The main important differences between cows and sheep which are important to remember when having any kind of dealings whatsoever with either.

1. Sheep are bigger than you expect them to be, but cows are bigger still.
2. Both come in a range of browns, blacks, whites, off-whites, and orangey-browns, making them essentially ‘autumn’ animals, but they are, however, available year-round.
3. You can make more varied food out of a cow, but sheep taste nicer. Nothing, however, beats a big slab of near-raw moo-cow.
4. Both make noises, one of a more ‘meeeeeeh!’ nature, one of a more ‘mmmmmmmmoo!’
5. Sheep wee more in public, especially when startled, which is often.
6. Cows manufacture enormous piles of poo, and leave them lying around so that you can tread in them.
7. You can make shoes out of a sheep, I think, but not high-heels.
8. Cows never wear shoes. Sheep sometimes do. Actually, I don’t think that sheep wear shoes either.
9. Both sheep and cows are put in Haggis. This is neither a good nor bad thing. (unless you don’t like haggis).
   It is just true.
10. Sheep run more than cows do, which is a good thing, because cows are bigger and if they ran a lot the world would fall off its axis and we would all die.
11. Sheep sometimes look resentful, but seldom menacing.
12. Cows quite often look menacing, and are just waiting for the right moment to jump out at you. They will do it when you are least expecting them to. They are big and heavy, and merciless.
13. I am not afraid of sheep.
14. But I am afraid of cows.

Right. Two days of celabratory hedonism and I’m still quite excited.
Last night we held a ceididh to celebrate - oh all sorts of things, weddings and university and birthdays, and all that happy rubbish.
Which would have been fine, the people joining in were mildly enthusiastic but quite quiet. Which meant that I had to spend two hours bouncing around like a helium toad, trying to get them to be slightly more than catatonic.
It was like wrestling dead puppies, all wide eyes and limp paws.

It’s taken me a long while to be awake this morning, this morning was a ‘19 snooze’ morning, but I’m nominally awake now.
But unable to string a sentance together.
I was unable to spell sentance for a while back there, too.

I feel sick.

Oh golly.
I am a hungover person this morning.
Or rather, on that vicious cusp of still drunk/hungoverness.

I was going to answer some of the questions that came up in comments, but I think instead I’m going to go back to bed and snore.

I’ll do the other thing later.
The waking up thing.
Oh, my head.

I’m going to university.
I’m going.
To university.
In six weeks time I’m going to be a post-graduate student.
Fucking hell!
I’m Going! I got in! They want me! To go there, and, like, study and all.
I’m going to the city! I’m going to Glasgow! I’m going to university!

I’m very happy.
Yay me.

I think.

No. Definitely today, ‘Yay me’.
We’ll think about it in more detail later.

Yay! yay yay yay yay yay!
What’s that you say? Why, thank you.
I’d love a drink. make it very large.

Incidentally, the race is on to see who will be the 200th person to sign the guestbook…
Well, not really a race.
More of a, a, a curiousity?
No, a competition. That’s it.
200th person wins a - ahm - a lion and a, a, ahm, the chance to name the next major hurricane.
And a bottle of wine.

“So, Who’s that guy? You know, that guy. That one who just went to the toilet?
Oh, right. How long’s he staying?
Aha?
And where is it he’s come from?
Aha? I see.
Oh, nothing.
No, nothing. It’s just…
Well, he’s very attractrive, that’s all. Very attractive. Indeed.
No, that’s all. He’s just very attractive. No, I don’t want you to tell him, he’s just…
Oh, don’t worry about it, look at me - I’m blushing.
I just thought I’d like to mention it. That’s all.”

What am I - fourteen?
My friend fancies you…. Will you kiss her?…

There’s a book I think about, every now and again.
Every sometime.
I would guess that the thinking abut the book is a way of evaluating stuff. Anyway…

It’s a book by one of my favourite writers. One of the only science fiction/ fantasy writers I like.
It’s Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut.
And the reason I think about it is this. The premise, to cut it quite short and try and phrase it well, is that the earth has suffered a timequake. Like a shift in the tectonic plates of the earth, but a shift in time instead.
Time, all time on earth, has slipped back ten years.
And everyone has to live it all through again.
But the thing is this - people can do nothing to change the events they have already lived. The timequake produces, in essence, a ten year deja vu, just watching these thing happen again.

The novel begins at the end of the ten years, at the point where the timequake happened, at the point where everyone stops watching and starts living.
At the beginning of free will.
Everyone suddenly has free will.
And no-one knows what to do with it.
It’s an incredible concept for a novel.

And I quite often find myself thinking about it. Not the free will part, although that’s very interesting, but simply the skipping back ten years part.

Skipping back, in your life, ten years, and living it all again, not being able to change anything.
When I first read the book, when I was 21, the idea was nightmarish, going back ten years, starting at secondary school all over again, having to put my hand up and be given permission before speaking, sitting in silent rows, the bullying, the boy things, the puberty, the growing, the angst and angst and angst.
Having to go through the first dates, through the exams, the lessons, the people, the angst and the growing…

Now, when I think of it, It maybe wouldn’t be so bad.
The last ten years of my life. The boyfriends, university, jobs, not jobs, flats and flats and flats.
It’s not been great - although I think it’s getting better all the time - but it’s not been terrible.

And, bad or not, it’s brought me to where I am now.
And that has to be a good thing - surely…
If I had to do it all again.

I think.
Would you?
Time flicks back ten years, all of a sudden.
Where are you? How do you feel?

Actually, one positive other positive thing in shamelessly revisiting last year’s posts because I’m too preoccupied to harbour original thought at the moment, it reminded me of my second least favourite speech affectation.

It was a colleague, in a box office in Manchester, robustly camp, the size of a house, a shock of blond curls leaping from his head (angelic curls, which looked about as fitting as tinsel on a rhino), absolutely flaming and asolutely insistent on refering to himself in third person as ’she’.

“Would you like a piece of Dairy Milk, Roger?”
the head would tip to the side, the eyelashes would go all Betty Grable on us, the whining and hard-edged voice would come…
“No thank you dear, she doesn’t eat chocolate”
He also had a habit of asking if I would ‘like’ to do all the dullest jobs, which is fine, it’s a normal turn of phrase. But he would put the emphasis on ‘like’, which never goes down well with me…

head on one side, slick smile, the eyelashes flutter, we begin the whine…
“Anna? Would you Like to do the filing, petal?”

“No. But thanks for asking.”
He’d continue staring at me until I felt pressure to say something, anything, else.
“Why do you ask? Would you like to do the filing?” I would say. Not mature, but…

“No, oh no,” He would counter. “She doesn’t do filing.”

Does she do slow and painful death by stapler?

I really shouldn’t ever work in an office again.
Really, no.
She doesn’t do offices.

When built, in 1236 or something, cloisters were for;

1. reading the bible
2. meditation
3. walking around
4. walking around meditating
5. walking around reading the bible
6. bat watching.

as far as I can tell.
I mean, there are no documents to prove they were for anything else.

Although there may be. Those documents may exist.
I’ve not actually looked.

What ever they were once for, they’re now, it seems good for;

1. bat watching
2. smoking
3. gossip
4. snogging (apparently)
5. wind (not mine)
6. bonding
7. acoustic testing. learning that if you walk along the line of a stone arch, looking into the curve and going ’shhhhhhhh….’ eventually you’ll hit the point of perfect acoustic and your head will be filled by ’shhhhhhhhh’
   very fun.
   the first two times.
8. an afternoon coffee and break, just as the sun starts going down and the birds start loudly singing.
9. tourism
10. meditation, sometimes.
11. a moment, just a moment of solitude, before sleep.
    Unless you get pounced on by a mad insomniac homeless tourist.
    As just happened.
    Just now.

For goodness sake.

There was disco.
anna did it.
it was good.
anna has gone to bed.
she promises stories tomorrow.
her burnt-out shell types on her behalf, and promises to return.
her feet smell.

I’m doing the disco tonight. Again.
And I’m actually quite excited. For once.
When I announced at dinner that there would be a disco, and that - what’s more - I would be DJ, I was hit by a round of applause and a half a dozen people shouting “You have got ABBA, haven’t you? Do you want us to bring ours?”
I love it.

Incidentally, thank you all those who tried to cheer me up for trying.
It’s worked. That and other things.
But a few made me laugh out loud.
And I can’t wait to see someone - just so I can ask them ‘what goes ‘Ooooo!’?….

I can’t get into my e-mail, and though I’ll have nothing, I’m still going to explode.