Madame G

I have an enormously terrifying day at work today. Presentation to give to the Executive Directors on my areas of work where I get to talk for 30 minutes then get grilled for an hour. I'm crapping my pants.

However, things are made a little better by the fact that I have hidden command power lurking beneath my black boots.

Mr G bought them for me yesterday and today I am wearing the command gold ones to give me Kirk strength. I love that he saw them and thought of me, and I love that I'm such a nerd that even in a high-flying meeting I can take strength from knowing I have the essence of Kirk wrapped around my ankles.

As I was walking into the centre of Cardiff on Saturday, I stepped off the curb outside St Andrew's church and almost trod right on this little guy...

He was lying in the gutter, wet from the standing rainwater and half-matted with leaves shaken down by the previous night's blustering storm. I couldn't leave him there, so I picked him up and popped him in my bag, thinking I'd consider later what I could do with him.

Then I went about my weekend and forgot about the little guy until I just pulled him out of my bag.

A colleague of mine said I should send him to the local newspaper, see if they'll print it so he can find his family again. I think I might scan him and send him to the Lost Photo Gallery but he's unlikely to find his way home from there.

Maybe I was just meant to find him and look after him. Who knows? I'm starting to imagine where he is now and how come an old photo of him in his school uniform against a very seventies backdrop of cork-tiled walls came to end up in a gutter in the suburbs of Cardiff. Did the adult him own the photograph and decide he didn't want this picture of his young self any more? What if something awful happened to him and this piece of his childhood fluttered out of a box carried by someone clearing out his house? Maybe he did live in someone's wallet and somehow he slipped out and ended up being trampled by shoppers on their way to town on a brisk Hallow'een day.

For now, I'll just keep him in my wallet. Which is kind of odd. I don't even have a picture of my nearest and dearest in my wallet, so to be carrying round a photo that looks some thirty years old of a person I don't know is probably strange. I just feel kind of compelled to look after him. I dunno.

I have a cold. My head throbs and intermittently I can't breathe through my nose. Apparently I was snoring last night, probably on account of being compelled to be a mouthbreather due to full-up sinuses. I also didn't sleep all that well, so my eyes are sore.

It's making me miserable, and I'm done with miserable. I've given it up for the foreseeable future. I was cheered by watching the STVI gag reel about three times this morning but that has worn off now, much like the pseudoephydrine *goes to top up mug of Lemsip*

So if anyone has anything that might cheer me up - macros, fluff fic [NOT Torchwood; Torchwood and I have fallen out], videos, pictures of puppies or kittens or pygmy hedgehogs, feel free to send 'em my way.

Help me, F-list Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope...

( Cut for spoilers for the BBC drama series Crash, in case anyone plans on watching it )

This weekend didn't really turn out as I expected. We had plans for Saturday that fell through for health and other more enigmatic reasons. But it's been nice. Mr G and I went to Cardiff yesterday for lunch and a wander and spent the evening at home. Today I've been domestically productive and managed to make two hone-cooked meals (including a fucking gorgeous lasagne, even if I do say so myself), do some cleaning and put away the groceries. Not earth-shattering but I feel I've not wasted the day. Then topped off the night by watching Shaun of the Dead, which made me grin very broadly indeed.

I took 15 mins or so whilst Mr G was in the bath this evening to progress a WIP I want to finish. I was pleased that I managed to get 700+ words out in that time, which is a good workrate, I reckon. I've promised myself I won't look back over it til I think it's done and then I'll edit it. If I can get another 500 or so words a day into it over the next couple of mornings I'll be feeling pretty satisfied with myself.

Our home phone line, and therefore the broadband, is broken due to a "serious exchange fault". It makes me realise how much I rely on the 'net when I let out a frustrated howl upon the realisation that I couldn't Google for the fault reporting number. Roll on the day I can get a connection straight into my head.

This evening Mr G and I went to our local bookshop, Borders, which announced today it is to close down and that there was 50% off all stock. By the time we got there it was like the scene of a middle-class ram-raid. Large sections were already decimated and under the pressure of time and constant tannoy announcements that the store would be closing very soon and that the queues were very long I found it hard to choose anything. Mr G, however, suffered none of my paralysis and as a result we came away with a massive haul including three travel books on Vietnam for our travels in November and December, two books on the Vietnam War, a complete set of Wainwright walking guides to the Lake District (probably for gifts as we already have a set), four of the seven West Wing season box sets, the film Hunger, Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain, Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory and Teach Yourself books on NLP and creative writing, the last three of these being my only choices. Oh, and the Taschen Big Book of Breasts. Not my choice, but I do approve.

I bought the creative writing book to see if it can kick-start me. I had a very defeatist conversation with terraswrath a few days ago about my inability to write and how I could never write anything novel-length. I'm still dubious, but also annoyed with myself for writing myself off without even thinking about it seriously, let alone trying. I'm not promising myself anything but keeping a journal is coming more easily to me now than it used to so maybe that's a sign there's something to develop.

In the absence of an Internet connection, we sat down tonight and watched Hunger. It's an unrelentingly grim film, all long shots with little action and no soundtrack interspersed with brutal naked violence. It was somehow compelling, though, and Michael Fassbender put in a stunning performance.

Anyway, iPhone keyboard is making my eyes go screwy and it's not as early a night as it was. Time to retire, methinks.

I am really feeling the therapeutic benefits of fire these past two days. We had after8mink over for a barbeque tonight followed by another fire in the garden. We sat outside until 11pm before retiring to the lounge where all three of us indulged in a glass of port and a Habano. I quit smoking in November, but somehow smoking a cigar is totally different. It was mellow and soothing to roll the liquorice smoke around my mouth and blow it out in rings. I won't make a habit of it but it was nice.

The boys (Mr G and after8mink) are downstairs watching a badly dubbed Chinese movie but I needed my bed. Replete, seasoned and sleepy.