Hot squirrels

I'm desperately groping for something to write about. I'm still doing all these on a Saturday thanks to lack of internet, and my mind is full of yesterday's break-in, to the exclusion of all possible inspiration. I asked for two random topics from the friend I was just on the phone to, and was offered 'squirrels' (see tomorrow) and 'heat'. "Heat?" I asked. "Well yes" he replied "it's pretty hot". Apparently I am required to be terribly British and talk about the weather, so yeah, it's pretty hot. It's also started raining since I started this post. This actually makes me rather happy, as I love that hot, wet pavement smell you get when it rains in the summer.

Things that make me smile No.56

I saw the frumpiest transvestite ever in Marks & Spencer the other day. I'm all about freedom of expression, but part of me wonders why you'd bother dressing up as a woman just to wear Clarks sandals and a long beige cardigan.

Nailed it

I have to wear dark nail polish at all times for the foreseeable future, because I'm the sort of idiot who forgets to don gloves when doing her hair and accidentally dyes her nails orange. Oops.

Narrow boat

Having joked last week about moving onto a barge, I've actually seriously started considering it. I've been looking at the prices of narrow boats on Ebay and Gumtree, and it seems genuinely do-able. The only problem is that it seems quite hard to find a residential mooring in London. They all seem to have long waiting lists. Still, I'm going to continue my research.

Things that make me smile No.55

It ought to be a little hard to find things in the break-in to smile about, but it did make me chuckle a little that the intruder had carefully placed half a digestive biscuit under the beak of the toy crow that sits on my coat rack.

Of mice-catchers and mentals

I don't even know where to start. Remember how I said that my sanity wouldn't take any more problems? The universe has decided to test that theory. In the early hours of Friday morning, an escaped mental patient used a spade to break into my house. He put together a meal for four people, made up of beansprouts and tinned peaches, moved loads of stuff around and generally made himself at home. Most disturbingly, I found one of my hammers in my bedroom, suggesting that he'd armed himself with it before investigating the upstairs bedrooms. He also had a knife and my spare door keys on his person when the police picked him up. I had planned to be at home that night, but had gone for a drink with a friend on a whim, and stayed on his sofa when it got late. I've never been so relieved to have made a spur of the moment decision. My mum had to call me at work to let me know what had happened, and that they were coming down to help me sort things out. They had hoped to get things cleared up before I got back, to save me from the upset of seeing it, but the scene of crime officers were otherwise engaged so we had to be careful not to disturb the evidence. It's all ridiculously traumatic and, even though the house is fully secure now, I'm a little concerned about being alone there when my parents go back to the Midlands tomorrow.

To add to the fun, my cat picked the same time to give birth to three kittens in the tea towel basket under the kitchen sink. Thanks for that Molly. If anyone wants a kitten, there's one tabby and two black and white, and they'll be available to take home in about six weeks. Free to good homes.

Itchy feet

I'm feeling hugely restless at the moment. Probably the result of having finished my degree but not yet persuaded anyone to employ me permanently. At the moment I'm feeling the urge to sell most of my belongings and move myself, my books and my cats onto a barge. Cats like barges, right? We would tour the country like canal-borne nomads... slowly admittedly, but what's the rush? Anyone know anyone who wants to sell a barge?

Things that make me smile No.54

Pugs. I'm not really a fan of small dogs, but I make an exception for pugs. They may look like they've run head first into a rockery, and sound like they've smoked forty B&H since the age of two, but they're still inexplicably charming.

Visitation

Ok, so I lied about the puppies. So sue me.

My parents are visiting me today. It'll be nice to see them, as I don't think I have since Christmas. Plus my mum's going to take me shopping and treat me to a new outfit. I'm very excited about this, since hardly any of my clothes fit me any more, and there's only so much a girl can do with belts and safety pins. I suspect it will need to be a sensible outfit that I can use for interviews, should I ever get any interviews, so I'll need to resist the urge to deck myself out like something from a child's dressing up box. I don't think many interviewers would take kindly to the tutus and clumpy boots that I'm currently hanging my nose over.

Time to change

There are very few things in this world that I really care about, but this is one of them. If you want a nice light-hearted start to your day then you might want to stop reading. Come back tomorrow. There may be puppies and rainbows. Puppies sliding on rainbows. Puppies sliding on rainbows while eating sherbet and blowing bubbles. Today, however, there will be the topic of mental health. I talk pretty frankly about my experiences with depression, because I think it's really important that people understand how common it is. There's a huge stigma attached to mental illness, which just ought not to be there, and the only way it's ever going to go away is if people talk about it. It's an uncomfortable subject for many. I've discovered over the years that a lot of people would rather I just didn't mention it, and I wonder why it bothers them so much. It could be that they're scared, in the same way some people don't like you to say the word 'cancer'. As if somehow, by saying the word out loud, you might call the illness down upon yourself. Maybe it's that people think I should be ashamed of my mental health 'issues' (god how I hate that word), and it's my frankness about it that bothers them. Or maybe it's simply that it's not a particularly fun subject to discuss. I suspect that the way people respond to the topic says more about their attitude to their own mental health than it does about their attitude to mine, but a stunning one in four people will experience a mental health problem of some sort at some point in their lives, so you'd have to be pretty damn lucky for it never to affect you or someone you care about. Doesn't that make it worth erasing the prejudice? The days of lock 'em up forever asylums are long gone, and so should be the stigma surrounding 'madness'. Frankly it's hard enough to deal with a problem of this type, without ignorant people treating you like you're crazy or telling you to snap out of it.

The Time to Change website has lots more information, and allows you to make a pledge to end mental health discrimination.

Now...onto the puppies...