I’ve just finished The Handmaid’s Tale, which now takes its place as the twelfth and almost certainly the last fiction book I’ll read this year. One a month: it’s not bad, I suppose, even if it doesn’t feel like much. And they were good books!
I don’t have time to write loads, because (a) I have to begin my review of the year before there is no year any more and (b) – the ‘normal’ option – I’ve got to dash off later to rendezvous with Abi, Oliver, Owen (& further unknowns) to see a Christmas show at the Globe, which should be fun fun fun. (Or ‘a family feast of carnival, comedy and Christmas cheer’, if you’d prefer.) So, briefly, two fun festive events! The first was a pub gig this Thursday past with Joshua, Niamh and Simon – situated in Archway, in the middle of a mysteriously byzantine road system and surrounded at the time by a snowstorm – which ended, as you can see, in some inspired dancing:
Looksee, a rival college scarf
Rage not against the machine, but rather against co-ordination itself
On the way home, after a chip/pita bread detour (tssht, Niamh, hummus is no match for ketchup), a momentous turning-of-the-tectonic-plate-tables took place, wherein the route of the last bus got me home before the Kilburn/Queens Park-dwellers. Mwha! And in fact, the buses were also relatively kind to us coming back from Secret Vegetarian Festive Dinner (Mach II) on Saturday night / Sunday morning. This was a most worthy sequel to last year’s event, once again very generously hosted by Abbi considering the level of carpet destruction which takes place, with another round of Secret Tikoloshe in which I acquired a pleasingly large box of Celebrations from Alice. (Thanks!) I have rather a lot of photos I’d like to include, which normally draws complaints, but please be assured that I could have posted pictures that were a lot, lot worse 
OtherEmily and Robert
Jakov and Robot
More modelling of Cambridge clothing!
Shiny happy people
Snow!
I think this is cute…
Rage against the machine x2
Christmas is coming, breakfast is at Jack’s
Merlin freed a dragon and Bill Compton’s coming back
Christian’s a space scientist, so here’s a Paradox for you
How are we going to hope without Tennant in Doctor Who?!
I’m still here! And I think I feel like writing a bit of rambling Tashaesque rundown, just to prove that I haven’t been hiding under a rock for the past week. Let’s count down the days…
Monday / Lundi!
Saoirse came over for tea, stayed for supper and tried to sell me TV Tropes for the n-th time. (She is so Badass Bookworm underneath it all… OK, OK, so it is both addictive and good. Like Lady Gaga or licking the baking spoon.)
Tuesday / Dienstag!
Had my traditional “I’m back!” lunch in the Corrib with Joshua. No more needs to be said: this is a tradition par excellence which you mess with at your peril, right down to pretending to scan the menu and then just-so-happening to have a burger. Mm.
Wednesday / Woensdag!
Noooooo… (etc)
LOOK! (Pssh… over there -> )
That’s right. This was the day I made my fateful discovery that Willesden Green Library Centre is currently cinema-less, the management having apparently ‘disappeared’. Hmmph. This is not acceptable: I don’t mind reading about high street closures on Nic’s blog, but depriving Willesden of a cinema means we’re now officially less cool than Rubery. Rubery! Good thing Lucy arrived on Wednesday, else I would have been tempted to storm the building and set up my own replacement finger puppet light show.
Thursday / गुरुवार!
Lucy and I lunched at the implausibly cheap The Stockpot off Leicester Square before heading to the Science Museum, because we’re obviously both Lovable Nerds. (‘Science’ consisted of random words from the Internet read out in a darkened room in the creepiest voice imaginable, some plastic drapes and a perfectly functioning game table in the glowy bit used to do extremely fun yet educational things.) Then it was off to almost-Hertfordshire for Abi’s house and some Merlin and True Blood, which again can be explained by how very very cool we are. Fun, though 
Friday / Fredag!
Oh, it’s alright – Willesden may no longer boast a cinema, but it turns out that it does have a previously undiscovered centre for rather nice milkshakes and cake. Boo yeah – take that, Rubery Smubery. Also of note: The Emperor’s New Groove remains in the top 15% of the ‘good things of the world’ list.
Like Christmas come early
Saturday / Sabato!
The Day Of The Great Cake Project, after Lucy wanted to do some baking and I wanted to do some chocolate cake eating. (I joke, but it should go down in the official record that this was a team effort, and there’s no Lucy-did-all-the-work in team.) Sugar-heavy cake left to cool, we then went to see Carolyn and ended up chillaxing (a word I think I use here because Tasha just walked in about 15 seconds ago) on set with the stars, as Alix prepared a showreel for an exciting audition. If only all films could have London Overground trains going by in the background, and then even bad films would become instantly lovable.
Everyone’s favourite
Sunday / Didòmhnaich!
Touchdown turnaround: Lucy departed for home very shortly before Sophie arrived in the neighbourhood to have dinner with the Selfs. After some tense rounds of Connect 4 and mum’s lovely cooking we headed off to Camden so that I could introduce yet-another-person to ‘mango’ beer, which was met with warm appreciation. In fact, Sophie loved night-time Camden in general, and it’s always nice in general to see London through a fresh pair of eyes. It may be one cinema down, but you just wouldn’t live anywhere else, would you?
I will resist starting a new cycle of the week, but just to note that I also caught up with Sanna today, who was lucky enough to catch the last of the cake before it vanished. Also: as of this morning we are down to a one solitary Windows XP machine, which will itself shortly be extinguished once mum’s shiny new laptop arrives. (Evil Laugh.) Blue may have been the colour of 2001, but it is so, so time to move on. To The Future!
OK… so this has been a bit of a long day, and I don’t want to drag it out for those involved, but I am going to blog it partly by way of explanation to those concerned by my unhappy tweet earlier. (Context: I came back home yesterday, after an occasionally stressful final week of term which nevertheless also produced a wonderful Christmas trip to Pizza Express and a couple of other really good nights with everyone.)
Basically, the core of the story is that my parents were out for a walk when a guy armed with a knife tried to get my mum’s handbag. Conflict ensued, and my dad ended up with several cuts to his head and one of his fingers. The first I heard of this was at home, halfway through mock-interviewing Tasha’s friend Sarah in preparation for her Oxford interview, when my mum popped her head through the door of the dining room, a police officer visible behind her, to quickly explain what had happened before going off to the hospital to rejoin dad. (My reaction, by the way, was to ask how he was and then shut the door again and carry on with the interview, which I hope doesn’t seem uncaring: my brain was just determined to finish what it was doing first, thank you very much.)
Later on, on my own, the house became a bit oppressive so I hopped across to the absolutely lovely next door neighbours, by which time I had heard more and knew that dad was going to be fine. So my fears shifted from ’emergency!’ to a desperate fear of fear of crime, because what scares me most of all is how easy it is to be shaken into fearing our own streets. But when everyone finally got home tonight I knew we weren’t going to let this happen. We’re all going to be OK, and although my parents were obviously lucky that it didn’t end much more tragically, they are – and have always been – fantastically good at setting an example in picking yourself up, counting your blessings and moving on. (Aren’t you glad at this very moment that we don’t all walk around with guns, for example? And live in the days of A&E departments?) And even after the attack, my mum remained cool \ bloody minded enough to hang on to most of her stuff, because it clearly hadn’t been a great day so far and no way in hell was she going to lose all of her bag in the process. So, in time, I’m sure both of my parents will emerge from the story looking actually pretty damn cool (but sshh!)
(I hope this doesn’t seem like I’m trying to downplay it all too much – I’m sure it was utterly horrible for them, and my afternoon worrying wasn’t particularly pleasant either. But we’ll survive!)
Thanks to everyone who tweeted, texted, phoned, Facebooked or made me cups of coffee – it was very good to speak to each and everyone of you 
Mirror universes exist!!1
Key points to note:
– I borrowed the top hat for the photo, obviously. (Believe it or not, but in black tie rather than white tie I was actually under-dressed.)
– I had taken it off by this point, but the Ken Livingstone badge made its proud appearance.
– The always-charming Cornellius did buy me a gin and tonic
– It was a good night, and I enjoyed it. But…
– At the end of the day, here’s to not being a conservative!
It’s Sophie’s birthday today! And, in fact, part of my lack of blogging for the past week has been having to keep under wraps my latest Silly Project prepared for today as a birthday present, to which Andy will no doubt wonder how much time I have on my hands. (The same amount of time as you, mate )
Produced together with Owen, Scotland Today, Scotland Tomorrow rested on a simple concept: if you don a suit and carry around a couple of cardboard props, it shouldn’t be difficult to convince the good people of Cambridge to donate a few minutes of their time to compare Gordon Brown to Sophie, the latter of whom morphed into increasingly absurd celebrity. (“…training to be the first Scottish astronaut…”) Sure enough, several kind souls did indeed agree to take part, no doubt partly lured by the offer of a free chocolate chip cookie, and to them I remain eternally grateful. Especially the cheerful Norwegian couple, as well as the dude who agreed to stand on a photo of Brown halfway through the interview to signify his distaste. Go go fake news!
Scenes from ‘Scotland Today, Scotland Tomorrow’
In non-fake ‘actual events’, Leonard and Sabina returned to Cambridge last weekend to take me out for lunch and argue about politics ‘n’ stuff – thanks muchly to them. And on Wednesday night we properly inaugurated a real Yuletide spirit by going to the annual Footlights panto, which was (as you might expect) lots of fun. (Did you know that I once saw Jim Davidson in panto? It was probably the single biggest deviation by my mother from the principles of good parenting, and equally inexplicable, since she’s hardly a fan of him either. Maybe it was a test of taste.)
And speaking of deviations: I now have two black-tie dinners in a row, after which I might just have to compensate by walking around in pyjamas for a week. Tonight is Sophie’s birthday dinner which offers the utterly intriguing ability to meet her parents (who most probably do not, as our film claimed at one point, “own six percent of Scotland”). Tomorrow is far less excusable – I’m going, in a ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of spirit, to the CUCA Chairman’s Dinner. Wearing a Ken Livingstone badge as a protective political talisman, of course. Bring on the quail… 
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
