Hello,
I'm just here to commemorate the mind-blowingly crispy bit of chicken skin I just bit into. Chee Seng generously let me have one of his pieces of fried chicken (I took a thigh piece =] - I thought I'd have to wait til I got home to eat such a meaty piece of chicken). As I headed out of his room he asked if I wanted bread to go with it but his loaf had started turning mouldy on the crust. Then as I was about to put the chicken in the (toaster) oven he came in to the kitchen and scooped rice into my bowl. Because he worries about me not eating properly. ..now that I have to cook for myself. oh man. I feel like the baby of the group.

Sundays are the worst. I'm too lazy to go out and buy food, let alone go to Nishi Waseda. So far I've eaten a cream puff, a curry pan, a pot of yoghurt and a kit kat.

Laundry day and a first period class

When I get my own place, I'm going to buy many beautiful, delicate vases and decorate every room with them. They will force me to act calmly when I'm feeling particularly violent to ensure that I don't accidentally break any.

I've taken up doing my work in cafes.

いただきます！

Me and my flashcards

I'm too sensible to ride the Yamanote all the way round. Got off at Akihabara to change to the Keihin-Tohoku and go home.

I bought this just 45 minutes ago!

lol at holding my wrist up to eye level and wiggling my fingers to see the muscles rippling. Man, I wish I did biology at A level.

No muscles in your hands! Just tendons!

Totally just licked out this container of potato salad from the supermarket.

Tastes just like the curry bread sold at the bakery in Oriental City. Here it's called カリーパン curry pan. Japanese cuisine has only one kind of curry.

The next bite was messy. Cream oozed over my fingers. I should've bought the other 10 or so that were also at 30% off. 66円 a small-fist-sized cream puff! Then I could eat them all day. perfect mountain-hiking food.

I'm so bad. This past week I've bought 3 books in English. at the moment, with Bats For Lashes in the corner, I'm reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

"The night was so deathly silent that I felt I could hear the sound of the stars moving across the heavens."

I also bought a Japanese kids' book to practice reading, because I'm tired of how long it takes me to decipher labels at the supermarket.

I've just realised that it's already dark outside and if I had gone to Shinjuku after class to watch the sun set from where the guidebooks suggest, though I'd have had to ask friends of what that suggestion is since I don't have mine today, I would probably have just arrived there. Too late.

The sky is clear, the air fresh and the top tips of the tall buildings are golden. But I will not go to gleam with them because I want to work on Japanese. I hope that I'll be able to make simple conversation by the end of this semester.

Today, I wore the plainest outfit since I've been here: brown cords, grey sweatshirt and a green t-shirt underneath. Hence, Chee Seng asking me whether I'm alright.. (lol). It's nice to be noticed.

Yesterday, on the train to Tabata, on my way home, there was a neglected umbrella and a dirty, possibly homeless, man wearing shorts and without an umbrella on the day a typhoon had been forecast to come to Tokyo (it rained all day). So I put the two together. As in most cultures, you're usually meant to leave people that don't ask for your help alone. But the umbrella probably would've just been thrown away if I hadn't given it to him. I waited until we were travelling to Tabata, where I got off and changed lines. before going to the umbrella. It was leaning against the wall by the door on the other side of the row of seats the man was sat on. I pretended that I needed to move closer to the television to consult the information it was broadcasting (a few train lines had been suspended cos of the typhoon). As we came into Tabata Station I stood in front of the umbrella, with my back to it, picked it up and the man sat by the door, at the end of a row of seats, so I hung it on his armrest as I walked past and out of the train. Until a few minutes after I sat down on my next train, I was worried about having grossly misbehaved. I acted against the norm, in a foreign country, and shocked a few people. I was even worried about someone coming after me cos of what I did.

Bought five rings today, despite it officially being the first day of glove-wearing season. Also, the rings are all tighter than when I tried them on in the shop, so it must be pretty cold.

Desperate to get out of here after seeing this

だいじょうぶですか

I've been in Japan for a whole month to this day and it does feel like I've settled here nicely. I've sorta gotten used to the commute, though I hardly ever leave on time or when I plan.

My group of friends come from all over the world and learning little things about their culture is really amusing. Just yesterday Eszter taught us that in Hungarian 'cookie' means penis and 'pussy' means kiss. When Aaron, from America, was a kid he would get disappointed when his 'fish and chips' came with fries (because they call crisps 'chips' and fries are what we call 'chips'). This came about when I said that I'd love to have a steak with some really fat chips and he thought I was being really daft wanting to eat a steak with crisps..

Marion is from Quebec and never introduces herself as saying that she's from Canada cos she's a hardcore Francophone. Plus two friends from France, Jenna and William, and these three sometimes talk to each other in French when they're with the rest of the group and it'll suddenly feel like we're not in Tokyo anymore.

Almost daily, Jenna and I will point out the same things simultaneously. Once it was the panda cream puffs in the cream puff shop, and it took Chee Seng a while to spot them. The other day it was the karaoke place where the rooms had big windows overlooking the street. And it turns out that on Sunday, without talking to each other about it, we both emailed the kimono club asking them of the details of their meetings.

Chee Seng is from Singapore and talks a helluva lot. He's always got a story to tell or make a joke out of something. He and Eszter are 23, I think. While Aaron is the baby of the group turning 20 in December. Oh, but Jessi is 24 or 25.. Though she doesn't seem it cos we're all just always goofing around, really.

I hung out with Gwynnie before we both had a class 4th period and we learnt that we are a lot alike but she's cooler for being able to speak some Hindi.

And I think that's everyone I hang out with.. I'll kick myself if/when I realise I've forgotten someone.

I'm sure I've listened to Kid A before, but I've never enjoyed it before this morning. Must be the effect of the sugary cereal. I hardly ever eat sweet foods for breakfast.

You know how it is when it seems like everyone's sent you a message but the one person you want to quite desperately want to hear from, right..? Yeah, it was as if I was a teenager again! (Not that I'm that far off.) It was such an exhilerating feeling. ..Aside from the frustration of course. I had even considered watching The Notebook again. But it was almost 10pm and I hadn't eaten dinner yet.. So I decided against it.

As I was eating dinner, the dorm manager came in with the parcel ma had sent me. Lunar Park has finally arrived and I did a dance after I yanked it out of the tightly packed bundle. Then I realised that there were three mistakes on the address and I suppose that's why the parcel's arrived later than we'd expected.

Just watched this video. Heh, carry on.. Not for a plane tho. It'd definitely exceed weight restrictions and then imagine carrying it from the check-in desk to your seat on the plane. Painful.

Sorry, I've been meaning to post about how I feel about this being my last week before I fly out to Japan and how stressful packing is.. Anyways, I have to post this because I didn't think Rihanna's Don't Stop the Music could sound any cooler, then I heard this. Yay!

This might be my absolute favourite song and the video's pretty good too.

I wish I was better at remembering all the things I want to look up. If I make a note it's more likely that I'll lose the note or simply forget to look at it when I can look the thing up. Anyways, after months of saying 'Man, I wish I knew how cranes are assembled', after seeing a portion of a crane being driven to a construction site, I finally looked it up this week. 

My sister and I recently tried some food from the newly opened Otarian on Wardour Street. They proudly declare themselves to be the first low-carbon emitting restaurant. This claim is probably made on the basis that the furniture and decor are made from recycled materials, the take away containers and cutlery are biodegradable and the carbon emissions of the foods on the menu are distinctly lower than their non-vegetarian equivalents. They've even printed the CO2 emissions of each dish right on the menu, next to the amount of calories each dish provides.

Anyways, I actually just wanted to post telling you how amazing their lasagna is. I dunno how to describe it to do it justice.. It's a roast veg lasagna. The flavours were rich and the cheese on top even more so.

I was awoken by receiving several text messages in the space of two minutes. It annoyed me but I was even more annoyed when I realised that it was 8am as I'd hoped to get up before 7 like I have been. I suppose I should have expected to wake up later now that I'm fasting again, especially since I couldn't get to sleep last night. (I cried when I imagined myself asking Steve when I would hear from him next.)

It's rather cloudy now but it was very sunny earlier when I went to the shops to buy some butter; I plan to make cupcakes later. There was a light breeze too, so it wasn't too hot but actually very refreshing when I went out. I pretty much snuck out to keep the walk peaceful; if I told my parents they'd ask a few questions in jest and ruin the calm. I leapt into my siblings' room announcing I was dressed to go out, then walked out, down the stairs, put my shoes on, quietly opened the door and quietly closed it. I didn't shut the door so that I need a key to get back in cos that requires jiggling the key in the lock and causes a racket. 

Outside the shop I met my brother's friend, Kiaan and his dad. They were waiting for mum, who was at the dry cleaners, as they were going out to a café for breakfast. Oh I'd really like to go out to a café for brekkie. I was up really early yesterday and itching to get out cos it was sunny but Miriam's in hospital and Aakash didn't reply (until late at night when I told him that I hated him and looked like this >____< as I typed the message).. I should've gone for a bike ride by myself, even if I live in a very boring place to cycle around.

I've met a man that's made his dream come true and it made me cry

The couple behind Original Production were in London this summer for the Sonisphere Festival. They organise events, such as music concerts and family shows, in Indonesia. These two have brought Beyoncé, Dionne Warwick, Bon Jovi, Air Supply and many other acts to Jakarta. 

When Tommy Pratama was a kid he'd dreamed of this job and even got in dentention for drawing promo posters he'd dreamt up. There was this one time (his wife told us as he sat quietly/shyly for it seemed like this wasn't the first time she'd told the tale) when his friends in class were telling him to put the drawings away or he'd get in trouble. He was drawing a poster saying that Deep Purple and Scorpions were putting on a concert in Jakarta. His teacher snatched it off his desk, laughed at what he'd drawn, saying that it'd never happen, and gave him detention. Some years later he organised this very concert and a kid that was in that class with him was in the audience, found Tommy and hugged him to congratulate him for achieving his dream. While Tommy had actually forgotten all about that incident.

When the dream is gone the world is a lonelier place

I should probably be ashamed for having found the title of this blog on a post on LookBook..

But if I hadn't found the line you'd probably have to wait a while longer before I told you my plans. meh.

So.. did I tell you that I'm going to spend a year studying in Tokyo?  I fly out September 13th at 9:10 in the morning and I hope that my brother and sister will get up ready enough to come see me off at the airport, especially since I'm sure they'll be able to get to school in time afterwards. Maybe they could nap on the way. I have a 4 hours stop over in Abu Dhabi and will land at Narita Airport around lunchtime. Then I must send my luggage to my dorm and take a Skyliner to Ueno where I will meet someone from the hospitality team and will be escorted to my dorm in Toda Koen. I'll be living some 45 minutes away from uni. The journey time includes the walk to the station, changing trains and walking to uni.

I have two weeks off around Christmas and New Year's, and I'm hoping some friends studying abroad for the year will come visit me or I may go visit them. I have a month off from mid-February to mid-March and I'm going home for about a week. During this week I will visit Kent: sit in on anth lectures with Clare and Matt, have dinner with some friends and give them gifts. Then during half term I will fly out to Tokyo with my family. My year ends in July and I have one more year at Kent.

Since the 2011-2012 year at Kent will be my last, next summer will be the last opportunity for me to work at Walt Disney World in Florida under their scheme for interntional college students. I need to put a CV together as soon as I can, post it off to the appointed recruitment agency and hope they can arrange for my interview to take place while I come back in February.

Then after I graduate I want to spend a year with the JET program as an assistant in schools helping children practise their English speaking. This way I'll have two awesome referees to add to my CV and will be able to apply for working with Camp America.

Paris Hilton makes me want to wear perfume =]

     At a red light on Sunset, I lean over and kiss her and she puts the car into second and speeds up. On the radio is a song I have already heard five times today abut hum along to anyway. Blair lights a cigarette. We pass a poor woman with dirty, wild hair and a Bullock's bag sitting by her side full of yellowed newspapers. She's squatting on a sidewalk by the freeway, her face tilted toward the sky; eyes half-slits, because of the glare of the sun. Blair locks the doors and we're driving along a side street up in the hills. No cars pass by. Blair turns the radio up. She doesn't see the coyote. It's big and brownish gray and the car hits it hard as it runs out into the middle of the street and Blair screams and tries to drive on, the cigarette falling from her lips. But the coyote is stuck under the wheels and it's squealing and the car is having difficulty moving. Blair stops the car and puts it in reverse and turns the engine off. I don't want to get out of the car, but Blair's crying hysterically, her head in her lap, and I get out of the car and walk slowly over to the coyote. It's lying on its side, trying to wag its tail. Its eyes are wide and frightened looking and I watch it start to die beneath the sun, blood running out of its mouth. All of its legs are smashed and its body keeps convulsing and I begin to notice the pool of blood that's forming at the head. Blair calls out to me, and I ignore her and watch the coyote. I stand there for ten minutes. No cars pass. The coyote shudders and arches its body up three, four times and then its eyes go white. Flies start to converge, skimming over the blood and the drying film of the eyes. I walk back to the car and Blair drives off and when we get to her house she turns on the TV and I think she takes some Valium or some Thoraine and the two of us go to bed while "Another World" starts.

I read a large portion of Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero as I made my way to Steve's, some 2 hours away by Underground, and I was almost in tears as I read this passage. It was also very sad to see that all the grass everywhere had turned brown due to the heat and lack of rainfall. Even the Chase, the nature reserve near where Steve lives was all brown but for the trees dotted around.

I'm sitting at the end of a tree branch hoping that it'll break cos I'm now too scared to let go. Beneath is a trampoline and it will bounce me beyond the acorns that I can't pick, and I will see what is on the other side of the hill. You should've blindfolded me and left me on a clifftop. After sipping the flask of hot chocolate I'd finally make my way down to the watermill where I would rearrange the pebbles in the stream to read 'salt & vinegar'.

Anyways, on the train yesterday I found a map of the British Museum and it has a list of the times of the 'eyeOpener tours': 'free short tours (30-40 minutes each) introducing different areas of the Museum's collection'. These occur daily. I intend to attend at least one each week. Please do let me know if you're interested in coming along with me =] I'm flexible with weekdays

Have you read this article on Bret Easton Ellis? I haven't yet, but I will after I tell you that I enjoy his books very, very much but have yet to read his most famous: American Psycho! Actually, I've only read Rules of Attraction and Less Than Zero so far. Both of these were borrowed from Mr Mitchell who absolutely insisted upon me trying them. (Thank you, sir.) Unfortunately, of all that he's written, the library at Hendon only seems to hold American Psycho, so I'll be giving that a go soon. I was planing on leaving that to last.

We, my sister and I, went to the library yesterday soon after a lunch we ate desperately as soon as we got home from a swim. (It had been years since I last went swimming and I was so out of practice that I couldn't do more than a length without a short rest.) Yusuf was meant to come with us but he's terribly stubborn and just stayed home playing Pokémon Battle Revolutions. Phooey! He didn't even put his swim towel in the laundry.

I'd planned to get out Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code cos I didn't read it when the craze for it was rife, and still hadn't read it yet, but I couldn't find it. If you have a copy I could borrow, please, do let me know. I would be very grateful.

The gums on the left side of my mouth have swollen. ow. are my widom teeth coming through? I've been in discomfort/pain since Saturday but I won't admit that I need to see a dentist. I don't like dentists. I don't understand why anyone would go into dentistry and spend their life poking in people's mouths. It's gross.

(Blogging takes a lot of effort. Especially when you don't want to sound self-centred or whiny. Or my delay in finishing the blog post on my trips to Wildwood, Old Trafford and Liverpool could be down to simple sloth.)

I'd like to share some news with you: I've been accepted by Waseda Uni in Tokyo to study there for a year and I'm very excited! I fly out on September 13th around 9am from Heathrow and arrive at lunchtime the next day. In exactly threee months to this day orientation begins. Three months gives me plenty of time to hunt around for a job to build up funds, improve my Japanese, learn to cook, read the material required by the core modules I expect to have failed and so expect to be requested to resit over the summer..

Hi. I'm in the process of telling you about mine and Steve's trip to Wildwood but the camera and computer aren't co-operating, so I won't publish the post until I can upload more photos to illustrate it. I'll also eventually tell you about my trip home last weekend and Bank Holiday Monday and how I have to go back home again today yet it feels like I just got back here/Canterbury. The hot weather and sharing a single bed with Steve means that I'm awful tired a lot of the time. Hopefully I can convince mummy that I needn't come home every weekend after this since I'll be moving back home in a couple weeks anyway and there's plenty of tidying up to do before then.

Today, Jenn's hosting a picnic for her birthday that was a few weeks back and as a big goodbye-for-the-summer do, so this week I'll be going home late Saturday afternoon instead of the Friday afternoon agreement. I'm going to leave the picnic before anyone else I expect, at around 3, to get home by dinner time. Then, tomorrow, Aakash and I are volunteering to help out at a fair in Camden, though he's not yet told me when we are to meet or where. Then, the day after I will finally rejuvenate my wardrobe with my first ever trip to a Primark. I plan on getting many, many simple (cheap) dresses to decorate from the grand Oxford Street store.

I've told mother that I intend to stay in Canterbury, at least until the end of term, so that I can attend Japanese classes. Weekly classes. So she's asked me to come home Fridays and she'll drive me back on Tuesdays. I've just booked my coach ticket for the start of this commuter-like lifestyle. Uh, such a lifestyle requires packing.. But at least the proportion of my photographs that contain Steve will decrease.

I am pointing at my boyfriend Stephen who is blow-drying his hair after a shower. When he's finished we will go to mine for lunch. At the supermarket yesterday, he bought a whole fish: including head, tail and scales. He's going to grill it. And, er, we might have it with.. Well, I'm going to suggest leaves and potatoes.

Down the hallway, our pal is practising on his saxa-ma-phone. He'd bought it just a couple weeks ago and seems to be making good progress on it. Well done.

TICK

I do like the idea of having a man that makes me want to kill.

 

Things I could do now that my exams are over and I have ridiculously incredible amounts of free time:

- make a dress, esp since several attempts to find clothes to buy on the high street have been fruitless

- read Pope's translation of The Iliad

- begin a photo-a-day project

- learn to juggle

- cook every meal from scratch

- learn to ride a bike

- find Bigfoot

- work out why Steve (the boyfriend) is a big fan of Nietzsche

I was once told that I could find all my favourite people on the walk home from a dream, and so from then on I would try to leave early. Usually I would leave too early to make that journey with anyone and could only watch them in their dreams. When I told my father that I had seen him sail away he smiled and asked me not to tell anyone of what I heard or saw. He believed that peering into people's dreams is worse than having your ear to their door without them knowing.

People seem more interesting in their dreams and it makes me sad to not be able to talk about all the fights I've seen the small kids win or the good food the poor kids ate. At school everyone played in groups, and these groups wouldn't usually talk to other groups, except in class when we had to work together. But I wanted to tell them that everyone dreams about going to the circus. Then maybe we could all be friends and put together our own circus show.

When I dream of the circus I like to be the trapeze artist. I sit on a swing, high above everyone else, eating popcorn until it's my turn to perform. And  everyone cheers for me. I can hang upside down with only a knee holding on, and then I'd loop round and stand without holding the ropes. At this point I might remember that I'm usually scared of heights and slip. The tent itself will gasp and seem to fall with me. Everything goes alright though. I'm a professional. To make the show more dramatic I waited until the last moment to grab the swing and flip myself back onto it, instead of snatching it right away. It sometimes takes a while before anyone started clapping; maybe they follow the line I would make as I fall and not realise that I'm still at the top.

My best friend Jenny also puts on a show. In school, she's usually tripping over because she doesn't know how to do her shoelaces yet, and she's too shy to ask for help. But in the show she has really good balance; like a flamingo because they sleep standing on one leg. She can walk along the tightrope, doing some spins and flips along the way, and when she gets to the middle she jumps on to a big ball. To keep her balance on the ball she has to take little steps to move as the ball rolled, and she juggles as she does this.

My other best friend, Sandra (but I call her Sandy), was ill that day, so in the dream she just sat in the audience. Hot chocolate is her favourite drink and clowns were always refilling her mug to keep her happy. She's never been to the circus before but she's scared of clowns. At first she didn't want any of their hot chocolate because she was worried that their red nose might've fallen into it when they were making it. So they all took off their noses to make sure that wouldn't happen. That made her more scared though: their white faces made them look like ghosts. My mother told me that things make you scared if you don't understand them properly or if you haven't found a way to fight them. So I suggested to Sandy that she should dress up like a clown, and she did. I can lose count of how many mugs of hot chocolate she drinks after that.

I've seen Jack be the lion tamer. In school he likes to tease people about stupid things like wearing odd socks or saying things differently to the way he does. He still seems mean even in my dreams. The lion doesn't like him because all Jack does is try make the lion angry by hitting him and keeps him in a cage so that he can't play with anyone. The lion doesn't want to be angry but merely be allowed to walk around the circus like the other animals.

Then there's Mary-Ann. She does the strangest thing with her popcorn. My favourite kind is sweet, and so is her's but she doesn't tell her mother that because she always runs off to see the balloon animals being made before the show. So her mother buys her a mixed bag of sweet and salty popcorn to make sure that there's at least half she likes. Except that doesn't mean there'll be half left in the bag. Oh no, because to tell whether a piece of popped corn is sweet or salty you have to taste it. So she'll eat half the bag and the other half will have been spat on to the floor under her seat. It's a terrible waste! When we're painting at school she'll take a bit of every colour before she knows what she wants to paint, and there was this one time where she only needed different shades of brown and yellow, because she was painting her dog, and all the other colour paints were thrown away. Things like that make me angry but she never listens when we tell her not to do that.

A letter home. (reposted from my other blog to tidy things up a bit)

Hello Yusuf.

Maybe you'd like to share this with Rika..

One day we should travel by train together, like the one we took in Geneva. Or we could learn to be gymnasts and fight like ninjas.

I installed Stumbleupon to Firefox yesterday and one of the things it showed me is a way for you to put together your own fireworks show and I thought you might like to try it cos I think you used to play things like this, but I don't know if you'd still like it. I tried it last night and it's alright, I suppose. Not as cool as these drawings some guy did on pavements using just chalk though.

Also, you're studying about the ancient Greeks, right? Well, maybe this might be useful cos it seems to hold information on a lot of myths, which I think is pretty fascinating.


I think you'd enjoy Stumbleupon in your free time too. All you have to do is install it, sign up, tick all the boxes of things that interest you and whenever you click on the button it's added to your web browser it'll bring up a page according to your interests that other people with the same interests have said they liked.

Anyway, reason I've put together this post for you is to show you a photo of a rabbit I took, cos I'd promised you on the phone that I'd show you since you're not here.

It's really small, can you see it? It's smaller than your '32' hat. Whenever I go up to campus I check the clear area around this tree to see if there are any rabbits cos I think they live in the holes at the bottom of it and on the day I had my camera (the day after I called you and told you about the small bunny) I was disappointed cos I couldn't see one, but when I looked back as I walked away I spotted this one. They're pretty well camouflaged.

On the way to campus that day I also saw a white cat in the foresty area opposite the flat. You can't tell from this photo very well, cos I couldn't zoom i enough, but I can tell you because I've seen it in our garden before. It has little ears like a teddy bear (and so we call it a polar bear) and a rather thick and short (thicker than shorter than you'd expect on a cat anyway) tail. When I saw it in our garden it was looking away and at first I thought it was a ferret.

The rain was falling desperately. It wasn't merely noisy and copious, but it was falling very fast. I suppose it was being frantic in its apology, as anyone would be if they had carelessly neglected someone (or something). In this case it was the meadows and forests that had been left suddenly.

She set the pen and notebook on the folding table beside her, and readjusted her reading glasses. This table also held a bowl of candy; there were only four pieces left. Is that enough to show you had tried to save some for someone else? The note she was writing in reads as follows:

"Roadworks at the roundabout on the main road means that the 379 bus has to bypass the Grean Forest area and so for the past week my walk home from the bus stop was a further twenty minutes of being surrounded by the big houses. However, I quite enjoyed yesterday's walk as I saw a new cat on my way home: one I hadn't seen before, and thought it very funny to be sat under a tree. It seemed to me as if it had just woken up from an afternoon nap or arrived from far away and wasn't sure which direction to take. This cat was coloured like a frisian cow, although where a cow would have black patches this cat had grey, and so I named it Daisy: a name I associate with cows more than anything else. Apart from the flower of course.

(This kept me distracted until I reached the garden gate; the neighbour's twins were were at war with the gnomes again.)"

On the mantelpiece stood three framed photographs. There was a photograph of a boy and a girl facing each other, holding their hands up to form an arch and wearing matching ties. This one had been turned so that it wasn't facing outwards but to the side. Another was of a group of people at a picnic; they were all laughing with their eyes closed and probably didn't realise that they were having their picture taken. A coat of furry dust laid over the the glass obscuring the name written on the cake. The last photograph was of a man with a cat on his head. This had gotten dusty also and the name on the cat's collar could not be read.

Every Tuesday evening she would tune in to her favourite program, but this week's murder mystery play was cancelled to make room for a special three-hour episode of a comedic game show. She used to listen to this program whilst eating dinner, but her current job requires her to have dinner two hours later than she used to, and the adjustment in her routine allowed her to forget old habits. That last of the witty jokes made her laugh so thoroughly that she cried. When the show was over she took her plate into the kitchen and washed up. The pocket on the front of her apron was peeling away along one side, though I suppose since she has only a few people left to bake for it doesn't disturb her very much.

"I suppose Linda's going to insist that I host the next club party when I see her tomorrow. Perhaps I ought to give the shelves and blinds a once over."

The sky roared and the rain hissed. People that live alone aren't expected to put as much effort in keeping their home tidy than if they had children running about, but, as it reads on the tag of her feather duster, "A tidy home leaves room for a happy home".

The phone rang feebly in the living room. It squats on a bookshelf between photo albums. She let it ring three times before hanging up the apron and making her way over. The lights flickered as she reached out

"Hello?"
"Dorothy, are you alright?"
"Thomas, I'm fine. Don't worry about me; it's just a bit of rain. About time too!"
"I know what you mean, Dorothy. I was getting worried about my raspberries. Can't have a summer without wild raspberries, can we?"
"Oh no, of course not. But I will see you at the club tomorrow night, won't I?"
"I've been practising my steps since I got home."
"That's wonderful. I think I'll try a bit of that too."
"Right, see you tomorrow night then, old girl."
"And you, Thomas. Good night."
"Good night."

The phone was rarely used, but whenever it was she would feel inclined to bring a photo album back to the armchair with her. She turned the pages slowly, as if peering into something strange for the first time. The photographs were mostly of a happy, young pair; though a few had other people appearing in them also. Everyone seemed cheerful wherever they had been captured, until the last page. There was only one photograph on this page; it was of a woman watering the flowers in the window box. She stood leaning out of the window with her back to the camera. There was a note on the page to accompany the lady and it read:

"Dorothy, please do all the things that make you happy. I'll be right behind you."

To muffle the noise of the pounding rain on the scaffolding she slept as close to the centre of the house as she could comfortably place herself: in the utility room. She made a tent by throwing the bed sheets that were in the dryer over clothes racks and cocooned herself in a sleeping bag. Unfortunately she forgot to bring her alarm clock in with her and when she ran downstairs, to pick up the telephone after it had rung three times, in loose socks she slipped on the tiled hallway floor. Despite the hard fall she managed to take the call before they'd given up.

"Hello?"
"Did you forget and decide to take breakfast in the bath?"
"No, no, nothing like that. There was a violent storm last night and..."
"You slept by your washing machine. Perhaps you ought to keep an alarm clock by the detergent!"
"Well, if you could bring one back for me that would be brilliant. How's the hotel?"
"Lovely, just lovely. Are you smoking?"
"Yes, but it's only menthol. Don't worry. Go on."
"Well, it's all sweeping staircases, fresh flowers and a pianist in the dining room. After dinner we went to the ice cream parlor, then danced in the ballroom!"
"He dances?"
"Like a leading man in a film! Jenny, we danced until the band packed up."
"(You don't deserve him.) He sounds really lovely. What do you have planned for today?"
"Hold on. There's more. We went to the bar afterwards... Oh, I'm going to have to call you back. There's someone at the door."

Jenny took the phone with her to the kitchen. When buying a phone for the house she had made a point about the phone needing a long wire so that a call could be taken anywhere between the kitchen door and halfway up the staircase. Somehow she'd manage to sleep right up to 10 o'clock: a whole two hours later than she usually gets up, so she was definitely hungry at this moment and not mistaking the pains for thirst! The quickest breakfast to prepare would probably be a bowl of cereal. But, in case her sister wants to talk to her for a while, she decides to cook something more filling.

First she drank a glass of water, then poured a glass of apple juice. Why she prefers juice that boldly states it is freshly squeezed over that which is from concentrate I can't understand. Surely they're the same. They both invigorate the late waker with their crisp taste. She mixed a couple eggs in a bowl, set a pan upon a small fire, melted a lump of butter, placed two slices of bread in the toaster, poured the eggs in, crumbled some cheese over the top, grabbed a spatula and scraped at the egg so that no part of it would over cook. Then the phone rang.

"Laura? Could you hold on a moment?"
"But I'm calling long distance!"

She threw the toast into the pan, grabbed the juice and held a banana to her waist using her wrist. After arranging a cushion at the coffee table she picked up the phone.

"Sorry, I was making breakfast."
"And I've filled in four clues in a crossword while you were doing so."
"Who was at the door?"
"Someone from reception. Johnny couldn't get through on the phone, so he sent up some flowers and a note."
"I'm surprised you're not spending all your time together on your exotic getaway."
"Well, his work keeps him very busy. I told you I'd call you this morning, erm, afternoon for me, because he had to meet someone for lunch. But he's back now, and has asked that I bring his camera when I come down."
"So what are you waiting for, Lauren?"
"There's something I have to tell you about him. It's very peculiar... I can't get my head around it."
"What is it? Did he do something to you?"
"No, no. He's a gentleman. Honestly, we do have the best of fun together. It's just something he said."
"And what did he say?"
"He said... that he's sick of everything, except me."
"What?"
"That's what he said, as he held my hand and trembled."
"How weird. What brought that on? Trembled?"
"I don't know. I really don't know. We were talking about.. about reindeer herding before he blurted that out."
"Leslie, that's just as strange. "
"Oh, stop it. That's not exactly helping, you know..."

Eating a banana requires two hands: one to hold it and one to peel it.

"Jenny? Hello?"
"Lisa, I don't know what to say. I don't know anything about him, because you won't let me meet him."
"I have. I invited you in when you dropped off those shoes."
"That's not what I mean. Remember when I started dating Harry and you asked to meet him? Well, I let you throw a birthday party instead of arranging our traditional celebratory dinners so that you could meet him.
"But my birthday isn't for another three months."
"That's besides the point."
"It is. We're straying. So what do you think he meant?"
"I think he was just trying to say he's happy. He's very happy with you."
"And nothing else."
"Right: nothing makes him happy but you."
"Yes, but I meant that only I make him happy."
"That's right."
"And everything else makes him feel terrible."
"So perhaps you should get off the phone and get into action."
"Why are you so eager to get off the phone?"
"I'm not, Lisa, I'm eager for you to go and do what you've travelled halfway around the world to do."
"And what's that?"
"Have fun. Go sightseeing or snorkelling or something. Just get off the phone. He's waiting for you now and I will see you next week, as has been the case for the past 15 years or so. So go."
"You're yelling at me, so I'll leave now."