Julie's Fundraising Tips

The best marathon fundraising suggestions so far have come from Mad Irish Julie:

- Organise a Bern-style onion market (she has even offered to help make onion figures)

- Sleep with celebrity, eg Kofi Annan or Kate Moss, and sell story to tabloid

- Sell James's possessions on ebay

All great ideas, apart from the fact that I may have to delegate the task of sleeping with Kofi Annan - any volunteers?

London Marathon - Rejected Yet Again!

I don't think I managed to get a place in this year's London marathon. Cheques of those successful in the ballot were cashed today, and there's no evidence of mine having been cashed. I feel rather melancholy, especially as I felt so big and clever yesterday for having completed my first long run in ages. So now I have to decide whether to go for a charity place, in which case I'll have to promise to raise at least £1500, or try another marathon. I really want to run for one of the breast cancer charities - in the last year, my Fairy Godmother, my friend Liane and my bedder have all been diagnosed with breast cancer. And I love running the London marathon - it's got to be one of the best in terms of atmosphere and crowd support. So, thinking caps on for fund-raising ideas. Getting James to shave off his beard? Raffling off the Finn's motorbike? A sponsored shagathon? Setting up a gambling den in college? Or, James's idea - blackmailing people! Yes, yes... London, here I come!

Chickens and their Short-Term Memories

One of mum's chickens died at the weekend - I hope it wasn't the one that liked being cuddled and used to stand in front of you with its wings slightly raised like a toddler asking to be picked up. Anyhoo, Mum wants to get a couple of young chickens to add to the brood. Megan, chicken expert that she is, informed her that the best way to introduce new chickens is to add them to the coop at night - that way, the old birds wake up the next day thinking the young'uns have always been there. Not the best of short-term memories, apparently. If you introduce new chickens during the day they get BULLIED; introduce them at night and the next morning they're already part of the posse: the senile older ones wake up, look at the new birds that are to all intents and purposes complete strangers, and think "Oh look! You again! How nice."

James is now threatening to start putting new things in my room at night, eg a baby or a pet crocodile or a rhubarb plant, to see if my brain works the same way. Performing these experiments on me is apparently just his way of showing that he cares...

Are All Beautiful Things Essentially Flawed?

Today we had our first lecture of the year with our favourite Dreamy Medieval Lecturer. I went to all his lectures last year and very cleverly wrote my notes in shorthand: however, instead of writing them up at a later date as intended, I ended up throwing them away by mistake during a particularly brutal clear-out during the Christmas holidays (nearly as daft as Simone, who wrote one of her lecture notes on a particularly beautiful leaf - which disintegrated some months later). The end result of my incompetence is not an entirely unhappy one - it simply means I must attend his lectures all over again. Today, I decided to sit right at the front of the lecture hall so that I could admire him in all his beauty. Only it turns out he's not quite so beautiful as I thought he was: for one thing, he has a very squished nose. He must have got into a bit of a medieval punch-up in a pub at some stage of his life (probably in a disagreement over the importance of the liturgical calendar in Chaucer's writings, I should imagine). And his hair colour is definitely out of a bottle. Result: I'm sitting towards the back from now on, where I can admire him in a less critical light. Because from about 6 rows back, he really is a perfectly dreamy academic. And his lectures are pretty good too!

Losing My Marbles

Should I be worried?

- Tuesday night I burn my hand taking something out of the oven. I run it under the tap then fill a bowl with cold water, put it on the table and put my hand in it for some time waiting for the pain to die down. Then for the next 2 days, cleaning up the kitchen I keep walking past the bowl and thinking: "I wonder what this bowl is doing here?" or "why has James put this bloody bowl of water here?" or "when is James going to move this sodding bowl". I finally asked him why he had left it there and questioned whether he had left it near the radiator to moisten the air to ease his asthma. He looked at me like I was completely bonkers and told me to sit down and think about it... It took me ages to remember I had left the thing there in the first place.

- There have been many other such incidents, but being senile as I am I can't bloody remember any of them!

And to think I used to organise Ambassadors (not very well, admittedly). Apparently, medical research has recently proved that running for 30 minutes twice a week can reduce the likelihood of the onset of dementia by up to 50%. So - I think it's definitely time to put my running shoes on. If only I could remember where I left them...

Done!

No photo (apathy reigns supreme) but the flat is now looking as though it is fit for human habitation. Now all I have to do is:

1. Read Arnold's essay on the function of criticism (what's the point in shagging an English PhD student if he refuses to summarise such things for you? He's being monstrously unfair...)

2. Read Andromache in French (have already read it in English, which doesn't make it much more comprehensible)

3. Begin dissertation.

4. Begin marathon training.

What I really want to do, however, is have an afternoon nap. And a cup of tea. And a penguin biscuit. But not all at the same time.

Playing at Being Grown-Ups

Well, we have finally moved into the flat. Compared to our old living quarters, it's huuuuuuge. We have space to run wild and free and, more importantly, to play hide and seek! We no longer have to share a single bed. We have more than one cupboard in the kitchen. People can no longer chav our food from a communal fridge. It's great. At the moment, however, we are unable to see the bedroom floor for all my clothes - there's just not enough storage space for all my needs - and my job today is to tidy it up so that we can allow the cleaner to come in without finding it too embarrassing. I've been putting the task off for many days now, even going to extremes such as getting very drunk on Saturday night so that I suffered a monstrous hangover all day yesterday and thus avoided the obligation to do any tidying whatsoever. And that's what this blog is really all about - procrastination!

But the procrastination ends here! Tomorrow I will put photos of our clean and tidy flat on here. I will, I will, I will...