I’m sorry, I’m not here at the moment, I’ve gone to Venice for a few days as an actual proper holiday type thing (you know, the ‘being away but at the same TIME as your beloved and in the same PLACE; it doesn’t happen often around here) I’ll be back to receive your messages and approve your comments in a few days but in the meantime:
a) Any favourite things about Venice? I probably won’t have time to check them before I go, but, you know, I’ll certainly be sad about having missed out on them when I get back. Unless I take my pooter after all … which no, no, I shouldn’t. Is holiday! but maybe I should.
b) Yes it is leap year, yes it is 29th, no, there is nothing proposally going on, before you think it.
c) What Are YOU doing this weekend, me dears?
d) Oooh! What’s that over there?

On Monday, I was slowly making my way home from work.

After I’ve finished a shift of covering an event or something through the medium of typingveryfast (we all have our skills, mine is a weak gate between brain and fingertips) I quite often reward myself and make my brain slow down a bit by having a large glass of nice wine. If one is not available, I will have a large glass of not-very-nice wine. In extremis, a large glass of frankly filthy wine is also acceptable, and even in a mug if needs be, seeing as the main important components of the ritual are
a)large and
b) wine.

The main problem is that while pumping your brain full of blood and demanding it think and do very very very quickly are things that are fine during normal working hours, when you give yourself time to calm down afterwards, but when you know you should calm down IMMEDIATELY afterwards and do sensible things like go to bed, you have to speed up the process and have the whole ‘wind down’ in a half hour.

So after work I walked through the London of office cleaners and postal workers and fish vans, and, after buying a small bottle of terrible wine and a similar sized bottle of orange juice, I stood on a completely empty platform in the dark, with nothing but a breeze and some R.O.U.S’s dancing across the tracks, for company.

On the train, I drank most of the orange juice and then, as I sat alone in the carriage at Blackfriars, watched the beginnings of a bright orange sunrise behind Tower Bridge while making myself a Crap Flat Mimosa (if anyone wants that recipe for a cocktail book, I’m available for freelance). I was pleased when I suddenly realised that that because I had forgotten to put my ipod on, I could hear all the birds breaking into dawn chorus as I travelled from Blackfriars through the city to London Bridge.

And then the commuters started getting on the train. And, dressed in their pressed Monday best, they were going from London to Croydon, from Croydon to Gatwick, from Haywards Heath to Brighton and all the while, I realised, I was going to have to sit there surreptitiously looking like I wasn’t drinking booze at 7am.

I wasn’t, honest. Well, I was, BUT.
But it was the end of a shift.
But I was was just having a nightcap or, in truth, a morningcap.
And, you know, it felt *quite naughty*. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I recommend it, in fact.

Unaccustomed as I am to public memeing - no, that’s a lie, I do do them every now and again, I just think it’s the cool thing to say when you do a meme, you know, if you’re cool and want to sound like you’re only doing it because it’s a very special occasion: “I hardly EVER do memes, but…”, so I’m going to say that, and we’re all going to pretend I’m cool. Ok? Ok. Where was I? - Oh yes. I hardly ever do memes, but, seeing as it’s a special occasion (Wednesday) I will just this once.

Meg over at Le Blagueur a Paris said it would be terribly fun if I opened up the book I am currently reading at page 123, skip to the - hang on (goes and checks) - and skip to the fifth sentence, and copy the next three sentences after that out onto this, my blog. Seeing as Meg is quite hard - like most bilingual people - and can probably beat me up, I thought I should probably do this.

However, I fall down on two points.
One: I have a stack of three books by my bed, because that is what normally happens, because a) I have too short an attention span to read any one thing at once, and b) one needs different books for going to sleep/staying up and reading/lie ins.
Two: Quite by coincidence, one of the books in that pile - the book on top, in fact, happens to be EXACTLY the same book as Meg is reading (I know! Who’d've countenanced it?), so that bit of the meme is going to be a little repetitive. If equally high in quality, obv.

So. Three books, three sets of three sentences. And then I have to tag three people.

BOOK No.1: The terribly enjoyable Petite Anglaise by one Catherine Sanderson. Page 123, after skipping the first 5 sentences, reads:

Now was probably the time to come clean and face the music. If I kept all this to myself a moment longer I was afraid I would burst. ‘It wasn’t the nanny,’ I confessed.

And I haven’t reached page 123 yet, due to an uncommonly busy week, so not only I’m I taking Meg’s word for that and copy-pasting it, I also have no idea what it means.

So what has she done that wasn’t the nanny? Pooed in the cupboard? Stolen the jewels from the family safe? Run over a school-crossing full of children? It could be ANYTHING. I simply must know! I cannot wait to find out!

Though I am guessing that everything will turn out all right in the end and nice people will get married to other nice people. That’s just a guess. Whatever it is, I would imagine that it is something very enjoyable to read, and would most likely recommend that everyone consider doing so.

BOOK No.2 Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh.
Which, by the way, I believe should be pronounced
a) ‘Evelyn Woff‘,
b) ‘Evelyn Waaaaaaarf‘, or
c) ‘Evelyn WOO!‘
depending on how highbrow and clever the people you’re talking to you are and which you think will annoy them the most.

Page 123, the 6th, 7th and 8th sentences:

“Oh, rot,” said William. “For one thing there is no such place as Laku.”
“I see you are well informed about my country, Mr Boot. I should not have thought it from the tone of your newspaper.”

And yes, I know that was four sentences, I just didn’t want to leave the poor man hanging.

BOOK No.3: Teach Yourself Small Business Accounting. Yeah I know. It’s the book for when I REALLY need to get to sleep.

Now this book doesn’t have a page 123. Well it does, but it just says CHAPTER NINE: WAGES. Which is a bit dull (although not, to be fair, as dull as the rest of the book), so I will go for page 122 instead. Because that’s So Much Better.

‘Rather than the normal detailed output tax less input tax calculation, it offers a simpler approach. Depending on the type of business, and flat rate of VAT is

*Snorrrrrrrre*
Blargh! Where am I?
Sorry.

applied to all the sales, without any allowance for inputs. The rate concerned depends on the business carried on, and ranges upwards from 5%’

The worst thing is I think I’m supposed to know that already, as I think that’s what I’m currently supposed to be doing.

And that’s it.
And now I tag some people, because it is a meme.

As there happen to be three other porketeers in our weight and fitness and body things blog A Lard Off My Mind, conveniently, I’m going to tag them. So Katy, Wendy, anthropomorphised unemployed lady-primate, it’s over to you. You is tagged, motherfuckers. Not literally. In either case.

You’ll have to excuse my slight confusion and possible grogginess. It is in part at least due to working all night without being to sleep extra yesterday, taking some sleeping pills mid morning, and then not even slightly seeing them through to their planned end, sleeping for a rubbish couple of hours, then waking and pointlessly checking email before falling back into a couple more hours fitful sleep. Actually it’s not ‘in part’ due to that. It is ‘entirely’ due to that.

I just lost my temper at the television. I’m used to casual idiocy - I watch TV an awful lot. But nothing, NOTHING touches, for me, the current advert for some fast food chicken parts operation, a large famous one.

So they have this product providing a solution to the only thing that could possibly go wrong for the modern family - the sudden inability for Mum to provide for her family.

It pictures a tired looking woman sitting on the sofa - feet up, looking like she’s come back from a day at work or something - with two kids, an adult male who looks like he’s also been out at work, and they all look quite worried, and then it reveals the solution to all their worry

“Give mum a night off!”

And then shows a bucket, containing some greasy looking chicken, some sub-heinz baked beans, and a bunch of other crap.

And there’s a voice over suggesting that sometimes, just sometimes, it’s ok if the grown woman of the house is given one evening off every intermittent now and again.

“Because there’s no substitute for mum.”

No substitute apart from a take away vat of factory farmed bird bits, dipped in seasoned flour and deep fried. Yes, the only thing that could possibly replace this woman is a chicken-bucket.

Because there’s no substitute for mum.

No, because apparently dad has no arms, a complete psychotic block about hobs and is a complete and utter tool. Is he?

No, he probably isn’t - and I do understand that this is how some families work, but then, there’s a lot who don’t as well, isn’t there? And even if there aren’t, the suggestion that there are responsibilities that should or can be undertaken by only one member of a family in 2008 is, frankly, a bucket of steaming chickenpizzle.

And it’s not just the suggestion the only women can do this. It’s the suggestion that only women DO do this.

Seriously, how do fathers who take their part - if not take a majority or sole part, as there are many that do - in taking care of their children NOT get offended by this kind of mindless horseshit?

You’ll have to excuse me, I’m extremely tired and extremely grumpy. I was going to post about something entirely different tonight, you know. But now I’m going to bed instead.

[Because I had to keep awake on the train home, and I had to write a monologue for something that won't end up getting used anywhere anyway]

Please excuse me - I’ve been up all night covering one of these very important Awards Ceremonies. The Oscars, in fact. Not in a glamorous way - I was covering it from a computer, via the medium of television with shitty reception in an office in London.

Still it’s the first time I’ve actually bothered to or managed to, whatever, stay awake for the whole of one of these Oscar ceremonies live, and not just watched the highlights the day after at a far more reasonable hour. It was fun, staying up all night, feeling like you knew who won what first - or at least certainly not last - but, frankly, it’s now Breakfast time, and I have tummy ache from all the coffee, and I don’t know if the experience was exciting enough to make up for that.

So for the sake of the many many international viewers ofthis and other such events - and the Academy claims the Oscars is watched by a billion people worldwide, though no one’s ever worked out whether they actually know that or if it just sounds like a particularly good line from a trailer (”A BILLYUN PEOPLE WATCHED IT…”) - for the sake of ALL of those people, let’s think of some ways they could make the whole thing easier for that international audience. Obviously holding them any earlier isn’t a possibility - they were already walking the red carpet from just after lunchtime, and you can’t stroll around in evening gowns first thing in the morning unless you’re still out from the night before - trust me, I know, although strictly speaking these are jeanvening wear.

So - certainly, 1.: more things going wrong, that would obviously be great. Hilarious slips of the tongue, slips of the dress, slips of, well, people walking onto the stage. There’s a bunch of hilarity to be had, it was all just far too dignified, frankly. Think of YouTube, people!

Secondly - more glitz. Yes, I know the dresses were pretty, but pretty dresses don’t keep people awake. I’m talking large-scale song and dance numbers possibly with sychronised swimmers, fire-jugglers and full, Ziegfield folly style parades of dancers walking down grand staircases high-kicking. I know there was a writer’s strike, but there wasn’t a choreogrpher’s strike, was there? This is showbusiness, people, the business of show - try harder.

Speaking of which, C - there wasn’t nearly enough emotion displayed by the winners and losers. All the emphasis is on dignity, nowadays, which just isn’t any fun at all. We want tears, shock, surprise, screaming, recriminations, proposals, not speeches that have been polished into the mirror to shiny perfection, no, there should be raw emotion. Snot flying everywhere.

In order to facilitate this, and this is possibly the easiest for the Academy to implement, so listen up, 4) stop telling people who the nominees are. It just ruins it. By the time the oscars came around this year, everyone knew who was going to win what, pretty much, and all the winners we prepared and all the losers were prepared - so don’t tell them if they’re even in the running. Just have all these people turning up Unprepared, entirely on spec, then you’ll get some honest reaction.

Last thing - and this is just on a very practical level, if you’re going to continue to air it quite so antisocially, perhaps some kind of loud unexpected noise every now and again at completely random intervals, just to keep people on their toes.

Anyway - Academy, if you’re watching, hope that helps, and I’d just like to thank you. I’m not sure why, but it seems to be the thing to do.

I promised in a comment earlier that I was going to post tonight, which was silly, as I should have remembered as I was working, live-blogging some TV tonight, and that takes up a lot of brain.

So I haven’t finished the post that I put on draft earlier today, and I’m sorry, but I might as well link to the writing I did do today, which was a very honest thing for the weightloss and fitness blog of ours, A Lard off My Mind about why I started making a concerted effort to lose weight.

And then of course there was the post I was writing tonight instead of finishing the one for here. I was doing our weekly column Watch With…, in which we deconstruct and review an hour of British TV through liveblogging it - which, I must say, I love doing with all my heart, marrying, as it does, the twin skills of ‘watching’ and ‘typing fast’. This evening’s choice, I must say, was something that brought a particular rush to the brain/fingers - so am linking to it for once … partly because there wasn’t much audience for it at work this evening, and partly because I’m proud of what I do. Please try to read - even if you didn’t happen to see the programme involved. I do try to make it stand alone.

Tomorrow I’ll finish that post, for sure. And more to boot, if I can.

I’m sorry I didn’t do the post tonight I promised.
This isn’t it.
I mean, this is a post, but.
You know what I mean.

When I was younger I always wanted an alarm clock I’d read about in some magazine or other. It was a plastic cow, and when the alarm went off, the 1812 overture would play in a tinny kind of plastic cow way, and then you turned it off by hitting it, and when you hit it, it went MOOOOOOOOOO. Obviously.

I have been through various alarm clocks since, generally depending, like so many people, on the dull beep of a mobile phone alarm (not, however, my current phone, which goes Brrrr-doodling-dee! like a fairy farting, and has an 9 minute snooze function, which is no use at all - so instead an old phone the size of a small brick which long ago gave up on the concept of phoning people and deeply distrusted being phoned BY people but is just about good enough to remember how to go peep peep peep peeeep! at some dependable time in the morning).

However, in the hope it would help with this winter’s horrible SAD, I have since late autumn been waking up to a simulation of dawn and, since last month some point, the cats.

The kittens, who now look so much like little cats it is hard to remember to call them kittens - have now not only found out where we disappear to at night but decided what time they would like their breakfast please.

Luckily for us, this is not at 4.30, but instead at the most reasonable hour of 8, when they start softly scratching at the door and making loud miaowing noises until someone appears and accompanies them downstairs to serve them. And this is all fine and well and good, as I am usually awake and starting my read for the day by this point, so perfectly placed to lean over, smack my beloved on his sleeping head and tell him to do it.

(No, come on, it’s a division of labour - I do all the nasty things to do with removing bits of poo from litter boxes, alright? A cat is for life, it’s just not for early mornings)

Anyway - and this is the only point of this post, really - for abotu the last three weeks, the cats have been quite rigid about the making of breakfast noises, sticking as close to 8 as they can. Last week, it was 8.15, on the dot every single day, Monday through Friday.
On Friday night I went out and got a little squiffy.
On Saturday morning?
9.15.

This is genius. Not only are they cute as buttons - they also have a weekend setting.
I shall never yearn for my plastic cow ever again.

Yes, it’s international LUV DAY!!! Or, by the time I post this, it probably won’t be.
But it was - believe me, I checked. I walked past several overpriced flower shops filled with queues of strained looking people, and got trapped in the supermarket between two seven-foot tall shelves of chocolates individually wrapped in red foil for about a pound each.

So I spent hours and hours and hours looking for really tacky and horrendous Valentine’s day gifts so that I could put them altogether for you in an HILARIOUS post about awful soppy presents. But I got nowhere. Hours and hours I looked, and, discovering that no one actually lists their gifts as ‘The worst taste love gift ever’ or ‘horrible’ or ‘tasteless’ made it extraordinarily hard to google. Because no matter how horrendous they were, people insist on listing them on their poxy gift sites as ‘Lovely’.

Idiots

So I couldn’t find enough for you for a whole rib-tickling post. And then I got led off and started bidding on pretty dresses on eBay. And bought some shoes.
Sorry.

Anyway. Here on this page is the most alarming thing I found - basically just a really vile-mental-imagey name for a horrendously dull product: The Elvish Love Drip Ring
Actually, maybe you don’t want to know.

So, in case you missed it, it was LUVV DAY!!!

And, in case you need a pointer for next year, here are ten things you shouldn’t give the person you love next year. Or not if you ever want to see their genitals again:

1. A bag of animal faeces (fresh).
2. Some false teeth that you stole off an old person on a bus on the way home having realised you’d forgotten and panicked.
3. Divorce papers.
4. An iron.
5. Weird red toilet paper
6. A piece of paper with ‘YOU’RE REALLY BORING” scrawled on it in crayon/blood.
7. A pubic toupee. Or just a normal toupee.
8. Someone else’s wing mirror.
9. Four eggs.
10. A fart filter. It’s kind of like an odour eater insole. But for pants. An inpant.

Hope that helps.

First up - and most notably, tomorrow, it’s time for the annual celebration we all call LUV DAYY!!!

I’ll be writing some more about LUVV DAY!!! tomorrow, when I
a) have had some time to think of something to think of something to write about it and
b) I have more time to write something about it what with my beloved not being here.

But in short, in case you have not heard of it, LUVV DAY!!! is a day specially organised by people who manufacture thick paper - of around 220gsm or more - to get rid of some of their surplus stock. Also people who grow roses, ethically or not. Also, if you have decided that there’s only one day a year that you can be arsed to say/hear ‘I love you’, this is a very good day for it, and popular.

It is always very nice to tell people you love them. And to hear it. Love is a wonderful thing. But that isn’t really much reason to overcharge people, overburden people, and put over-excitable expectations on people that may only leave you broken hearted at the end of the day. Well it’s true, kid; stop crying.

Love’s nice. Commercialisation of the sentiment - not so nice.
And thus does my genius sister appear with her Be My Anti-Valentine cards - which are, as usual, brilliant. And there are new ones. Send them to your friends, your family, hell, even your beloveds.
And then tell you love them on Friday as well, just for the hell of it.

YAY! Yay my genius big sister and her Anti-VD campaign!

- The other thing I want to link to was this: a very worthwhile project for all my blogwriter readers in the shape of a bloggers anthology book. It’s in aid of charity Warchild, and will contain themed pieces of writing by lots and lots of talented bloggeriters - but check Peach for more details. I’ll also be mentioning the project again when, in the next few days, I try and have a think about the shared theme “You’re not the only one” - and whether I can produce anything anyone could want to use.
Because I AM, though, right?

Anyway. Things and stuff. I’ll write more in the next couple days. Sorry. Front end of the week always bad. Weekend this week also gone for various reasons. Explain explain explain.

When planning a trip, I can get, it must be said, a little obsessive.
Being a little bit of a control freak (just a little. little tiny bit. hardly at all, really. just the tiniest weeinest bit, honestly) (alright I’m an enormous freaky control-freak, what?), I like to check every possible combination of possibilities.

If I get in my mind that we should go somewhere, I’ll spend hours of careful research, checking prices against destinations and destinations against accommodation, prices against reviews, reviews against user recommendations and back against price, travel possibilities, location, etc etc etc. I always suspected that random roaming in a backpacking style wasn’t really for me. Then the internet came along and proved it to be the truest truism there ever was.

I like to be prepared. I like things to be perfect. Or as perfect as possible for what I’m willing to pay, anyway. Clean, quietish, shower, location - my standards aren’t high, but I know what will make me happy, and I won’t stop until I find it. You can criticise that as much as you like, but I’ve never had less than a perfect, relaxing holiday, so there. Oh god, I’ve just jinxed myself. Anyway. Point being:

Thus, I spend a lot of time on sites like Tripadvisor and HolidayWatchdog and other more general user travel tip sites like Been There, and things. And I have learnt that there is a certain amount of salt that must be pinched if you’re looking for the opinion of Mr or Mrs Random-Hotel-Patron.

1) Some people - mainly US travellers, it would appear - seem to get very upset if the room is any less than 400m sq. In the middle of a major city. In a budget hotel. With no comprehension that this may be slightly unrealistic.
Apparently, for less than £100 a night, they’re expecting a presidential suite in the middle of Manhattan with views over central park, and are surprised when they get a small hotel room with views over a brick wall three feet away across a crack alley.
“My wife and I were expected to cope with only one kingsize bed in the room, and only two wardrobes for our weekend stay. No matter how many times we complained to reception, they would NOT move us to the Hilton on the next block! 2 stars!

2) British people can be given a presidential suite in the middle of Manhattan with views over central park for less than £100 a night and mark it down because it doesn’t have a kettle.
“Well I can’t Really fault the location, I suppose, but expecting anyone to get up without a cup of tea is simply appalling! Two stars!”

3) Some people seem to blame the hotel for whatever else goes wrong on their holiday.
“It rained the whole time! 2 stars!”
“There was a very loud parade in the street outside one afternoon. No stars!”
“I got stomach ache from a dodgy hot dog stand. I wouldn’t stay at the Four Seasons again!”
What? You’re rating a hotel, you idiots, not Your Dumb Luck. I don’t care how many stars you’d give your entire holiday, your year or your life. How was the chuffing hotel?
“My wife got run over by a tourist bus. 1 star!”

4) While I admit that some people’s ideas of cleanliness, quality of soft furnishings, decor etc may differ, and that’s all worth taking into account, there are some points that I think people should just take a step back and have a think whether maybe this is just a personal thing that quite possibly other people won’t be able to relate to.
Example? Oh alright. I once found a user hotel review that had been marked down to one out of five on cleanliness and atmosphere because room service had left the window open a crack to air the room before they checked in and … please be prepared … There Was A Fly In The Room.

5) There is absolutely no pleasing some people. None. Once you get around this fact, user-generated review sites become a hell of a lot more useful to use. And life’s better, actually. But don’t tell them that. They’re FAR too funny.

Still. I’m all excited, and all prepared. One city at the end of this month, one city and a wedding (not mine, no) in May, two possibly three cities and another wedding in June. And ALL, I tell you, delicately, carefully, intricately planned. Apart from the flies, obviously. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed against the flies, right?

He dragged a large suitcase onto the train with a grunt and a bang and with a heaving rush-breathed push shoved it to the inside of the carriage and looked around to check that everyone had noticed his noisy embarkation.

We all stared at our books and free newspapers and out of the window. It was Gatwick airport. A man had got on with baggage, what did he want, a round of applause?

Apparently so.

Before the train had even left the platform, he was shouting down the phone. “Yeah Dave Yeah! Yeah, I’ve just landed, and I’ve got on the train, and now I’m on the train, yeah! Yeah, I’m on the train!” he informed Dave. And us, loudly, in the process, and in case we had been forgotten. “It’s really cold, this country, innit?” He shouted, in an East London drawl. Yes, we thought. It’s sodding January. (It was.) “I’d forgotten how cold this country was! YEAH!” And then luckily we went through a tunnel.

As we ker-chun-ke-chunked into the outskirts of London, he was back on the phone again. “Kev! Yeah! It’s me, yeah? Yeah! We still mee’ing at Lonnun Bridge, yeah?”

We were only five minutes from London Bridge. I imagine, the volume he was shouting, Kev probably would have been able to hear him even if he put the phone down.

“Is London Bridge still the same? Still got that big entrance at the front, yeah? I mean, it’s not changed since I’ve been away, has it?”

He squinted out of the window, like a great king looking over the side of the ship returning him from exile to a once much beloved kingdom.

“Shiiiiit, it’s all changed, Kev, it’s all changed!” Everything’s different. So grey, and horrible, this place! It looks like it’s all decayed since I left!”

I looked at him over the top of my laptop. Pacing train vestibule, like a man too good for trains, he wasn’t particularly tanned, nor carried trappings of a crazy and exotic lifestyle. His accent was as strong and as freshly London as anyone I’ve ever met. I looked down at his bag. A single suitcase, not alarming in size, it wasn’t remarkably big, nor remarkably little. It was completely unremarkable. It was all completely unremarkable. And yet he was still shouting into his tiny phone like a man who’d just caught a shuttle back from Mars.

“All this Grafitti! Where’s that come from! And it’s all just so run down, and dirty and … Shiiit! This isn’t the place I left at all!”

I started wondering if this IS the place he left. Maybe he left Austin, Texas, flew to wherever he went, and then returned to London by mistake. Like the airline losing your bag. Except not your bag. You.

Nah, man, this isn’t the London I remember, what’s happened? What, ‘as there been a war hahahahaha? I just can’t believe that THIS city has changed SO MUCH in the time I’VE BEEN OUT OF THE COUNTRY! Haahahahahha! Yeah, we’re pulling into Lunnon Bridge nah, mate. See you in a few seconds.”

And with that he pulled his bag - that had been, lest we forget, on a really long trip overseas, unlike us poor traindwellers - and with a humph and a grump, lumped it off the train and onto the rainy platform of a city he’d deserted for just so long he barely recognised an inch of it. Yanking the bag’s handle, he stretched it out to full, and grundled it along the platform.

He’d just been so desperate for everyone to know about his long absence and distance from dreadful, dirty London.
He’d just been so loud about the fact that the whole place had turned to ashes without him, and that anyone who didn’t see that was wearing cinnamon specs.
He’d just been convinced that if everyone wasn’t oppressed by the greyness of the day and the filth of the town already, his lucky life and apparently blessed and sunny, clean world experience in a whole other land should, by contrast, remind us of it.

I bet he’d just been to Crete for two weeks.
Wanker.

I am almost entirely composed of snot, I think.

I have heard that cucumbers are almost entirely composed of water, and that people are also. But I am almost ENTIRELY composed of snot. So I don’t know what makes me. A snotmonster, I suppose.

I am a snotmonster. I haven’t had a headcold like this since … well, the last time I had one. But boy, this is veh stinky. I have mainly been lying on the sofa going “meeeeeeeeh?!” in a pathetic voice, hoping someone would come and look after me.

Sadly, with a beloved at work, the only living beings in the house have been the kittens, who hear me going “meeeeeeeeeh?!” and run to me, looking wide-eyed and perplexed and wondering if this means they can get treats again please thank you. Kittens are lovely, but not terribly hot on sympathy. Or tissue fetching.

There is no physiological backing to my feeling that I am, currently about 90% made of snot. I know, because with my weakened snot-filled fingers, I have searched google for preceedent, and found none. I am a medical miricle, then!

Someone should inform someone before (in approximately a day and a half’s time, if the progression continues at so swift a rate) I turn completely into snot, from head to toe. Farewell, my friends. Farewell.