23.08.05..5:36 pm

Not much news, it's been mostly getting new glasses (purple plastic, I feel like a cross between Janine in Ghostbusters and when Marilyn Monroe played a librarian)(It's also kind of instant chic � given the librarian thing is really big over here at the moment - I don't have to make the effort dressing in the mornings now as people see the glasses and I�m immediately hip), and working on the thesis.

For the past few weeks I�ve literally been living, breathing and shitting Bond. if it weren't for my dearheart M, I�d feel like we were going out and I was nearing the point where I would have to call it off because it's just too intense and he's not letting me hang out with my friends. That and if he weren't a fucking fictitious character.

I got off to a really good start today and then ran into my friend Leah around 2 and it all went to pieces. I�m going to go to the caf� near M I think and read for a while to try to (re)gain a little perspective..You know that lately I�ve actually been avoiding people and making eye contact because otherwise they talk to me? I don't think it's healthy, but people just demand things like conversation, or at least responses, or change, or library books. Want want want.

That�s about it except I�m interning (so to speak, work experiencing more like) at a publishing house, which is interesting. They threw me a manuscript my first five minutes there to go over and decide whether it was worth publishing. It wasn�t, but it was nice to have the chance at a veto. The last thing we need is more of the brand of infantily prosed, meagrely suspenseful arsefuckery getting floated about. (I�m writing a thesis, thus am automatically granted full rights to making up words and/or manipulating grammar to suit my needs. It�s all there in the Terms and Conditions of Thesiswriting.)

It also looks like M going to move into My Tiny Apartment. Which�ll be cool because it means I don't have to the Enormous Sty he calls home. (I swear, I vacuumed on Friday and it just looks like I took the vacuum bag and emptied it all over the living room floor. They are monstrous pigs. I mean I�ve gone over how we lived in fourth year � it was a four story pit. I can pull up with mountain ranges of dust balls up the staircase, I can put up with vacuuming once every three months, and only ever mopping the kitchen when things that smell get spilled and a near ending trail of scum in the toilet. This place is just filthy. There were nine people living in that run down mansion-shack of the student ghetto, here there are four. Five if you include me. And two of us actually make some attempt at cleaning.) It�ll only be for a few months and then it looks like we�ll be finding our own place back in South London. I�m not infinitely thrilled with the prospect, but my gag reflex hasn�t caught me out on this one yet, so perhaps I don�t actually mind so much.

Right. I�ve got a double date with Lacan and bond. Wish me luck.

PS, Barcelona was beautiful. The whole trip was great: we missed the first bus to the airport because M was working so ended up going later which turned out to be fine actually. We just spent the whole time walking and eating and drinking and walking. and speaking Spanish. I was thrilled on that point, conversations nearly happened! I made a point of attempting Spanish everywhere and was mostly successful. As M noted, I lost my fear of looking like an idiot pretty early on. Mind you, learning to ask for beer instead of accidentally asking for a parrot didn't take too long.

It came in really handy when my camera broke on the last day and I just about died. It's a 1979 Yashika, the part that's broken (from what I could make out from the very spanish camera shop dude I startled by quietly collasping at the word 'broken'; and then again by my Dad) stopped being manufactured about four years ago so I mightn't be able to get it fixed, so that sucks. But outside that it was fantastic. And most of the film developed really nicely and I'm procuring a scanner so there will be PICTURES! ON MY WEBSITE! I'm completely freaked out by how cool this all is!

****emmmms is on to the digital age