Right, I'm off away to Belfast for the weekend - or at least I will be if the traffic in Leeds city centre lets up enough for the bus to get out to the airport. I'll see some of you there. The rest, be good while I'm gone!

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I've been doing some more painting: this time, the gloss in the back bedroom. It seems to take forever - at least if you don't want to splurge unwanted gloss all over the walls that you have only just finished painting the week before. So I have been working my way through the pick of the last week's worth of Radio 4 comedies, and also the ( Read more... )

This weekend is Quiet. An oasis of calm amidst the madness. There's a bunch of stuff I could be going out to (in fact, should be going out to, really), but I'm deliberately dividing my time this weekend between venues no more demanding than my bed, my sofa, and my bath. Oh, and my computer, I guess ( Read more... )

Saturday night in Oxford saw a bunch of us heading for Chicks with Decks, a sort of Indie / Punk / 80s night at the Cellar Bar: the same low-ceilinged venue as for Intrusion. redkitty23 and secutatrix sadly couldn't make it, and were sorely missed, but we did have edling, Cat, aef, violetdisregard, Spiky Neil, Jenny and even Hugh and Zara up from London.

( Oxford nights )

Pretty much all the companies who really need to know I'm moving now do, although I still haven't managed to get through to an actual human being at Nationwide. My office is packed up; the house is starting to happen today. Got up bright and early this morning to go to Tesco's and pick up some extra boxes, and since then it's been coffee and ( Read more... )

Have just come back from dinner with my two Masters' students and three Ancient History colleagues at Café Milano. We were all very impressed by the décor: not only Domus Aurea-style trickling fountains in the background, but a tessera-for-tessera copy of the Alexandery bit of the Alexander mosaic on the floor. You couldn't get much more ( Read more... )

As promised, my photos from the Belfast Pride Parade. They're crummy photos, taken with a crummy camera and then scanned (hardly a recommended way of improving image quality), but still - such as they are, here they follow:


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Well, my sister, Charlotte and her partner, Nicolas, should be in the air on their way home to England now. We had a really enjoyable weekend together: for them, mainly exploratory; for me, nostalgic.

On the Saturday, we took a coach tour up along the east coast of NI to the Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and other attractions. The ( Read more... )

I'd intended not to do too much dancing last night at Cornucopia, after boogieing round half of Belfast in the hot sun yesterday at the Pride Parade. But who am I to resist a dance floor and a beat? In the end I danced copiously, whilst also enjoying watching a certain young lady get friendlier and friendlier with a handsome gentleman nearby. Her ( Read more... )

Last night I marked my 29th birthday by meeting up with some people in Duke's, going on for dinner at Scalini's and then returning to Duke's for further drinking and chatting at the end of the evening. I had a fabulous time - the food was delicious, the company delightful and lots of lovely people kept giving me presents and cards! Thanks so much ( Read more... )