Et In Arcadia Ego

Actually, I've never been happier.

Media - movies, novels and "true life narratives" - give drugs a pretty bad rap. My favourite of them is probably Harvey, a charming fifties comedy about a woman whose attempts to marry off her ward well are continually scuppered by her mad alcoholic uncle and his invisible rabbit friend. Presumably the link between bohemians, depression and creation means that most creative enterprises would naturally champion an unhappy individuality over dull contentment.
Perhaps this is accurate - I've heard mixed reviews from real people too.

...the thing is, at present, I'm not really enjoying anything, I don't have the motivation to work either at uni or on my own projects and I keep feeling unmotivatedly tense and threatened when out with friends and family. All things I've experienced fairly more often than I'd like throughout my life, but over the past few months I've had all three at once and pretty constantly. Once you've got work, play and socialisation out of the window, then I'm willing to give anything a go regardless of what the cinema says. This is especially true when you think my antipathy towards chemical solutions extends as far as paracetemol.

I think the "talking treatment" is very useful, especially for me in particular whose main problem is being bad at talking to people - peverse, I know! Perhaps "bad at communicating" would be a more accurate, Personal Life Skills way of expressing it. The problem is, after a point all it can do is shift these horrific soul-destroying feelings onto someone you care about ("It is the fault of X and Y, because...") or at you personally ("I'm sorry, you simply can't cope with leaving the house because that's just what you're like.") Now, perhaps I'm an inherently useless person and all my friends and family are heinous harpies - but it doesn't seem likely. And even if that is the case, it's hardly a positive step in the right direction. Encouragingly, my GP also seemed to think that three years of counselling was too long without a practical boost as well.

So if you were to ask me when the last time I felt really, really happy I'd actually say recieving a nice shiney box of Citalopram yesterday afternoon. Which testifies to placebo power if nothing else - it's always easier to feel better about anything when you're working towards a solution. Hope is good enough, in the absence of Better.

Mind you, I'm having second thoughts since seeing the side effects list which, as my doctor warned me, is "as long as my arm". Not quite true. It's as long as my elbow to my fingertips, which is still pretty damn long.

In some cases, there's nothing to worry about. 1 in 10 patients experience:

• sleepiness, difficulty sleeping
• reduction in weight, gain in weight
• increased appetite, loss of appetite

Just so long as I get all six. Additionally, there is less than a 1 in 10 chance I will experience
menstrual pain. Impressively, there is also a 1 in 10 chance I will suffer impotence or erectile disfunction - frankly a miracle of modern science, as that's statistically far higher than me suffering either at present.

Of course, it's not all good news. There is only less than 1 in 100 chance that I will experience:

• a state of optimism, cheerfulness and well-being (euphoria)
  

and then only as a side effect, which is rather demoralising when you think about it. 1 in 100 people also experience a "general feeling of being unwell", although how that's not already covered by the previous six paragraphs of runny nose, fits and tics, ringing ears, slowing heartbeat, liver problems, coughing, muscle pain, allergic reaction, headache, dizziness, swearing, lethargy, weird dreams, memory loss e.t.c. I'm not sure.

On the rarest end of the spectrum - less than 1 in 10,000 - I may experience "loss of contact with my own personal reality". What that might do to me in particular I daren't speculate. Possibly relocate my own personal reality, profile stalk and invite it out for an awkward catchup coffee...

Post two - more to come!

This week, my grandparents and cousin have been over, which has been rather fine. I'm happier when either totally alone and free from responsibility, or surrounded by friends - and happiest when I get both in turn. It bothers me that visitors, even ones I like, can thus never see me at my best. Rather exacerbated because Oceanic has been very depressed this week, and my cousin - Squirrel - has been missing her mum. We make for a very mardy bunch.

We've been doing Family Things, which I do enjoy. I was going stir crazy stuck in the house. The problem with Guernsey is the transport is patchy, and even if I could drive, there's nowhere to go anyway. Perhaps that's why people matter to me so much? They're the only entertainment to be had. It's not so much that there's nothing to do - having visited a smattering of English towns and cities, I'm convinced that Guernsey actually has more to do than most of them. Not many places have such a great range of shops, four(ish) great museums, castles all over the place, beaches, the list could go on and on. The problem is it's all the same. Same stone. Same tea green vegitation. I miss being able to be somewhere totally different within 20 minutes. London Tube as TARDIS. Now there's a new thought...

Earlier in the week, we went shopping and I splurged at Oxfam, for a copy of The Ethical Shopping Guide and Lemony Snicket's Unauthorised Autobiography. I've read both before, but the former is something you need to have for reference purposes. It is a very good book, because it presents counter arguments to ethical behavior, and degrees of ethical involvement i.e. fish to avoid even if you don't want to go veggie. The Autobiography is my very favourite of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. The novels are very well written, but repetitive - until you work out the plot you're seeing isn't the story at all - it's Lemony himself, and the details he drops about his life. And suddenly, they are the most exciting books on earth - and I dive through all the time to find things I've missed, just like that itch to see the Minutemen movie while viewing Watchmen. Naturally, the book all about Lemony is the must-have on that ground, so I'm a very happy chappie. Of course, doing a bit of innocent wiki research, I'm amazed to discover Lemony has released some five extra books that I don't own...I also spotted A BIG FEATHER BOA, sufficiently exciting to warrant capitals, which my grandparents got me of their own accord. Smart cookies :)

Last night we went for chips on the wall, and I went kite flying. The kite story goes something like this - I saw it last year in Herm and fell in love. Ever since, when stuck for a birthday present idea, I always thought "hmmm - kite?", but what I meant was "that kite". It's a flying viking longboat of rainbow coloured joy! When I went to Herm this year, and saw it was still there, and still reasonably priced...I tend to feel bad after buying things, but I've felt not a shred of regret.

Friend 2 christened it Zachariah - my dad has since tried to amend this to something a bit more noble, suggesting Odin, Earendil and Beowulf. When I pointed out that it was a happy, rainbow-kite, he amended his suggestion to "Gayowulf".

It is in truth, very very dull: it's too well designed. The boat has two flat wings to catch the wind, rather like that diagram they always include in encyclopedia entries about plane wings which I only pretended to understand. Once you get it in the air - not difficult - it just stays up there. You could fly it while riding a horse, or tie it to the back of a car, or loop it over your belt while walking - just so long as you keep it out of tree range. There's no skill involved, like with a traditional kite, and you can't do tricks. Friend 4 and I did some experiments - it can even carry light stuff into the air, if you balance it well enough.

But it makes me happy nontheless. Last night we had chips on the wall, and I played with it - by which I mean held onto the end, while trying to make sand-Liberators with my feet (not very well, and in the end they got destroyed by rising water). We had left a key strut at home, so I improvised a replacement with seaweed and a propelling pencil. If the wind had dropped, this would have been the best "I dropped my pencil and the lead broke" story ever. But see above - nothing will make that kite fall.

Super Squirrel released some chips for the seagulls, in the manner of a demolition expert - timidly carrying the package to a safe, open location; gently setting it on the ground, priming and opening the box, then running to safety as the area was divebombed by some fifty seagulls. We considered attaching the kite to some chips...but it didn't seem worthwhile, even if it would have been hilarious.

What else - we've been out to a nice restaurant. Pretty foul. My dinner was meant to be Asparagus, Spinach, Egg and Hollander Sauce - and turned out to be soggy leaves in custard. This I would not have minded - except for the other patrons. You know when parents snap at their children "this is a nice restaurant now be on your best behavior", and the poor kids freeze like meercats for the rest of the night? It was as if someone had yelled that at the adults too. I mined doing voiceovers on strangers for it's full comedy value, so again, nothing was wasted.

When we say "blue", do we mean exactly the same thing? It's a matter of philosophical debate going to the root of human experience.

I just realised I'm the man who sees lime where others see aqua. I reallyo, trulyo cannot smell. I've known this for ages, but only just realised what a huge and weird thing it is, and how difference a life experience I'm going through as a result.

I cannot be relied upon to smell anything. I assumed it was a sort of laziness, as if I wasn't putting in enough effort - but you don't put in effort with senses. They're just there, and you don't need effort to touch or hear.

It has only recently occured to me that this is very different to the way others do it.

Some things, I can smell, but often, only when something is pointed out to me - which makes me wonder if I am creating the experience because I know I ought to smell something. I remember:

• banana; smells rather like dried banana tastes, a clammy sweetness. I should add that in general, I can't catch the scent of banana - this was a onetime occasion, and I basically pushed it up my nostrils for five minutes before I got anything. And when I succeeded, I found it totally revolting.
  
• vomit, sometimes, a similarly sweet sensation
  
• rotting celery - but everyone else there insisted it didn't smell of anything
• the sea, and sort-of fish
  
• perfume; but it never smells pleasant or even different. It's like a constant, metallic chemical tang. Friend 4 and Calypso both insist that's all it ever smells like.
• Actually, I'm quite good with chemical: deodourant
• I think I have smelt smoke, although this could be wishful thinking.
  
• In addition, I experience very vivid phantom smells when reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. I do not know what this means, if anything.
  

Are these all a certain type of smell? But crucially, I only ever get them when paying serious attention. What can't I smell? Everything else. There are probably smells I don't even know I'm missing! Does milk smell? What about biscuits? I know rocks don't smell, because the movie Perfume says so, but what about wood? I suppose the biggest and most obvious casualty is nature. A list of things I have definitely never smelt:

• flowers (and flower-scented things). Do sunflowers smell?
• grass
• trees
• Dinner cooking in the distance
• people - now is your cue to say "well, that explains a lot..."
  
• exhaust fumes
• pets (apparently the rats smell...?)
  
• crap (does crap smell? It seems like it ought, being generally disgusting and objectionable, but I've never got that impression)
  

As an aesthete, I am depressed that I miss part of the sensory experience of the world. But only in the way I abstractly "miss" the fact I'm not telepathic: it's not like I've lost something I had. Which does happen to some, and that must really suck. Friend 5 has the most incredible olifactory memory. Often she'll catch whiff of something, and link it to a very specific memory: "ooooh, it smells just like that book I was reading two years ago"; or "that smells of my fire at Christmas".

It often seems to me like a bloody superpower. I'm always impressed when someone can tell a smoker is around, even before seeing them - Calypso does this all the time. Smoke irritates my nostrils, but doesn't really smell of anything but heavy. I certainly only "smell" it when I know someone is smoking nearby. Mind you, Calypso often regards my state as similarly marvellous - especially when someone has to volunteer for a really reeky job!

I do feel a revulsed sensation when handling rotting food, but I'm increasingly sure this is just imitation of what I should have; and if I don't think about it, I do not notice. A sense is instinctive. I suppose the nearest analogy would be tuning out loud music.

Wikipedia calls the condition "anosmia", but also mentions "hyposmia" which is a partial loss of smell. I'm not sure which I have, and I don't think there's an easy way to work it out because from evidence, I know you can (or at least, I can) create phantom pain in a limb merely by imagining it diseased. So how would I ever "know" I smelt, not just imagining I smelt? And how could I tell whether my experience of what I call "smell" is the same as most people's? It certainly makes sense that variable smell perceptions governs what regular folk like or dislike.

Friend 4 has suggested that maybe the impulses are being redirected to the wrong bit of my brain, mentioning that I am rather on the synesthetic side. Synesthesia is interpreting one sense as another, most famously seeing letters/numbers as linked to colours. I do this a bit, but in particular, I have a very strong visual map of how time works, in blocks and boxes; even with which way I'm "facing" at any one time. You think this'd help my disorganisation...but it's not conscious.

So maybe if my mental circitry is already miswired, that explains where the smells are going. Charming: my brain resembles my bedroom. Wikipedia suggests the death of receptor neurons, brain injury, and an early onset of Parkinson's or Alzheimers. Woo!

Clash (among others) has pointed out that if I can't smell, surely I can't taste? I evidently am able to taste, but I now wonder if my experience of food is different. It's been observed that I have very plain tastes, and am happy to eat the same meal ad nauseam. And now I wonder: does this explain why I've always preferred demolishing plates by food "type", because I wouldn't get a taste experience at all if I took carbs and veg it in turns? Why I've never found food all that interesting? Is this why I don't do spices? Is the taste of regular food as vivid to you lot as spice is to me? Or why I love the intense hit of sherbert, or hyper-masochistically-dark dark chocolate? And now I wonder: Would caviar taste of anything to me? Are my favourite foods determined chiefly by what I can smell? If I did crack, would it have any effect?

A very interesting article on the Guardian confirms my theory about spice, and reminded me that I've never really distinguished between different types of tea. It really just tastes like nice hot water to me - I definitely can't smell it. Nor coffee. Another article by a hyposmic claims it made his vegitarianism easier, althought I would disagree with this on a personal level. One of the most sure-fire indicators that I am really, really hungry is that I start craving meat like mad, normally those cheap hotdog sausages. Mind you, I now doubt that I could ever tell the taste difference between beef, chicken, and the rest. The fact I have to presume there's a difference seems like confirmation...and a third article, most interesting of all, written by a normal bod whose smell has gone due to a cold. It displays correlations with what I regularly experience - especially red wine, water (dude, does water smell/taste of anything?) and onion. The article I mentioned above, by someone who lost smell late in life, confirms my theory about unsubtle lemon and sherbert, while suggesting my dislike of mashed potato and peas could also be related. 50% of the Ben and Jerry's creative team is ansomnic, which is why their ice cream is so darn good: it heavily relies on image and texture.

I've also found a blogger who, perhaps obsessively, discusses his condition. Although it came to him later in life, so I can see why it would make such an impression. If given the chance - and there are Places That Can Do Stuff About Stuff Like This - would I take it? Resounding no. I can't imagine it would be anything but agony, irritating, interrupting agony, like hanging TMI bunting all over the world. But for a day, I'd definitely like to see what I was missing.

I'd also like a bash at a blindfold smell'n'taste test - I am positive that, exposed to a series of well known smells, I would mega-fail at identifying most of them. I am more confident with identifying food; but if you blended them, so they no longer had texture or shape, I don't think that would be so easy. It would still be a fun afternoon.

(incidentally, pregnancy seems like a worse and worse idea - apparently the strains it puts on your body are well known for knocking your biology out of whack. This includes the appearance of coelic disease, and the sudden reappearance of a sense of smell...)

I have to tell you what's gone on with the househunt!

I'm now sitting at Guy's campus with the loveliest view, one of my favourites. A mix of huge modern buildings, 50s brick, 1880s grimey white tile, hundreds of windows, walkways, scaffolds and smoking chimneys intersecting with pipework and stairwells. Yes, it's ugly. But I'm not sure anyone quite understand how much this breed of London ugliness makes me happy. To cap it off, I can also see trees, and lights and shadows playing through it all, and a huge sky of clouds peppered by regular planes. I'm happy.

I'm at a strange campus because I've spent the last two days papering student-haunts, and this is the end of my toils. Today, because I have no shame, I have also been carrying about a placard reading "HOUSEMATE WANTED". Unfortunately, the only offer that has gleaned has been from a yellow foam pig, whom we established probably couldn't afford make rent every week.

Yesterday was a sort of special hell. We were going to sign up Segnor Espania and Miss Interpreter at 11.30AM, so I came home specially only to discover that they had flaked out on us that very morning. Calypso and I did some calming painting (she's doing, as she calls it, "Mucha Sci Fi Tarot") but finally resigned ourselves to tromping back to Central. It was a crushingly miserable moment, but my motto is if you can't feel fantastic, you can at least look fantastic.

So I got out the tub of "man gel" Oceanic had abandoned there - mum had got it for her by mistake, not being the brand she needed. I've been intending for some time to attempt Agent Cooper-style slicked-back hair, and my day wasn't going to get any worse. My hair is too long to do it properly - it's heavy, so it scrapes the style back flat instead of achieving the foppish "puff" short haired folk get - but I shoved it into a pony at the back. With a bit of practice, I might be able to get a little puff. Calypso noted it had rather a boyish effect, though I thought it was a bit more 80s power-dressing. Very much like the photo to the left. It certainly made my face look good, if artificially giving my hair the greasy-unwashed look. I then pushed it over the top with a fake cravat and the Sixth Doctor frock coat. Looked worse (probably), but felt better.

We hit Central like a plummeting lift. Calypso manned the internet machine, and shrapnelled the web with adverts. I photocopied adverts, then went and papered every student building I could find. We'd already done the Strand Campus. It was a lovely, dark evening - glowy lights of all colours, public transport, glittery shops. I walked up to Bloomsbury and hit every college in the area: UCL, SOAS, Royal College of Surgeons, Birkbeck. Guess what else I found up there?

RADA.

I snuck in nervously, avoiding the urge to attack the smug, irritating types I found scattered all over the place, and went to the reception desk. As I had at the other Colleges, I stumbled over a request that the receptionist take my poster and have it put up. He accepted it, and replied "I'll make sure it's put up, sir." I thanked him and left, and it was only once I'd left and shut the door that what he'd said sunk in.

Sir?!

Being mistaken for a man didn't actually upset me as much as you'd assume it should - in fact, I grinned for the next fifteen minutes. While "passing" for male wasn't exactly what I'd intended that morning, nevertheless I had consciously styled my appearance after my male fashion icons, so I suppose I was sort-of asking for it. And it made some sense - that coat broadens my shoulders, what shape I have was hidden under a baggy jumper and as per usual, I wasn't wearing make up. Plus, this was RADA: they must be used to ludicrously effete fellas.

But I wasn't upset. While I've no desire at all to be a man, there is a fairly significant chunk of my brain which operates in a stereotypically "male" manner; and part of me would love to be a proper Victorian gentleman, hence the cravats and pretentions to chivalry. On a shallow, purely aesthetic level, it's a torment that I can't wear suits. I mean, I have the right to, and do my best with cravats and top hats and the rest, but I will never have the ability to make it look good in the way I want it to. Rather like that dress my sister and I accidentally bought on the same day. We both kept it, and it looks marvellous on both of us - but it looks like two different dresses when we wear them together, because we've different shapes. To illustrate my point, I've peppered this post with some of my favourite suit-wearers: Doctor number ten; 30s actress Jessie Matthews in First a Girl; Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks; 30s actress Marlene Dietrich in Morocco and singer Janelle Monae, who I've never heard of before but the picture looked great. My point being, they all look very fine - but fine in different ways.

But avoiding the obvious biological differences, I've little time for the gender binary. I feel that dividing people into two categories which influence the way they behave, dress, speak, move, and are treated is a shame on so many levels, not to mention unfair. Why would anyone want to limit themselves like that?

Bizzarely, the whole experience left me very conscious of how feminine I am. Going back on the tube, it occured to me that no one could possibly mistake me for a man for longer than the 5 seconds I had talked with the receptionist. The way I was standing, sitting, walking, positioning my legs, moving my hands - even, I felt, my range of facial expression would be different had I been raised male. No space or time, or indeed point to going into nature vs. nurture here - I think it's predominantly the way we learn to behave. Properly paying attention to the way men and women move is actually an exercise I'd recommend to everyone.

All in all, it was a fascinating occurrence. My first instinct was "eeek, won't do that again" - but a moment after, I amended that to "I will be careful how I use this in future". After all, with great hair comes great responsibility. There are many situations in my life where appearing manly is not an advantage - i.e. most of them. I'm glad I've been warned, so I never give off this effect by accident.

But I'm tempted. Very, very tempted to have a go at it properly. Work out how to sit and stand, and (assuming, for a moment, that I am convincing) see how people treat me differently.

Of course, the main downside of this whole scenario is the fact I spent my entire evening walking about with dead animal fat smeared all over my head. It's now gone all crusty, and I somehow respect movie gangsters and the rest less for knowing how nasty it feels in the morning. I've washed it once now, and it's still pretty gooey - today, I've been sporting the cancer-outpatient look, with a hair-concealing hat so concealing that it makes obvious something nasty has happened up there...

I've got a plan, however, for what to do next. I'm going to get my hair to frizz, then slick down the very top. It works, in my head, with a flapper dress and pearls.

Just so you know we've been trying has hard as we can on the house front...we started with people we knew well - a good friend, and Calypso's cousin. As these are people I know and like, I'll skimp on details :) But after a few weeks of hope, neither turned out to be able to live with us, which was a shame. We then moved on to people who moved in the same circles:

Alzarius
Remember Alzarius from the quiz? Right. Turned him down on the basis that, as a geek, he Absolutely Positively requires the internet hard-wired into his brain, and we love having an internet free house.

Fake!Friend1
Met her at a club on one of the LGBT nights out. TERRIFYING. Charming, witty, very friendly, but looks JUST LIKE FRIEND 1. Same short hair. Same sort of face. Same dress sense, and slouch, and jewellry picks. Drinks the same drinks. As far as I could glean, same interests too. Oh, and is also called "Friend 1". On the one hand, this is a pretty excellent reason for her to live with us: while on the whole my Friend 1 wouldn't exactly fit the quiet, party-free house we are running in Acton, she is an intelligent female activist, and at least I know she's a good pal and great person. But on the other, OHMYGOODNESSCREEPY. Unfortunately, she couldn't get out of her contract.

Miss Polypluck
Also couldn't get out of her contract, and I'm still not sure whether I'm glad or not. Another one of Calypso's activist buddies, pretty perfect. She wanted to get out of Kings halls because they wouldn't let her play her drums, sax and keyboard there. Obviously, this would almost have been excellent: we've a garage for her drumkit, and I wouldn't say no to having a keyboard in the house. But I don't know. Everyone turns into a bitch when it comes to music. Bar none. I include myself in this, and can envisage the atmosphere turning instantly unpleasant when it comes to sharing and arranging rotas or, worse, if I were better than her (or she better than me...)

Mr Novello
The first of a very long line of very gay men. Spirita pounced on him at SOAS, having overheard him talking about his flathunt, and invited him straight home. Calypso showed him around while I did a whirlwind tidy ahead of her. He was soft spoken, very poised and careful, and didn't seem to mind the mess. His favourite film is Brief Encounter ("us too!" the three of us squealed. It is basically our joint-fave movie), but he was something of a cineaste. I couldn't help but ask him if he'd seen The Lodger - 1920s silent film, about a mysterious lodger who might secretly be Jack the Ripper. He had, and took the question in good faith. In many ways, he was ideal - he would hardly ever be there, and because of the age gap, wouldn't want to be our pal in a dynamic-disrupting manner. But Calypso had a bad feeling about him, in the way one reasonably might of a stranger Spirita had known for 30 minutes, and fortunately, he only wanted four months out of the six month contract, giving a substantial reason to turn him down.

At this point, we started advertising, bringing us an unwelcome influx of foreign students. Which sounds mean, but not wanting the internet remains my chief aim in finding a roommate. Impossible? Probably, but foreign students are naturally going to require the internet to keep in contact with those abroad. It was at this point I agreed to cave on the internet front, and am still rather gloomy about it. It's not that I don't want to get in contact with you all; but having the ability to do so (in the form of the net) is a constant reminder of your absence. When no one has emailed/messaged me, it's not because you forgot to, didn't want to, it's because you physically couldn't. Which sounds pretty clingy and pathetic, and perhaps it is, but it turns the Acton House into a very calm, relaxing space where I can go to unwind from absolutely everything. Calypso keeps referring to it as a "safe space", which is a technical concept that, in this context means no fellas, no conservatives, no hateful people. For me, a safe space also entails the internet's absence. Incidentally, this isn't an excuse for you to stop calling, texting and sending me health packages with cigarettes, pin ups, warm knitted socks and Queen Alexandra tobbaco tins...

La Dolce Vita
Visited, and was adored by my fellow housemates. I didn't meet her, but she was The One for about a week until she couldn't get out of her contract.

Tempus Fugit
Mr Fugit was actually one of my favourite people we interviewed, a small and rather timid fella with a lovely smile. He was very keen to make sure we were OK with lodging with a guy, and made sure we knew he was gay and therefore non-threatening, in a manner which I thought rather sweet. Too expensive for him, though.

Senor Espania
Oh God, this one is almost too recent for me to want to go into. Lovely. Lovely, lovely Spanish guy studying fashion design - hobbies, cooking and cleaning. Which is a combination that makes more sense if you understand that we put some adverts up in the queer-friendly sections of the internet. Again, much like being smacked over the head by the nightmare transpeople must have navigating public facilities, I've suddenly realised how much it must suck to be a homo in search of a home. On top of all the other problems associated with finding a room, you'd have to find roommates OK with your other half.

He came to visit with a friendly interpreter - he is learning English at present, but is very timid at speaking it. The four of us got on famously. Argh, curses be upon everything! It turns out he couldn't afford it, but then suggested maybe he could share the room with someone. Which we were actually cool with - especially when we discovered the friend would be Miss Interpreter.

Senor Espania and Miss Interpreter
Which was fine and peachy, and legal, and everything was set up to sign the contract until fifteen minutes before the landlord was due to arrive. Still can't afford it. A flurry of obscene texts followed this news. Which is probably good on some level, because a five person house wouldn't be ideal, but then again it is now three days away from our deadline...

Mr Poland
Replied to the ad in frustratingly chirpy broken prose, peppered with ellipses, but had problems coping with "you are not a student and would therefore need to pay Council Tax".

Caviar
Referred to us via her brother's cousin, or something, but only wants to live here for three months. Might actually be an option, at this rate...

Mr Belgium
Our Landlord has informed us that we have to find an English student, so we didn't bother getting in touch with him.

Miss M.
Found somewhere else out of the blue.

Alzarius II
We asked again, now with the offer of internet, but he couldn't be parted from his busy social schedule before Monday morning. This being the only excuse, under the circumstances, I think I might like to kill him.

Candida
Visiting this weekend. Fingers crossed.

???????????
Well, I'll tell you about what happened last night in another more narrative post, but as you can see - we've been busy. We've exausted everyone we've ever met, scoured Facebook, shrapnelled the internet and plastered not only our campuses, but every London university with posters. At this stage, I am not sure what else we reasonably can do. As you can see, however, it is not for lack of effort - and our Landlord has offered to dock the cost of the spare room by 50% if on Monday we have no one and need to cover it ourselves.

This obviously would not be ideal. If only because the stress of finding someone has been dangling heavy for about two months now, and I can't take much more of it. It's like a constant weariness, like there's always a task to accomplish. But it could be worse. A friend has informed us about his last lodger, who was a really sweet old lady who gave him cookies, and then turned out to be an international confidence trickster who stole £800 from him over a few months!!!

In the absence of anything better to write, I have decided to share with you my recipe for egg fried rice. It's as easy as it sounds, but I'm still rather proud for working it out. You know it as a phrase in the same way TheEmpireStrikesBack or DireStraits become words in their own right. You don't really consider the fact that Star Wars V actually features the villainous Empire striking back at the goodies, no more than you stop to consider what a dire strait might have been before being a band name. Get what I'm driving at? So I regard the discovery that if you fry egg with rice you get egg fried rice as a personal epiphany.

If you select your brands carefully, it can be totally free from colouring and cruelty, and can be as packed with healthy stuff as you imagine. It's probably the healthiest egg fried rice you will ever eat. Depending on your brands (instant rice vs. proper rice) and the extras you add, this meal can take anything between 10 and 30 minutes to prepare. 20 is a good safe bet.

Due to the chaos factor in preparing the Osterman Fried Rice, I don't recommend you make it as a side dish unless lots of people are dining, and you have someone else helping in the kitchen. It's hard to prepare in small quantities, is very filling and tends to be temperamental. Or maybe I'm a lousy cooker.

Rice or noodles (referred to as "rice" throughout, but noodles work too)

Cruelty free Eggs (this recipe will self-destruct if used with battery farmed eggs...)

For 1 person use one or two eggs
Consider using three eggs if you are cooking for 4+ and are using an noticeably huge amount of rice.

Hoisin Stir-fry sauce. I use Sherwoods. I'm sure other flavours would taste good too.

Oil/stuff to fry in

Peas, chickpeas, sweetcorn, any other variety of bean or vegitable you have lying around

Grated cheese (for a mega-disgusting protein fix - this doesn't taste very nice, I warn you!)

Fake-meat chunks (But not fake-mince! Seriously, I've tried this with mince and it really fails.)

Spring onion, waterchestnut e.t.c. (for genuinely-Asian kudos)

Anything else fryable to add protien, iron, carbohydrate, vitamins, whatever


At least one saucepan

Strainer / method of getting water out of the pan while leaving the rice in.
Note: if Dr Manhattan is aiding you with your cookery, you will not need to find a strainer.

Frying pan

Wooden implement for stirring the fried egg with

A plate to serve onto (well this is student accomodation we're talking about! In dire straits, you could make a "trencher" as the Medievalists did - find a slice of bread, fresh or stale, and serve onto it.)



1. The basic recipie is rice + eggs + frying = egg fried rice. If you want to turn it into more of a meal, raid your cupboards for other stuff to stir in. Vegitables? Fake-meat chunks? Waterchestnuts?

The finished product is very creamy and filling, so while you are pre-planning consider putting on only half the amount of rice you would normally eat and serving something refreshing alongside it. Not being a natural cook, the best I could come up with was cucumber or celery sticks with maybe a sour cream or tzatsiki dip, and cool icey water drink.

I never bother with this, but I'm not a discerning eater - I just shovel it and ignore the taste. If you have distinguished tastebuds, consider a cooling counterpoint.

2. Using the time on the side of the packet for both the extras and rice, work out when each needs to be started to reach boiling point at the same time. Usually, the extras need to go on first. I tend to do this all in the same saucepan - it makes for less washing up.

If you are making cold extras - celery sticks, complicated cocktails, or laying the table poshly - now is the time to do it.

3. When the rice seems to be getting towards done, put some oil in the frying pan and heat it up. Strain the water out of the rice.

4.a if you want your the egg in the egg fried rice to come out in little lumps like it does at the Chinese, begin frying it before you add the rice. Use the wooden implement to break the yoke and scrape the bits around the pan till it is in pieces. Then, add the rice and stir it all together.

4.b if you want the egg and rice to all be in one big cream, pop the rice into the frying pan first then break the egg over the top, mixing it all together with the wooden implement.

If I'm frying two eggs, I generally do both - b. tastes more sickly to be sure, but is more eggy too. If I'm frying with meat-chunks, or something else "solid" that is the focus of the meal, you're probably best to stick with a.

5. If your "extras" were not in the pan with the rice, now is the time to add them, stirring as you go. I like it when it steams, because it somehow feels more authentic, but be prepared to turn down the cooker and turn on the extractor fan.

6. Add some hoisin sauce (or the sauce of your choice). I tend to do three splats-worth, covering about the area of a £20 note on top of the rice. Real scientific, this. Keep stirring so the sauce goes all the way through. Another rough measure - the meal should not turn brown after being sauicfied - the egg pieces should merely look a bit grubby

7. Keep stirring, and get ready. The moment this meal hits the plate it begins to go cold, so make you are ready to eat the moment it leaves the pan. Make all essentials are cleaned up (i.e. put the eggs back in the fridge) and safe while you're frying, and anything that needs to be prepared for the table (plates and drinks) is ready. If you have an accomplice, this is a great opportunity to make them do some work ^_^

8. Switch off the cooker and serve the egg fried rice. Abandon all washing up and tidying for afterwards.

"Dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond Unmutual's cooking"

PS - Sugarbabes. Aren't they just like a rip-off, sweet edition of the Spice Girls? Just noticed that...

1. Utilitarianism doesn't work
If "the greatest good for the greatest number" was applied universally, then you get some sticky moral problems - and not simply "if I have to blow up New York to save the world, then is the world really worth saving?". The Peeping Tom scenario gives us a happy voyeur, and a happy woman unware she is being watched. The right thing to do here is obviously to stop the peeping, but under strict utilitarianism it wouldn't make sense: the woman would be unhappy to learn she was watched, and the voyeur's fun would be taken away. And that's why utilitarianism doesn't work. Or something.

2. Carrots used to be purple
They were bred orange by some patriotic Dutch guy about 500 years ago.

3. You can milk an extra six working hours out of a day
All you have to do is work out what hours you are most productive. For me, that's 9 in the morning to about 12 midday. Work as normal. When you hit the end of productive time, turn back your watch and work the same hours over again. And then do it a third time. It's amazing how this simple trick of the mind really does make it seem like you've perfected the art of time travel. Don't attempt this more than one day in a row, or prepared to be exhausted and confused. As Calypso pointed out, you are effectively giving yourself jetlag....

4. A man can be beaten to death with a copy of the Big Issue
Or London Paper, or Metro, or any magazine given half a minute's work. It's known as a Millwall club or Millwall brick, and makes me feel about 0.8% safer walking home at night.

5. It's worth making a point, even if it's pointless
I've always rejected vegitarianism because it doesn't make a difference. It still doesn't make a difference: my sacrifice isn't bettering the life of a single chicken, nor extending that of a single cow. That doesn't matter any more: I do it because it is better to do so. I think a lot of human apathy would be cured by that mindset.

6. Artists everywhere!
Feliks Topolski, the Decemberists, Rainer Warner Fassbinder, the Manic Street Preachers, Lewis Klahr, Amanda Palmer, Peter Tsscherkassky, Bat for Lashes and Martin Arnold. To name a few.

7. IMAX is cinema
Why settle for anything smaller?

8. Dinner tastes best after 8PM
At home, we tend to have an early dinner. I've never known why. Late tea means late lunch, extending the productive working hours in the morning. The rest of the evening after Late tea can be given to chatting, and not interrupted because there's no time for something more constructive. And late tea doesn't interfere with Doctor Who broadcast times.

9. Other people don't matter
I have the right to wear what I like, love who I want to, choose my appearance, my presentation, my life, and damn the rest. I know I've never really cared about opinions, but now I really don't care. It's awesomely liberating. Before I went to London, a few of my relatives worried how I'd cope in such a cold, unfriendly atmosphere - but there's no where free-er than a place where no-one gives a damn is.

10. Twitter
Nuff said.

11. You can get from Victoria to St Pancras in under 20 minutes
Without a mobile phone, Oyster card, cash or bankcard. Go figure.

12. You can get tickets for sold-out plays at less than face value...
...provided you have the strength, nerve and patience to queue in the early morning cold.

13. Patrick Stewart can't act on stage
I'm about to be shouted down here, but I'm sorry: I don't get it. I saw him in Hamlet, against David Tennant. Strictly, my mind should have been going "it's Doctor Who!" - but it didn't, and after five minutes he was simply Hamlet. Patrick Stewart, however, remained Patrick Stewart and I didn't like his interpretation. Similarly in Waiting for Godot, against a man who will always be Gandalf to me, I barely even remembered it was Ian McKellan under the top hat - whereas again, the other actor was always firmly in mind.

14. Butler's Wharf and Shad Thames
There are lots of cool places in London, but the Southbank is my second home and this part especially. Doctor Who filmed there in the 80s, but that's not what keeps drawing me back. Several reasons have since occured to me, all of them weird, but agree the place has great atmosphere?

15. Everyone sounds better live
The way to appreciate a band is to actually see them. Fan for life.

16. Pokemon was actually a Gameboy game, before a TV show or card game
Apparently, I'm the only person who didn't already know this.

17. Current 93 is the ultimate test of nerve
"The huge tree bubbles in its arms / And long processions / Kill the kings and cover / The babies in soap paradise / Pure glass in the cactus smile / Of the Madonna of Chandeliers..."
I can cope about 8 tracks into the album before giving up a shuddering wreck. The one time I actually got to 15, the computer crashed as protest.

18. Doctor Who fans are nuts
Yes, you are the only one under 20. Yes, you are strangely female. And yes, you are the only one without that half-vacant stabbity stare beloved of tramps and bus-weirdos everywhere. Be afraid, be very afraid.

19. Movies and TV shows set "in London" are rarely ever filmed there
Feeling homesick when you only have a very nebulous concept of "home" is a strange experience. Right now, "home" tends to be groups of people, not places. But as I treat London as a living entity (like the dreaming city from Sandman), it does come under that definition. I've found myself getting really, really excited whenever it turns up in movies. Only to have a bucket of cold water dashed upon me when I realise it's only central Cardiff and some very clever editing. Once you live there, you can tell - because they shoot like I shot Mordor on Cobo Beach. Tight angles, lots of cuts, no recognisable landmarks. A few stock establishing shots of major landmarks. It only bothers me because I want it to be proper London so much.

20. I was right about the direction of sunrise over the Thames
Always have been, always will be.

1. Actually reading Ovid and/or Virgil, instead of quotehunting. I'm studying them because I adore them, but I keep getting sidetracked by the good bits.

2. Actually reading critical literature about Ovid and/or Virgil. I'm an awesome skim reader. I can get through academic papers pretty darn quickly and yank out the bits I need. But again, I keep getting sidetracked by non-essay related stuff in said texts.

3. Practicing the piano, while I have one. I've decided I'm really, really going to go for it this time and learn Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu. My view to playing the piano has always been "get stuck in and you can play anything". One of the first pieces I learnt to play, by which I mean heard and thought "I am going to play that", was that introduction from Firth of Fifth by Genesis. Here it is:



Although I tend to play it a little faster than that. My point is, I found the music and practiced like hell. It's still the most challenging thing I can play, a notch above everything else - and that's because I really put my mind to it. I mean, it's pure motor response - I couldn't teach it to you, tell you the notes or slow down when I play because it's literally just muscle memory, and if I stop concentrating I lose it completely. Yet it was a nice suprise to find I could do it through sheer willpower, and it's been my attitude ever since: just sit down, plunge in and play it. (I'm not a perfectionist, so my sight reading has become pretty formidable - and that's a double edged sword in itself, because if you can play something OK-ish without practice, and you're lazy like me, you never learn to play things to performable-in-public standard.)

There is one exception. Chopin's Fantasie Impromtu: listen if you want a special musical treat:



I can play the first ten notes, and the middle quiet section when it slows down a bit. But that gorgeous racing about at the start and end? Pfagh! No chance! It's a combination of all the hardest things - it's an irritating, complicated key + difficult rhythm in both hands made more difficult by playing them simultaneously + really, really, really fast. I've been bashing it for years and never got anywhere. Yet I'm sure my trademark method of plunging straight in can't fail me now. It didn't fail for the middle section, for example. What I need is a good week with the piano. Oooh, like right now.

4. Listen to the Manic Street Preachers. Friend 2 agonised about whether or not to go see their reunion concert next month for a long, long time. And then out of the blue, two days after saying she definitely couldn't go for all sorts of reasons, she phoned to say she'd just got tickets. Make no mistake, I am really really looking forward to it. But I need to brush on songs which aren't You Stole the Sun from my Heart before I go to get the most out of it.

5. Watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Guns of Navarone, Black Hawk Down, Brazil, Force 10 From Navarone, This Is England, My Beautiful Laundrette, Day Watch, Death Proof etc etc etc

6. Watch Doctor Who, The A-Team, Robin of Sherwood, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Crystal Maze, Lost or even Galactica.

7. Write. I can't count the number of stories which deserved to be finished for enjoyment by others. Unfortunately, I work at too too obsessively slow a pace to ever get one done. Still, it'd mean a lot to me personally were they a little better shaped. Top of the priority list: Lord M's epic, as usual. Hard, as usual. The problem with writing the story of a splinter of your fractured psyche is that you experience it in three dimensions. Which is to say, a better author would leave out much of the detail, but I can't help it as it's a record as much as anything. And because of the semi-experience, it's very opinionated. And that's added to the trouble of writing a story which is really a life - much, I'm sure, isn't relevant.

I've done it straight. I've shaken up the chronology, and done it with flashbacks more than once, and from one or more points in the narrative. I've done it from the perspective of the "bad guy", I've done it from the perspective of a Horatio-style companion, I've done it from M's perspective and from a completely non-judgemental point in the sky. I've tried faux-Austen, but it just comes out sounding like Wilde. I've also gone all Dracula and attempted it through journals, articles and diaries. That one sort-of worked, but you lost a lot of that detail. I've given up on trying to make it a good story and plunged into a melodramatic, trash-romantic version - curiously, that one worked best as fiction, but was least satisfying for me. I've just embarked on a post-modern version which is even less likely to see the light of day than any of the above, as it's hopelessly pretentious and wallows in sub-existentialist musings. It's very personally satisfying, as it encompasses many of the odder thoughts I've had about reality's relationship to fiction, and some of the ideas I reach may eventually filter back into what I've been calling The Real Novel.

Which will never be published, except perhaps if I tidied it up for Mills and Boone. The basic story is way too hackneyed. But it'd please me were it finished, and I might have a single copy bound just to sit on my shelf. Second priority is my semi-semi-biographical school story. This is shamelessly postmodern, start to finish - think a steampunk Chalet School, as written by Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman - but I think it's in with a chance. It's complied from various shorter stories and ideas, and is certainly entertaining if completely trivial. It lacks any more substance than one weird happening after another. Whenever I love something, I write a story - most films and books I admire have a shameless rip off following a few months after. I recognise the source, but do it for my own amusement. One of the reasons I'm still so mad at my school is that it got a tribute epic, and then went and let me down on several counts after my big fictional demonstration of affection. I recognise, but can't help, that it's basically the fury of a scorned lover. So in one way it's catharsis - if I finish the story, the bad memories will be totally subsumed to the school I was actually at, the one with the undine in the swimming pool, the monkeys in the tree and something very nasty backstage.

Next on track is a fairly old story, basically the A-Team with teen girls. It feeds off my love of heist/crime movies, and trying to keep it from becoming too pitch black is a constant challenge. Despite the basically silly premise, it keeps bubbling back up in my thoughts which is an indication that maybe it's not so silly after all. I envisage it either as a comic book or TV series, which takes some of the pressure off.

And finally, my Castle epic which comes at the bottom because the idea of finishing it has been throbbing away since I was 11. There is a fairly large problem in that it was so innocently written. At the time it was only natural that most of my cast turned out to be princes and archmages in disguise. I think it's an unhappier world now I'm aware these things are "cliche", because my world doesn't work without them, and the sheer unlikeliness of all of these people accidentally coming together is a genuine plot point within the narrative. I'm not planning on retconning big things like that, or my story would vanish. One of the more taxing problems is compiling Emily II with the Emily I I was at the time, in particular coming to heroics. We have different standards. It's filled with daft heroics and dafter pride, chivalry, death, more death, and worst of all, honour. It's a valid literary pose to hold - I enjoy Beowulf and The Aeneid and Lord of the Rings. The problem is, it's hard to reconcile that with Emily II's love of irony and ugliness. I've been twisting scenarios for years now - heroes will flee, villains will stand firm, princes will fall in love with princes, and nice characters will die by accident and alone. If I read the Castle Epic as written by someone else, I'd nod approvingly and take it in my stride that X would think death before dishonour was a good idea, or that Y would dive into a perilous situation to rescue their truest love. The problem be, it feels very false coming from me because I personally don't believe it. Or rather, considering how far I fall under influence, I do believe it - but only when enjoying one of the above.

But as my own self I can't, and my cynicism has already permeated one or two drafts. My personal motto has been for several years now "decus intelligentia" - or, "honour with intelligence". Or to expand it, "Do what you must, as long as it is sensible". It occurred to me five minutes after finishing the movie Rob Roy, which I watched purely for the delectible Mr Roth and was not disappointed. The treatment of goodness and honour angered me though - once a man steals your cattle, harrasses your people, rapes your wife, burns your house and shoots your dog, you are no longer bound to face him in honourable, equal combat, because he clearly no longer deserves it. In the real world, however, it expresses a sense of pragmatism about all systems - defend your faith, but don't start wars; stand up for your friends, but not if they're 200 miles away and you're talking to their armed arch enemy, I'm sure they'll understand; know your beliefs, but be flexible; no martyrs. You'll appreciate why I find my youthful optimism hard to imitate.

I'm also aware the characterisation is very weak, and I don't want to come in and impose something like personality just to make it a better book. They're far more shapeless, archetypal than that.

8. Read. My room is stuffed with those books you meant to read when you picked them up, but never got around to. Within arms reach is The Bonfire of the Vanities (enjoyed the first 500 pages or so, then was bowed by the sheer daunting length of it), Death is Part of the Process (it was on the 1001 Book list. No idea what it's about. Oh my, it's about anti-apartite freedom fighters in South Africa. I must have been feeling worthy when I picked that! I adore the title though), To the Lighthouse, Orlando (in French, irritatingly, as I so want to read the rest of this), The Secret Agent, Vanity Fair, Bach Johnathan Livingston Seagull and Oscar and Lucinda. And that's without walking to my bookshelves which are doubtless even worse.

9. Set up manufacturing plant for baby Rorschachs. Yes, I am looking forward to finishing them. No, I've nowhere near enough time to make 4 of the things. As it stands, I have 4 heads, 5 arms and 2 pairs of legs.

Living an ethical life is impossible. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Today my mobile phone woke me up. I set it charging - electrical consumption - while I had a shower under a mix of cheap chemicals, and got dressed into clothes which, while not Primark or high brand, were not hand woven hemp either.

Yes, being ethically irresponsible is part of life - it's a sad truth that if you were to cut out all unethical consumption, life would be impossible. And that's before you take in the financial implications - shelling out for fair trade everything is quite pricy. I've been having one of those Locke days - "what the hell am I supposed to do?!" - because it doesn't matter how hard I try, I still feel dirty.

And even when I feel I am being good - what's the point? I don't know anyone else who is consciously cutting down on their internet/computer usage; I'm the only person in the kitchen to pay £1.50 extra for chemical-free washing up liquid, I refuse to learn to drive so I will never get a car - but what's the point in my denying all these little, irritating things to myself when I know there are millions out there who leave all their computers on overnight and own private jets? In other words, my sacrifices are instantly cancelled out by other's excesses, making the whole thing pointless. I could switch off my computer now and save electricity - but out my window are a thousand businesses who've left their whole skyscrapers lit up overnight.

I've been applying my personal motto to it, it's the only way I can focus my efforts. You didn't know I had a motto? But it's Latin and all - "decus intelligentia" - and it came to me halfway through Rob Roy. It means "Duty with Intelligence", or, "do what you must - as far as it is sensible". In the context of Rob Roy it means "once someone has stolen your cattle, burnt your house, raped your wife and shot your dog, you are no longer required to challenge him to honourable single combat. You go down, sink to his level and kick his teeth in." In a Doctor Who sense, it's Warriors of the Deep episode 4 "cling to your pacifistic beliefs as long as you can, but there's a point at which mercy no longer extends to genocidal Silurians, and it's this point at which you can gas them in good conscience. Also, Doctor, this point actually occurred 45 minutes earlier..."

And so on - any film which ends with the entire cast being killed for no good "honour and peace" related reason which doesn't actually produce any practical effect. You're just dead - as Guildenstern puts it, "dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over...Death is not anything... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more ... the endless time of never coming back ... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...". Last Samuri is another - they die for their beliefs, and they do it nobly, but the net effect is they end up dead - which is what the villainous Americans wanted in the first place.

As you can see, this motto is a direct reaction against trash heroic movies, but it applies to real life too. Defend your religion - but don't start wars about it. Go and help people in trouble - unless the odds are overwhelmingly against you. Protest your cause - but don't cry if it doesn't help. Recognise the point at which your actions no longer make sense, and give it up, but until that point fight like hell.

So, to ethical shopping. You know all big companies screw someone, somewhere down the line; you simply have to assume good faith, until explicitly told otherwise. There are always alternatives. I boycott Nestle - no Nesquiks, but you can replace it with equivalent cereals like Coco Rocks. I strongly boycott Proctor and Gamble because they still do animal testing, and this hurts folks, because I have to cut out Head and Shoulders, Tampax and Pringles. There are other shampoos, though, and as much as I hate to say it, there are also other brands of crisps. And at the same time, I ask myself what the point is, because not even my animal-loving ex-vegetarian friends can be persuaded to give Pringles up. People will never live ethically when it directly conflicts with their own self interest.

Before you ask, they test their chemical products on animals, not the crisps, but buying the crisps is still supporting them instead of forcing them out of business and to rethink their methods.

This requires some willful ignorance - I haven't looked too hard at the methods of the companies I still support, mostly because I know that to be big and successful you have to be dirty somewhere. But if ever I discovered there was something untoward, then I would ditch them too. Few things make me angrier than bitches who still shop at Primark - Primark bags make me want to push people in front of trains. Because it's not even a case of "I won't ask questions" - they know, they all know. If you sat them down and asked them to shoot a puppy as part of their Primark subscription, they wouldn't do it; but they can do it because out of sight is out of mind.

There is a point where being ethical is just hard to live. But there are other clothes shops. How many of them are any better? Probably not by much. But knowing and doing it anyway is wrong on a basic level. It also reminds me of an argument I had with my mum about the Christmas at Olympia fair.

Mum - "I really want to go to that next year".
Me - "you'd like it, but we can't because the company which organises it also organises Britain's largest arms fair in Central London, and invites countries with appalling rights records to purchase "defensive" torture equipment"

I can't remember her precise response, but I know that that didn't convince her. I find myself asking, what isn't convincing about "going to this event genuinely allows this company to involve themselves in murder and destruction, and make profit off the suffering of others". Yet Clarion won't stop organising arms fairs, all that will happen is my mum will be denied the fun of an admittedly great event.

Nothing will change. Yet if we don't, who will? It's like I always say about protests - 99% of which are a waste of time. The point of a protest is to stand up and show your feelings, to say you were there because you know it's right to be so - not because you genuinely expect the villains to buckle under pressure. It won't make any difference in a global sense; I just don't want to have any part in the destruction of the enviroment or opression on those less fortunate.

And that's it. Ethical living cannot be done. Even when it can be, the number of people too ignorant and/or lazy will far outweigh any contribution you can make to the side of good. Nor is it worth you living in a cardboard box with clothes made out of banana skins. It's like reality. You can't escape from it - it's everywhere, and part of who you are. The world is built on it. But you can make yourself as small a part of it as possible, and that's what I'm asking this week.

Don't get to the point where it's stupid. Just do what you can. Buy the greenest, fairest, cleanest products available. Not because it makes the world a better place, not because it has any impact at all. But because it makes you a better person.

In this post: a brilliant dream; navagating the "Library of Sheol"

I have spent today operating on anger, adrenalin, chocolate milk and Strauss.

I'm taking an hour off, to blog and catch up on my comic. Then it's back to slog. Honest.

Today has been all kinds of hell. I woke up from quite an impressive dream. The details, naturally, run away from me now. What I do remember is a girl called Jackdaw Flash, on account of her hair. Hands off that name, by the way - Jackdaw Flash is going to be coming to a book near you very soon. We were in grandma's house, choosing a scary movie to watch; only I was too afraid of the house. Which is part true in real life - only, now I appreciate the mix of kitch and terror, the crazy random decorating and all the details and junk. You can't get bored in a house like that, even if part of the "you could find anything!" encompasses everything from an original Dorian Gray to a dead body.

This morning I remembered why we were going around this place - now all I remember is there was a room.

I think Dorian Gray was responsible for the next bit in any case - I found a room which wasn't there before, and it was intense. Naturally, there's no room like this in the house - although I remember dreaming once there was a secret passage there, and while I know that dreams are dreams, I've never quite shaken the feeling that there should be. This house has an Anne Frank style attic which used to be behind a bookshelf, a green library which looks like it's been abducted from another house entirely, and a recently discovered cellar with a wine press which nobody knew about. So maybe there is a secret passage, and this is what is at the end of it.

Unlikely, as the room was intensely Chapter 12 - like something from the Vatican. The high roof was decorated with jewels and gold, marble floor and there were pearls in the walls. What was so remarkable about the room was that I experienced it as sound. I heard the sound of the emptiness and size, and then the rattle of the pure pearls, and then a jangling sensation like tiny bells to represent the gold. I have far more of an intense impression of it than I would have by sight alone.

Finally, we were in a trial room - and I'm not going to describe the circumstances, but like Miss Flash expect them incorporated in a coming story.

It took some crawling to escape that dream - I woke properly at 9, having set my alarm for 11, which was satisfying. I had cereal (I rushed to Sainsburies yesterday, but got distracted by the Watchmen posters and cutouts, and after five minutes of ogling, I was too late. Then I tried Atlanta which is a corner supermarket, and almost bumped into the manager as he was leaving. He asked me if I needed anything, and at that point I just requested cereal and milk. So I've been subsisting on that. The greatest crime the religion has ever perpetrated - no, not the stonings, the martyrs, the bombs or crusades. It's things shutting on Sundays. At the end of a hard week, I only want to veg out on a Saturday. But I'm bored by Sunday - at which point shops, supermarkets and attractions close. Why? No good reason, except ?2000 years of tradition or more. Why not a more convenient day?), and set off for the Maughan Library.

In Ballad of Reading Gaol - in an Oscar Wilde mood at the moment - there's a line about each man going back into his private hell. Mine looks something like the Maughan. Initially I was pretty excited about Chancery Lane - it's a line from Planet of Fire, when Turlough reveals his guardian on Chancery Lane is actually a Trion agent spying on him. There's a tax man on Verdon and an agrarian commissioner on Darveg as well, though obviously I've never visited Verdon and Darveg. In any case, I do get a little leap of love whenever I see the road sign; and the Knights Templar, the nicest pub I've ever been in, is on the corner; and the building is beautiful.

But I want to die as soon as I get inside. It genuinely puts me in a worse mood than the Tube, and I normally start off pretty stressed from being on that. To begin with, you have to swipe in, on that irritating swiper with the wrong direction marked on it. From thereon, it's a warren of despair. The staff are unfriendly and useless. The cafe's always closed. The filing system is incredible - it's the American Library of Congress System which, incidentally, my mother also uses when she rearranges my bookcases at home.

Which is to say - completely bloody random as far as I can tell.

I admit that the good old Dewey Decimal is probably inadequate for an academic library, but understanding the system hurts. P is Language and Literature, but PE is English lit, and so on.
What makes this worse is nowhere in the library is this list actually displayed. There are little leaflets reading PN is room 1.26 and DU 4.32, but it's useless if you don't know what PN and DU actually mean.

It's the only sensible building in the world (as opposed to, say, the Empire State Building) where I condone normal, healthy people taking the lift - if I didn't, I'd have to find a staircase; and if I tried that, well, the caretakers would find me emaciated and feral three weeks later after being unable to find my way out. I know that to find film, I go up the lift one level, turn right and walk to the end via the Spanish books; Byzantine history is up lift 4 to floor 2M; to find the Oscar Wilde, you pace floor 2 until you see a pitch black area where the light doesn't work - that's where his shelf is. Lucky that I can identify most editions of most of his books by touch, then.

Oh, and the cafe is down to -2 and straight across. But they don't sell chocolate milk.

If you find the right area, it's impossible to find the actual book you want - I have to check the catalogue four or five times. And often as not, the book's not there when you need it, even when the catalogue says it is. By that point, I'm usually in tears from stress, and I don't physically have the strength to work out whether the book's been taken out, I've got the room wrong, the shelf number wrong, or the catalogue is just lying to me.

And then there are the little niggling things, like the computer rooms being out of the way so it takes 15 minutes to just hop onto Google to check something, not to mention the toilets all being treks away; like the request system not working; like the fact the Classics section is on the divide of the number system, which means half is at one end of the massive corridor which makes up the building, and the other on the other; like not having a copy of the Silmarillion; like the fact Lagaan, a 3+ hour film, is on short-term loan, which means you have to renew it after 2 hours; like the fact it's on no convenient Tubes or buses, and it's a bloody stress to get to. You can't even watch films there in comfort, because the room with the TV booths have the most appalling reflections that you can barely see.

In any case, back to the Library from Hell. I have never once been there, but that it has let me down. I spent half an hour trying to find Photius' Bibliotecha, and after phoning up my lecturer in a state of distress, discovered only the first volume of two was there anyway, meaning I had to write an exam on a source I only had the duller half of. There was not a single book on the Parthenon, Mycenae, and nothing about Greek buildings or architecture, with the result that I got a poor score because I didn't reference enough. How could I? I couldn't find any damn books to reference. I've got one on Greek pots due in a week, and I just know there will be nothing useful on the topic.

To sum up the rant, then - once you've spent 45 minutes on the bus and Tube, you're already stressed, tired and not in the mood to be pissed about. Especially if you're working on a deadline, the fact you're going to lose at least two hours to public transport really stings. Unfortunately, it'll take at least that long in an environment twice as stressful to locate a book. In the unlikely event you find something potentially useful, at that point I am in no fit state to work. Any desire to do well, any interest in the subject or spark of enthusiasm has been wholly crushed. If you go through all that, and then make it back to Hampstead, you're in a state to do one thing and one thing only - sleep.

One day I am going to find a room with no one else in and scream at the top of my voice "I FUCKING HATE THIS LIBRARY". Then walk out. Which is the mantra which keeps pumping around my head as I get more, and more, and more stressed in that evil place. Today I merely picked out one of their useless "maps" which don't help at all, and scrawled words to that effect, in big letters on it, like a PostSecret, and left it in one of the racks for the next person to find. I hope it makes them smile. It certainly made me grin. Screaming, however, is only a matter of time.

That library has only ever been good for one thing. The very last video booth is around a corner on the Mezzanine, so you can see any approaching lecturers long before they see you. Or properly, your screen. I had the most divine afternoon when I took off my shoes and watched 3/4 of Planet of Fire there. But even then, it was the token rebellion against the third worst place in the world which really made it fun. The other two, incidentally, being Bodmin Gaol and the Ellis Island Immigration Centre.

In any case, today was no exception. It got to the point where I had to sit down in the corridor, because I was getting serious stomach cramps and vomit sensations. Not because I'm ill - from stress and anger. When I asked for help, I got directed to people who directed me to other people, who directed me to all sorts of different places to tell me what I'd already worked out - that the "Short Loan" and "Reference Only" system did not function at all correctly, and that people who could have taken the train to London and watched the exam movies at any point over Christmas hadn't - and were obviously happy to sit on the videos, and just pay the crippling fines after the exam.

So I did the trek to the computer rooms and establish that most of the DVDs I needed were in Swiss Cottage Central Library (15 minutes away from home). Back on the tube. Back on the bus. Back to the TV room.

I walked back under the arch and made a provisional oath. I say provisional, because naturally I don't ever want to be in a position where my sons are Kinslaying, burning Swan Havens, stealing boats or throwing Silmarils into volcanos, and I didn't swear on anything serious like Tanquetil, because I wouldn't want to have to stick to it.

Which is nowhere near as dramatic, nor as satisfying to write, but probably a better idea in the long run. But if I can help it, I am never going to go there ever again. I'll use Camden libraries - there are nine of them - or the British Library, or Senate House. Anywhere else. Even Wikipedia.

I managed to get four films out the library - Comme Une Image, Angst Essen Seele Auf, La Strada, and Marie Antoinette. Total cost - £7.89, but the satisfaction was immense. I staggered back up the road and ensconced myself in the TV room for the rest of the afternoon for a quadruple bill.

In the process, I made a permanent enemy. I've been getting closer to the campus cat for the previous term. He always comes and sits on the floor when I'm in the TV room, which is really comforting, as I'm mostly in there on weekends - when everyone else is at home. He usually comes in for my Doctor Who marathons too, though generally only Jon Pertwee episodes. Not sure why - Cat must be a connoisseur. Today I managed to persuade him onto my lap, where he promptly fell asleep. It was lovely, I felt far calmer. But then I had to turf him off to change the DVD - and he refused to come back, attacking my hand when I tried to tempt him. It upset me more than it should have; mind you, the fact he had a nap on my lap made me happier than it should have, so it all evens out.

As it happened, I only managed two movies before my stomach started complaining. I had only had a bowl of cereal, so I dashed across the road to the place where the guy had let me buy the cereal yesterday (I want them to have my custom, they were nice). Dinner = two sausages, taramasolata on toast (Olympia brand - quite potatoey, but nice texture) and Salt and Vinegar crisps. I don't even like crisps, but Jessie's mum has this theory that when you crave something, it's your bodies way of telling you you have a deficiency. I don't get that much salt, so I always choose to believe it when I fancy some.

Though my body must have a serious calcium deficiency if that's the reason I've been drinking so much milk.


So today has been stressful, but rewarding in a weird way. It's reminded me at least why I came home exhausted. And apologies for the foul language. I'd like to think I'm a skilled enough author to express the horror of the place without resorting to expletives, but sometimes it's the only way to get your point across.



In other news - I had quite forgotten my unkillable plant, Leon, over Christmas. As soon as I got back, I started tidying - I'd left the desk and wardrobe a total mess. And I kept coming across things I'd half forgotten were here - my red shawl, my wonderful copy of Sands of Time, my lemonade bottle I've converted to a permanent drink holder and Leon. Well he was all curled up, so I gave him some water and he's perked up. It's incredible, it's like I've never left. He's all green again. I'm genuinely impressed - it's truly hard to kill!

And I proudly rearranged my MicroUniverse Display Box - only to realise I'd left the three Dalek figures at home! So the collection is still not yet complete...

The plan as I see it is this - now, start researching Marie Antoinette (I had to let Sholay go, mainly because I couldn't find it in Swiss Cottage - despite the massive section of Hindi cinema. Plus, it's three hours when time is running short, I can't appreciate the whole of Indian Cinema in so short a time and I enjoyed it too much. Marie Antoinette I liked but didn't enjoy, so I'm willing to get digging)

Go to bed early, wake up early and watch Comme Une Image, then try and hunt out the other movies for the rest of the day. Missing - Rear Window, I know Where I'm Going. The latter might be tricky - I may ultimately have to skip it.

Finally, and then I'll get back to work honest, I did point out before I left that Estonia, a Marillion song written in typical cheery style about the sole survivor from a boat disaster, was the most divine song ever written - particularly the instrumental break with the dropping guitars. Here it is:



Having listened to it again, some of the magic has worn off - but its lovely, isn't it?

Finally, if you come across a Doctor Who book called Matrix, you will pick one up for me? I've just established that not a single library in London has a copy, see.

Sainsbury's basic range is cheap, and it's cheap for a reason. Goodness knows what they make some of their proudcts out of. Despite that, sometimes you can get away with it. Here's a brief guide:

OK
I bought shampoo and conditioner for under 50p combined, and at the size of the bottles I think I'll still be using them at Christmas. Yes they look like gloopy alien spit, and yes there isn't a comforting picture of leaves on the bottle to trick you into thinking you're using genuine Mayan leaf extract instead of a chemical goop, but they work well enough.

The cereals are brilliant. As long as you can put up with the rip-off names, there's nothing to seperate them from the kellogs/nesquik equivalent. Plus, the boxes are massive.

It's quite hard to get dried pasta wrong.

The breakfast juices are stunning! I've had a lot of their sicilian lemonade, and am now enjoying their rum-less morning Mojitos. They're some of the nicest I've ever had.

This is also the best place in London to buy Doctor Who figures. But they don't taste so nice...

Go for basics yoghurts! You can buy four generous sized yoghurts for about 27p, and they're perfect.

Passable
The blackcurrent doesn't really taste like brand squash, but it is still drinkable. Actually, this goes for a lot of products - not identical to what you're used to, but nice in their own way. Lemon squash, angel delight and the biscuits also come into this catagory.

Avoid
Nevereverever buy own-brand pizza. They're tasteless and the base just disintigrates. Just bite the bullet and buy a proper one. it'll only be £2 more expensive, and it's more wasteful to be cheap and buy something inedible. Plus, they taste rank cold. If you must, at least buy a sauce - L&P, Ketchup, plum sauce, anything.

The Bargains
You can't go far wrong on a store which has had a Buy 1 Get 1 Free on both my staples, pasta and pizza, for the past few months...also, Jelly Babies are half price.