not be worth going back to after taking advantage of the introductory offer, even though they will give me a discount card for future visits.)

So this serendipitously solves my blondeness problem - I will just get some blonde put into the ginger. I love serendipity, the more so because my late favourite grandfather Derek used to call me Sarah-endipity. (Sometimes Sarah-endipity-doodah, when he was feeling intertextual.)

Derek also liked to quote Dorothy Parker, and would quite shock my mother when she was a teenager (you know how teenagers are almost puritanically shocked by any sign of a naughty sense of humour in their parents) with aphorisms like 'Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker' and 'You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think' (which Parker came up with when challenged to use the word 'horticulture' in a sentence). When she was upset about having to start wearing glasses, he offered her consolation in this embellishment upon Parker: 'Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses, but they'd like to have sex with girls who wear specs!'

Derek was really cool. He joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force once he was old enough, which was too late in WWII for him to see action (I'm really quite glad about that, I wouldn't like him to get shot at) and went to Japan with the J-Force occupation, and later worked for Mobil oil and got to go to New York on business in the days when, to New Zealanders, that was an impossibly glamorous and adventurous trip. And I would just like to say that he was not an oppressor of the Japanese - in fact, as a boy growing up he had a Japanese friend, the son of immigrant parents, and refused to stop hanging out with him because of the war. As far as he was concerned, his friend was a New Zealander too, not an enemy.

I'm sorry I can't feel the same about my other late grandfather, Wally, but he just wasn't as nice. It's hard to feel fond of a man who called your mother 'a know-it-all bitch like all New Zealanders' because she pointed out to him that the Bible was not, as he was saying over dinner, the oldest work of human history. My mother can be a bossy woman but that's because she's a good leader and organiser, and she certainly is not a bitch *or* a know-it-all.

Wally was also horribly oily of pelt. My father has inherited his sebaceous hyperactivity and stains pillowslips. Don't you tell me I shouldn't wash my hair every day!

I feel wiggy. Tomorrow I'm meeting my mate Anne for coffee, which I expect will be nice.I have Bouncy Fidgetty Legs Syndrome in the worst way.Buffy and The Sopranos are on TV tonight, hurrah! I think I'll have the traditional Friday night fish and chips. Fish and chips and Buffy on telly - enjoying these in conjunction, and reflecting that I'm indoors, warm and safe, make me feel very fortunate and contented and thankful. It's like how I often feel as I snuggle down in bed at the end of the day, particularly if I can hear rain on the roof. Here I am. I have a safe place to live; I have a warm bed. I don't have everything I want by any stretch of the imagination, but I have plenty to be happy in the here and now.

I miss my friend Lizz who has had to go and spend Thanksgiving with her berserk relatives in Natchez... still, she'll be back soon. I just hope the cousin who tongue-kisses his dog doesn't try to tongue-kiss her dog. Precious Katie Presley should not be molested like that.

A peculiar thought which popped into my head today/recently:
I know there are no more Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel crossovers planned, due to the fact that Angel is still with the WB and Buffy has migrated to UPN, but that doesn't stop the mind toying with daft ideas and I amused myself with the question, if the Buffy cast went to Caritas, what songs would they pick off the karaoke list?

And something hit me out of left field - the final song from the movie Labyrinth, sung by David Bowie's character Jareth as Sarah runs through the MC Escher room, 'Within You,' virtually exactly expresses the situation between Spike and Buffy at the moment. I'd been thinking Spike might pick on a Billy Idol number ('White Wedding' springs to mind) or could go soppy with Robbie Williams ('She's the One'), but now I know he would sing:

How you turned my world, you precious thing
You starve and near exhaust me
Everything I've done, I've done for you
I move the stars for no-one.

You've run so long, you've run so far
Your eyes can be so cruel!
Just as I can be so cruel
Though I do believe in you, yes I do...

Live without the sunlight?
Love without your heardbeat?
I can't live within you...

I just wanted to tell people that!

It's kind of hard to blog on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, since I'm at work from 10:30 AM to 11:30 PM and don't really have experiences I find it interesting to write about. Perhaps I'll tell you about my flatmates.

Flatmates is English for 'roommates.' It's an odd little word because it doesn't necessarily mean people you share just a flat with - you might share a house. We do. It is too small for us (the landlord turned the living room into another bedroom in order to squeeze more money out of it) and the roof seeps (not quite leaking) but otherwise it is quite nice.

In the downstairs front room, in a warren of entertainment and computer equipment, with a Dance Dance Revolution mat, more DVDs than you can shake another DVD at and a disturbingly large collection of plushies lives Mark, who is tall, electively bald, a computer game programmer and gay in his mannerisms if not in his love-life of which I know no details. He is very nice and generous with his DVDs. Rates Sailor Moon. Sometimes you hear odd thumping noises and heavy breathing from his room which is just him playing DDR, not his love-life of which I know no details. Likes cats. All right in my book.

In the next room (the former living room) is Kim, the Mystery Flatmate. You do catch occasional fleeting glimpses of her, but she works odd hours in a hotel and is very seldom home at the same time as anyone else. She is thirtyish, and while my experience of her is necessarily limited I find her dull. Claims to like cats.

Upstairs and next door to me is Tall Northern Katie, distinguished from my sister Katie by being tall and my friend Lizz's dog Katie by being Northern. She is from Bradford and has a degree in chemistry from Oxford and now works for a journal of that discipline. She says 'snicket' instead of 'shortcut' and rates Terry Pratchett. She does not, however, like cats. I have gotten her onto Escaflowne so now she understands when I snigger walking past the Sir Isaac Newton pub up the road. I like her very much. We share a phone line and sometimes she gives me a chocolate biscuit.

In the upstairs back room, which I want, is Hugh. Hugh is slim and dark and sort of half-Asian looking. He is an accountant. He is dull. He owns a lot of stuff. He leaves his dirty cooking pots about the kitchen and hoards coffee cups in his room. I have stolen his Cambridge Illustrated History of China, although I don't think he knows it yet. This has not been my first passive-aggressive act against Hugh. I'm not actually engaged upon a campaign to make him want to move out. I just don't like him very much. Dislikes cats.

Rrgh. Getting bored. All real work done. Still having to hang about at work. Wanna go home! Bye bye for now.

Today Ginge came to see me! Ginge is my friend. He's a cat. He has two bells on his collar but no nametag so I call him Ginge of my own accord (short for Ginger, which is his colour). When I hear his bell outside I hasten to open the door and let him in and pet him and feed him Sainsbury's Paws. Yes, I'm sad enough to buy cat food for a cat that isn't mine, just to encourage it to visit me because I miss having a cat so much.

I live in a house divided against itself - Mark and I like cats, Katie and Hugh don't (Katie just because she isn't used to them, Hugh because he's one of those dupes who believe cats aren't affectionate and dogs are). I don't know what Kim thinks - we hardly ever see Kim. I wish with all my might that I could afford a place where I could keep a dear little catlet of my own. Companionship and bedwarming!

I am Puss and I have new boots. I'm pretty sure I can afford them, my economic crisis being behind me. They are sand-coloured suede and they have tassels that I could remove and alternate with feathers or beads or ribbons, wee! They make me feel just a little bit like a cowgirl. They also make me feel like someone with warm legs and feet, which is more to the point.