Just watched "The South Park Movie" (for the third time). Wonder if there's a market for WWBBD (What Would Brian Boitano Do?) bracelets?

Sunday 8 July 2001

Bryn has gone.

Hooray!

No longer will I have to worry about someone pinching the icing when I eat a piece of cake.

No longer will I feel the need to make interestingly shaped sandwiches. (He said he had no preference over the way in which I cut his toast. At first, I just cut it diagonally. Then I started making patterns of triangles and quadrilaterals from it. Then I experimented with a heart, a Z, a person and something rude. It was a tough act to follow. Yes, he eats a lot of toast.)

No longer will I have anyone to cuddle. Hang on, that's not good.

Wah!

Bryn arrived on Sunday 1st. I collected him from the bus station, and we returned to the car, all smily and huggy and "Do these traffic lights bleep when they're green? Yes? Good good." ::smooch smooch smooch::

The following day passed rather lazily. We went to Omega Music, getting the worst part of the trip over with. (For me, anyway. Having virtually lived there for eight years, it's verrrrrry boring. He, on the other hand, loves the place, and since I won't let him go in any other music shop, he has to make the most of it.)

We also wandered around Brampton's fabulous shopping streets - no, make that shopping street - and went to the NEW *sparkle* library, so I could return some books. I wasn't impressed. It looks v. empty. I'm sure it has the same number of books as always, but the old one was low in ceiling and lacking in window, which gave the nice claustrophobic feeling of being in a catacomb of tall, dark (and handsome?) shelves. This one is high and airy and fails to give that impression. Also, an alarm was going off. Since there were several people in front of me in the queue, librarian was struggling to get to grips with the new computer system, this was quite trying.

On Tuesday, I decided to show Bryn some of the sights of Carlisle. The first stop was my old school, since he's read so much about it in my journal. I forgot to show him the basement where 1) a girl in the year above mine died, 2) the oft-visited chocolate machine stood and 3) multitudinous games of pool, darts and table football were played. (Not to mentioned The Zed And Smill Truth Or Dare Boardgame and tug of war with the pool cue.) However, other than that, I think it was a comprehensive viewing.

I'd thought we'd just be able to enter and walk through the corridors, unnoticed. After all, the uniform is totally black and the pupils have an average age of twenty and long, dyed hair, regardless of gender. But nooooo. We had a quick look at the dining rooms (which are a lot more civilised now: no more labyrinth of skewed tables to navigate one's way through) when Bryn suggested we signed in as visitors. So we went through the main entrance (a privilege I was never entitled to, as a pupil), and waited for a receptionist to get off the phone. My ex-History teacher was one of them. "Sorry about this," he said to whoever he was talking to, "but one of my ex-pupils has just walked in with a radically different hairstyle."

Before long, we were surrounded by other teachers. One tried to drag us upstairs, but he lost him and looked around the classrooms. Everything's changed so much! The doors are all blue, while they used to be red. They have sensible labels on them: when I were young, most of them were numbered, but there was no rooms 1, 2, 3 and 5. Now they say things like "Geography 2" on them. Inside, nearly all the old-fashioned openable desks have been removed. The carrels have been rearranged in a psychotic fashion such that most of the desks are diagonal and potential for playing football in them has been minimised. Bits of the corridor, which were inaccessible in my day have been opened up, and the dormitories (on the very top floor) have been turned into exam halls..

We ended up sitting in Stafford House Room (which still had the same posters as it did in the days when I had tutorials there - at least one thing remains the same), being rambled at by two of my English teachers. Now Bryn knows the suffering I had to endure! When they ran out of time, they told us to go to the library, so Bryn could read all my publications in the school magazines. The ones from later years ("Telephone", "Cross Country" and "Mixing Physics With Romance") I don't mind, but the earlier ones (stupid Chinese whispers story, stupid story about a typical English lesson, stupid soap operatic story)? Quel humiliation!

I tried to show him where I used to work, but the company had left the building. We moved on to Carlisle Castle, which was rather less impressive than I remember it being, when I last looked round, aged seven. We then shopped in Carlisle until we ran out of time on the parking ticket. I bought three CDs: "Independent Women" for Smill (quite a lot of the songs on it were performed by men, though), "J. E. E. P." by The Stereophonics for myself (since I'm going to see them in August) and "Origin Of Symmetry" by Muse (because I [hart] the song "New Born").

Wednesday was long and strange but rather enyojable over all. Dad playing the piano woke me up. I found myself on the sofa. This was because Bryn had broken my bed the previous night. This isn't the first time he's done this: he killed my bed at university too. Admittedly, on both occasions, it was unintentional: he merely sat down on it and it cracked.) However, it is further evidence that he breaks everything he even thinks about. Good thing I don't have a heart.

We went to Birdoswald which is a Roman fort. Well, it used to be. Aren't we cultural? I even paid to get us into the exhibition! I didn't do that when Helen visited me, but then, we were able to walk along the wall for quite some distance. This time, due to foot and mouth disease, this was not to be. As it was, Bryn and I had to dip our shoes in a bowl of disinfectant on the way in and out of the museum. Bryn's size 12s barely fit.

Then we went to Alston, just because I saw a sign saying, "Alston" and thought, "Yes, let's go there!" It is, after all, the highest market town in England, and it has two shops next to each other called "Absolutely" and "Crackers". It proved to be a bit of a waste of time and petrol, though. After spending ages driving along twisty sloping roads, we got to the town, found it v. difficult to park, and decided to drive to some mines in the neighbouring town of Nenthead. We got lost and found ourselves in County Durham (the third county entered that day). We found the mines and found that exploring them was too expensive for poor students like us. We did, however, find a playground. Sadly, we were being watched: some bloke was painting the fence. His dogs were adamant, siouxsiesioux and johnnyrotten to keep us out, but we succeeded in entering after the bloke shouted at them for a bit. The zipline was good fun.

The strange thing about the journey was the amount of roadkill visible. I saw more roadkill than I have seen in the rest of my life put together. At least twenty creatures had bitten the dust, discovered it tasted nice and decided to keep biting it until someone moved them. There was a stretch of road, covered in four seconds, containing four dead rabbits. There was another where three creatures were laid out in a triangle.

When we got back, I tried to make Bryn and myself some toast. I made my own first, then his. I made a concerted effort not to spread Marmite on his (I love it, he hates it), but did so anyway, and had to make some more. At least I missed most of "I Can't Believe The Length Of Those Skirts" ("Sailor Moon") as a consequence. We then watched "Power Rangers", "Dragon Ball Z" and "Batman Of The Future".

We then went to Carlisle and met Smill and Roe in a pub I'd never been to before. (Roe chose it, to avoid his stalker.) This outing was because geenic reunions during the holidays are traditional, Bryn had yet to meet Roe, and it was Smill's birthday. Will was meant to come along, but had too much work to do. (Due to failing one end-of-year exam, he has to resit them all, poor thing.) Chris was too busy playing computer games. Marion was in Hong Kong.

We went to a restaurant, where we had a ridiculously dodgy conversation (Bryn will insist on pronouncing "Coke" in a European accent) and spent a long time examining the candle. (Which gave further cause for dodginess. The fact that it was pink and emitted viscous liquid didn't help.) Smill was v. amused by the fact that there was a chair in the ladies' toilet. That's nothing; there's a computer in that at my parents' shop!

We went to see "Shrek" which was v. good and much better than the trailer had suggested it would be. Afterwards, we sat in a pub until it closed. Smill went home; Bryn, Roe and I went to The Twisted Wheel, the rock club, where they were supposed to be having a punk / ska night. Entrance was free.

Punk it wasn't. I wasn't expecting The Sex Pistols or anything, but I anticipated Blink 182, The Offspring, Less Than Jake, that sort of thing. But nein. The first few tracks I heard were rappy nu-metal bumph. Then they played "Bullet In Your Head" by Rage Against The Machine (which is also rappy and nu-metal, but I rather like it). This was followed by a stretch of goodness, including "Nancy Boy" by Placebo and "On A Rope" by Rocket From The Crypt, which are two of my favourites. Unable to drag myself from the dancefloor, I boiled in my leather jacket. We got "The Bad Touch" by The Bloodhound Gang and "Faith" by Limp Bizkit (also nu-metal, obviously, but I still like it), then they played some dance bumph. We got some insane metal, then, since Roe seemed to have gone, Bryn and I left, drenched in sweat.

When I got home, I discovered Dad had fixed my bed, fortunately.

On Thursday and Friday, we were more or less housebound, as Noj needed the car in order to go to college. He was supposed to have finished there a week earlier, but the clever geens had lost one of his assignments and he had to go in to redo it. So we just wandered around Brampton a bit and played "The Feeble Files" and watched lots of TV.

On Saturday, we went to Carlisle again, because "Pokémon 3" had come out. Argh! I'd just about recovered from "Pokémon 2" when they bring out another one! After only seven months! How dare they! Oh well, Bryn bought my ticket (I had promised to pay for everything during his visit, but that was just going too far) and in some regards, it wasn't bad. The silly story at the beginning had more point to it than the last one, and less annoying oft-repeated words. The actual film was fairly short. And Bryn liked it, which, I suppose, is the main thing.

We spotted Roe buying breakfast, and enjoyed the two minutes or so before he noticed us. Apparently, he'd still been in The Wheel when we left - we just hadn't noticed him because he was being squashed by some bloke who had just won on a fruit machine and been invited to spend the night with two lesbians. This is a typical Roe story. We wandered round the shops a bit, and I bought three "Monkey Island" games for £20, and some rewritable CDs. (Only to discover that, since they're eighty minutes long, they won't play on my retro CD player.)

Once we got home, the rest of the day was spent packing and playing "Monkey Island". We were too tired to go to back The Wheel. Today, I drove him to the bus station, where we bid each other farewell.

Thursday 19 July 2001.

Tourist (who just happened to be American): It's a shame they built the castle so near to the airport.

Dad: Your mattress is terrible. You should complain.
Zed: I might do tomorrow, but first, I'll sleep on it.

On Sunday 8th, once I got back from the bus station, my family set off to my new house in Canterbury, where we were going to spend a few days, before travelling in mainland Europe for a while, before leaving me in Canterbury. The journey was as it usually is: the traffic was slow around Birmingham, the food in the service station was overpriced, and Dad arranged to look at someone's piano en route. On the motorway, I found definite evidence of my geekiness: it took nineteen years of travelling along the A69 on a weekly basis before I saw anything amusing about it, but as soon as I saw a sign for the A404, I laughed.

Since we weren't to arrive in Canterbury until 5.30pm the following day, we spent the night in a town named Bagshot. Naturally, this inspired puns along the lines of "I'll be bag shortly". But as if the word wasn't close enough to "Bagot" for my liking, we stayed in The Cricketer's Inn!

The following day, we travelled to Windsor. Dad refused to take us to Legoland (not understanding the appeal); instead, we went to Windsor Castle.

It was ever-so-slightly more impressive than Carlisle Castle. That said, Carlisle Castle isn't much of a tough act to follow, and Windsor Castle wasn't that great either. It was also ever-so-slightly more expensive. It cost £3.10 for two of us to enter Carlisle Castle; it was £44 for four of us here.

As we entered, I had a "Spinal Tap" moment. The metal detector wailed as I walked through it. The security guard asked me to do so again, and indeed, something was upsetting it. The guard ran his hand-held detector over me, identifying my leather jacket as its main source of discontentment. However, my right arm also caused a problem - "We'll have to have that off, then," he said - but I have no idea why. I haven't acquired any artificial body parts accidentally, have I?

We were let in just in time to see the changing of the guards. It wasn't very interesting: none of them were wearing nice underwear. While they did so, a band played various seemingly inappropriate songs, including "Paint It Black" and "Yellow Bird". They sounded like Carlisle Youth Concert Band on a bad day.

We looked around the chapel, where they seemed to have a very strange policy as far as burying people went. People like Napoleon III's son and Prince Leopold Of Splurdigurd were given huge monuments, while Jane Seymour, Henry VIII, Charles I and a child of Queen Anne occupied the same unoutstanding hole in the floor. Other than that, there wasn't much to write home about.

On the way back to the car, I noticed a pub called The Slug And Lettuce. (I forced Mum to take a photograph.) On the journey to Canterbury, I found another amusing one called The Snail.

Tuesday 10th was a day of poddling. I walked up to campus, to go to the medical centre. Did I really used to walk from campus to the town centre then back again a couple of times a week? And if so, how? This wasn't the full distance, but, to paraphrase Holden Caulfield, it killed me.

Then my family investigated the shops a bit, before returning to the house. After lunch, since I had an appointment at the medical centre at 3.20, there wasn't really time to go anywhere more interesting than Safeways. Then, mercifully, Dad drove me to campus. We returned to the town centre and attempted to visit the cathedral. At this point, I realised that Canterbury Cathedral is determined to not let me visit it.

I spent a night in Canterbury in August 1992, when I went to France with my family. When we tried to go to the cathedral then, there was a service on, so we couldn't enter.

When I came to Canterbury for an open day in February 2000, I had to go to several lectures, while my parents looked around the town. They went to the cathedral without me.

When I first started university, I had no intention of going to the cathedral. After all, for the vast majority of my life, I had been dragged from cathedral to cathedral. However, when the second term started, I resolved to go, Just So I Could Say I Had. Somehow, though, whenever I went to central Canterbury, I always forgot this plan. In the third term, I finally remembered, but a sign informed me that students had to pay £2 to get in. £2 for a poxy cathedral? No ta, Kenneth! Then I got back to campus, and Soppygit and Ibid informed me that students at UKC could get in free. I never got a chance to go again, though, before term ended.

This holiday was the ideal opportunity (much as Noj hates cathedrals). However! We discovered that on that day and the next cathedral wasn't open to visitors, because of graduation ceremonies! And we had to leave the day after that.

I know I'm going to be in Canterbury for the best part of another two years (exam results permitting), but I have this nasty feeling that the place will continue to conspire against me. Even when I graduate, I'm sure something will stop me going there.

Anyway, we walked along the city walls, which was quite nice: I usually never have cause to do this except after returning from Slimelight, when I'm too knackered to pay any attention to the byutiful surroundings. We went to Canterbury castle - the third castle I'd been to in eight days - but it didn't take much viewing, being small and a ruin. Noj wrote his name in the gravel with his foot. I attempted to copy, then realised the gravel would catch in the springs of my shoes. It took quite some shaking to evict it.

It was at this point that I noticed a lorry, which bore the words "Head's: Removal And Storage". If there hadn't been an apostrophe (and knowing the state of grammar in the world today, perhaps there wasn't supposed to be one), I'd have been seriously worried.

In the evening, my parents and I went to Sittingbourne, to collect some of my possessions which had been stored at Bryn's house during my time at home. We spend two hours there, most of which I spent stroking Bryn's shirt. It's made of satin (or something like that) and I'm addicted to it.

Also, I suddenly realised that while working at Omega Music, I'd typed up orders from Bryn's old school. As he put it, "I played with your equipment before I met you."

Naturally, I didn't want to leave. I hovered in the doorway, in the hope that my parents would forget about me, and when they asked if I'd got all my stuff, I asked if Bryn counted as a possession. Neither trick worked, though.

On Wednesday, we decided to explore the southern and eastern coastline of Kent. Our first stop was a town called Hythe. There was nothing to see there. Then we went to Dungeness. I apologise in advance if anyone from Dungeness is reading this, but I have doubts as to whether anyone actually lives in Dungeness (is it possible to live there?) never mind anyone with Internet access.

It is the grimmest settlement I have ever entered. It is like something out of The Chronicles Of Walter Winterbottom (where everything is as nasty as possible, to the point where orphans are boiled up in the tripe factory and the church has monochrome stained glass windows). Dungeon-ess is an appropriate name for it. It has no roads, just tracks, and all the houses - well, run down shacks - are several metres away from them, across a sea of reeds. There are no amenities (who got an A* in GCSE Geography, eh?) in sight, but damaged vehicles everywhere. It has a nature reserve, but it is next to a power station! It has a shingle beach, which is apparently its pride and yoj: we found a sign saying "Shingle is special! You might not think so BUT" and the rest of the print was too small to read. It has a lighthouse, which the rest of my family tried to visit (it was so windy that I thought I'd best stay in the car, lest I blow away), only for someone with a very thick Brummie accent tell them it cost £2.20 just to walk up and down a poxy flight of stairs and look at Dungeness.

We went in search of materials edible, and found a Mace Supermarket(!) in the town of Lydd. While we were there, it had a power cut!

After eating, we went to the town of Deal. It was bigger than everywhere else we'd been that day, but no big, um, deal. We thought about visiting the castle, but decided it cost too much, owing to its state and lack of size. So we moved on to the air museum at Manston. (This is some air from 14 July 1468. This is some air that Queen Victoria nearly breathed! And look at our newest exhibit - Air from Year 2000, who had a string of hit singles!) Nah, it's an RAF type-o-place, but annoyingly, it was closed, so we went back to Canterbury.

On Thursday, I went into Canterbury avec ma mère et mon père, so Dad could buy some shoes and guidebooks and I could get a CD (The Vegatones' album). We then gathered various belongings and set off for the Channel Tunnel. They charged £299 for us to use it! It would have been ok if it had turned out to be 299 francs, but alas not. Quel cheek! You can get a return ticket to Canada, say, for that much. Still, it had to be done.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, except for the rows over which dairy products should be thrown away. (France are afeard of Foot and Mouth being brought in, but I don't see how some sandwiches are going to do that. We had to drive the car through disinfectant, but since we didn't have to walk through it, it all seems a bit ridiculous.)

We soon arrived in Calais, land of bent lamp posts. After a quick stop at a huge shopping centre, which had scary sloping escalators, suitable for trolleys, we travelled to St. Valeres, a town in northern France.

I had thought we were going there for a reason i.e. there was something interesting to see there. But when we arrived, Mum read out from the guidebook that there was absolutely nothing to see there, just a good place for peace and quiet. A siren was blaring as she read this.

O well. We checked into a hotel, which was v. cheap (although quite expensive by French standards). The toilet and wash basin were several yards apart, reminiscent of Eliot College. Downstairs, there was a restaurant: a menu appeared outside, and everything on it was "Moules something" (one being Moules Lucifer). We had a long discussion as to what they could be, before Mum looked them up in the dictionary: mussels! No wonder the place was empty!

The next day began with me being woke up by Mum saying, "Get up, it's past eight o'clock" which was when breakfast would be served. Of course, it was only really past seven o'clock, assuming my body still ran on British time. But bravely, I removed myself from bed. An hour later, however, Noj refused to stir, on the grounds that breakfast would probably consist of moules on toast, scrambled moules, crunchy moule cornflakes, and the like.

(If a muscle was in debt, or wore blusher, would it be Moule-in Rouge? And is the bloke who delivers moules called Mr Muscle?)

That morning, we looked around St. Valeres for a while (making the most of the fact that it was sunny.) Then we headed for Les Andelys on the grounds that my parents thought they had been there before but couldn't remember what it was like. When we arrived, after three hours of travelling, they decided that they hadn't.

We went to a ruined castle there. On previous holiday, my parents have dragged me to vast numbers of cathedrals and graveyards. This appeared to be The Holiday O' Castles (although we went to a fair few churches too). The view was fairly good.

After struggling to find a parking space in the centre of Les Andelys - despite the very small number of people we saw in France, they have a lot of cars - so we could go to an Intermarché, we decided it was a scank place o dume, and drove on to Vernon. There, we checked into a motel, with the unfortunate name of "Formule 1". "Formule 1 - it really is the pits!"

Ok, it wasn't horrendous, just a bit weird. The rooms contained basins, but the toilets were at the other end of the corridor (will I never escape from Eliot College-esque designs?) and you had to get out of them quickly, for they cleaned themselves. Above the basin were two mirrors, at ninety degrees to each other. This not only meant I got two more views of myself than I strictly wanted, but when I approached the sink, my reflection had a line down the middle of it. Most disturbing. Also, if you moved one way, your reflection moved the other. Also, you couldn't look directly into one of the mirrors, as the room's only light source - a vertical fluorescent strip - was beside it and blinded you. This also meant some parts of the room are v. dark. The rooms each contained a double bed, with a bunk over it, which meant it was impossible to straighten the sheets without hitting your head at least once.

Shortly after arriving in France, Mum realised that Dad had left his driving licence at home. "Drive carefully and safely," she instructed, and Dad obeyed, as far as possible, given the predominance of sudden no entry signs at the ends of streets.

Friday 13th passed without calamity. On Saturday 14th, however, we had planned to take the train to Paris. However, we woke up late, it was raining, and it was Bastille Day and the news indicated that the city was swarming with parading muppets. This could have been a good thing in sunshine, but given the rain, we decided to put it off until the following day. Instead, despite the fact that it had nothing going for it except a cathedral, we decided to go to Chartres.

A couple of minutes into the journey, the car broke down, due to a burst hose.

Luckily, we were close to the hotel we'd arranged to stay in that night, and after feeding the engine the best part of six bottles of water we'd reluctantly bought from the hypermarket the previous day, we made it to the hotel. We spent the next five hours sitting in the car, the reception and eventually our rooms, while Dad made and received millions of phone calls. The complexity of the operation was not helped by the absent driving licence.

My parents had been to this part of France before (before I was born) and they went there again to reminisce. It worked well: last time, the car also broke down. Coincidence? Je ne pense pas!

When they finally returned with the hire car (two and a half after setting out to get it), we decided to go somewhere, just to make the day worthwhile. So we went to . . . another castle! However, I got a much needed walk up a steep path out of the bargain (last year's six mile climbs seem to be a thing of the past).

On Sunday 15th, the weather was nice, so we went to Paris. Considering the number of countries I've been to (eighteen, if you count England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separately), I haven't been to many capital cities. In fact, I'd only seen London, Glasgow and Belfast. Even in tiny places like Malta and Luxembourg, I managed to avoid them. So this was a change.

When we got there, we went to the Louvre and walked round wondering why certain things had been painted and verbally adding captions to the weirder pictures. The Mona Lisa was surprisingly small, and didn't seem to work - it was always looking to the left, probably because there were so many people standing over there.

We walked to Notre Dame, decided against going in, and got the batobus (which is just a boat) down the Seine. Or up the Seine, I'm not really sure. As I wrote on every postcard I sent, fortunately, I wasn't in-Seine for once. Sigh. We went to The Eiffel Tower, which hadn't looked particularly impressive from the Place du Concord, where it appeared to be dwarfed by a big wheel, and, if you stood in a certain position, it was entirely hidden by another spire. However, it looked pretty fleeping big when standing beside it. We stood directly below its centre for a few minutes, then returned to the station.

The following day, still denied of the car, due to the garage being closed (everything is closed in France on Mondays), we decided to book another night in the same hotel and go to Chartres. The cathedral was very dark, but it had some nice stained glass windows, and more flying buttresses than you could eat in one sitting (or something).

On Tuesday, we went to Monet's garden. It was pretty. Then we sat in the v. overpriced gift shop, reading (or looking at the pictures in) books about him. I became not entirely convinced by his prowess of an artist. On several occasions, he drew haystacks, which were rubbish! (How many painters can I insult in one entry?)

We got the Landrover back, returned the hire car (to do this, Noj had to drive, in a vehicle he was unfamiliar with on the wrong side of the road, but he managed it), then set off for the coastal town of Etretat.

When we arrived, we sought a hotel. As we did, some blokes started yelling "Doing doing!" at me, on account of my boots, I presume. In the second one we tried, we had to go up many wonky steps, only for the receptionist to inform us that there was no room at the inn. He did, however, know of a place we could stay, if we could give him ten minutes? So we did, and he took us to it.

It was flipping weird: we had to climb a million flights of steps, of varying heights, to get to our rooms. In the one Noj and I shared, the floor sloped incredibly. The bathroom door had no lock on it, the taps were the wrong way round, and the toilet seat had a hole in it. Also, despite the fact that there was only space for us on that storey, a load of Chinese people staying in the same building kept coming up to it.

As soon as we'd got the accommodation sorted out, it started raining heavily. Getting some food and getting the luggage into the room were going to be a job and a half. As a result, we spent half an hour sitting in the car, watching the rain hit the sunroof, and writing Zobo/Noj Creat on the steamed up windows. I wrote "Spome Wasn't Here" on mine.

However, by about 9.30, we had completed the operation, and the rain had ceased. So my parents and I walked along the sea front, and up a v. steep path that took us to the top of a cliff.

The view was absolutely breathtaking. The cliffs, the little town in the cove below us, the perfectly blue sea, a cathedral on top a hill (and this weird lopsided pointed structure next to it). We also saw a field full of rabbits. The sunset painted the clouds pink, and when it ended, floodlights were switched on, but they didn't interfere with the beauty. And seagulls shrieked, reminding me of the beginning of "Burn" by The Cure, one of my favourite songs.

But the moment was short-lived. It started to rain again, and we had to go down.

The next morning, it was still raining, so we decided to give up and go home. So we returned to Canterbury, and went to see "Tomb Raider", like 23470234234 other people I know on the Internet. I hadn't particularly wanted to see it, but I really enjoyed it - it was rubbish and brilliant at the same time.

Sunday 22 July 2001

(On using a website to show you what certain decorating schemes would look like) Bryn's Friend Chris: You can paint with a mouse.
Bryn: I'm getting a really weird mental picture, here.

(On uses of the word "slag") Zed: Or "slag heap".
Bryn: I'm getting a really weird mental picture, here.

Why is it that people called Chris cannot drive without making their passengers afraid for their lives?

Bryn has gone to a christening (which he keeps accidentally referring to as a funeral) this afternoon, but he will return this evening. If he can find a job tomorrow, he will remain in Canterbury avec moi for the rest of the summer, so please pray that he does.

Today, I went to the campus shop, bought a toothbrush (since Bryn keeps borrowing mine, most unhygienically) and handed in my application form for a job there. I doubt I'll get it, as I illustrated my geenicness by accidentally leaving the toothbrush on the counter.

Tuesday 24 July 2001

Is it just me, or does the idea of having a cross between a mobile phone / computer so that you can check your e-mail on the train before you get to work not sound very appealing to you? Isn't the only reason most people go to work the fact that they check their e-mail when they get there? Why would anyone want to start work before the working day began and have nothing fun to do once they arrived?

Wednesay 25 July 2001

You know you've been playing too many point-and-click adventures when you see a plastic fork lying on the pavement and you want to pick it up, because it might be useful in opening a chest or something later on.

Thursday 26 July 2001

Today, on my way to campus, I saw a load of kids messing about on the grass. Foreign ones on one side of the footpath - one little girl approached me, but didn't say anything - and about six local boys (I assume - that is, I assume they're local, they were almost certainly boys) on the other. One of them asked how to get to the medical tent because his friend was dead. His friend was quite clearly not dead, given that he was protesting and was not carrying a death certificate. (Monkey Island in joke) I told them there was no medical tent that I knew of. Then they asked what kind of boots I was wearing, and whether I liked Marilyn Manson (not really - I like the music, not the person), Korn (no), Slipknot (sort of, shame on me), Crazy Town (Don't know - grr, must find out who they are, since the latest issue of Classic Rock mentioned them too) and N Sync (no way! To which they whooped, "She likes them! I can just tell!") "Do you have a boyfriend?" "Yes." "My mate's interested." "Too bad." Weirdness!

Friday 27 July 2001

Today, I went into central Canterbury. On the way, I encountered:

* Some drains which had recently been painted the most horrible shade of green. Think snot, but darker.

* A bloke who gave me a thick book about karma, then asked me for a donation. "Just two pounds." I gave it back.

* A woman who asked if I'd had any accidents in the last three years. Forgetting about the netball court (I'm forgetting everything today. I forgot that I call Camilla Smill!), I told her about the car accident. She lost interest when I told her I hadn't been hurt.

Saturday 28 July 2001

Today I made an amazing discovery! I know how toilet roll holders work!

You know the sort that have a bar which is joined to the holder at both ends? I have never known how to change the toilet roll on them. (Well, there isn't one at my parental home!) But now I know how to remove and replace the bar. Woohoo!