tall poppy: h-blog

A workmate of mine went to see the latest Harry Potter movie the other day, at the Arts Cinema. (The Arts Cinema has allocated seating, which merits an angry digression of its own, whenever I get the time. Let's just say for now that allocated seating is a very bad thing, and leave it at that.) Colleague and husband are seated in front of a group of women, and as the movie is about to start, the following conversation ensues:

Spectator 1: Issa ... Trilogy! [This statement was uttered, according to my workmate, with the ringing yet hollow confidence of one who has heard of a Trilogy, but has no idea what one is]

Spectator 3: (Not wanting to be left out) I'm not into all that wizards an' magic an' stuff. [It must be reiterated at this point that this conversation took place at a screening of Harry Potter. But I digress.]

Spectator 1: Nah, issa Trilogy. The first part, thass Lord of the Rings. The second part, thass Lord of the Flies...

[Sadly, no further details of the exchange are available, because at this point my workmate's husband insisted that they take their chances and move to another part of the fully-booked cinema. As to the title of the third part, we can only speculate]

You've got to hand it to postmodernism; no other literary movement in history ever spread so much boredom in the name of playfulness!

A proud if slightly surreal affair, for which my parents flew 12,000 miles and endured two and a half weeks on our lumpy next best bed (well, futon) in our less than commodious living room (which my mother charitably described as 'cosy'.) Jack presented me with a pair of Corpus cufflinks, which I wore with the rather outrageously-priced white blouse that I'd bought for the occasion, and whose acquisition I have spent the last month justifying. (Still it is rather cool to be able to shoot one's cuffs and I intend to do this ostentatiously at my next job interview. Which hopefully won't be for a while as I actually like my job.)

Here's how a Cambridge Graduation works. Your guests take their seats in the Senate House, where the ceremony takes place. Meanwhile, you and your fellow graduands muster in your college. Escorted by your college praelector, you proceed through town towards the Senate House amid the whirring and clicking of tourists' cameras. (Strutting is optional.) If you're very lucky some of your mates will line the streets for you, as described in an earlier installment. (Thank you Ruth and Ged!) Once in the Senate House, further mustering occurs; the colleges are sorted into rows, shuffled and beckoned forwards by their praelectors to be presented to the Vice Chancellor, who is enthroned and wearing ermine robes. There's stentorian yell of 'CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE!'. The Praelector extends his right hand, and each of you grabs a finger, using your right hand (one lass reached out her left hand and was gently but firmly corrected). With four of you hanging off his hand, the Praelector bellows out a Latin formula presenting you to the assembled archbeakos and asking if you can have your degrees please. Then you wait until your name is bellowed, upon which you approach the VC and kneel on a cushion before him, hands clasped in front of you in a prayerful attitude. The VC encircles your hands in his own and pronounces another Latin formula (the Trinitarian 'in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost' one) granting you your degree. You rise, bow, then leave the hall, collecting your certificate on the way out. (As I emerged blinking for the Senate House I was met by Alex, Alison and Martyn, who had come equipped with digital cameras and a bottle of bubbly, which we quaffed on the Senate House lawn, surrounded by triumphant grads and doting parents.)

Later in the evening you attend a formal meal in college, where you drink most of the contents of their cellars, but manage to keep your mitts off the college silver. Although I quite fancied the college horn.

The actual epic bit was a 360 mile road trip to North Devon, via Plymouth, which is on the south coast of Devon, and where we dropped off the aged parents for a couple of days. The final leg involved driving northwards from Plymouth across Dartmoor during an unnecessarily showy electrical storm, complete with bolts of forked lightening striking a radio mast mere yards away from the car). Three hours of buttock clenching later, I staggered, exhausted and grumpy (OK, homicidal) into the Saunton Sands Hotel, and face-planted in a pint of ale (usual remedy for exhaustion and grumpiness), Jack bringing up the rear with the luggage and a harried expression. Two days later we did the same thing in reverse during serious weather warnings (gale force winds were huffing and puffing and blowing most of England down.)

On the subject of travelling to NZ, the other day at work a colleague asked me what a friend of hers should see and do while she was over there. Here, just for the hell of it, is what I came up with:

The touristy places are Taupo and Rotorua, and around the Tongariro National Park. I'd recommend heading north of Auckland to the Bay of Islands - beautiful beaches and great diving (apparently - I don't dive). At Cape Reinga (the very tip of the North Island) you can see the Tasman Sea meet the Pacific Ocean.

The Coromandel Peninsula (south west of Auckland) also has great beaches and is full of hippies and other alternative lifestyle types happily knitting their own yoghurt and that sort of thing.

Go to Wellington! Wellington is my adopted home town and is much better than Auckland in EVERY WAY. Ride on the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens. Walk around the harbour, which has many cool pieces of public art. On the way, visit Te Papa, aka the Museum of New Zealand. On the way back, if you must, you can even visit our weird shaped Parliament, the Beehive. (There was once a plan to relocate this edifice by tipping it on its side and rolling it across the road. No, really. Was eventually vetoed by our nations rulers on the grounds that it was clearly a dumb-ass idea). Wellington has many great restaurants, especially south east Asian - Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese etc

Often overlooked by time-strapped travellers. A shame, cos it has most of the best bits. Go there today! I'd recommend taking the ferry across Cook Strait from Wellington - the entrance to the South Island is through the rather stunning Queen Charlotte Sound, and if you're lucky you might spot a pod of dolphins frolicking in the ship's wake.

The Abel Tasman National Park, at the heart of which is Awaroa Lodge, which is inaccessible by road. Transport options are: the sea taxi, walking in through the bush (takes three days) or even chartering a Cessna (Have done this. Is fun.)

Nelson - more hippies, craft shops and alternative lifestyles than you can shake a handcarved piece of renewable native NZ timber at. Also a departure point for various wine tours of the region - any BnB, hostel or tourist office will have info on these and will be able to book you in. If you like wine, that is. If you do, I'd recommend you try some of the Rieslings (not at all like the syrupy German sort) and ice wine - a type of dessert wine. Pinots were v fashionable a couple of years ago too.

The Southern Lakes - Te Anau, Wanaka. Lake Matheson does 'the which way up does this photo go?' mirror image thing if you're there at the right time of day.

Milford Sound and Fiordland are the spectacular yet sombre Tolkienesque bits (and by now are probably full of unkempt programmers in 'Keep Mordor Tidy' t-shirts).

Hamilton - this seems to be a general rule for all towns called Hamilton, anywhere.

Gore (a hideous small South Island town known even to its denizens as the ***hole of the universe. Mind you, I've never been there.)

Most of Auckland can safely be avoided, especially the bits with yachts in them. Mount Eden has some cool craters, in which you can spell out your name in volcanic rocks.

A writer, or at least, a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: 'Whom do you write for?' The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover, I don't want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other's existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author.

Had a party for J's birthday on Saturday. Our parties are run along fairly simple lines: cram a large number of people into our tiny kitchen, ply them with booze and wait for mingling to ensue, followed by merriment, and proceeding inexorably to riotous inebriation and lewdness. Whether or it culminated, the following morning, in fits of fist-biting remorse on the part of certain individials remains a matter for speculation. However, I would like at this point to take the opportunity to assure a certain guest and good friend, on the off-chance that she ever reads this site, that Jack's co-workers have seen breasts before. Honest. And that we're really, really sorry.

Jack's birthday is actually tomorrow, October 8. Happy birthday babe - I love you lots and lots.

Last night I kicked everyone's arses at LaserStrike, coming top of the score chart (admittedly two of our number had walk on tiptoe past the 'you must be as tall as this line' sign). Am elite killing machine. Very gratifying finally to live up to the Carrie Ann Moss 'Serial Killer Super Bitch' t-shirt J bought me a while back.

Got back from triffic holiday in northern Spain last Friday: illustrated account of our divers adventures under construction and will be available here soon, if you can bear the suspense.

Last night I cracked the big five oh oh. I have now cycled 500 miles in weeks and 6 days. And I will cycle 500 more, though I'm not sure how long it will take me. Still, it's a minor milestone and I'm quite pleased with meself really. More cycling will ensue when we go to northern Spain next week. 'And remember, one more thing. In this country, dey drive on da wrong side of da road!'

According to the docs that came with, my cycle 'puter doesn't work below about 10 degrees Celcius, meaning that any cycling I do in winter won't count towards my grand total. Not that I'm getting obsessive or anything. It's just a hobby. Some people collect stamps, some Fabergé eggs, some venereal diseases: I'm collecting miles.

Had some blood taken this morning - couple of routine tests. Went to my local GPs (now a convenient 4 mile bike ride across town - hmmm, maybe I should change practices). When she was done the nurse asked me if I would mind popping the sample in the post for her so that it would reach the lab that day rather than the following morning (since the surgery's post didn't go out until 5pm that evening). She also cheerfully qualified her request with the caveat that according to the Transport of Human Fluids Act, or some such, my posting my own blood was 'of course, highly illegal'. When I asked what the usual procedure was for sending blood to the lab, she explained that one of the nurses usually popped it in the post on the way home. So it is apparently OK to post a container of human blood, so long as it isn't your own. Weird. Off I trundled in search of a post box, 9cc of my own blood concealed in my satchel. A helpful hint for those who wish to post vials of body fluids: the slot of the traditional pillar box is too narrow to admit a 10 ml vial inside a jiffy bag, as I discovered after a brief but edifying tour of the city's post boxes. Eventually I started to get worried that I'd have hand the package, clearly marked 'biological sample', over the counter of an actual post office, with the mendacious assurance that its contents were not mine but someone else's, honest. Fortunately it fitted through the slot outside the central P.O., so I was O.K.

3. 'You Can Kiss My Arse' (to be sung or hummed to the tune of 'You Can Leave Your Hat On'. This is a motivational hum, good for use in especially heavy traffic.)

4.'Everything's Going To Be Fine', to the tune of the Pastoral Symphony from Bach's Christmas Oratorio. (For when it all gets a bit much.)

The weekend kicked off with a cottage-warming at Alex's bucolic new pad in Willingham. It was too dark for chicken stampedes, unless they were doing it by stealth, but I did converse, in somewhat circular fashion, with a short, stout, middle-aged man with crow feathers in his hair, from whom I failed to learn anything material about Shamanism, eventually concluding that it is, in all likelihood, a big pile of shit.

On Saturday we went to see the director's cut of Amadeus - an intense, moving and slow-paced film (some of the restored scenes slowed it to a crawl in places) with a kick-ass soundtrack. However my appreciation was marred by the fact that the Cambridgeshire Rude Cinemagoers Society (Arthouse Division) had booked out this particular session. The man behind me had brought along with him a bottomless bucket of rocks, which he proceeded to consume with noisy and relentless gusto. The middle-aged couple next to us offered a running commentary throughout the film (Sample comment: 'Oooh! I think he's a bit drunk, don't you?' from wifey during a scene when a dishevelled Mozart is staggering about clutching a bottle. Thank you so much for that indispensable interpretation, Madam, and if I ever run into you in the street I am going to poke you in the eye with something pointy.) To make matters worse every second viewer appeared to be suffering from acute incontinence, necessitating frequent noisy clamberings and scramblings out of the theatre. Quite honestly, the row of eight-year-old-boys we sat in front of during Harry Potter were a damn sight more considerate and better behaved than this lot. Afterwards went home and watched Amélie on DVD. There's a great deal to be said for the privacy of one's own home. And Jeunet, with or without Caro.

Racked up a few more miles (about 35) on Sunday. No owl moments as such but several large and savage farm dogs attempted to give chase. Jack has added a suspension seat post to my bike, which cushioned the impact on my arse for some of the off-road bits, but didn't prevent me becoming enmired in a slurry of bovine excrement. Returned home exhausted and splattered. My favourite purple and silver trainers had to have a serious dunking in disinfectant. Was fun in a grimly masochistic sort of way. And my thighs are getting sturdier by the week.

So keen were we after the London-Cambridge run that we clocked up as many miles this last weekend. Did the Wimpole Way on Saturday, a good long run that took in about ten miles of bridle paths, the corrugated, pocked and pitted surfaces of which kept us on our granny rings (a technical term) and at just above walking pace, although we occasionally had to get of and push through thick mud. It was fun. Finished up a good 33-ish miles later grinning happily in front of a plate of moules and a pint of lager at the Green Man in the village of Grantchester, a Cambridgeshire village steeped in charm, thatched cottages and, to judge by the standard of conveyance the locals drive, stock-brokers. Erstwhile home of angst-poet Rupert Brooke, its Old Vicarage is also the country pile, when he's not being detained at HM's P, of disgraced Tory peer Jeffrey Archer. (I believe that's now his official or at least media title, ha ha ha ha ha ya boo sucks Jeffrey. And your prose sucks too. Years ago when I was locumming as a radiographer in London I was stranded in a staff residence without any of my books and was forced to resort to an Archer novel lent by a co-worker. Christ it was awful. Just awful. I got about 6 pages in before succumbing to the temptation to hurl it, Dorothy Parker style, at a wall.)

On Sunday we polished off a further 20 or so miles going out to see Alex in her new farm cottage 3 miles outside Willingham which, as those of you who've been paying attention will remember, is also where the lovely Lisa lives. Not that she's been spending that much time there recently. While we were at Alex's we witnessed stampeding chickens (about 500 of them). From the safety of the kitchen, naturally, else we would have been skeletonised in seconds.

Another: that they make you go further, and faster. It must surely thus follow that by banning both odometers and speedometers from all motorised transport, governments could knock both the global emissions and the road deaths from speeding problems on the head in fairly short order. Just a thought.

The worst part of the London-Cambridge Bike Ride was the murderous heat. (That and the 5:30 AM start. I found out - indeed, I think I already knew - that before 6:00 AM, I don't speak. I growl.) From about 8:30 AM onwards the temperature was hovering happily about 30 and the weather managed to be both cloudless and muggy. Not sure how it pulled that one off, but well done, the weather gods, you sadistic bastards. The race was pretty well organised for the most part - every ten miles or so there was a way station, usually at a pub, with a hose pipe outside for filling up water bottles (rather than have 4,000 sweaty cyclists demanding tap water from the bar, I guess.) However it was so hot that it didn't seem to matter how much I drank - no sooner had I sucked down a litre of water then out it oozed, fountainlike, straight from my skin, unmediated, apparently, by any internal organs. I felt like a leaky bag. Or a peripetetic water feature. Next year am going to experiment with bright food colourings in my water supply to see if I can sweat in technicolour.

All the same, there were so many good bits that a blinding headache and the slow cessation of all renal function paled into insignificance, especially in the warm pink glow of hindsight. Great scenery - the shady fringes of Epping Forest, parched wheatfields with scarlet poppies, thatched cottages, the whole English countryside caboodle. The shirtless young guy on the back of a tandem, having a quick mid-race fag as we waited at a level crossing. The occasional smatterings of applause and shouts of encouragement we received as we whizzed through East Anglian villages were pretty cool. As were the kindly villagers who sat on the side of the side of the road dousing us with hosepipes. In one village a couple of kids, supervised by their father, were standing in wait with a super-soaker, but they asked very politely first before squirting us. When we eventually, trundled, knackered, onto Midsummer Common, at about 4:30, we were each given a pack containing a medal, a certificate of completion, and some foot lotion. Hell, just finishing the thing was a big enough buzz. And beer, even the slightly warm beer tent lager, served in a plastic beaker, has never tasted so good. I'm definitely going back next year.

'Last year [American feminist and queer theorist Judith] Butler won the first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest, sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature, for the following sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Now, Butler might have written: "Marxist accounts, focusing on capital as the central force structuring social relations, depicted the operations of that force as everywhere uniform. By contrast, Althusserian accounts, focusing on power, see the operations of that force as variegated and as shifting over time." Instead, she prefers a verbosity that causes the reader to expend so much effort in deciphering her prose that little energy is left for assessing the truth of the claims.'

Just got home from the London-Cambridge Bike Ride. 54 miles, in 30 degree heat. Oooooh, me arse.

This bloggin' thing is all very well 'cept when I have anything interesting to write about I'm usually too busy to write. It's this shameful lack of self-discipline that has kept me in and out of institutions and gainful employment for the last decade. And transfixed before flickering screens, obviously. Speaking of which, my pick of the flicks, btw, reflects my penchant for Canadian things. Outright winners were Century Hotel and Treed Murray, which is about a Canadian man stuck up a tree. At least that's more or less how it was billed in the festival brochure, although the précis turned out to be about as helpful as my sister's summary of Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale as 'the one about chickens'. (This talent for trenchant concision appears to run in my family: my grandmother is reported to have claimed that A Midsummer Night's Dream was 'about a donkey asleep', and I recall my father's dismissal of Great Uncle Tennessee [Williams]'s entire oeuvre as being 'about people dying of sexual frustration in the Deep South'.) Go and see both films, in the unlikely event that they ever play at a theatre near you.

On Saturday two of my mates from the Corpus Christi class of '98 received their doctorates. I'd originally planned to get doctored at the same time but want my aged parents to be present and for various reasons this will be easier in a few months' time as they'll be coming over from NZ, and so I've deferred until October and instead of pullin' on the Praelector's finger with Mark and Ruth, I opted for lining the streets as they proceeded in their academic finery from the gates of College along Kings Parade to the Senate House, which is where the degree ceremony takes place. We've lined the streets for a number of mates over the last few years. The trick is to run like hell, pausing every few yards to give a cheer, a little hop-up-n-down on the spot accompanied by a Mexican wave-type movement. That, in relay fashion way, and somewhat sporadically, you can get the entire street lined with only two people. Although you do get some strange looks from graduands, praelectors and tourists. Hopefully we've managed to convince some of the latter that this some arcane, centuries-old Cambridge tradition. (Tourists will believe any sort of old shite about Cambridge quite frankly: last time I walked through the New Court in Corpus I heard an American women breathily assuring her companion that this was the very place in which the scene in which Chariots of Fire, specifically the scene in which Abrahams does the double circuit of Great Court of Trinity College, an area approximately six times the size of Corpus's modest little court.) Anyway, if anyone would like to come and line the streets for me on October 19, at a time to be confirmed, you'd be v welcome. Jack will be in the Senate House, hopefully preventing my aging parents from getting confused and wandering off into cupboards or striking up conversations with statues.

Am all a-quiver with excitement, not to say dread, at the propect of Sunday's London-Cambridge Bike Ride ("54 Miles of Aching Buttocks!") Have even bought a pair of whizzy cycle shorts, which feel like wearing a nappy, or at least a colossal sanitary towel (my, that should generate some disturbing search terms.) Apparently they are great at protecting one's tender parts. And Jack has got me a little cycle computer so I can tell how fast I'm going, and how far I've gone, but not, as Jack discovered to his surprise while cycling home the other evening, that an encounter with a parked car lies in one's immediate future. Fortunately Jack stopped fiddling with his own cycle computer just in time, thus preventing another 'owl moment'.

About a Boy is great. Like High Fidelity, another Nick Hornby adaptation, the film is better than the book because it draws on the book's strengths and omits its weaknesses (such as the fact that Nick Hornby can start novels but can't finish them). Go and see it.

I've had a lovely weekend. My sister Ruth was over from NZ and came to stay for a couple of days, so I took a four day weekend, which is my favourite sort of weekend apart from the entirely lost kind. Ruth's an old hand at Cambridge by now so we decided to go to Ely. Getting there was half the fun - in theory it's a mere 20 min train ride away, but having sprinted in order not to miss what we assumed to be an imminent departure we were treated to a half hour wait in the station inside a very stationary train, with occasional announcements of the usual 'leaves on the line' variety. At one point we were regretfully assured that the delay was due to 'operational delays' - late, in other words, due to lateness. We whiled away the time by meditating on the redundant and indeed meaningless nature of these assurances, and speculating whether, when asked for our tickets, we should allege that we had already showed them, and that we, unlike them, had been on time, and that but the aforementioned operational delays, the ticket inspector might have been on time to see our tickets. Alternatively, we mused, we could tell the inspector that we weren't at this stage able to sure at what time the tickets would be shown. He might hang on for ages and ages in case the tickets appeared, or he might give up and dash off to the loo (or, perhaps, for a cup of coffee and a newspaper) only to find to his horror and frustration that the tickets had materialised the second his back was turned, and were now vanishing into the distance. However, as ticket-holders we had no control over, and could offer no further information concerning when, or indeed whether, the tickets would be displayed. This is what you get when you mess with us.

Anyway, the reason for our little jaunt was to look at Ely Cathedral, which is splendid and has an octagonal tower wrought from some sort of pale grey stone, and which looks like it fell out of the sky and landed on the building by mistake but fortunately just in the right place. There is also a fine array of gargoyles, leering and picking their noses. Gargoyles are cool. One day I am going to buy myself a pair of binoculars, and become a gargoyle-spotter. I probably won't wear an anorak though.

On Friday I saw Ruth off on the train (which departed on time and with an exceptional lack of crap excuses) and then went and got my hair done for the Corpus 650th Anniversary Ball. Just think, a college that's 650 years old, and has only admitted women for the last 22 of them. There's a slogan in there somewhere. At the hairdressers I learned that provided you have the right connections with the St John's porters you can be smuggled into their May Ball for free, and even be issued with the designer plastic wrist-band that will prevent instant ejection from the premises, thereby saving yourself some 120 quid and a good kicking. The ball was a fine affair, and I shall certainly be up for the 700th (72 years since the admission of women!) I only hope I will be capable of putting away as much champagne, and that by then I will have learned how to walk in heels.

On Saturday evening we cycled out to Willingham, a village about 8-9 miles north of Cambridge, to spend the evening with Lisa in her lavishly appointed (and idiosyncratically decorated) cottage. Just south of Cottenham, we were overtaken by a shiny silver car, from the driver's window of which issued a very long hairy arm, waving in a friendly fashion, and which turned out to belong to Chris. He'd seen Jack's ponytail and, thinking it belonged to a comely female cyclist, had slowed down for a better look. Chris decided to join us, and went home for his bike. Mere moments into the journey, he pointed out an owl sitting on a power line overhead. So excited was Jack by this prospect that he promptly fell off his bike. When I caught up with him (I was lagging about 50m behind - my bike, a heavy lump of iron and not a mere wisp of aluminium, is slower on hills) he was still lying on his back on the road, beaming happily and pointing at the sky. 'Did you see the owl?' he exclaimed delightedly as I approached. 'No dear,' I replied. 'I wasn't looking at the sky. I was distracted by the sight of you falling off your bicycle, and was trying to determine whether you were still moving.' Jack looked crestfallen, but he was otherwise unscathed. Happily there were no more unexpected wildlife sightings for the rest of the journey, although we did see a field full of sheep. Fortunately this failed to dislodge Jack from his saddle, although an incredulous exclamation of 'Paddock lice!' was heard to waft back along the summer breeze. The return journey, made the following morning, passed largely without incident.

My morning bike ride to work, as I've mentioned, takes me across Stourbridge Common - this is the bucolic stretch of the journey, a meagre slice of relative tranquillity, sandwiched between two thick slices of school runs tiny tots on tiny bikes with tiny trainer wheels zipping about like randomly motile charged particles white van drivers with BAAAAD attitudes and jagged ladders protruding from their roof racks ready to slice open the occiput of the unwary cyclist. Then I cross the footbridge by the Green Dragon, pause to glance briefly at the Cam, on which various rowing crews are doing their sweaty stuff, and to dodge their coaches who weave erratically across the bridge, bellowing into megaphones. Trundle gently down off the bridge onto the common, and it's three minutes of buttercups, daisies, happy dogs caked in cow shit, and, at some point, Angry Mother of Three, skinny and furious behind an overloaded push-chair, yelling at her kids that she won't Far King tell them again. I used to encounter her every morning and she once gave me a tight smile for screeching to a halt when one of her grime-faced infants tottered directly into my path. I haven't seen her for a while because I've started leaving half an hour early in order to avoid the school run, shaving a good 5 mins off my commute time. However the other day I had the entire stretch - from front door to bike rack - to myself. England played Nigeria at 7:30 AM (pubs throughout the realm were open under hastily-enacted emergency licensing laws) and it was like a waking dream - the brown surface of the Cam untroubled by rowing crews and the common deserted with not a solitary cow in sight (maybe they'd found a TV somewhere). It was like being in once of those early eighties post-apocalypse movies, in which the hero wakes up to find that all life save his has unexpectedly vanished, and spends the next 90 mins wandering round in women's underwear cradling a rifle and mumbling 'I've been condemned to live bollocks bollocks Crikey Dick.'

Spiderman was great - we went the other night with the Reverend Jim, a childhood devotee of the original Marvel comic, who emerged from the screening moved almost beyond words (apparently Stan Lee, creator of the comics and the film's co-producer, had a similar reaction to the previews). An exuberant, scenery-munching performance from Willem Dafoe as the evil Green Goblin - he was clearly enjoying himself immensely. Swirly, campy soundtrack from Tim Burton's favourite composer Danny Elfman. Fantastic special effects, of course, but the movie didn't rely on them for its impact. And it wasn't smug, self-indulgent, or full of itself.

Stawberry Fair, the annual hippyfest held on Midsummer Common, was also a lark. One of the funniest parts was watching the pairs of uniformed police officers determindly averting their gaze every time they proceeded past a group of unwashed degenerates sucking happily on spliffs. You could almost see the cops thinking "don't see nuthin', don't see nuthin', TOOOO much paperwork..." Venturing into the earnest lobby group quadrant I passed by the Save the Tapir stall and took part in their charity Guess the Name of the (stuffed toy) Tapir. I hazarded "Torsten", and duly left contact my details in case of victory but it seems the jury is still out. However Jack bought me a chocolate cookie in the shape of a tapir, which was delicious.

Have just been writing a potted biography (about 150-200 words) of Philip Larkin for work. Considered opening with "Philip Larkin was a miserable fucker, and a bloody ugly one to boot." Decided not to, as is destined for one of the Schools products.

- I really think, if any one should ask me what qualifications were necessary for Trinity College [Oxford], I should say there was only one, - Drink, drink, drink.

Surrounded by all these e-Pepyses, I am wracked with guilt (somewhat) at not having written anything for - well, however long it's been. And let me remind you that Pepys had to abandon his diary because he had nearly gone blind. At thirty. I think there's a lesson in that for all of us. Somewhere. Speaking of lessons, I received a particularly salutary one in Not Trying To Out-Macho-Idiot The Boys at the gym when I managed to do something extremely painful to a joint in my neck while lifting heavy things. Poor me. Couldn't turn my head to the right for about a week and a half, which ruled out cycling, as you have to cast a quick glance over your right shoulder every seven seconds or so to make sure some dangerous lunatic in a - well, in any sort of vehicle at all really, pathological hatred of harmless cyclists seeming to know no class, creed or bank balance round these or any parts - isn't about to bring about your bloody demise. So I have been walking to work, which takes about an hour, but at least you don't need to be awake. However thanks to the tender ministrations of my lovely physio I am now back in approximately working order and will once more be able to enjoy sailing across Stourbridge Common on my bike of a summer's morning, dodging livestock and their slippery by-products, and occasionally shooing them off the cattle grid. The other week it was carthorses, but there were less of them and so much easier to shift.

We had a lovely weekend - astonished our British mates by going to London for the Bank Holiday Jubilee weekend. Well, during, rather than for - we eschewed displays of monarchist fervour in favour of a day in Kew and some enthusiastic shopping. We spent an afternoon with our lovely ex-Wellington friend Meredith who is living in Hackney and is enjoying life. Happily we did not encounter any of the crack dealers who reportedly loiter around the stairwell of her building - I think it was too early in the day for them. We also wandered into a pub quiz at one point, and came bottom of the whole world. Nice to know my three and half years at Cambridge haven't been wasted. Most of the questions were about football, about which I know little and care less. Apparently England are to play Argentina at some point, which everyone over here seems to consider frightfully important.

Kew was terrific and I can particularly recommend the bamboo garden, which, as well as having 135 different species of bamboo, also had an array of musical intruments made out of bamboo. There was a nest of fledglings in one of the hollowed-out ends of the xylophone - you can just imagine the mother bird laying her eggs in there, thinking 'this looks like a nice respectable place to live, not too noisy, neighbours seem unassuming enough' - sort of like me and Jack before we moved in here, really. Another point of interest was the giant Amorphophallus plant. As Latin scholars will know, amorphophallus means 'funny-shaped knob', and this prize specimen was located in the Princess of Wales temperate house. More remarkable than the plant's size and shape was the smell, which was foul - next year I shall take along a lavender-soaked hanky and press it to my delicate nostrils.

On the way down to London in the train (which was on time, and cheaper than the coach) we passed through Potters Bar, site of the recent accident in which three passengers were killed. It was a sombre moment.

Now, they say if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, so let's see ...

Natalie Portman's costumes were very pretty, and my word there were a lot of them. And you could see her nipples through at least half of her outfits. (Reminded me of that bit in Titanic where the wardrobe dept cunningly had Kate Winslet change into a diaphanous pale pink nightie mere moments before the ship flooded with icy water ...)

Ewan MacGregor was looking mighty fine ('tis possible that my penchant for long-haired young men with ginger beards is coming through here). And it was really sweet watching him crease himself up trying to imitate Alec Guinness.

Temuera Morrison as Jengo Fett was also looking pretty staunch. Although I was rather hoping he'd say 'the trouble with you Jedi is you're too damn lippy'.

Impressive, and indeed extensive, use of castration imagery, which is always amusing for the ladies in the audience. (Lisa and I were pissing ourselves.)

At least they used the same offensive racial stereotypes from the last movie, instead of devising new ones.

It must have been nice for Christopher Lee that he could use the same motivation, characterisation, etc. as he did for Saruman in LOTR. It would have been a shame to waste it, and he is getting on a bit.

There was plenty of helpful expository dialogue, clearly outlining the relationships between the characters. A fine example occurs in the scene in which Anakin, returning to Tatooine to find his mother Shmi, visits her new husband Lars:

Young man: Hi - I'm - Lars's - son - Owen - and - this - here - is - my - girlfriend - Beru.

You see how helpful that is for the viewer in unravelling the relationships between the characters in subsequent episodes? Just imagine how confused we'd be if George Lucas had simply left it to us to work out for ourselves who the various characters were!

The film also provided some helpful illustrations of concepts such as Democracy and Dictatorship. I thought it was sweet that instead of sullying the screen and our fragile little minds with needless explosions and violence, they chose instead to include a number of scenes in which elaborately costumed characters stood (or hovered) around, explaining to each other why Democracy is Good, and Dictatorships are Bad. (Doubtless this will also come in handy for interpreting later episodes.)

Oh and the ice cream I had before the movie started was both delicious and refreshing.

...we're going to see Episode Two: Attack of the Clones. To be honest, I can hardly contain my indifference. This is not out of intellectual snobbery - I was very excited indeed about Monsters, Inc. But who thought up that title? When I first hear it, I immediately imagined a bunch of buff young men with crew cuts and tight white T-shirts passing catty comments about each other's fashion sense. Should there prove to be a homoerotic subtext (or any sort of subtext at all, come to that) you shall all be the first to know.

Cycling to work the other day, I had to dismount and shoo cows off the cattle grid on Stourbridge Common. ('You there, cows! Get out of my way! I'm trying to get to work, dammit!') They were surprisingly obliging, really. Unlike a great many motorists I encounter (or in some cases, narrowly miss) during my daily commute.

It's late spring, so there's a lot of Nature about. Including cows, and moorchicks. Moorchicks are baby moorhens. They're very funny-looking, and they go 'peep' a lot. They look like the sort of thing you could make in kindergarten, if you took a blob of black wool, glued a red cardboard triangle on for a beak, and then mounted it on a pair of improbable, disproportionate legs. Soon they will grow bigger, and will start to look like very small pukekos.

'Channel Four is going to milk the calf that laid the golden egg until the tits bleed.'

God. You can tell which one of us is going to be Fun Parent, can't you? Many people are surprised to learn that we order our groceries online and have them delivered. Maybe they think it's a bourgeois affectation. I think it's because I can't be arsed with walking for 40 minutes along a dual carriageway that borders on a sewerage treatment plant, in order to arm-wrestle some wiry septuagenarian for the last tray of lager - I'd much rather pay someone else a fiver to do it. Online supermarkets are catching on in the UK, albeit slowly - I think it's because many British people are loath to give up the chance to queue up for half an hour with a whole bunch of muttering resentful people. British people love queuing and if you stand still for long enough in a public place - say, an empty field - sooner or later someone will come up to you and ask hopefully 'Is this the queue?'

Couldn't write a thing while I was waiting for my viva to be over. Five days on, I'm still surfing waves of euphoria and relief (not to say insufferable smugness), which are a lot more fun than the waves of nausea and terror that assailed me before V-day, but which make it equally difficult to settle to the task of writing. Have made J promise not to let me do any more degrees. It's not that I don't enjoy the relief and euphoria when it's all over, it's just that it's a somewhat labour-intensive way of getting your kicks. Maybe I should take up extreme sports.

The final week pre V-day was a very long one indeed. Trouble is, in these situations everyone has a motivational little tale to tell, which they fondly imagine will make you feel better about the ritualised humiliation that awaits you ('And at the end of the viva, the examiners, smiling cruelly, held the PhD candidate's still-beating heart up to her face as she gasped her last...'). It's like when you're about to set off on your first big overseas trip and you have to suffer through all those bullshit stories about someone's distant relative waking up in a bath full of ice with incision marks in their back (I mean, honestly, if you were going to rip off someone's kidneys, why on EARTH would you go to the trouble of leaving them in a bath of ice afterwards?) And I have lost count of the number of people who have said 'it's just like having a baby.' Because, while I have yet to experience the joys of maternity, I fail to see how spending three and a half years in a library cranking out 80,000 words of arcane literary criticism which is destined to spend the rest of its existence gathering dust in the nether reaches of the university library resembles having a baby IN ANY WAY. (The fact that my thesis specifically deals with childbirth-creativity metaphors - the relationship between children and texts, childbirth and the production of narratives - only adds to the irony.)

My own war story, for the record, will be of the 'oh it was all a great big anticlimax' variety - just as irritating as the still-beating-heart scenario, but at least it will be kindly meant, and more concise. In the end, in spite of my terror, the day dawned fine, I had a wee glass of red wine in the pub beforehand, and Jack walked me to the examination room. The lightening flash and thunderclap that accompanied my halting response to the first question lightened the mood somewhat, both examiners were kinder to my work than I'd been capable of being, and it was all over in an hour and a half, after which I was given a list of corrections and told to have the typos sorted out by Monday morning. Finally, my external examiner handed me a book and asked me to review it (it's a collection of articles about one of the authors I wrote my thesis on). This was very flattering indeed. Emerged, blinking, from the exam room, phoned Jack, got his voicemail, left a message, phoned my supervisor, at which point Jack rounded the corner of the street at a gallop, and handed me a cigar. The cigar being the only element common to both the completion of a PhD and the safe arrival of a new little life into the world, I feel that too much should not be made of it. Sometimes a thesis is just a thesis.

Next we to Gymboree and bought baby clothes for our new nephew Joe (they're in the post). At no point did we purchase a little stretch suit with tobogganning penguins on it, with matching bib, cot blanket and tiny baseball cap, for my thesis.

Today I did my viva, viz. thesis defense - the oral exam which was final hurdle of the three and a half year process of getting my PhD. I passed. Life is good. More on this forthwith.

Congratulations and all love to my brother Rob and the lovely Ryoko on the birth of Joseph Hisayasu Williams. Er, the knitted fluffie booties are in the post, guys, or will be when I remember how to knit (hegemonic femininity never having been my strong suit). And I should probably warn the proud new parents that Jack is planning on being the sort of uncle who sends unsuitable presents. Although I fear that in this respect he may have some competition from my other brother Jim. If you hear a rattling noise, it's my mind boggling.

With the Queen Mum barely cold in her grave the British media has turned its mayfly-like attention to the latest national tragedy, David Beckham's left foot, the untimely fracture of which, it is widely feared, has effectively knobbled England's chances of winning some important football match. It's something to do with the World Cup, apparently. Or something. Turned out the gasps of horror that greeted my pronouncement at work that a) I really didn't give a tinker's cuss about England's chances in the World Cup; and b) it's only a game, guys, contained not a whit of irony. Sigh. Just when I thought I'd got them to like me.

A mildy amusing side-effect of Becks' injury (he was knobbled by an Argentinian, a fact the tabloids made much of) is that Pepsi, Coke, Adidas and other major sponsors are now stuck with a whole great big shitload of potentially obsolete David Beckham merchandise they'd had churned well in time for the World Cup.

Thanks to a good hard servicing the other day my little blue bike now works like a dream, including the gears, which were stuck in second for a couple of weeks, necessitating a good deal of frantic pistoning of legs with rather disappointing results. However I can now overtake old ladies again, instead of cringing as they pass me at a speed on their ancient sit-up-and-begs, tweed skirts blowing in the slipstream, walking sticks hooked over the handlebars.

It's official, girlies, weight training DOES turn you into a bloke. How do I know this? Because the other night, I went to an aerobics class for the first time in ages, and discovered that I have LOST THE ABILITY TO DO AEROBICS. Six months of weight training have stripped me of my ability to perform a set of choreographed movements to music. Surrounded by whirling lycra-clad bodies moving in perfect formation, all I could do was twitch apologetically from side to side, like one of those poor, embarrassed, slightly portly guys who are trying out aerobics for the first time but suddenly can't remember where their arms and legs are. After half an hour I gave it up entirely and slunk upstairs to lift some heavy things.

In other news, the Queen Mum is still dead. Her ongoing morbidity continues to dominate broadcast and print media, and many businesses, including some supermarkets, will be closed for part of today while the funeral takes place. Hmmm, wonder if the sandwich guy is still coming into the office? Apparently two minutes silence are to be observed in many workplaces, which will at least offer a brief respite from my coworkers' idle chitter-chatter about last night's reality TV. Some places are going to greater lengths - at Jack's company, a couple of offices are being set aside for those who wish to watch the funeral on the telly. Now call me cynical, but this takes me back to the way the management of a certain children's hospital I used to work for would regularly send out memos to its downtrodden and underpaid health professionals inviting us to drinkies the management suite. Down in x-ray we regarded these invitations as nothing short of a joke since most days we were so busy and so understaffed that it was hard enough finding time for a lunch break, let alone a spare hour to go upstairs and swill cask wine with the bean-counters. Moreover, given the management's enthusiasm for cost-cutting (except where their own six figure salaries and lavishly appointed facilities, complete with harbour views, were concerned) some of us suspected that these innocuous-looking drinks sessions were in fact a subtle management strategy aimed at the identification and subsequent downsizing of those staff members who didn't have enough to do. If I were working at Jack's company I would be very leery of knocking work off to watch the funeral, especially if a member of HR happened to pop in with a stack of personnel files and a large red marker pen.

'Is it just me, but every time something like this happens does the Royal Family have to get dragged back from luxury holidays?'
Jenny Colgan in The Guardian

Learned of the Queen Mother's death on Saturday while sitting in the pub. Well actually I was in the toilet ('Where were you, Granny, when the Queen Mother died?' 'Well, child, I was on the bog') but J considered the news to be of such moment that he actually texted me while I was in there. The premiership football coverage had, apparently, just been yanked in order to impart the tragic news to the nation. Since then, media coverage has been circling around the fact of the death, returning to it over and over to give it a bit of a prod, as though there were really anything to be added ('Nope - she's still dead, been dead for, ooh, 48 hours now and not so much as a twitch. We tried poking her with a stick but nothing happened. Gin-soaked rag under the nose? Yeah, tried that too. No effect whatsoever.') For want of anything useful or material to say, media coverage has rapidly descended into an all-out bitch-fight about Who Loved Queenie Best, with various channels and organs of the press piously accusing each other of inadequate displays of grief and reverence. The BBC in particlar came in for some stick because the TV news anchorman on whose watch the old girl finally carked it failed to change into a sombre suit and black tie, unlike his colleagues at ITN, who apparently keep a spare change of mourning gear in the dressing room on the off-chance that she should drop off her perch. What's more, heated words were exchanged on Radio 4's Today programme between Edward Sturton and some Daily Mail hack - I believe at one point the words 'gutter press' were uttered, and it's a damn shame the pair of them weren't in the same studio, else there might have been a bit of on-air hair-pulling and face-scratching to enliven my morning. Just imagine what will happen when they read out the will. Meanwhile, has the nation chosen to demonstrate its collective grief by giving me a paid day off work? Has it bollocks.

Come to think of it, bet you various New Labour spin docs are well pissed that it happened not only on a weekend, but a Bank Holiday weekend at that - imagine the lost opportunities for burying unfavourable stories!

Am intrigued by the fact that Mil Millington has signed a book and film deal for Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. And which blogger doesn't secretly cherish similar hopes, now more than ever, for their online chronicles? Although 'Annoying Things Our Psycho Ex-Neighbours Used to do until they were Deservedly Evicted by the Cambridge City Council' doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?

Come to think of it, I didn't even know what a 'blog' was until about two weeks ago. Had to ask Jack to explain. Mind you, I have to ask Jack to explain so many things.

Still, if I'm going to set down the minutiae of my day-to-day existence I'd better get on with it.

We went to MFI the other evening to order some of their finest cheap flat-pack furniture, having carefully circled the items we wanted in the catalogue and written excited little stars next to them for good measure. The thrill of the experience was enhanced by the coyness and, indeed, downright elusiveness of the floor staff, who flitted away like startled fish every time we approached them. We pursued one of them around the showroom at some length but eventually lost him - I think he ducked into a wardrobe. Increasingly short of breath and developing a stitch, I began to toy with alternative means of convincing MFI to sell us their wares. Suggested to J that we simply pick up a large item of furniture and carry it out of the store to see what would happen. J never likes my ideas.

Despite the fact that it's spring everyone seems to be nest-building (including us - we're planning to spend the weekend papering and painting the living room, whe I can tear myself away from the new-found fascination of describing everything I do for an imaginary public.) Last night we helped Lisa (cute Canadian chick) to move from her modest one bedroom flat just outside the city limits to a lavishly appointed cottage in Willingham, a village about 10 miles north. Bitter jealousy ensued at first sight of the new place - all exposed beams, wonky floors, skylights and other nifty little architectural features that I can't recall just now but which will rekindle my jealousy at the cottage-warming next Sat. And it's huge - for some reason when Lisa said she was moving into a cottage, I imagined a shiny hob-nail boot sitting in a field with hundreds of apple-cheeked children swarming out of its doors and windows, groups of field-mice sipping elderflower tea out of hollowed out acorns, and Richard Briers doing the voice-over. (It must be noted that the term 'cottage' held markedly different associations for Lisa's grubby-minded workmates, including J.)

Another thing about Lisa's new place is that so many things came in twos - two shiny toilets in adjacent bathrooms ('I won't know which one to USE!' wailed Lisa), two friendly gay neighbours ('I can be a fag hag again!') who kindly let us (well, Chris, Jack, and Jim) heft furniture through their exquisite designer garden, two huge fireplaces, one of them in the larger of the two large bedrooms (as we were leaving, we heard Lisa plaintively wondering 'Which bedroom will I sleep in tonight?'), and two stuffed animals mounted in glass cases at the tops of the stairs. And when I say stuffed animals, I'm not talking beanie babies™ but actual real, formerly alive, animals. One of them was a stuffed parrot, and you can imagine the direction THAT took the conversation in: 'Hey guys - it has rung down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible! Hee hee hee hee!' Hilarious. The other was, even more disturbingly, a stuffed squirrel. I got the impression that the taxidermist who had been presented with the hapless animal's corpse and told to get stuffing had never seen one in the wild, because it was preserved for posterity in the somewhat romantic attitude of a mongoose about to attack a snake - a Squirrel Rampant. As it turned out Lisa hadn't noticed the ghastly objects, and when I pointed them out to her, she covered her eyes and exclaimed 'Ewwwww! I don't wanna live here any more!' 'Too bad!' we exclaimed in one voice, and continued putting heavy boxes of her stuff down on the polished wooden floors.

Things have quietened down at the gym lately as the New Year Resolution brigade have crawled back to their wide-screen tellies and sagging sofas for the next nine months or so. Meantime, the recent addition of an auxilliary heavy weights room ('Atrium Max'), amply supplied with mirrors, has siphoned off most of the swaggering muscle men, freeing up the regular weights area for those of us with more modest requirements. I enjoy weight training, and follow a three day split routine, using mainly free weights, and including bench press and squats. I usually work out with J so that he can rescue me if I become trapped under anything heavy (it happens). So few women at our gym use the free weights area that I attract the odd incredulous stare, but generally am otherwise ignored - in fact, the other day after I'd finished a set of flat flyes, a guy who'd been jealously eyeing up the bench I was using asked Jack (who'd been spotting me) if I'd finished. When Jack shrugged and replied 'Why don't you ask her?' he look faintly horrified, but somehow managed to screw up the nerve to address me directly. However what was more irritating on that particular day was the group of four guys, all working out together (safety in numbers is clearly important when there's a chick in the free weights area) who stood in a row and stared at me as I went about my workout. I'm not talking the odd covert glance, but slack-jawed, unabashed gawping. It can't have been the way I was dressed, as I work out in baggy knee-length t-shirts. Nor was it, I hasten to add, slavering admiration (as anyone who's met me will know, on my good days I look like Milly Molly Mandy with crow's feet). Nope, this was 'wow, how 'bout that, a dog walking around on its hind legs!' staring. I guess it mostly bugged me because I'm used to being invisible in the boys' part of the gym, to the point where I am occasionally stood on, and am accustomed to reclaiming equipment from guys who casually stroll off with it while I'm still using it. I am puzzled as to why I should suddenly be the object of such curiousity, and am in the process trying to devise a t-shirt slogan that will discourage such gawking, but which won't get my gym membership revoked.