Oh! the joys of student living. The Dude in Brown himself must be having a bad day (I've heard he's suffering badly from unrequieted love for fellow of the Penatium the lovely Rosalind Franklin, who presides just across the quad. But you didn't hear it from me....)

Whatever the cause, there's no reason to take it out on us; yet that's what he's been doing. Last week, the longest of the kitchen walls stopped producing electricity. Bam. All those sockets no longer work, disabling the kettles, toasters, George Foreman grills, microwaves and, horror, blenders. I noticed that the irritating hot-water-producing machine is still working, and that has a plug socket beside it. So until they sort it out, I've donated my Extention Cable of Rassilon to the kitchen. Yes, before you panic, it has my name on it, and there is no just way I can't. It solves the problem beautifully, and without it the whole building would be sans microwave. Which for students, is the equivalent of Zeus confiscating fire. Just as long as the Dude doesn't decide to chain me to the kitchen sideboard and let my fellow students eat my liver every day, and make it grow back every night.

It's a pretty poor microwave at that. Angelicus was complaining vocally last night as it ruined a whole pack of popcorn. But I can't complain, as it it was my exploding christmas pud which killed it in the first place.

So that problem, while it's still very annoying, has been got around. Gordian Knot cut, you might say. Unfortunately, the Dude has evidently now noticed, and to punish us he has made the hot water go away. All of it. Not in that bloody enviromental catastrophe, I should add - that still heats up a constant source of boiling water. Also, they have one upstairs in the kitchen above me, and in the tea-bay to my left - and I'm positive that's the thing which sounds like a screaming freight train being dismantled en-route with a pneumatic drill, and wakes me up at all hours.

No hot water, no showers. This is about as unfunny as it gets. And I can't, as Actimel has, wash in my sink with a pan of the aforementioned boiling water, because as I've complained before - the water which comes out of my taps resembles cloudy lemonade. I'm already feeling pretty foul, and if they don't sort it out very soon I may have to take extreme action. Like invading Ellison. Or a protest jump into the Thames. Or, and this is a big or, going on a quest for the three keys of eternal night, carved from chalcedony, cimorene and chrysoberyl by the three Fates themselves, and use them to find the Beigespear, the only known weapon that can threaten the Dude - and then challenge him to single combat in the Quad. Although that might have unpleasant consequences. The reason Cameron House has just been fully refurbished and redecorated is a result of Lord Cameron coming out the loser in a fight with the Dude, and as they're both Penates, and I but a humble mortal, well...the fourth choice is simply to reek until they get it fixed. I think that's preferable to being eviscerated by my household god.

PS - Who Killed Amanda Palmer: the Songbook. Unlike the Virginia Companion, it appears to be reasonably priced and not a gorgeously uncreaseable collectable. Should I order one now? Wait a few weeks? Hang around hinting at Calypso? I wonder whether I'll be able to find one in Foyles and use my book tokens...I'm going to have to get hold of one somehow, because the fact remains that there's very little incredible piano-based rock-pop around at the mo, and I'm not sure I've ever found another band quite this much fun to play. I always say the best covers change their source material: I've been put through the choral mill ever since I was five, which means my Aled Jones impression is always going to own my Amanda Palmer impression. I'm not all that good at jazzy, rocked up singing. One of the reasons I'm so bitter at not getting into the Kings A Capella group is that I applied because I wanted to practice this area which I know I'm deficient in, and was rejected because of it. So as an experiment, I'm using my crispest, vowel-pronouncing, top-A hitting choirgirl voice on these songs designed to be sung with raw emotion and ballsy enthusiasm, and getting very good results. It works because it's so incongruous, and when it comes to a high note which she just roars on, I hit it as pure as I would Verdi's Requiem. It's particularly good on Mandy goes to Med School - my Mandy isn't a nasty piece of work, she's a 1950s style innocent-good-girl-gone-bad.