So one of Ian's friends gave him a book called The Sausage Book. I find this hysterically funny.

* posted by nat 8:04 PM

Thursday, March 29, 2007

I forgot to mention that Doctor Who is back on Saturday. Woo! Finally a reason to turn the TV on again!

* posted by nat 5:01 PM

So, let's see. Patrick Stewart was wonderful (sorry to make you jealous, Melissa!), and I have spent a week eating very little except salmon and cucumber - not that I am complaining about that! Except for breakfast, of course. Breakfast is poridge and raisins.

I have decamped to Ian's for fun and games - plenty of games. Scrabble is now a keenly fought contest and he's even started winning the odd game of tavla! It's taken a while... In terms of other things that have taken a while, we went out on Tuesday with some people from his work, who expressed their delight that I was not, in fact, a figment of Ian's imagination - he has been trying to produce me for ages, and I haven't been playing ball. Of course, I'd slept badly the night before, so I was bleary eyed, bloodshot, and hurting, so I can't have made the ideal dinner companion, but everyone else was talking nineteen to the dozen, so my seven to the dozen inputs, just to make sure that I stayed vaguely awake and no-one forgot I was there, were all that was really mangeable under the circumstances. Ah well.

Also taking a while has the whole getting myself in gear again. It is taking forever. I have been stuffing myself full of protein and carbs and still have no energy, which is excessively annoying. Getting up is still taking more effort than it ought to at this time of year, the whole thing is rubbish.

* posted by nat 4:39 PM

Monday, March 19, 2007

I am sort of spring-cleaning, except it is snowing in fits and starts, and yesterday when we drove up to see Grandpa (who was mostly asleep, quite sensibly for a sunday morning) there was hail at lunchtime. Which is not so condusive to the clearing out of things in the spring sense. Today I have also been editing Ian's ramblings into shorter sentences for his job application and sorting out piles and piles of old articles. I got sidetracked for much of the morning by Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, but I have achieved a trip to the doctors' to reorder tablets, and to book tickets to The Tempest on Thursday for another Patrick Stewart fix - I think I got the last two. (In one of my more vertical days in February we went to see Anthony and Cleopatra, and we also saw Richard III up at the Courtyard in Stratford a month back, so not doing too badly on the theatre front.) So I think I have passed the attainment threshold for day success - at least if the previous two months is anything to go by!

Mother has just phoned to say she is on her way home so this is the cue for the rest of us to look busy.

* posted by nat 6:00 PM

Sunday, March 18, 2007

I wrote a post and Blogger swallowed it. Grr.

Anyway, not an awful lot is going on in my life, I have monotonously been ill, spoonless, and killing myself with the funding application of inhumanity. I finally finished it off (hurrah!) in Belfast, where it was a good excuse to grab a few moments on my own away from the Belfast insanity of boyfriend and mother - an entire week, I have decided, is perhaps pushing my limits of it all. However we got out and did plenty of things - Clements cinnamon steamers, Archana meals, pubs and pubs, and meeting up with Lizzy in our occassional blue-moon-getting-our-acts-together phases; we have resolved to try and be better about it.

Ian watched rugby, turned a car-hireable age, got a car, and we went exploring. So I have now been to Oxford Island and the bottom of Lough Neagh to stalk the goldeneye; all the way down the Ards peninsula and over on the little car ferry and round the coast past seal haunts (signs, but no seals), fortified houses, ruined churches and the mountains of Mourne coming down to the sea; up the coast road to Cushendun and then all the way up Glendun, avoiding sheep. On our last day we went full out and drove over the border to the land of cheaper petrol and County Sligo, where I spent most of the day casually directing Ian to places related to W B Yeats, throwing in the occasional Neolithic site such as Carrowmore to throw him off track, although I needn't have bothered, as when I said "Let's turn off here and go to W B Yeats' grave" Ian said "Who's he?"

*

Last night we went out for Vaness'a birthday and I got to be social for the first time in rather a long time; today I have been fairly dead but it was worth it! I am slowly getting on with throwing things away, which is a) long overdue and 2) relatively cathartic. This week's project is papering the lounge ceiling, fun for the whole family!

* posted by nat 10:46 PM