That's the most important thing about today.  Cold.  Very.  Brass monkey.  Rubbish.

There are all kinds of philosophical things I would like to talk about, mainly because I went to a talk on Substance Dualism last night at the Union Society - it wasn't great.  You know when the bloke picks up a wad of sheets and starts with the phrase "In this paper I am going to..." you're in for a dull night.  And my God, the Philosophy talks bring out the obnoxious question askers.  Really.

But tonight I am going to see J and A Streetcar Named Desire, quite probably simultaneously.  This is quite exciting.

It's odd, I was expecting this year to get quite a lot more bleak more often, but while I've been swingier than usual, especially during the plays, and the odd bit of homesickness, I've noticed it a lot less.  Maybe I've just found more people who get it worse.

Speaking of home, I'm going tomorrow, so I shall be off the radar until Monday morning most likely (that includes phones, I have no signal at home.  Not quite sure how I'll manage Christmas...).  This is very exciting.  I can't wait to sleep in a bed with a decent sized mattress, for a start.

"I eat my peas with honey,
I've done it all my life.
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on the knife." - Anon.

My grease paint palette came through today, which was highly exciting, along with various powders, glues and miscellaneous sponges.  So there, obviously, disappeared all chance of working all afternoon.  I include a photo, for anyone vaguely interested, of myself after an hour working the herbal emo look (click on it, it gets bigger.  And do disregard the splodge, won't you?).  It was so very much fun.  Maybe, soon, I'll get good at it.  Either way it's very exciting, and I'm enjoying it lots.  There's something about painting a cut on oneself, thinking it looks awful, and then looking in the mirror and seeing that from a distance it stands out and looks properly realistic.  Hurrah.

Other than that, I have done an hour and a half's work and feel quite pleased with myself.  Considering recent misadventures, it's probably a record.

Here is something to ponder that I have been thinking about for most of today (I had a lecture on the UK Constitution this morning, can you tell?): nobody, theoretically, can stop Parliament passing any law it wants.  The courts can't.  The House of Lords can't stop the Commons doing what it wants, ultimately.  So with the Lords not being elected, and the Government being so disciplined with all its party whips and allegiences, who should we be putting our faith in?  What happens if it all goes wrong?  Are there any absolutes out there or is it all relatives?  And if everything is relative, why has nobody stepped in to change the bits that obviously aren't working?  I think I need to sit down with a pencil and paper.

Part of me is very glad that I haven't had thinking time much this last week.

Last night after the aftershow party I went online and talked to M.  I am angry with myself for getting into a state.

My mood has been swinging without warning or notice, from sparkling silver to black and back again in ten minutes.  I have been latching onto people, and last week I morphed into the sort of person I used to be and hated every time I noticed.  When my money comes through in a few days I keep thinking about a grease paint palette I have bookmarked for buying - I have such an urge to spend an evening covering my arms and legs in splodges of colour and bruise, stipple green and yellow and red all over my shoulders and stomach and then tiptoe across to the shower with it all hidden under my dressing gown, and just scrub it all off.  I won't.  But at the moment I feel like it.  Maybe I will sit in front of the mirror and paint butterflies round my eyes again, like when I was eleven and in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It has alternated between sleet, snow, rain and hail for the last few days, today I got caught in a hailstorm three times and twice out of them I walked up to the library, into the wind, with my eyes scrunched up thinking about hot baths.  Before then, as in last week, I was inside for most of it.  There is an argument, used by legal positivists, that just because something is natural doesn't mean that it is the right thing.  They mean this with how we act, and on how we reconcile or differentiate law and morality.  If you'd asked me two months ago I would have said, oh no, I think naturalism has a lot going for it, positivism doesn't explain half of what is there.  Just you wait, they said, you'll start questioning naturalism soon.  Well I am, and I haven't done any Law in a week, but I am coming across more and more things that are natural but are not the right thing.

Define natural.

I can never remember which is sympathy and which is empathy.  I haven't even listened this week.  Right.  That is it.  (And I have said this before and I do try, I do, even though I have no idea if it makes any difference.)  From now, while I have thinking time, I am going to consciously make a great effort to be a better person.

"'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the Law,
And argued each case with my wife.
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life.'" - Lewis Carroll

It is half past ten.  I am in my pyjamas listening to Lau and assessing the situation, which is as follows:

1. Tonight is the last night of Peter Pan, and also there is a matinee at two o'clock, so I really do have very little time to think and should probably be thinking about coffee and a shower right about now.
2. Last night a group of us all went out after the show and I got tipsy without embarassing myself for the first time in ages.  The group of tech people I know better than the others (there are five of us - K, A, R, T and myself) ignored that the cast were going in one direction and went to meet a few others with the result that I spent Friday night in various pubs, over gin and tonic, and just randomly wandering about town a bit looking in wonder at the girls in four inch heels and no skirts.  I think I've had a lucky escape.
   
3. Hence the world is a good place, full of good people; I've got onto the Gala show and am slowly but surely building the reputation of If It's In Durham And You Can Buy It I Know Where It Is, therefore it seems to be the case that after weeks of obsessing I am getting invited back.  Chiz chiz chiz.
   
4. Plus there is a 50:50 possibility that I've found housemates for the year.  (Five of us!  I mean, coincidence?) - Most of them are yet to realise this, but I'm really not bothered by most of the people on my corridor... I'll be sad not to live with a few of them but it's SO comforting to think that I might have found people.
   
5. I am achey and a bit headachey.  Most of this is lugging stuff about and lack of sleep; can't tell if it was last night as well, but HAH and good luck for tonight.  I'm thinking caffeine.
6. It is dawning on me that I have done precisely no work this week (no joke, I have turned up to lectures and that is IT, comprehensively it).  Oh well, what can you do?
7. At half past two this morning, just before I went to bed, I scribbled something on the nearest notebook (of which I always have two open in my room... just in case) - which at the time I thought very important.  "WE ARE ALL LOOKING FOR APPROVAL."  Laughably melodramatic.  Well done me.  I think I was thinking about A getting wasted and inviting himself over to the tech director's house instead of walking up to college.  And T being completely silent in a conversation about Duke of Edinburgh and hiking.  And K getting the others to explain various horrifically complicated technical terms to her, so she'd be able to understand.  And various people I know from all over the place: maybe that's why we relied on Poetry Society so much.  Or why going down to Sheffield the other week was so comforting and like a breath of fresh air.
8. Another situation is this: I think I've got a stalker.  Oh GOD.  On which probably more later as I should probably go and put some coffee on, and wake up.

And then tomorrow it is back to the grindstone and I should really be getting on with this essay.

(Added: also, yet again, xkcd makes the world a far better place.  This struck far too much of a chord... http://www.xkcd.com/507/ )

It's ten to one, as I write this.  I got back ten minutes ago, and have since been checking my e-mails, trying to work out how many splinters I have, washing paint off my hands, etc.  Wondering, mainly, where the hell I am expected to get a klaxon from for tomorrow morning.

I have mostly been in the theatre today so this is mostly going to be another theatrical post, I'm afraid.  And probably quite a bitch as well.

The fact of the matter being that I feel like a bit of a bitch at the moment; I get to a certain degree of feeling tired, not being able to see the end, and exasperation with everyone nearby that all pacifism goes out the window, I start to yell "SHIT!" every time my phone, as it has been doing every half a minute this evening, randomly turns itself off.  I start threatening to shoot anyone who touches the props table (it is a big deal, if you break another pair of handcuffs I will personally hunt you down, ditto if you put anything back in the wrong place, now get out of the way I have a chest of drawers to move).  I have also discovered quite how egocentric the world of the actor is.  They - we - don't realise quite how much running around after them there is.  Or how other people have jobs during scene changes - it's called scene changing - and therefore they will have to get their own props on occasions.  It would also be helpful if their own props happened to be on the props table, as opposed to just having been picked up by someone who's not in this scene because they want to have a play with the retractable daggers, or flicking the flick-knife.

There are several people for whom my respect has risen markedly in the last few hours.  Very, very much.  Not that I had a low opinion of them in the first place.  Other people, on the other hand, I can feel my tolerance waning with.  I am not good at this sort of thing - tolerance under pressure is not my forte, and now I feel like an utter cow, but someone has to take the initiative, or more accurately more than a few people have to otherwise those few just feel it so much more.

At times like this I wish I were physically stronger, and heavier.

Maybe you'll get something coherent, or back on track, tomorrow.  More likely Thursday.  For all you to whom I have not written in the last few days, I really am truly sorry, I was going to this morning but I got a call and had to run and get another half a dozen things.  I rang my mum for about four minutes on the way to rehearsal this afternoon, after a missed call from her and not having spoken to her since Friday.  She asked if I'd been doing any work during all this stuff for the theatre, in that tone that says what you're doing isn't important, your priorities had better be the same as mine young lady otherwise you will never manage to do what you want to do (I'm not even going to think about this or I will end up in tears again) - still, I feel a tinge of guilt for lying to her.

And yet still I think, all these short notice things, all this extra turning up to paint, trying my best to lug things about and put my all into it - they've got to have me back after this, haven't they?

Went to see East last night at the Assembly Rooms - not quite sure what I was expecting, but what happened quite categorically wasn't it.  It was very good.  So dark it could conceivably have gone round again.  Effortlessly energetic - or apparently so, and that takes skill.  Cleverly written, cleverly directed, cleverly performed by actors who it appears have not an ounce of shame between them.  A short section of 1930s silent cinema, complete with pianist.  The world's scariest makeup, or at least among the ranks of same.  Several graphically suggestive (? does that make sense?) sex scenes.  And physical theatre... R. R. O. of the Theatre and Performing Arts Dept. would have enjoyed herself immensely, I feel.  In fact... about halfway through... there was a scene in a fairground and I thought hang on, I've seen this before.  I've been this before.  I have in fact studied several sections of this (the motorbike bit as well) without realising it.

How odd.

As things are, though, otherwise, I think the technical term is "like death warmed up".  I feel tired and headachey, my shoulders ache (although that's unrelated, that's stress) and there is a ringing in my ears every so often.  The sixth and seventh paracetamol of the day (about an hour ago) failed to have any effect whatsoever and thus I have done nothing today, except for discover that I have more things to do, agree to spend most of tomorrow doing them, and glue a bit of stick to one end of a (formerly squeaky) truncheon.  (It's currently next to my sink being propped up to dry on my copy of "A Memory of Solferino".  I therefore feel a bit like I'm spitting on history, but it was the only book smaller than 200 pages that I could find...)

I found out earlier that I have been lucky, in that I wear walking boots and rarely skirts, and rarely go out to clubs any more, and make a flamboyant idiot out of myself when I'm drunk, to have found my own friends.  That is, if I hadn't done so I would now be alone, completely alone because of the certain degree of social snobbery that there is situated yards from me.  Basically I am the only girl on my corridor who does not get told when they are all going out, even for people's birthdays, any more.  But I'm not lonely (and only slightly wistful...) because I have my own friends, or at least I do if I work hard and keep up this enthusiasm and walk down over Kingsgate bridge twice a day to see what I can do to help.  I'm so tired at the moment but part of me dreads the play being over (end of next week!) because then I've run out of excuses.  And I'm back to my room, like the second night of Freshers' week, wondering if I only tried harder whether they would like me or whether they would tell me (like has happened to other people recently) politely but firmly to find my own friends.

The rest, at the moment, I fail to comprehend.

...I was going to say "feminist" but I'm not even sure it's that.  Feminism as it should be is synonymous with egalitarianism, or at least if it isn't I'd quite like somebody to explain why not, and that is not what I'm trying to say.

What I'm trying to say is that I, personally, 5ft 5 in 18-year-old female that I happen to be, am not, and have never been an object.  What I'm saying is that I have never been "stolen" from anyone, by anyone, and it continues to piss me off when I remember the term being used.  It means that no, hell, I'm not going to borrow your jacket because I'm feeling the cold slightly more than you.  I am not here for you to look at, and talk about, and make snide, knowing comment about because you think I haven't guessed the contents of this legendary Conversation You Had Earlier.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm not an idiot, and I'm not passive, and I am not here to be the object of the unrequitedness of any tosser who likes it when someone talks Hitchhiker's Guide to them.

Honestly.  They're worse than schoolgirls.

In other news I have been props-buying today, and getting covered in sawdust, and generally doing useful things and ticking them off my list.  Which is all well and good.  I get very uppity, as perhaps you can tell, about not being thought of as capable, and I quite like the theatre because one is expected to be capable.  Maybe that's why I liked Guides as well.  Wussing out isn't an option.

And yes, yes I did - do - help at Girl Guides.  And yes.  I knit.  And yes.  I watch Strictly Come Dancing.  And YES.  I enjoy all of it, and I do not do not do not appreciate being made to feel inferior by people who have time on their hands, respond to stress in a different way to me or have read, watched or listened to something I haven't.  I can't help but think I'm not the one missing something here.

I could very well snap this evening if it doesn't go according to plan.

It's been one of those days; I've been headachey and tired, had huge amounts of work to do, a tutorial I don't feel like I've prepared for properly and no motivation to read for tomorrow's.  Tomorrow morning's.  I just can't concentrate.

Comprehensively failed to get any washing done today - I ended up falling asleep after lunch for an hour and a half and feeling only slightly better for it.  Let me put this in perspective: I don't sleep during the day.  Ever.  I can't.  On the infrequent occasions where I try, I lie awake for twenty minutes then give up and read a book.  It has been this way since I can remember, my mum always used to complain that as a toddler I didn't sleep.  I wasn't even out last night, I went to bed at just gone eleven having been on Youtube watching clips of Tim Minchin, so I've no idea what's brought this on.  During Fresher's week, I did not nap.  It did not happen.  And yet within minutes I was out like a light, having a really weird dream (involving the Jolly Postman, a chat show and a certain quantity of duct tape - say what you will about my psyche) and bloody glad I set an alarm for an hour and a quarter later otherwise I would just not have woken up.

Tonight, in about twenty minutes, I am going out.  I am going to go dancing, and if they do not let me do the foxtrot or quickstep, or if I have an entirely impossible partner, or if they make me do the jive at double-quick speed and I trip over my own feet, I shall not be impressed.  As things stand I'll probably end up in tears.

After that, actually, I have a choice of socials: Latin-themed dancing one, or theatre one to be conducted, if previous experience means anything, almost entirely in techie-speak.  I really ought to go to the last one.  We'll see how it goes.  If it kills me I will get to the end of this week.  For all those expecting miracles, I shall tell you now: Saturday before about 4pm has been written off.  Whatever you want, no.  Comprehensively, all-inclusively written off.  Sorry about that.  Consider this written notice.

In a month or so, all the students the country over traipse home for Christmas, back to people we love who don't mind our quirks and oddities, who get all the references and in-jokes that have been there for years and years.  We find out how we've changed, got more restless, maybe, or in my case developed a fully fledged five-mugs-a-day coffee addiction.  I'll sit on the end of my bed and miss the mounds of paper covering the desktop, or clothes covering the floors, or books piled high across the windowsill or leaning against the walls.  It'll still be my room, but I've changed apart from it and I don't doubt that it's changed apart from me.  Someone must have vacuumed by now, for a start.

I can reacquaint myself with the kitchen: the glass mixing bowl I seemed to use more than the rest of the house put together, a decent oven, grill, hob.  Microwave splatter-free.  Fridge with things in it.  Toaster, not furnicular, that actually toasts bread rather than warming it gently for thirty seconds.  And elsewhere, a decent sized TV, with ITV Crime and Thriller Weekends (which I have missed monumentally).  A sofa without chipboard about an inch below the top of the cushion.  A real, full-sized ironing board that I can use when I wish.

The makings of Christmas.  A few years ago, I was out the day they decorated the tree and I came home and it was done.  I used to like setting it up, taking it out of the box and carefully unfolding all the branches so it looked properly bushy.  The lights at the front of the house used to be hung out of my bedroom window, which always involved an argument with my dad about how on earth he was going to get all the way in past the bed and across to the window when it was looking like this tip.  It's strange to be this far removed from it all.

I wonder how much I'll be spending on train fares.

It's been one of those days when it's not raining, not spitting, more like downwards-moving fog.  The sky is the grey of ineffective rubbings out of pencil marks, and there have been umbrellas everywhere - I don't like umbrellas, because as a general rule the people underneath them are suddenly under the impression that they own the pavement for being so Organised, plus the umbrellas themselves seem to get in the way of everyone they can get away with while at the same time being completely ineffectual.  Plus, it's only water.  Not hydrochloric acid.

I did see a lad walking down the road with his rucksack balanced on his head, it did amuse me somewhat, but I'm sure somewhere in his mind there is logic.

In an hour, I think I am intended to be helping carry three full sized single bed mattresses across the Bailey from Chad's to the Assembly Rooms.  This may well be eventful, if not to say slightly damp.

Going to the theatre with K tonight.  As members of the audience only.  Cor.  What larks.  I will get this reading done eventually, I promise.

...And the rest of the world lets its breath out in relief.

It's still America, there is still a certain set of values and the polar ice caps are still melting, the rainforests still disappearing, the temperature still rising.  These latter, of course, are not solely the responsibility of the Americans, but the world continues to turn.  There are still people getting killed in conflict across the world instigated by America, but at least now we as a world are one step closer to, if not making it all better, then at least making some of it better.  The promises have been made - it remains to be seen, of course, whether they are kept - but for the sake of the rights of the individual, and of pacifism, the general consensus seems to be that this was the right outcome.

I wonder how it feels to be John McCain now, or how it has felt over the last few weeks, knowing (as he must have done) that you're in for defeat but still having to keep going.  Having the entire rest of the world, practically, backing your opponent.  It's true, the turnout of young voters, the interest among people I know, there has been more support for and hype about ths election than any I've ever seen in the UK.  Please, everyone, when you have a vote, let this be a lesson to use it.

Well done, say I.  Good decision.  Good job well done.  And then I lean back a bit further and say: so you've talked the talk.  Go on then.  Prove it.

(Previous entry deleted as frankly it was a bit crap.)

You can tell I haven't seen M for a while.  There are several reasons for this: all that self-doubt is coming out of the woodwork and doing jazz-hands right in front of my eyes, and I've basically given up on trying to look attractive/after my appearance particularly (case in point, "Fiona, you're looking very... jumpery... today.") and this afternoon I was stood in front of the mirror carrying out a particularly scathing self-appraisal, every last spot and splodge and wobble and quite a few theatre-related bruises and scrapes and the odd papercut, when it dawned on me that this is partly related to not having M about - twenty months later, almost, and he still has such an incredible effect on me, I always feel so much better about myself.

There are other manifestations, too; I'm a lot more stressed and there are two particular practices that are possibly slightly unhealthy.  The first of these is a greater penchant for really quite fancying a different person every week for wildly inappropriate reasons, such as that they occasionally quote Shakespeare when drunk, or have really off-the-wall taste in boots, or just hold themselves really well and said hello to me once.  This is slightly worrying, and the advent of Facebook doesn't help in the slightest.  The second practice is that of getting either weak-kneed or really angry when I think someone's flirting with me.  I've been trying to regulate my moods desperately over the last few weeks, but there's such a lot of self-control involved, either to say no, or to be civil.  For instance.  Let us take ballroom dancing.  "Yes I will dance with you" in no way equates to "Yes I am interested," and if you are not very good there is a line to be drawn considerably before requesting private lessons.  I have a feeling that saying, "Keep your dignity, I don't want it," is pushing the point.

I don't understand why this keeps happening: maybe I'm just spotting it more often, maybe I just have one thing on my mind and at the moment I can't have it so I'm reading into things that aren't there.  But I can't reconcile in my own mind red faced, jumpery, walking boots-and-library Fi with whatever else there is to see.

Plus I am quite worried that I am becoming insufferable by being self-obsessed (case in point the last three paragraphs), only having a few things to talk about and not being interested enough in other people - I'm trying but I know being out so much means I've missed some things my corridor's been doing and I just didn't get asked on the last one.  Fair enough, I was busy anyway, (out at the theatre, as it happens, I think) but I worry a bit about having to find somewhere to live next year and who that'll be with.  I've been a lot more myself with people at the theatre but I'm sure they must all have their own friends from college, same with people on my course.  Everyone seems to have someone else.  I hope it works itself out.  I'm trying not to think about it.

Enough of this.  I tried not to spout rubbish earlier too - I'm not very good at this, apparently.

On the third of January this year, I thought the world ended.  I've just been reading old entries, so I know this to be true.  I want to avoid being trite and clichéd here, but it's probably not going to happen: I like Plan B.  Plan B and I suit each other.  Having a Plan B makes so many things so much more flexible.  If I'd had the opportunity to go with Plan A, I would still be as tired as I am now, just for completely different reasons.  I would not have got drunk and done all kinds of things, I would not have got white paint over an old pair of jeans and had eyebrows raised at me for climbing a ten foot ladder in heels.  I would have read a lot more widely in Law, but I wouldn't have bought a newspaper the other day and sat and finished the crossword in bed on a Saturday morning.

Last night, I believed I mentioned, was Closer's last night.  The politics were evident in one or two very specific places and you could have cut the atmosphere downstairs in the workshop during Act 2 with a knife.  But I felt for the first time like I wasn't leeching off anyone else, like I was properly there for things I could help with rather than job creation.  I won one game of rock-paper-scissors and then lost another because I wasn't concentrating.  And it was wonderful.  One mishap with the projector, but swiftly rectified.  No accidental crashes of scenery backstage.  Scene changes running like a well oiled brick.  Curtain up fifteen minutes late, interval chaotic, curtain down at the end of the last scene (Scene 12, In The Memorial Garden), a quarter past ten.  Suddenly legions of people appeared who I had only ever seen during the tech course (and who I was therefore convinced thought I was an idiot - mainly for the heels/ladder debacle... paranoid much?) and who obviously knew what they were doing... lightning speed de-rigging, manoeuvring of props, lugging sofas up and down stairs with varying degrees of success, decent but obviously theatrical soundtrack (somebody, and I haven't found out who yet but they have access to the CD player, apparently has an obsession with HMS Pinafore.  Hmm) and the obligatory bit of standing around watching other people work, banter, what have you.  Also excellent.  Finished 11.45, tech team sodded off down the road to the nearest pub that was open til one.

Drinks.  Discussions of fresnels and washes, the Gala show, Guys and Dolls, Kiss Me Kate, The Importance of Being Earnest.  People who are freshers who are amazing and an asset to the theatre.  Somebody said to me we've got a really strong Freshers' team this year, A, R... K... you... ----what the hell?!  I had never done anything technical before about two weeks ago.  Apparently turning up, standing around drinking coffee with your sleeves rolled up and agreeing with people (plus a certain knowledge of the musicals... ahem) is a trick worth repeating.

On the way back, we stopped by the theatre and there was a lot of tension so K and I stayed outside and didn't get involved.  I don't know what happened as a result but I hope people weren't as stupid as they might have been.

Today, I was up at a decent time and actually had breakfast, for the second time this week.  Was going to do some work but in the end sat in A's room with A, M and M and beat the lot of them soundly at Scrabble.

And now I'm going to bed because I'm knackered and I'm trying to put "early night" back into my vocabulary, at least for a few days.

It worries me that, on some level, every single moment we have a choice.  Every last thing.  Even if we feel like we don't: I don't have to do this essay, I could in theory give up and go home right now, or sell everything I have in the world in the next week and go to Australia.  There's an element of self-preservation and self-interest in the fact that, obviously, I'm not going to do that, but it's a depressing thought that even when one is blind drunk and making a total arse out of oneself, the choice is still there.  To some extent.

It's my first most-of-the-day where I don't have to be anywhere (at least until four o'clock) this week.  Last night of Closer tonight, which strikes me as a bit sad, but then everyone else in this theatre knows they'll be asked back to do another performance together - either that or they'll be doing the asking.  I'm not so sure.  Freshers' play, yes.  And I'd like to be.  But there's nothing really that I'm good at, not there at least, and there are so many big personalities who've been there for years or who can cope with concentrating on things late into the night and who prioritise the theatre above their degrees, even... I wonder if it is a feature of things we love that they in some way make us feel inadequate.  Maybe.  Maybe it's just me.

Speaking of things that are just me, I feel a bit wistful that nobody here seems to quite get the way I use the word "exciting".  In my mind, it was not at all inappropriate.  But the sneer and the swift change of subject told me otherwise.  Sod it.  I will raise this here: am I in fact out of order, committing a social faux-pas, coming onto everyone on the table, whatever, if over dinnertime in reference to several people being very coy about the matter, I say, "What a lot of men don't realise is that women find breasts exciting too"?  Oh for God's sake.  They are.  Amusing.  Interesting.  Novel.  Worthy of some attention.  This does NOT mean I am attempting to ogle/grope half my corridor.  But there is always, is there not, one girl - usually shortish, blonde, pretty, lots of male friends, with the incredible ability to appear as if she's suddenly smelled a nearby sewer and make you feel enturely inadequate?  I wish people would be a bit more open-minded about this sort of thing.  Not that she ever speaks to me directly, but I reckon if I were to be gay, very few people on my corridor would either - or at least they'd be quite a bit more frosty.  This I find more shocking the more I think about it.

Who would win in a fight, Oberon or Theseus?  I had this discussion, of sorts, the other day.  I think I'm compartmentalising, but for some reason at the moment it's very important.