Right.  So, now the bridesmaid dress shopping is done and dusted, and Eff has a glorious wedding dress and we bridesmaids also have lovely dresses which we seriously managed to choose in five minutes flat, and all I need to do is a. sort out shoes/underwear/accessories for self and b. make Eff a wedding stole because, you know, one just does that for one's bestest friend in the world since Uni, you guys get a list

• Order Habu Fine Kid Mohair
• Brownie Accounts
• Guide Sleepover Accounts  How did I lose a fiver?  Hope it turns up, because I've just subbed in my own cash...
• Dishy Barrister's Wedding Reception
• High speed manicure & pedicure  I know.  Logic evidently not at its strongest, I painted my toenails and left my fingernails be.  Thus, I knew my toenails were lovely but hidden in my shoes, and the  lighting was so low, no-one cared about my fingers.  Somehow, this helped.
• Download & Install recording software for tomorrow.  Try to test.
• Iron dress sash
• Do recordings for the annual Christmas CD  These are mostly done.  We did wonder what on earth my Father was doing when he started singing at one point.  However, we love him for it.
• Get nibbly stuff for people.  Far too cold, it snowed on Saturday night and I wouldn't go out on Sunday.  Fortunately, people brought nibbly stuff.
• Work out how many guides on sleepover thirteen and counting
• Start my evidence folder for sleepover.
• Sort out nearest hospital/doctor/etc for sleepover  Delegated this onto the First Aider, as really, that's her job.
• Check ice rink open for sleepover  Oh, curses.  It is closed for repairs to the condenser fans....

OK.  I need to be in Bond Street by 6.30pm.  I should get ready now so that I don't rush the lippy.

xxx

I feel as though I am getting left behind....

xxx

"I've got an MSc", thus my squawk of outrage as Indiana Jones informs another don, who had been to an interesting lecture about DNA and the way we damage it on such a frequent basis (apparently merely by existing, and how it repairs itself - if we understand this, then, apparently, we can work out why it goes wonky (tumours) and thus how to stop it going wonky (cure cancer in some point in the future when we're all living on pills so we don't damage our DNA)), that we can't possibly understand what he's on about since we're not scientists.

"I'm sure there's a pill you can take for that." is the laconic response.  The heathen doesn't appreciate the original William Morris wallpaper in the drawing room in his college either, and would prefer Pompeiian red paint (at which point I put in my one piece of classical knowledge about Romans and that they believed colour played a role in stimulating the digestive system) but did treat me to a jolly nice lunch so we won't be too rude about him.  He's got the loveliest office sort of over a bridge, with a bay window.  What it is to be a Fellow in Cambridge.  I got all over excited when I got a window in my office, and even then it's got slats and frosted glass (there is an overlooking private residence).

Acksually, I'm a Renaissance Woman: I got lucky with a BA in History and then an MSc in Information Processing: Computers and the Man Machine Interface.  I would like to thank my parents for all their support, and ensuring that I knew enough about sewing to darn my jeans and thus keep body and soul together as a student because I didn't buy new jeans and bought food and books instead.  This may make me a Jack of all trades, to be honest.  She does history!  She knits!  She sews!  She soups up the memory and changes the page file size!  She writes!  She dances!  And, she's got pretty nice legs too

Today I have been to the Fitzwilliam Museum (worthy but boring: art makes me fidgety unless it's Degas, Monet, Italian Renaissance or pictures of people I've learnt about in history), The Archaeology and Anthropology Museum (liked the anthropology bit, particularly the Finnish mitten which was knitted using a one-needle technique), and the Folk Museum (BRILLIANT!).  I feel like I have walked over every single bridge in Cambridge in order to identify the bridge that the actors jumped off at the end of the first episode of Cambridge Spies.  It's St John's Bridge, and I think they set up a camera in someone's back garden, since I couldn't get that angle at all.  Much of the rest seems to have been filmed at King's.  I trespassed into St John's, as I was at the back and couldn't face going the long way round to get in at the front.  Since I am regularly mistaken for a student, despite the fact that I do not knot my scarf in the fashionable, Cambridge, manner, I got away with this.  I was very good.  I took pictures of the bridge, and from the bridge, and then wandered out the front door without poking about any further.  Wandered into Marks & Spencer, invested in some new knickers (5 pairs for £4.80, instead of £6), wandered to Sainsbury to get supper, and had an in depth conversation about Brownies with the lady at the checkout, which totally held up the queue, and thus back to the billet.

My feet ache again.  And I have to go home tomorrow.  Boo.

xxx

Draft 4 version 2 (don't ask) of The Book has been packed up and sent off, as it were.  This leaves me with a day in Cambridge, to play with.  Lunch with Indiana Jones is about the only thing on the agenda.  He bounced into the Classics Library today, and I was miles away.  Didn't notice him until he was about 2 feet away and was decidedly dazed when I did realise he was there.

Dazed owing to the fact that my head was where my book is, not because he makes me go all dizzy.  I mean, he's perfectly lovely and all, but, really, I stand no chance whatsoever there so he's another one of my good male friends instead.  Along with his brother.

Anyhow, lunch tomorrow.  I shall go a-museuming in the morning.  To the Folk Museum, perhaps the Anthropology Museum too.  I'm not sure whether the plan is to be smuggled into King's College in the afternoon (if Indiana Jones takes me, then I don't have to pay), or to continue to museum.  I may hire a punt and a person to punt it.  Just for the sheer fun of it.

xxx

In his defence, the secondhand bookshop he told me about was more of a him bookshop than a me bookshop (he's a fellow in Ancient History at one of the Cambridge Colleges).  I still ended up with five books, one of which is an early impression of The Young Visiters, and three of which are destined for presents.  The last is a first edition by Peneople Lively, which looks rather intriguing.

Today, I walked, I wrote, I had a cup of tea and a conversation with a real, live, person who was sitting in front of me (my first since about Friday - all other conversations have been on the phone), I wrote some more, I had a very late lunch of a flapjack, wrote yet more, and came back to the billet via said secondhand bookshop.  I feel utterly exhausted.  Tomorrow suggests there will be much more of the same.

Thursday looks up: I'm going for lunch in one of the Colleges (not high table) and I might just be smuggled into the back of King's College so that I can look at the bridge in Cambridge Spies (which is supposed to be Trinity College Bridge, but isn't).

I am too tired to write more.

xxx

It is amazing what you can get done without internet.

I went to the Classics Faculty Library today (Indiana Jones is a fellow of the Classics Faculty in Cambridge, so said I could go in there, and give his name if there were any problems.  As it was, no-one bothered to ask who I was, although my Oyster Card set off the alarm at the entrance).  Nice and quiet, no internet, and the Book is now substantially longer and rather more structured.  Plus I discovered that I'd already re-written one of the chapters that I thought needed rewriting (you see how often I get to work on this thing?!)

Tomorrow there shall be some tidying, some correcting, some note taking.  I must say, though, that if one has been waiting to write a chapter for about three months, when one finally gets the opportunity, it does tend to flow out rather more quickly.  If you know you only have five days in which to do some work, and then there may not be an opportunity for close to a year again, you tend to write.  None of this "well, I can only write with a Waterman pen, at a Louis XIV escritoire," or "I must have a shed in the garden, a blanket, an American legal pad and a yellow pencil."  No.  You get on with it.  I have written in all sorts of places, at all sorts of times including, bed, a bar, someone's sitting room, on a coach, in a library, on the sofa (my preferred spot), and, after a rather debilitating batch of writer's block, on the train from Highbury & Islington to Camden Road.  Today I put my head down at elevenish, and surfaced round about threeish when I realised that I ought to have some lunch.  The Buttery served me very well, with a baked potato, baked beans and tea for about £3.  This meant that I could squander most of the rest of my food budget on books in the Haunted Bookshop. I now have rather too many copies of 'School at the Chalet', but my new copy is about 68 years old, and has a frontispiece.

I am also rather losing patience with those of my acquaintance who have been writing up their PhDs as long as I have known them (i.e. years), and who still haven't managed to get done.  Indiana Jones put his head down, and got on with it, and I respect him greatly.  He submitted in time to read the last Harry Potter without that hanging over him.

Supper.  Am hungry.  And I want to watch

I don't know what I want to watch.  Entertainment.

xxx

Today, in Oxfam, I scored a First Edition With Dust Jacket of Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.  And, more excitingly, there is a pattern torn out of a magazine stuck in the pages - of a Lace Chevalier Collar by Mrs Kinzel.  Moreover, there is a little bit of history about her and her company.  I had not realised that she was an adopted Englishwoman, having been born in Austria.  This is what happens when books are published only by American publishers.  One loses all sense of geography. 

I simply could not be more excited.  I obviously need to get out more, or sleep more, or something, as I have lost all sense of what normal people might call perspective.  As well as the plot (does anyone seriously know what the plot actually is?).

Or, I could just be channelling Franklin.  At iKnit London on Thursday night, he read two excerpts from his book, one of which was about knicker-knitters (oooh, isn't that alliterative?!) and one about the masochistic pleasure of knitting lace.  I do like Franklin.  I was lucky enough to go to Chicago in March, and there, with Sara, I had my photo taken for the 1,000 knitters project.  Airily, Franklin announced that it would only take about half an hour.  Somehow or other, the entire morning disappeared in a joyful discussion of English Literature, London, Sam West (so when I went to New York to see Sam in Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, I got Sam's autograph for Franklin), children's books, E.M. Forster, Mary Poppins and the like.  So, when Franklin came over with his Tom, we had to meet for drinks the night before the madness of iKnit London: and we had a lovely hour before jetlag overtook the boys, and then I took the two of them over to iKnit London.  Some things work better with an adopted Londoner.  Double decker buses are one of them, although we nearly played dominos as the bus stopped at Waterloo.  The thing about London Buses is that the drivers have this tendency to slam on the brakes as all the anti-congestion measures and bus lanes mean that they can hit a top speed of about 30 miles an hour, and they do.  The drivers have also not heard about slowing down.  So they slam on the brakes.  Hard.  Without warning.  Franklin (being the smallest of us) was at the bottom of the stairs, Tom, the tallest (he plays rugby, which opened up a whole new avenue of conversation) was at the top.  I used my superior holding-onto-the-handrail skills or it could have been very messy since I was in the middle and I am clumsy, and the other two were surprised.

I didn't manage to get a copy of "It Itches!", but the author, I hear, doesn't have a copy either.  This makes me feel slightly better.  There were only 20 copies to go round, and about three times that many people in the shop, and several copies had been pre-ordered so some of us would have to be disappointed.  I am, however, happily snuggling some lush Sundara which was brought over as a present, and I have a rather natty tote bag with a cartoon  from the book upon it, which is sitting with my holiday knitting snuggled up inside.

Once the signing was done, and there wasn't much more to say, we meandered off to Joe Allen's (one of Mum's favourites, I think - I remember going there about 15 years ago, and, goodness, I am getting old as I would swear I am no older than 25 but I definitely wasn't 10 when I went there), and had one of those dinners where the conversation just flowed, there was a wee bit of wine, and a lot of giggling and a group photo at the end and I am beginning to run on a little.  It was a very late night, for a school night, but a very good night. 

The world needs more good nights like that.

xxx

The bed is harder than I'm used to - and a single bed, so less room to fling about.  The duvet spent much of the night trying to escape (I have blankets at home, because I am a restless sleeper and tend to fling about and dislike having random body parts suddenly cold).  The alarm clock, for some odd reason, hummed until I put it on the Body and Soul section of The Times.  There is Digital TV and I am listening to Digital Radio 2, which is more than I can do on the TV at home.  It rains.  I love holidaying in England!

I was in bed, ready to sleep, at 9.30pm.  I was asleep by the time I got a text at 10.15pm...I could do with a tad more sleep.  I could also do with some shampoo and conditioner as I have washed my hair in shower gel.  I am full of porridge, and neither alert, nor awake nor enthusiastic.

Right.  Cambridge.  Are you ready for me?  Am I ready for the bicycles?  Will John Lewis have jingle bells?  This, thus, is the plan.  Finish reading 'School at the Chalet', head into town, let ideas percolate, sort out those items I forgot to bring on holiday with me (shampoo, conditioner, a map of Cambridge), and then come back to the billet and write that book....

xxx

• Pack naturally, I have worked out which knitting to take, but not much else.  Well, books.  I am taking the books that are on the 1001 books list and also need to go back to the library Monday week.  Also going are the DVDs of Casino Royale, Cambridge Spies, Torchwood, Enchanted and Dr Who.  I have eclectic tastes.
• Brownie Accounts (I want to ignore them, but I shall feel bad if I do)   If I do not leave soon, I shall never actually GO on holiday.  So they are ignored
• Note for flatmate with emergency numbers
• Vaguely tidy up post-packing
• Various blog related items
• Work out where to get jingle bells  Huzzah!  Cambridge has a John Lewis!
• Sort out craft for sleepover.  Possibly need paint.  I know we lack green paint at Brownies, but considering the unadulterated MESS that they made last night, I am in no hurry.  They enjoyed themselves, unlike poor Brown Owl who was wiping the floor and the walls in an effort to disguise the mess.  The new caretaker at the hall is not a patch on the old one.
• Go on holiday
• Watch Quantum of Solace while on holiday
• Chase A/Ac form  First, require phone number of woman who is supposed to have mailed it to me.
• Mail Thank You veterans All addressed, needs LARGE stamp.
• Restrain self from worrying about entire rugby team, and whether they're injuring themselves at today's match (last year, when they went over to Paris, one of them came back with his leg in several pieces).  I know they are mostly twice my size, apart from the wingers and hooker, but I worry about them.  They are students, I am staff - and as the guy in the Finance Programme Office says, to a degree, we are still in loco parentis.  Fret, fret, fretty, fret.  We won!  We won!  They are all in one piece and we won!  Danced round train carriage in relief.  Am sure there will be various drink related injuries in the course of the evening, but that is something that I do not worry so much about.

xxx

"I used to like command line, when I understood it."

Goosh it...

xxx