A gradual gradient of graduands

I graduated yesterday. Well, technically I graduated a few months ago when my results were published, but the ceremony was yesterday. The journey there was made unecessarily stressful by a combination of the tube strike and of an idiot woman pulling the passenger alarm in protest at the train being diverted from the Charing Cross branch to the Bank branch. Potential time taken changing branches at Camden = two minutes. Time spent half in and half out of Kentish Town station waiting for a supervisor to come and investigate the alarm = twenty-five minutes. Where's the logic?

Once I got to the Royal Festival Hall, where the ceremony was being held, everything went fairly smoothly. Parents found, gown sorted, photo taken. The photo was potentially the most important part of the proceedings. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the one to tell my Grandma she wasn't getting one! After a bit we heard the PA system vaguely in the distance and split up to go and take our seats. At some point I became aware that everyone was moving in the same direction. Away from the hall. Toward the exits in fact. And at that point I started to actually listen to the PA system, and realised that we were being evacuated from the building. Hundreds of gowned, mortar-boarded students and their familes were summarily turfed out onto the Southbank in the freezing November wind. Several of the more determinedly entrepeneurial stall-holders from the nearby Christmas fair seized the opportunity by opening up early and starting a brisk trade in hot chocolate and mulled wine, while the ubiquitous tourists looked on in confusion, probably wondering if this was some kind of quaint English tradition. Eventually we were allowed back into the building, although none the wiser as to what the security alert had been due to, and took our seats. Thirty seconds walking across a stage willing myself not to trip up, and one hour, fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds of mind-numbing tedium later, we emerged, filled ourselves with free prosecco and escaped.

In the evening my parents took me for an amazing dinner at the Cinnamon Club in Westminster. I'm not a food blogger, and strongly suspect that I'll sound like a bit of a twerp if I start talking about the food in any detail, so I'll limit myself to saying that it was absolutely delicious, beautifully presented and very much enjoyed. My parents amused themselves thoroughly by laughing at me blushing at the sommelier, who evidently considered it part of his job to flirt with any remotely eligible female who crossed the threshold. I can't say I minded too much, since he was very obliging in finding me white wines to match every course (my red wine allergy is one of the great tragedies of my life), and his decorativeness was second only to his skill at his job.

All in all it was a fun day. It didn't exactly run smoothly, but then the things that I'm involved in rarely do. Still.....at least the chaos that follows me everywhere gives me something to write about.

North and South

I'm feeling a little ashamed at the moment. It's all Sarah Palin's fault. Yes Democrats, that's right, one more thing to hold against her.......she made me feel stupid. More specifically, she made me realise that I'm just as stupid as she is. I'm definitely going to have to improve my knowledge of politics and geography. Then when someone says to me "Haha! Wasn't it funny when Sarah Palin said North Korea were US allies?", I wouldn't have to pretend to laugh and then scuttle off google-wards to find out which Korea is which.

Wait.......where are you going?......don't you want an answer?

On my way home today, a large, middle-aged American lady walked up to me at the bus stop, took my hands in hers and asked me "Why so sad, pumpkin?", before walking away.

New levels of randomness.

A matter of timing

I like tea, but it bothers me that it goes from tongue scaldingly hot to unpleasantly tepid in the blink of an eye. I dislike being left with mere seconds of agreeable temperature in which to drink it.

I've got a theory.......it could be bunnies

I have a theory. It's tenuous, so you may have to bear with me on this one, but I became convinced today of its existence. I think that studying literature turns one into an involuntary amateur psychoanalyst. You spend so much time analysing words; everything that's said, the way it's said, in what context, what isn't being said. It's inevitable that the approach would bleed out into real life, whether you want it to or not. But then, as somebody with a more than generous supply of paranoia and social insecurity, I've always read a lot into the things people say. So maybe it isn't so much that studying literature has made me do this, but that it has given me the habits and skills to make me really, really obsessive about it. Why this word rather than that one? Is the presence or absence of an exclamation mark going to change the entire tone of this email? Does that statement reflect the feelings of the character or merely what the narrator wishes the reader to believe to be the feelings of the character? Oddly enough, in the context of that rather convoluted sentence, the narrator and character are the same person; the one speaking to me. I seem to be conferring multiple personality disorder on those I communicate with, or at the very least a rather worrying premeditative and manipulative attitude to their dealings with others. Of course, all this isn't to say that I ever get my analyses right. I'm still impressively bad at reading social cues, and regularly screw up epically due to some spectacular misjudgement of someone's character or intentions. In fact, maybe it's my unnecessary engagement in the minutiae of people's speech that blinds me to the bigger picture. I'm so busy worrying about the inference of their last sentence that I completely fail to notice that they're upset, flirting with me, angry, or just a despicable human being. Perhaps some day I'll learn to see the wood without looking at the trees. In the meantime....bonus points for anyone who can identify the quote in the title.....

My new area of expertise

When the girls have their milk before bedtime, they get to watch TV. If I happen to have possession of the remote control at this time, I confess to being more inclined to pick out something I like than something they do. At the moment I'm quite keen on Billy - a monotone-voiced, animated Northern kid with a propensity for daydreaming - but try to avoid Peppa Pig where possible, as it bothers me that the pigs' heads look like hairdryers. Dora the Explorer is so unbearably repetitious that I want to cram a stuffed giraffe into each of my ears just to make it go away, but I would watch her anyway, if it kept me from having to go anyway near In the Night Garden; a program so creepy that it has actually been known to give me nightmares.

I never did find the pen though

A quick rummage down the back of the sofa cushions in search of the red pen belonging to a magnetic drawing board turned up a spoon, a pair of scissors and a lilac cardigan. It's been months since I've seen that cardy. Serendipitous sofa booty = awesome.

You learn something new every day

Today I have learned not to allow babies to play with my mobile phone. Last number redial is far too easy to press.

I should probably talk about something other than babies, shouldn't I? Apologies for the recent excess of auntie-blogging, but when you live with them they do rather tend to fill up your home and, by extension, life.

So what else have I learned today, that does not relate to small children? Erm.... that's a good question. I suppose I've learned that spending most of the day on the sofa watching back to back episodes of Come Dine With Me is not conducive to my continuing education. I've also learned that going to the bank on a Saturday means using one of those paying in machines, which in turn means being forced, through aggressive impatience disguised as friendly helpfulness, to assist the myopic, technophobic old lady in front of me in the queue to use said machine, and then getting my hand chewed by the envelope chute when attempting to use it myself.

I think that may be the sum of today's learning experience.

Tea time

The unconditional love that a child gives you is at once wonderful and humbling. There's a lot of comfort to be found in coming home from a bad day to find eager faces at the window and little arms held up for cuddles. On the other hand, part of me worries that my bad mood will taint them in some way. I don't want such perfect innocents to ever know what sadness is, even at a remove. So I plaster on a smile, and I read stories and sing nursery rhymes, and wait for these simple pleasures to take the rough edges off my stressed out mood. It works, to an extent. In fact, I suspect I get much more from our interactions than they do. At the age of two they barely know me from Adam, so I feel privileged that they allow me to be part of their games. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to drinking imaginary tea from a pink plastic beauty and the beast tea cup. She put imaginary sugar in, and I can't stick sugar in tea, but I'll drink it anyway.

Loathe at first sight

I've taught the babies to say "Molly gone for walk". It's a good thing too, since this will always be the answer to the question "Where Molly?". I have never seen such a look of fear suffuse the face of a living creature, as when the poor animal trots through the door and spies the terrifying toddler beasts in the room. They've done nothing to deserve it. They've never even got close enough to lay a finger on her. She's just a wuss. But I suspect all they will ever know about her is a brief glimpse of a pair of goggling eyes and the tip of her tail as she flees. The clatter of the cat flap as she makes good her escape is inevitably followed by a plaintive "Where Molly gone?". Molly's gone for a walk, munchkin........because she hates you.

Invasion

My twin two-year-old nieces are now living with me. They are quite implausibly cute, but their presence does serve to confirm my suspicions that motherhood is a looooong way off for me. I'm too fond of lie-ins to be woken up so early, and make quite enough mess all by myself without kiddies to help out. However, Auntie-dom looks set to be great fun, and I anticipate it furnishing me with plenty of anecdotes, which will have me cooing while everyone else looks back fondly on the days when I talked too much about cats. Starting with this one:

Baby: Want juice, Daddy
Daddy: What do you say?
Baby: Bees

A sting in the tale

What's the one thing that could make an overcrowded strike-era tube train worse? A wasp in the carriage. Stop flailing and screaming you bunch of ninnies. You're not helping matters.