juliet

dogrando & I are now the proud owners of this house here, having just had a phone call from the solicitors to say that we've completed.

Gosh. House!

This does of course mean that we are now in hock to Nationwide to the tune of An Unfeasibly Large Sum Of Money, but No Matter

Yesterday evening was rather entertaining: P & I met up at TCR to go looking at sofas & beds. We discovered that this was the Correct Night to do this, as both Heals & Habitat were doing special Xmas shopping nights involving free wine. Heals' free wine was really rather nice, as well. Sadly, their sofas are really rather expensive, boo. Then went for dinner at an average Thai somewhere around there, then returned to Heals to pinch more free wine & inadvertently bought a nice clock for the kitchen. And then I smashed my wineglass by accident & we concluded it was time to leave. There was an *enormous* queue of people waiting to have books signed by Gordon Ramsay. Weirderers.

And then we went to an Adaadat night at the Scala, where there was weird electronica, & 2 splendid & somewhat overexcitable Dutch gentlemen playing silly things. Then some dodgy rapper types (rap with bleepy bits) came on & we fucked off to catch the last tube home.

House!

Pete & I have just got back from an epic 4-hr trip to John Lewis which involved buying lights, a kettle, and curtain material; and creating a possible-things-to-buy list covering rather a lot more.

[falls over splat]

I do approve of their 'customer collection' thing which means that you can buy something & send it off to the Customer Collection dept, & then pick it up on your way out. Rather than having to drag stuff around with you.

Yesterday I got up hideously early to go to Colindale to teach, but thankfully less hideously early than I expected due to the splendid Dr Phil giving me a lift. Hurrah. Was somewhat nervous about the day - doing a Philosophy of Mind course with a group of 12 10-13 yr olds - but in fact it went really, really well. The kids were interested in what we were doing & in general engaged with it & really tried to give things some thought. Some of 'em were, of course, doing better than others (one kid in particular was *way* ahead of everyone else - at the end he said to me "I'm really glad that I'm not mad for thinking about this stuff - if I talk about any of this to my friends at school they just look at me funny". I have suggested he try going on one of the residential courses as I think he'd get on really well); but that's to be expected & the important point was that they were giving it a decent try.

So after 6 hrs of that (we had breaks & lunch, but I was the only adult present so was on-duty for the duration) I was simultaneously enormously hyper (because it's *really good fun* doing this sort of teaching when it goes well) and absolutely knackered :-)

Arrived home to find that Pete had successfully returned from the Far Wilds of Florida, which was entirely splendid news :-) So there was much snuggling to catch up on. Constructed dinner, chatted to beingjdc for a bit when he dropped round, & then headed down to Balham for a swift half with Mike, Rich & Mark (friends from college). Haven't seen them in *ages* (well, other than Mark, who was down for Nick Cave a couple of weeks back) & it was really good to be able to catch up. The pub had a late licence, but we bailed around closing time anyway due to both being shattered. (I suspect the lads didn't last much longer; it was getting very loud indeed in there, & there were many drunk people trying to dance & suchlike).

And, yes, today = John Lewis. Argh.

In further house update: the reason we now feel able to go out & spend vast sums of money on house-apparatus is that we exchanged on Friday, hurrah! Completion date is next Friday. Meep.

Couldn't go to the Seed Records birthday party in Aldwych tube last night, because it was cancelled. Bah :-( LU apparently pulled the venue at the last minute on a technicality - they're in search of anyone who knows anything about contract law (presumably to see if they can sue), so if that applies to any of you, get in touch with them via that link.

Was gutted about this, as we'd really been looking forward to it (Seed Records rock, & Aldwych would have been an ace venue). However, we managed to find something else to go dance to instead, & went off to Egg, up on York Way, for a gig in aid of Oxfam - electronica upstairs, tech-house downstairs (stayed in the electronica room till it shut at 0230, then went downstairs for about 20min before heading off). Was a good night. I'm feeling a bit meepy this morning though - possibly because Pete's off to the States for a week tomorrow morning & I shall miss him :-( Possibly just slightly come-down-y. (and, of course, ongoing Stress atm due to House, so meepiness is par for the course, especially after having to reorganise stuff yesterday & having fight with estate agent).

We also bought a kitchen yesterday evening, from MFI, which was a bit scary. It's all very nice & shiny, hurrah. And even came in significantly under budget (the nice MFI man gave us many many discounts), hurrah some more.

Off to Southampton now to visit angelmine & dr_meg, which will be much fun.

Definitely been a slow week. Wednesday night involved Going To Bed Very Early, though I'm still feeling weary. Suspect I shall not be up for the Raucous Partying tomorrow, though I shall endeavour to do a little Quiet Partying instead. Date with kitty_goth last night, where we ate curry, and attempted to watch Clockwork Orange. This lasted approximately 10 minutes, before I got fed up of having to keep shutting my eyes & concluded that it was Too Violent. So we watched Silent Running instead, which was good. And had very cute little robots. Kitty decided that the way to get rid of his cold was to drink a mixture of lemon juice, orange juice, honey, hot water, & *minced garlic*. He did, apparently, feel 'much better' this morning, but only at the cost of some serious offence to my nose in the meantime.

In House News: we've had our mortgage offer confirmed (hurrah!), & are now waiting for the solicitor to send us the things to sign. Proposed completion date = 26th Nov. (obv this is still not confirmed until we've signed things, etc etc). Meep.