Alloway Grove

It's a beautiful day outside and I had plans to meet up with Dedalus that I've had to cancel. We were going to do lunch at Tabac. I'm full of cold, again, and feel like my head is in a vice (yet I'm still blasting music from my laptop speakers.) I blame my erratic sleeping schedule since Bertie came to live with us. He's really very good, but he's just exhausting! At the moment, I'm allowing him to eat a pair of Boyf's pyjama bottoms because it's keeping him quiet.

Yesterday, my swanky new phone arrived. It's a Samsung D900 and I've just about got to grips with it. It's not even pink ya'll - I went for performance over girlieness! I guess I really am growing up. I purged my contacts list and it's quite shocking how many people I've fallen out of touch with. I have to say there are only about twelve people on there that I actually bother texting. And that's including Alfie who I never text anymore for obvious reasons but to whom I forwarded my new number in a big group message that began with a casual "Hi all." (I think I can record video on it and put it on here, but that's a bit advanced for someone who just figured out how to store her sent messages.) But looking at my meagre contacts makes me wonder just how I'm going to use up all this credit I've paid for. In the old days, I used to blow about fifty quid on my phone over the weekend.

Yes, I'm still mourning the old days for the foreseeable future. Girl can't help it. But at least I'm not carrying those 200 messages from him around with me anymore, you'll be glad to know MJ! They're safely stored on my old phone and will be put away to gather dust.

Anyhoo, the studying is not going very well. I need to write something a bit more meaty on alternative readings of Dorcas in Toni Morrison's Jazz, and then I need to bell hooks a bit of my chapter on the burden of representation. My chapter on The Edible Woman and Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" is looking a bit like a wasteland. Did I mention my deadline is May first? Meh, at least I have an idea of what actually needs to be done. That's progress for me, right?

Mummy's Little Hero

A quick post while Bertie is playing out in the garden. (Who knew I'd turn into a Mummy Blogger so quickly?) He had his second round of injections on Wednesday (squealed like a pig, than ran to me for a cuddle), and the vet gave him a check up. Her findings were quite amusing.

Lovely vet lady: Ah, he appears to have an undescended testicle, but we'll forgive him for that because he's only little and it might still happen.

Boyf: Is that why he hasn't barked yet?

*chortle*

The other is in the Albert Hall.

Want a Man? Get a Dog

Quick update on some of the other, non-Alfie men in my life:

Boyf believes Bertie loves me more than him and is jealous. This is because Bertie cries for me any time I go upstairs, take a shower, or am otherwise engaged, and the only way Boyf could get him to stop was by wrapping him up in a pair of my pyjamas. That's devotion for you.

Bertie has not barked yet, except for in his sleep, when he let out a series of baby yaps followed by an unconvincing growl and twitching paws. He also still makes a sucking noise as if he is feeding from his mum in his sleep. Too adorable.

'Muffin and I have had conflicting schedules over the past couple of weeks and have not had a decent gossip in ages! Is gloating over his swanky new mobile phone and counselling me on the wisdom (like what I did there?) of forwarding my soon-to-be new number on to Alfie.

MJ turned 25 and rather than shagging everything, went home early with his darling boyfriend, Spanky, and admitted he was happy to do so. I'm so proud.

Dedalus and I have not seen each other since the night we went out, despite many invitations and protestations on his part. Accused me of being cold and gets cross if I don't text him back quickly enough. We are in very weird territory indeed.

Have been texting Mybug on and off. Told him he looked good in his uniform, he replied: You'd look good in many uniforms. He called me up for a chat on Monday 'because there was nothing on the telly.' Mentioned seeing me and Dedalus out that Friday, said Dedalus was 'giving him daggers' and 'staring him out'. Also said I looked really drunk. Cheers, love.

Guillermo (sort of in my life?) is now a fully fledged grown up and is buying a flat! What what!

My lovely Dad is 52 today! Ordered him a special edition DVD of The Producers but it has not yet arrived. I predict that he will celebrate tonight by watching the Comic Relief does Fame Academy final. He loves him some reality shows.

Latest text from Yank: Good looks catch the eyes but good personality catches hearts. You're blessed with both! FLATTERED? Don't be, it was sent to me, I just wanted you to read it!

New Kid on the Block

I know I've been quiet on both blogging and commenting fronts for the past few days. But I can explain. You see, there's a new man in my life. And, to be frank, I can not stop looking at him. I could sit and watch him play for hours. And when he snuggles up to me and tucks in his little nose, well, I could just die.


He has a much, much cooler name, selected by Boyf, but as with all the important people in my life, he'll be given a *BNI alias. That alias shall be: Bertie. He's eight weeks old and so tiny!

Also, I didn't buy the I HEART DAD t-shirt like I said I would, because, as I think you'll agree, Mister is cute enough without it.

I haven't slept for two days. He's totally worth it.

She's Gotta Have It

News item: I think I may be developing an addictive personality. In that, I'm seemingly becoming addicted to stuff, not that people just can't get enough of my anecdotes. A plethora of evidence is mounting up to support this hypothesis. Shrugging off the obvious temptations of alcohol and powdery substances (unless blusher), I have a different devil at my back entirely. I make my case forthwith:

Exhibit A) Alfie. Enough said.

Exhibit B) I cannot stop shopping. Shopping makes everything better. It is the joy in my life, the marrow in my bones, the giant gaping weakness in my budget. It's starting to get repugnant. I'm throwing money away that could go towards much more valuable ends. I talk of moving out, buying cars, earning enough to support both myself and a poor defenceless animal, and then blow hundreds of pounds on tops. Hundreds of pounds. It starts off innocently enough, with a couple of t shirts for maybe a tenner each or so, which I tell myself I need for work, and then, before I know it, I'm lusting after a dress on Asos for £54 that Peaches Geldof has. But I don't just want the dress, I throw things in my basket until it's over two hundred pounds worth, then I guiltily delete things I can live without so it's around a more respectable looking £100. Then I don't buy it, until encouraged to do so by my very irresponsible friends, sister, niece, boyfriend, and mum. Then I can blame it on peer pressure. Not satisfied with frittering away cash on clothes for myself, I have now firmly resolved that the minute - the very minute - I get a dog, I am buying it this.

Today, I theoretically spent £33.00 at Pucci (I didn't click on check out.) Before the guilt made me remove items from my basket, it was £103.50.

My name is Chica, and I'm an Alfashopaholic.

WARNING: Contains Extremely Cute Puppies

Okay. I always knew that I would buy another dog, because the house just feels empty without Puppy and I really think a house is not a home without a small furry creature running around in minority rule. But I didn't want to jump straight into it, so I decided to wait until my birthday was close. It's just over a month away now, so I thought I'd better start looking if I wanted to buy a puppy before then. However, I have encountered a small problem, which I will detail for you thusly.

How in the name of Xenu am I meant to decide which is cuter between these little puppies? Is a question I often hear my boyfriend wondering aloud, and yet I never thought I would find myself in the same dilemma:

Repeat after me: Awwwwwww!

&c. Can I have them all??

I think I want the ruby boy. But I would have to make two 160 mile round trips. Or I could take a half hour drive and pick up the dog in the first photo. Sounds like the decision should be obvious, but my brain kind of goes all gooey when I see such cuteness.

Ideas?

Junk of the Heart

This is supposed to be the week I get my life in order. But I have just got myself ready to go into uni (I'm meant to drop in on my new tutor before four - it takes me an hour to get there and it's 15:02 according to my laptop) and now I'm sitting here blogging instead. I have a headache.

I also have great plans to redecorate my bedroom and throw out/box up a load of junk. But I'm back at work tomorrow and I haven't done much more than throw out some old receipts I was holding onto.

There is a bag of clothes at the foot of my bed waiting to be returned to Miss Selfridge, and I still haven't picked up those heels. I'm completely unprepared for Saturday, the Big Night out with 'Muffin and Crunchie/Himself.

My little baby Puppy isn't doing very well at the moment. He's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and suffers from a genetic disorder that effects his heart valves. He's lethargic and acting weird and on about six different pills. He's ten so he's quite old for that breed.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my sister's husband's death and I think she might go off the rails. It' going to be a tough day for my niece.

MJ is away and I have the house to myself. I was looking forward to having some alone time with the Boyf but now I kind of wish MJ was here, if only to distract me a bit with his terrible singing in the shower, leaving wet towels everywhere, experimental cooking, and those really awful detective programmes he makes me watch because he hates watching TV alone.

Maybe I subconsciously don't want to sort my life out, because then I will have to make some decisions and I haven't got the foggiest? Maybe some people are just supposed to flounder around aimlessly in the messy debris of moments gone by? Maybe it's no bad thing? We can't all be like 'Muffin with his five year plans, work diaries, strictly adhered to priorities. The man is like a machine. A machine in tweeds and a corporate logo tie! He really knows what he wants and goes for it though. I wish I had such direction!

I'm gonna e-mail my tutor and cancel. Then I'm going to look at my dissertation - I'll probably blog again when I get bored after about five minutes of that. Then I shall go upstairs and start organising things until half past five when Puppy's next truckload of pills have to be administered. Unless the Boyf shows up in the next tens minutes and saves the day - he can get me to uni in twenty minutes.

You know why I was running late in the first place? Straightening my hair. What was that about priorities?

What's Up Doc?

Monday again. If I wasn't flitting off to France in two weeks time, I would be a very gloomy person indeed! The weekend was very chilled for me, watched the Big Brother finale - I love how Davina is pregnant for every other one - had a movie marathon, and took in enough stray animals to make Noah look like an amateur.

That last one needs explaining huh?

My sister took her kids and the bane of her life (Grinch) on holiday this week and left Anjelica's menagerie with me for safe keeping. After resisting the tantrums, hopeful requests, and letters to Father Christmas for eight years, my sister finally relented and allowed a pet to enter the super-clean zone that is her house. My sister has a problem with the mere suggestion of dirt. By the age of two, her children had been trained to fix the fringe of the living room rug whenever an errant footstep dared to mess it up. Actually, she did once allow them to keep a tiny little yellow bird in a cage. It was regularly bathed in soapy water.

However, for her eighth birthday, Anjelica received some living, breathing, fur-moulting, pooping, pee-all-over-your-new-sweater gifts. Gift 1) a floppy eared rabbit christened Thumper Jane. Gift 2) an inquisitive hamster going by the name of Princess. Gift 3) A butterfly farm, which currently houses approximately six cocoons. These are all currently residing at my address, along with 2 goldfish who claim to be Scooby and Scrappy. I am literally obliged to "put 'em up."

She'd have been better off buying a puppy. Am I right? At least you can walk a puppy. Goldfish are not happy about being dragged around the park to do their business. And speaking of puppies, I finally managed to get mine to fetch a ball. Unfortunately, the hamster was in it at the time.

Puppy is supremely unimpressed with the invasion of his space. He hasn't yet tired of barking, growling, scratching at the cages of, pretending to make friends with and then slyly nipping, our guests from the animal kingdom. See, in our house, Puppy is the King. He's the Godfather. He's got a paw in every pie, a dame in every port, he even has one of those little white caps that keep his dog food fresh. Not to mention a very cushy arrangement that keeps his happy pills and dog biscuits coming in nice and regular. And now he has these young bucks on his turf - well, you can imagine how he must feel, days away from his tenth birthday, to have to contend with such obnoxious intruders.

It's like a frickin' Quentin Tarantino movie in here right now!

You're never fully dressed without a smile

As I rambled in a recent post, I had the greatest long weekend. Monday night the Boyf and I opened a bottle of Claret. We glugged away happily, watched TV (we bought it to sip in the garden but the weather was poo), and went to bed early so we'd be all refreshed and recuperated for work the next day. Some time in the wee small hours, we were disturbed by what sounded like an unruly mob outside our window, shouting to each other very loudly. Then we heard much screeching of tyres. To this I responded: "Ugh, it's so noisy," and rolled over. Boyf climbed out of bed and went to see what was going on. The unruly mob were in fact police officers, milling about in the street and standing around a neighbours densely planted garden like gnomes who'd been let at the kinky dress up box. Or something. Boyf came back to bed and we resigned ourselves to blocking out the episode of NYPD Blue playing out at the foot of our driveway. Then: the dreaded helicopter, which hovered directly over our house for about an hour, presumably deciding whether to use our garden as a helipad. I knew we should never have mown that big 'H' into the lawn. Much sleep was not had.

Tuesday at work I was greeted by the weird bloke who asked Weezer out, then bumped into him about seven times. Had fun talking to Potter about The Princess Bride and Labyrinth. He was amused and disbelieving when I said I'd never seen Labyrinth: "What age are you?!" I was three when it was released, but apparently that's no excuse for such ignorance. I wouldn't have known what The Princess Bride was if Guillermo hadn't got me it for my birthday. I think you need to see these films as a kid to hold quite so much affection for them though. Anyway he brought the DVD in for me yesterday so I'm gonna watch it over the weekend. I think offering Donnie Darko up as one of my favourite films bought me some respect from him too. It's probably a good thing he doesn't know Mean Girls is another. Me and MJ love Lindsay Lohan movies!

My poor baby puppy hasn't been too well recently and we've made a couple of trips to the vets. He has to take two lots of tablets, and one type are in capsule form so we've been inventing ways to trick him into eating them. The vet has a bit of a soft spot for Pup. The first time she saw him she exclaimed: "My, he's rather rotund isn't he!" We took him for a stroll in the park today and now he's snoozing happily. We had ice creams and lounged on the grass, it was pretty. Puppy had many admirers and a couple of people stopped to stroke him on our walk. "Everyone wants my doggie," I said to Boyf, who replied: "He's my doggie, I'm holding his lead!" I rest my case.

Wednesday morning I was accosted on my way to work by somebody thrusting a pile of books at me. I told them they'd have to come into the library when it opened. He was like, "You can't just take them now?" Um, yes sir, I'll just whip a Self Return out of my handbag, no of course I don't mind carting your books around in my own time. Sheesh. Luckily there were plenty of nice people turning up on Thursday to make up for it. One guy was kicking up a fuss about getting fined on books because he said he hadn't received any emails from us about them. Potter had been dealing with him but then the bloke went off to check his email and when he came back it was my turn on the counter. I thought he might be awkward but he was sheepish since he'd found the emails and was soooooooo nice about paying, even when the till broke. The till crashed twice on me yesterday. Bitch hates me. Thankfully I had another lovely student the second time it happened. Cheerful people really brighten up your day. Some funny guy came in too who was also unhappy about paying for a book he'd lost. He thought he might have knocked it into a bin next to his desk by accident, and was trying to argue that that was the same thing as losing it in a house fire. We just laughed at him, but he was good natured enough.

Tonight we're off out to a French restaurant and I'm trying to decide what to wear. I'm fed up of my haircut and am thinking about what styles might suit me. I'm also returning to the question of whether to pierce my ears. I don't have one single piercing, and I love earrings. I'm hoping to squeeze in some shopping this weekend as I have spotted a fab pair of gold heels that require further investigation. I'm off to scrub up nice. Ciao for now.

Amity & Enmity

"...together in perfect harmony."

So far today I am mostly:- listening to Marvin Gaye. Quote from Zadie Smith, for making Guillermo smile purposes: "What a voice... It's like God took Stevie's honey and poured it over gravel." Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, (London: Penguin, 2003. First published 2002), p.135. Footnotes are my life.

Lots of stuff between posts, but can't be bothered blogging most of it! Have acquired a new mortal enemy, a surprising one this time, though you hardly ever expect them. Tip of the day, that one. Saw Amityville Horror the other night, starring Melissa George AKA Angel from Home & Away. It was quite cheesy but effective. The general test for how scary a film has been is whether, after turning off the light, you RUN across the landing into your bedroom and hurriedly close the door behind you. This didn't happen, but I did run to switch it ON.

Took Puppy to the woods yesterday. It was a really nice evening but we did go a bit over the top on the old hiking and did about four miles. For the first half mile Puppy carried his lead in his mouth, tugging like crazy occasionally to be set free. He looks alternately like he's taking his darn self for a walk thank you very much, or like he's swallowed his lead. Eventually we let him off for a run and he ran straight into a marsh and got muddy up to his belly. Well done there Pup. On the plus side, he didn't bite any other dogs face! Progress!

Word of the Day: Spurious

Another Day, Another... Lack of Dollars

This coming weekend is my birthday weekend and for it I'm running away to Wales with my boyf and little baby puppy. Puppy is technically 8, so not a puppy at all but he's an only child, so he'll always be my puppy! By midnight on said birthday, on which I will reach the grand old age of 23... yes, 23, and what did I spend my last weekend as a 22 year old doing? Working, and trying to sort my wardrobe out. My wardrobe is like a volcano that everyone thinks is dormant until you try and open the door and a cascade of hangers and sequins and twenty four thousand jumpers you haven't wore for about three years rain down upon you, as if you've angered the wardrobe gods. I should have been out somewhere, teetering around in high heels and sending my mates tipsy text messages, but alas my purse contains only dust and old bus tickets. But I digress. By midnight, I hope to be walking home from the pub down the beach road, doing the Peter Kay dance, then looking at the stars for a bit, pretending to be romantic. The weekend after brings the proper night out, as, although I know even before I speak the words that I'm confirming the fact that I'm aging by about a century never mind a year in this single utterance, town will be too busy this weekend because of the races. But who really wants to wait in a three deep scrum at the bar? Plus you get all those men huddled in grey suits holding pints in one hand and searching for a passing ass to grab with the other. Note to all bum-pinchers: it's not big and it's not clever!

All this and I've no credit on my phone! This seems a mere trifling annoyance in itself, but what can I do in the meanwhile when I'm in the middle of writing my essay and my brain refuses to construct further sentences until I've texted my good friend Guillermo Silverknife? (I've started letting my friends choose their own aliases, BIG mistake!) Update my blog, obviously!

Mrs. De Winter

My hugely knowledgeable and therefore incredibly annoying friend (kidding) made me change my browser to firefox, and now my blog looks different and I don't like it! I'll get over it. Been busily typing useful quotes to papier mache my essay out of today. Spent the weekend catching up with my mates, playing crazy golf and shivering my ass off in Southport. Saw a little dog running around in a jumper. I want one for my puppy! Apparently you can get them with their names on too. How cute! Unless your dog's called Killer or Tank or Butch or something more suiting a studded collar I suppose. I also have to admit to watching Fame Academy. Purely for charitable purposes, of course! I have to say I'm loving it. I'll be phoning up for Edith, and maybe Gina.

For those keeping track, namely me and the boyf, the crazy golf tournament, (of which I was self proclaimed champion last year as I won two free games! Oh, the amazement. ) currently stands at a score of 1-1.

My crazy friend, let's call her Mrs. De Winter (you know who you are!) may have a very decent job offer in the pipeline, so congrats and crossed fingers go out to her. You were made for it I'd say Mrs. W! No dragging your colleagues (or a certain person) down to your beach hut! You don't need me to tell you where that leads...

Tuesday Morning

It's early Tuesday morning. I have this annoying cold that rather cruelly won't let me sleep through its yuckifying effects. My poor baby puppy has one too. I call him a puppy but he's really not, but he's still little and cute so I think he qualifies :) I have zero plans for today even though there are lots of things I should be doing, I have like six months of studying to catch up on and a wardrobe explosion in my bedroom. I still can't believe Christmas is over and we're in the second month of 2005! So, my lovely friend David told me to start up a blog, and here I am. It was my New Years resolution, well, one of a bunch of resolutions, so I'm a bit late. My other ones are generally more philosophical, things like living a more full life, the kind of resolution you make nearly every other day truth be known. My cold has put paid to that one for the past week or so too! It's really thrown me off my natural rhythm; I woke up at 5 am this morning with the desire to go out dancing. I have unworn outfits in my wardrobe, I blame them, that always bugs me.