for months now, i haven't been able to stop thinking about you.
everytime i tried to enjoy myself without you, i felt guilty.
at times i hated you.
but now it's all over between us.



I POSTED MY END OF COURSE ASSESSMENT TODAY!
FREEDOM AT LAST!!

on the final night of big brother this year, channel 4 aired the first two episodes of an american drama about a plane crash on a desert island. it is called lost. i wasn't going to watch it but gordy talked me into it.

now i am utterly addicted.

every week i snuggle down on my sofa with a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate and izzy's furry tarantula for company and watch it. i have both my phones next to me so in case somebody dares to interrupt me i can just whisper, "call you back" and hang up on them without having to leave the television. gordy and i text each other in the adverts.

here are some texts from gordy i have on my phone:

He needs sleep! It's well edgy!
Grab the roots!
MOTHS!!
Grim.

i have to be really careful reading american entertainment sites in case i ruin it for myself, because the second series has just started over there. i have actually thought about just buying the region 1 dvd and watching the entire series in a couple of evenings (yes, i would actually do that!) but then i'd have nothing to look forward to on wednesdays.

if you're not watching it you are SO missing out.

some interesting reading:
this article about how it's better to make decisions rather than leave them until the last second and then be forced into them.
also this, about getting older and becoming a person you never thought you'd be, and this poem, about trying to keep on top of everything.
finally some words to live by.(via lorelei on the thirty boards)

yesterday i borrowed a company car to go a chamber of commerce meeting (oh! the excitement!) in worcester. the car i used actually belongs to the daughter of the directors, so i didn't want to mess around with it too much. after moving the seat, the wing mirrors and the rear view mirror, i decided not to even attempt fiddling with the radio.

side note: it really pisses me off when i get back in my car after mattgreen has been driving it only to find that classic fm has been changed to radio 2.

so: i listened to the radio station that she had preset. it was brmb, a local birmingham radio channel. on the way home, they had a series of songs chosen by terry, a lorry driver who is clearly stuck in the 80's.

here are his choices:

'bat out of hell' by meatloaf
'red red wine' by ub40
something i'd never heard of by electric light orchestra
and to cap it off...

'poison' by alice cooper

i am astonished that people like terry still exist. his choices actually caused me physical pain. he should be ashamed of himself, inflicting torture on innocent victims like that. i bet he hasn't had a shag in years.

alicey: mattgreen, you know i've fucked up my diet again this week...?
mattgreen: yes darling?
(pauses)
mattgreen: do-it-yourself liposuction? (turns on the dustbuster) just me, the black and decker and the globals?
alicey: (laughing)
mattgreen: i've got hands like a surgeon! i mean... a sturgeon! (holding his hands aloft) easy mistake to make.

today is the first day of autumn properly - it's properly cold but the sky is bright blue. i've just walked izzy to preschool, tramping through fallen leaves and picking up conkers. i wore my new coat and actually needed it to keep warm. i love this time of year. winter is my favourite season and days like today remind me that it's coming. there's so much to look forward to: halloween, isabel's birthday and then christmas.

we've been busy lately. last weekend was soraya's wedding. the cakes were a success, and the wedding was really great. i especially liked the handfasting; it was so intimate and imbued with significance at every step.

that morning, isabel said:

"you're going to soraya's wedding, aren't you mummy? i've got an idea, why don't you wear your wedding dress?"

the thought of turning up to somebody else's wedding wearing my wedding dress had me in hysterics. soraya would've been speechless (in a bad way)!

then last sunday was our wedding anniversary. it was quite bizarre: for years and years our anniversary has been quite personal and private and then suddenly this year we suddenly got loads of cards. i wasn't expecting it at all. it's quite strange that so many people remembered even; i am useless with anniversaries, i don't even send my parents a card! we had a nice day though and i'm really glad we went to stowe - i was struck by the majesty of it all over again. the church my parents got married in has been demolished and it makes me really happy to think that stowe will still be there whenever i want to visit, for my whole life and beyond.

isabel told me the other day that she was going to get married at the same place we did. of course, she doesn't know what she's talking about (!) but i really like that idea all the same!

i had my final assignment for my science course back this week, so i have been able to work out my overall average for the continuous assessment, which counts as 50% of the course. it works out at 91% which is pretty good for somebody who hates science i reckon. now i just need to get 80% or better on my end of course assessment. my tutor thinks i can do it so that's a good sign. it's due on 4th october so the end is nigh. i am so glad; just one more nightmare essay and it's all over.

note: this article is massively opinionated and may offend.

so far, i haven't written anything about hurricane katrina here, but i'm still thinking about it every day. mattgreen and i talked about the things we would absolutely have to take with us if we were evacuated from our home, and here's the list:

box of photographs
computer hard drive
paperwork (birth certificates, passports, financial documents)
pink teddy

that's it. our entire house is full of stuff, and it turns out that four items you could fit in a small box are all we really need. it's pretty sobering to realise how much stuff we own that is irrelevant/replaceable.

mattgreen says that i'm a ghoul for being so interested in katrina, and maybe he's right; i'm always fascinated by human stories. i don't think there is too much point in trying to work out who to blame. everyone says the aid came too late, but none of the weblogs i read even mentioned katrina until 2 september, which makes me think that nobody realised the true scale of things until it was too late. if people had been posting, "why aren't the government doing anything?" on 29 august, maybe that's fair enough. there should have been better emergency planning, but what's the use of saying that now?

having said that, the one thing i strongly believe is that the usa's gun culture made this a far worse disaster than it would have been if it happened in england. i haven't seen any commentary about this on the web at all. average members of the public just don't have guns here. that makes a huge difference and would avoided some of the problems with looting. it's much easier for armed police to control a huge crowd of desperate people (like at the superdome) if those people are not armed themselves. i honestly believe that british people, even the so-called "underpriveleged", would have handled the situation completely differently. as usual i think america should change their gun laws; as usual i'm sure they won't.

although the scenes from new orleans are pretty desperate, i think it's important to keep things in perspective. i don't think british people should be donating to the evacuees from katrina: they're from the wealthiest country in the world! if we have money to donate, how about we donate it to the poorest countries in the world, the ones where children are dying because they don't have enough food, where basic medicines are not available? i am certain that the people displaced by the hurricane will be helped by america, and within months they will at least have their basic needs met. i know that people in the third world will still be dying because their basic needs aren't being met: in a month, in a year, in five years. what's more important?

i am doing astronomy in the final block of my science course. today, the course text pointed me to the website of the european southern observatory. apparently, they have a Very Large Telescope (VLT). another telescope they are thinking about is an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). i did start to wonder whether there would be a BLT - Bloody Large Telescope - but no! the man in charge of acronyms at the observatory is way ahead of me.

apparently their next telescope (due for completion by 2020) is called an OWL. that would be ... OverWhelmingly Large telescope.

i laughed and laughed. i told mattgreen about it. he paused for a moment.

mattgreen: well, that's all very well, but what i'm really worried about is the MDT.
alicey: (starts giggling)
alicey: (starts thinking about what ridiculousness mattgreen has come up with, and laughs harder and harder until the tears roll down her cheeks and she can hardly speak)
mattgreen: (accusingly) you've guessed it, haven't you?

the best thing about studying science at the open university this year is that it has helped me to realise my potential. this time last year i didn't think i could do a degree. if i can get a first (hopefully) in a subject i'm not even interested in, i can do anything. it is an incredibly liberating feeling.

today i spoke to the careers advisor from my morrisby profile (psychometric careers testing). he said that my verbal ability was so strong that i should seriously consider utilising it. he felt that my other abilities (numerical and perceptual) were strong enough that i could persue a degree in science or technology, and succeed, but that english was where my strengths really lie.

i am seriously considering doing an english degree. my studies so far are not useful in pursuing that goal so i would need to do a three-year full time degree.

from the university of wolverhampton's webpage, here are the careers open to me at the end of that degree:

"English graduates go on to work in commerce, the public services, journalism and other media, teaching at every level, publishing, advertising, the law, and a very wide range of other professions."

hmm. i think that covers JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING I WOULD POSSIBLY WANT TO DO!

a gigantic beam of light has just lit up. english language is the way forward. screw science, screw psychology - i am not a scientist. i have been writing my whole life. i've been a journalist, an editorial assistant, and i've been writing these pages for eight years. THIS is what i want to do with my life. at last i understand.

it has taken me thirty years to work this out. now is not the time for second best. i am going to try for the university of birmingham's english language degree. you need a-levels of aab to get in there. i am even thinking about oxford. why not? i can do anything.

i can't believe it's september already. it seems unbelievable that this time a year ago, it was only ten days until my wedding. i remember those last few days being full of planning and organising, daydreaming about my honeymoon, checking the weather forecast every 30 seconds and desperately hoping everything would go according to plan.



this year i'm more preoccupied with soraya's wedding, as i'm responsible for making her wedding cakes! and our honeymoon seems like a thousand years ago. nonetheless, i keep thinking about our wedding day and what a TOTALLY AMAZING day it was. at the time i wondered if it was worth the gigantic hassle; a year later i can say with absolute certainty that it was.

on our wedding anniversary, mattgreen and i are going to go out for lunch, then visit stowe gardens (where we got married) and then later on i'm going to get my wedding dress out and put it on and watch our wedding video.

i can't wait.