_{originally posted 12/07/05}

7.57 Waterloo Station: A young couple locked in an embrace block my path to the platform; I tut at them and push past, as does the man behind me.

8.54 The towpath along the Thames at Kingston: A flotilla of elegantly gloomy swans cuddle their long necks into their tail feathers against the sudden, unseasonable chill. A lone duck, feathers punked up in the cold, hurtles around them like a skateboarder through a chicane.

9.15 Raven's Ait: My colleagues and I, teachers all, begin fidgeting and squirming and rifling through handbags for peppermints, some of us doodling on the unread accompanying notes. Teachers make very bad students; we have already liberated all the spare stationery and biscuit packs. We know we will be bored today.

10.15 Raven's Ait: We cluster around a tinny radio with an ariel too weak for the BBC. In between adverts for double glazing and car insurance, we hear about the bombs. When the oikish presenter asks for listeners to email in any pictures they may have of 'the tragic events unfolding' my oldest colleague, and I, the youngest, reach forward as one to switch it off.

10.20 Raven's Ait: We cling to our phones as if they were rosaries, each digital ping and click and flash of melody means a loved one is safe, or is checking on us. We count them like beads. All the people I love in London are safe, except one, the one I need to be alive and unharmed, as my lungs need air, as my eyes need their eyelids to protect them if they are to continue to see. A Luddite colleague who has never used a mobile phone before suddenly has a face like a child's, crumpled with exasperation, staring at the malevolent plastic toy in his hand that refuses to confirm that his wife is safe.

11.33 Raven's Ait: He calls, at last, while I am standing outside in the rain chainsmoking. I let his voice pour over me and melt into my skin like a perfume. I turn back into the room and my face speaks for me. They are good people, and even the most anxious of them smiles at with pleasure at my relief. I stuff my phone carelessly back into my bag, and the Luddite flinches.

2.15 The Thames: There are no trains. I blag my way onto a party boat heading back to Richmond, then onto a requisitioned pleasure cruiser full of Special Constables and medical staff heading for Westminster Pier. I sail into London in a garden party dress and four inch heels surrounded by men and women in uniforms and orange jackets. We veer between laughing, companionable chatter, then sudden silences where each of us retreats into our own thoughts, like the swans into their feathers earlier. Though it is sunny now some us still shiver.

4.00 The Thames: Slowly we turn towards Westminster and the sunlit, silent city. I think of Wordsworth's lines composed at the same spot 200 years before: 'Earth has not anything to show more fair: dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in it's majesty.' This city has no need of prayers, prayers are the work of those who did this; those who are not evil, but are merely fools and cowards, gullible products of a dark-age mentality that this city shrugged off centuries ago. This city has no need of prayer, it has poetry. It is poetry. It is the most beautiful city on earth.

4.30 Waterloo Bridge: I am the only one on my side of the bridge heading North into the city. I walk through hundreds of people making their way to Waterloo Station, now reopened and nearly normal. The only sounds I can hear are our feet and our voices. There are no cars, no horns, mercifully, no more sirens, only these human sounds. Hundreds of commuters, most of whom by this stage know that their own loved ones are unharmed, walking and chatting to strangers. Some have walked far and are tired, but many have something of the air of children let out early from school. I see the same expression, again and again, like a uniform. A look of anxiety, relief, bewilderment, bemusement, determination. Many smile at me, going the wrong way in a party dress.

4.40 The Strand: I ask the young policeman how to get to Chancery Lane. He doesn't know. 'I'm from Essex' he says, smiling, 'Don't tell anyone! But I've got an A-Z'. As he flicks through it I see his thumbnail is bitten to the quick. He's been drafted in from the Home Counties to protect a city he barely knows. I wish there were some way to convey how reassured I am by his presence - and his nervousness. I walk, because I can, down the middle of the empty street. All the shops and cafes and offices are closed. Only a shoe repair shop is open and the cobbler carries on with his work, listening to Glenn Miller. The strains of Pennsylvania 6500 ring out across the quiet street, as its gramophone ancestor might have done fifty years ago.

5.00 Chancery Lane: Usually this majestic, arrogant street is full of lawyers, strutting like crows, surrounded by all the lesser birds that flock with them. Today it is all but empty and has the somnolent grandeur of a leafy Victorian suburb. The loudest sound here is that of birdsong. It is altogether too quiet. I check my phone and listen to my missed calls. He has changed his plans, he must be elsewhere. I don't quite cry. This day has made widows of some women.

5.40 Waterloo Road: The city is coming back to life, there are buses again and some cars. I watch the miraculously orderly queues, the smiles and the 'no, you go aheads', the 'excuse-mes' and the 'sorrys'. In the Tandoori House window is a cardboard sign that reads, with various mispellings, 'we have water, toilets, phones, street maps. All food half price. We are Muslim. We are sorry.' Wet-eyed, I buy a samosa.

6.30: Elephant & Castle: I stand on my balcony high above the silence of London's noisiest roundabout. I count nine huge cranes dotted around St Paul's and the city, caught in oddly balletic poses, as though the Eiffel tower had just dropped a litter of children over London and they were tentatively trying out their lacy legs for the first time. This city is still growing, rising. As always. I do not turn on the TV. Somewhere, in the East End, perhaps, or a back room of the Regent's Park Mosque, the mediocrities that did this and those that support them are watching the continuous loop of images of the broken and bleeding, cheering at each rise in the death toll and drinking whatever it is these joyless bastards drink when they celebrate. I will not see what they see. I have seen only beauty on this ugliest of days. I have seen the soft underbelly of the city. In a matter of days we will go back to pushing and shoving and tutting and scrupulously avoiding eye contact with each other. But if trouble comes again we will again form an orderly, amicable army of calm and competence. We are London. We are invincible.

Further problems may be appended to the original post which features screened comments.

<sub>Dear Auntie Oxidant,

I have a most wonderful friend who forgets that I am not available on a Wednesday and who texts and tempts me with offers of luscious Chinese food and her fabulous company on those days. What do I do?

Yours,

Confuddled of Covent Garden</sub>

Dear Confuddled

Are you, by any chance one of those dreadful polyglomerates? Perhaps one who posts up fortnightly schedules of their lives with two long pre-arranged 'date' nights and a whole host of nights strewn with the desperate tumbleweed of 'no evening plans'? If so you can't possibly expect your wonderful friend, who undoubtedly lives a life of elegant bohemian mayhem and sexual spontaneity, to remember when you've got a filofuck (a term soon to appear on a spellfecker near you). I'd have dinner with your friend anyway and just be late for your date. Break the stranglehold of the schedule!


<sub>Dear Auntie Oxidant,

I have to go to a christening in July. This is bad enough in itself... but at this particular one I will meet my partner's ex-wife, who hates me, and all of her family. Am totally dreading it! What to do?

M.C.</sub>

Dear M.C.

There is only one way to cope with this situation. You MUST be thinner, younger-looking and better dressed than the unspeakable harridan your boyfriend used to be married to. I suspect that in your case this will not be difficult. You must also ensure that your partner is looking his very best, too. It wouldn't do to have her look at him and think he'd let himself go, so if he has grown An Unfortunate Moustache or anything similar he must get rid of it.

If the Evil Ex is gorgeous or just super-intimidating there is only one answer. Get brutally, riotously drunk. As long as you are drunk enough not to remember how awful the day was, it doesn't matter if everyone else remembers how awful you were.


<sub>Dear Auntie Oxidant

How best to delicately break it to one's mother that she (and not a cruel, cruel world) is the agent of her own demise? Bluntness seems a bit too much, but it's time for her to take responsibility for her own joys; I hope for her to be happy in this lifetime.

Yours, Concerned in California</sub>

Ah Poor Concerned,

The trouble with breaking this news to her is that she will simply substitute a specific cruel, cruel daughter as the agent of her demise instead of a generic cruel, cruel world. There is only one possibility for salvation for her and that does not lie in getting her to confront the lies, apathy and incompetence of the past. If she has spent her life determined to see herself the tragic victim of cruel circumstance, the only way to shake her out of it is to get her to imagine a future in which she assumes a sense of agency and becomes the active heroine who pluckily salvages her life into something successful despite the odds being stacked against her. It is extremely hard to get someone to accept this sort of paradigm shift, unless you can get a shrink, a priest or some other sort of soothsayer to collude with you. The problem is that you shouldn't have to do it - it is what she should have done for you. You might be better off just cutting your losses and regarding her, from as far a distance as possible, as an example of what not to be when you grow up; that is the only benefit that bad parenting affords you.


<sub>Dear Auntie Oxidant

I think my boyfriend might be a bit Aspie. He can't pick up on hints, never realizes when I am miserable (even if I am crying) and can't make conversation with my friends. I have described his behaviour to some of my online friends and they seem to think he has Aspergers.

Yours, Twilight Fan</sub>

Dear Twilight Fan

Your boyfriend is not 'a bit Aspie'. He's just a bloke. He can't pick up on 'hints' or tell when you are miserable because, as an adult, he has progressed beyond responding to passive aggression or sulking. He probably chooses not to talk to your friends because they are asinine bores.

As forgetting your online friends to diagnose him? If your cat was sick would you get a bunch of women who spend all their time online posting pictures of 'Edward the vegetarian vampire' dolls' they have knitted from their own pubic hair trimmings to diagnose him? No, I thought not.

Dear Auntie Oxidant,


<sub>Dear Auntie Oxidant

What should I do?

M.W.</sub>

Dear M.W.

1. Keep calm and carry on.
2. Drink more.
3. Think more.
4. Write more.
5. Love more.
6. Forgive yourself. Everyone else will eventually, providing you teach them to. This maxim applies to almost all the points I have listed.

<sub>Dear Auntie Oxidant

I'm finding myself developing terrible violent urges with regards to some members of the Trauma Toilets. How do you suggest I work to overcome my violent idealisations before they spiral out of control and I break my beloved computer screen?

Yours, with blood and guts,

A. Nonymous.</sub>


Dear Ms Nonymous

I share your violent distaste for the half-witted nutjobbery that so often features on the pages of the Trauma Toilets. Are you 'triggered' by references to anything other than bikkits and kittens? Did you get an unrecognisable courgette in your Abel and Cole box last week and not use it - are you now terrified it will give you PCOS if you cook it without the aid of a SWAT team? Do you feel like you've been gang-violated because a doddery old gentleman penis-wielding oppressor has called you 'dearie' ? If you have answered 'no' to any of these questions then the Trauma Toilets is probably not for you. Except, of course... go on... admit it. It's exactly why you read it. It is the Bedlam of the internet. One goes there to point and laugh at the loonies. You should, however, ensure that you take the same precautions our illustrious ancestresses took when visiting Bedlam. Before you approach the TT, ingest copious quantities of gin, then hold a fragrant nosegay to your nostrils. If this doesn't work, then don't bash your keyboard in fury, instead creatively visualise enacting some violence on one of he more irritating members. Take, for instance, the one with the Celtic name, predilection for posting whining verse and sermonising about her own tiny carbon footprint whilst failing to realise that the hot air that pours from her mouth is a major threat to the ozone layer. Imagine tying her to a chair, taping up her gob with gaffer tape and then slowly stuffing a mooncup into each of her nostrils. This should do wonders for your blood pressure.

Friendlings! Thank you for filling in my poll, you lovelies (and for strolling by and not filling in the poll you weirdo stalker types). Some of your comments filled me glee and/or mushiness.

Lovely lady victorymarch suggested I should write an advice column. This is such a good idea! Leave me a question in the screened comments indicating if you would like your name appended to it or if you would like to remain anonymous. Completely anonymous comments are permitted and this is a public post.

I have just taken the Political Compass Test. I can't find how to display the results as a lovely graph, but I am only just on the right and only a couple of notches into libertarian, thus putting me closer to Ghandi than Thatcher. I am, therefore, making no claims for its accuracy. I shall pootling off to vote in a mo. I leave you with an icon of the best Prime Minister we never had in case you were in any doubt as to how I'll be voting.

I used to want to place a bet on Brown being the first British Prime Minister to top himself in office. I had, of course, underestimated his over-weening egotism and arrogance. And the fact that his sword, like his wit, isn't sharp enough to fall on.

I don't know why but I just couldn't quite stop myself from clicking on the link for the ad for The Power of Shakti of on Farcebook. It is, so they would have you believe, an Irish retreat for men and women to go on so they can untap 'their repressed 18 inner mystical pathways to enlightenment and secret feminine power'. Now if there is one thing that riles me into rant it is new age balderdash dressed up as feminism. It is as much - more even - of an insult to the my intelligence than trying to tell me the Spice Girls were somehow empowering women by dieting, painting themselves orange and doing exactly what Simon Cowell Fuller (what's the difference?) told them to do. The nonsense from Shakti is so overblown it virtually satirises itself. Here are some choice - and all too predictable - snippets.

Access to the power of these pathways has been closed down for thousands of years, hidden away, piece by piece, in the Isis Mystery School, and the Pagan, Indian, Tibetan and Aramaic sacred traditions, known only to a few.

Or: We are far too lazy to actually learn anything concrete about a particular culture or historical period so we just cobbled together all the shiny sparkly bits from a variety of cultures that have cool things like llamas and mummies. Our speshul sekrit knowledge is known only to a select and gullible few because if it was ever subjected to rational scrutiny it would be such obvious codswallop it would make The Da Vinci Code look like a peer-reviewed article in The Lancet.

These 18 Pathways are not found outside you: they are within you, and used together they reveal one of the greatest secrets of all time: Divine Woman Power in human form.

Don't worry. You won't actually have to learn anything or look beyond your own navel. This course is all about your favourite subject: YOU. And like you, and unlike the rest of the world, we understand that, despite having a BMI in the high forties, a dozen incontinent cats, no boyfriend and a moustache you are really a goddess with secret powers.

[Learn about] The Voice and the Mandala of the Womb, and how you can access this at will

Does no one listen when you talk out of your arse? Try talking out of your snatch instead. We can show you how.

Why men need the Womb to step into the new, yet timeless, Divine Masculine.

I can't quite get this bit. Men need a little troll-like womb with feet to trample on their speshul masculinity? Or men need to step into a womb - presumably via an entryway as commodious as a wizard's sleeve?

Ireland is a living Goddess that has been sleeping and is now Awakening.

Ireland has spent the last decade glorying in being the Celtic Tiger of European ecomonies whilst still guilt-tripping the Brits about the Potato Famine and Cromwell. Now the credit crunch has left it well and truly fucked, some of its citizens are reverting to the use of good old blarney to do to the wallets of the witlessly credulous what its priests traditionally do to choirboys and orphans.

In this Retreat, we will be connecting with the power of Shakti at the extraordinary Gyreum Eco-lodge nestled into the living land of Ireland. Gyreum is connected to Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza

You can map your way on the direct walking route from Ireland to Wiltshire to Egypt if you use our special womb-empowering Twat-nav.

Carol MaRa's fiery intuition and passion for spiritual truth provide a powerful light

Beryl Munt's (that's probably what says on her birth certificate) talent for bullshit and disregard for empirical evidence are such that anyone who is neither deluded nor desperate would immediately identify her as a total charlatan. Tragically, the deluded and desperate will be charged 450 euros for the privilege.

Stella Fairbairn's voice, passion for music and spiritual growth allied with shamanic initiation and knowledge from ancient lineages

Stella left school without any qualifications, but her grandmother's grandmother once saw something nasty in the woodshed.

Padma Aon is an evolutionary catalyst, guide, and author of the "Shakti Circuit", “The Christ Blueprint,” and “The Nine Eyes of Light: Ascension Keys from Egypt”, all published worldwide 2009-10.

Paddy O'Neill (as was) once came round to Stella's to give her a quote for some building work but had an epiphany whilst chatting to her. He realised he could get into the pagan bullshit business and it would be even more money for old rope than fleecing householders for substandard and tardy building work. He'll publish his mystic tomes on the worldwide interwebs just as soon as he's cashed your charitable donation at the bookies.

I just opened the door to a couple of Jehovah's Witlesses. They didn't quite launch into their usual patter because they were too bewildered by the sound of Modulate's Skullfuck (I always hoover to Skullfuck) so I was able to smile sweetly, chirp 'God is DEAD' at them (I always think of Nietsche when I'm hoovering) and shut the door before they'd spoken.

I've just had a trip of comments in Chinese? Japanese? on my last entry. Are they just spambot rubbish or are they death threats from Nadine Dorries' hardline Asian fanclub?

Dear Ms Dorries

I do not write to you - as so many surely have - because I which to express my contempt for your recent comments to the press regarding the suffering supposedly being endured by those MPs and peers whose mercenary exploitation of their parliamentary privilege has been exposed by The Telegraph. I write because I am an English teacher, and because I wish challenge your inaccurate, manipulative use of the term 'witchhunt' to depict as martyrs those MPs currently under scrutiny by the press.

The present use of the term 'witchhunt' is predicated on the fact that there are no witches. The original European witchhunts of the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries involved the pursuit and persecution of thousands of innocent women and men and were fuelled by religious mania, political expediency and local prejudice. This was mirrored in America in the 1950s when the term was used to describe the hounding and harrassment of innocent Americans. There were no reds under the bed.

If you have claimed reimbursment for a cauldron large enough to double up as a duck pond and fillets of fenny snake to chuck into it; if the only thing that stops your complacent buttocks from settling ever more firmly into your safe seat is the broomstick protruding from your undergarments; if the only thing preventing your long, green, warty nose from digging ever deeper into the trough of taxpayers' cash is the fact that the brim of your pointy hat gets in the way, then you ARE a witch and the accepted, metaphorical use of the term 'witchhunt' is not appropriate.

Perhaps your disregard for linguistic and historical accuracy is merely due to a poor education. Many of your peers - be they trades unionist or old Etonians - seem to have been taught maths so badly they have made innocent errors amounting to several thousands pounds in their mortgage interest claims. Even poor education cannot account for those who have claimed for mortgages long paid off or 'homes' they do not live in. Perhaps they - and you - are delusional. Only serious mental illness could justify the replacement of your delusions of grandeur and entitlement with the delusion that you and your cronies are victims.

You should count yourself lucky that 'witchhunt' is merely a metaphor. Were it not, voters like myself would be cheerfully carting their recycling and other flammable materials down to Westminster green to build bonfires; many many bonfires. You are fortunate that you will not suffer torture at the stake, merely humiliation at the ballot box, and the prospect that you will not be able to take up a post-parliamentary career in any field where integrity and maturity are prerequisites.

Yours sincerely

Rosamicula

Our art escapade on Saturday was great - and curiously exhausting - fun. It was run at the Tate Mod and involved teams of four each being given four phrases from a fairytale that had been rewritten by children's author Joe Dunthorne. The teams then had three hours to run about London creating an image for each photo and the images were then assembled in a photostory at the plenary event.

Our phrases:


We were delighted with 'people coming' and 'the witch' but less inspired by the others. Our team name was 'End of Splott Rd Hump Area' because that was the legendary sign at the end of the street Anne and I lived on in Cardiff. I shall post our entries at the end of this. We started out trying to do the witch with shadows. perfectlyvague isn't really pleased to see you, she is creating art:



Unfortunately this effort wasn't very witchy, it was more Klu Klux Anne:



Thankfully the pagan /witchcraft bookshop (which, surprisingly, both Miss Vague and marchosias444 were familiar with) opened and we were able to get what I think proved to be the best 'witch' shot of the story, as the phrase cropped up about six times in total and some of the teams merely had one of their number gurning to represent it.

Then lovely Annus had a brilliant idea about how to do 'people coming' which meant we had to hit Cass Arts (you've got to love an unfeasibly cheap arts supply shop in the heart of the heart of filthiliy expensive London that has 'Lets fill; this town with artists' written above its door) in St Martin's Lane to purchase placard-making material. Fortunately Cass Arts is next to lovely Cafe Ciao so we were able to adjourn there for coffee and construction:



We took the pic with the help of some lovely tourists, realised that we were running out of time so headed back south of the river in a cab:





We were flagging a bit and had had some unsuccessful attempts at the other two pics in town, so whizzed round Borough market and took our last two. It should be noted that the venison vendor was much less supportive of our art commando activities than either the deer-stalker seller or the extraordinarily helpful lady in Temperly's (which I can't find online - can one of you gods-bothering types link in the comments, pretty please).

We got back to Tate Mod in goodish time, only to discover that the deadline was a lot more fluid than we thought, so we hung about for a bit, decided to bail out on the flashmob photo that was supposed to conclude the active part of the event and instead adjourned for posh burgers and cocktails and stonking great chunks of gateau. Given how much hanging about there was later we were very glad we took this sensible decision. When in doubt, always ALWAYS give priority to fleshstuffs and boozes and cake. The following pics are all of us hanging about in the turbine hall, waiting for something - anything - to happen. I indulged in some face painting:



We just kept having to play with the placards. I think I can there will be another photoshoot sloganeering project in my future :



Anne was a bit bashful about assuming the position:



Then we got so bored we used the backs of our placards to mount a protest about the late running of the event and the fact that the free bar had run out of beer:





Lots of people (including, apparently, steer and Mr and Mrs the_meanest_cat) on the gallery overlooking the Turbine Hall were taking photos of the massed Shoot London people, so Robert went up for a civilian's eye view:



Bury me like this, preferably with a couple of toyboys and a large bottle of gin to accompany me on my journey to the afterlife:



Eventually the Shoot London people (who were a bit wheatgrass and world music-tastic and consequently a bit too zen on the organisational front) sorted out the photoplay. Joe Dunthorne narrated his story, which proved to be a reworking of Hansel and Gretel. There were some deliciously inventive and witty photos, but also a fair few dullish ones, which were, I suspect, done as time was running out. I'd include our own 'herd of deer' shot in that category.

The prize categories were funniest photo, most creative interpretation of phrase, best use of location and best overall. I thought our 'people coming' shot might be in with a chance for the prize for funniest, but when that went to a brilliant shot involving tomatoes I thought our only - frail - hope was for best overall for 'the witch' shot, which I thought was rather lovely. But then we won 'most creative interpretation' for 'people coming'! I am very glad that the one I thought deserved that prize - a naked man wrapped in clingfilm with some rooted muddy salad representing 'fresh' - was awarded 'best overall'. Now for our four entries:

a herd of deer



bricked up tofu



the witch



people coming



To my endless shame, when we went up to collect our prizes, in the hubbub I accidentally claimed that the idea was mine when in fact it was Anne who came up with the idea of making placards. I was just a bit over-excited and manic, really. It was my idea that our models should stand quite formally and have stern expressions, though.

It was a brilliant day, and I am so glad Anne had the oomph to sign up for it and invited me to join her and that I was able to enlist Sarah's creative energy and Robert's technical skills (he really did, as the day progressed, prove to be made of win).


_{Entry pics and more photos from the day available thanks to prompt organisation from marchosias444}

marchosias444, perfectlyvague, Annus WInolj and I took part in Shoot London at teh Tate today and WE WON THE PRIZE FOR MOST CREATIVELY INTERPRETED SHOT!!! We got winner badges, free entry to the next event and weird Mathmos lighting doofuses. Photos - taken by marchosias444 to follow.

Those of you on Farcebook may have noticed that I am updating there again much more frequently.

I am going to change the way I use LJ and keep it just for closer friends and contacts and hopefully more thoughtful writing. If you are someone I know in real life, but not well - e.g. a Patsy person I just chat to a bit in the pub occasionally or someone I met peripherally a while ago but we don't really communicate much online or elsewhere I have taken you off my LJ friendslist. I have also dropped another load of twitterers. I've dropped my f-list by about 40 people, many of whom are on FB for social chitchat purposes.

I am notoriously open about my life on LJ, much more so than I am in person and over the last few years I have found that openness extremely cathartic, but I have changed, and want, perhaps somewhat belatedly, to reclaim some of my privacy. Toodle pip.

Yesterday, heading down the shabby street of corner shops near the tube near work, I came upon two old codgers peering uneasily at the ground. They were huddled over some glistening black pellets on the ground near one of the wastebins. One had a walking stick, one an unnecessary hat similar to the one that kissmeforlonger wore the day after Pete Fenelon's funeral (she stuck the unspeakable thing on her head like a sort of special needs memento mori and it made me cry).

Hat: I reckon they're from a fox. I reckon it got summink to eat out the bin and then took a dump.

Stick: Yeah. Markin' it's Terry Tory, weren't it? Where it had got its food from.

Me (I'm a teacher; I cannot allow ignorance to go unthwarted): Excuse me, those are not fox spraints, those are kalamata olives.

Stick: Bloody 'ell! They're them fings you take off the toppa pizzas.

Hat: (to me, disapproving, now doubt, of my filfthy dago eating habits) Unt you clever, love? We must look a right pair of charlies. Olives. Bloody muck.

I haven't forgotten. I have FIVES to write about for a couple of you.

If I have just knocked some people of my f-list; some for not posting in a long while because they appear to have migrated to Facebook, some for posting endless strings of uncut fucking tweets. If you just want to broadcast your sandwich filling and a frigging emoticon to the world, hie thee to Facebook, too, please. /banging walking-stick on floor and declaring they shoudl bring back National Service.

I'm off to my favourite Italian ice-cream parlour with my favourite straight-shoe-gazing boy. There's nothing he likes better than licking the nuts off a Neopolitan.

_{I do have a clue, actually. No mistaken identity issues this year. I know who you are and you are awesome. *mwah*}

Chillingly, I cannot see St Paul's from my window this morning, though the view is a lovely as I have ever seen it. There is as little traffic noise as there is Christmas day. My balcony is free of pigeons and squirrels.

I love living this centrally. Every suburb is the same under snow, but the River, the West End and the City will seem even more separate and distinct today. The West End will be slick and ski-jacketed, all its dull edges crisped and clean, an Alpine flush on its grey face. The River will look as though it has borrowed a Mardi Gras gown from its more glamorous Venetian sister, yet even masked and swirling and gaudy it will be innately, inexorably its stubborn English self. The city, free of commuter-drones and the pulsing blood of traffic, will be Miss Havisham the morning after the failed wedding, silently proud in its crisp Flemish lace, unravished yet by time and disappointment.

School is closed. I am going out to play. There are a hundred silent white paths on which mine could be the first crunchily invading feet.

The flat smells gorgeous. I have made a bitter chocolate and seville orange marmalade cake and a vanilla, blueberry and apple ring. The chocolate one looks lovely and rich and was merely the new variant of an old favourite of mine. I have no idea how the fruity one will taste but it looks pretty good. I wanted to do something different, flavourwise, from the cinnamon that I always add to apple mixes. I may also make some little savoury tarts for my guests tomorrow. Not that there's much point unless one is inviting a vicar to tea and thus has the opportunity to declaim, 'Reverend, surely I can press you to another warm tart?'

Dangerously Experimental & Deeply Fragrant Blueberry and Apple Ring

125g butter
225g caster sugar
tsp vanilla essence
3 eggs
75g plain flour
60g instant coconut cream powder
35g self-raising flour
225g blueberries
3 small coxes or other sharp apples
I wish I still had some blueberry liqueur or pommeau

The instant coconut cream powder is a very, very silky-smooth form of not-too-dessicated coconut. I use a brand called Santan that you get in big silver packets in chinatown. Its flavour is quite delicate so I am hoping it will compliment, rather than compete with the vanilla. I have no idea how it will bake, but I am anticipating it will be like a smoother, lighter, more scented version of ground almonds. The apples need to be tangy or the cake will be too sweet.

Preheat oven to 200. Butter a big baba dish. I'm cooking it in this because it is quite a wet mixture so I would anticipate a soggy middle in a round or square tin, and also because I like to see the purple blotches up the sides. It looks like someone has covered your cake in lovebites.

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla essence together till light and very fluffy. Add the eggs one by one and beat well. Then add the flours and coconut powder in the order shown above, as this will be easier and because you should always add self-raising flour last as the raising agents begin to work as soon as they get wet. Then stir in the fruit. Don't scrape around the sides of the bowl too much, though. Dollop it carefully into the baba dish, pressing the mixture into the 'corners'. Then use a spatula to get the last of the fruit-free mixture off the sides of the bowl and polyfilla that over the top. This should give you a nice smooth bottom to turn it out onto.

I cooked it for half an hour at 200, then turned it down to 150 for the last fifteen minutes. It should be pleasantly resistant when pressed. Knife-testing is pointless in a cake with squidgy fruit in. It was a bit difficult to remove from the silicone mould and seems very moist, almost puddingy, but it smells astonishingly good. If I make it again I will add only two apples and cook it in the smooth baba, not the fancy fluted one.

Spicy Seville Orange and Bitter Chocolate Cake

150g self-raising flour
50g cocoa
75g butter
75g full fat marge
4 heaped tablespoons of Rosa's Fearsome Multitasking Seville orange marmalade
zest of a lemon and about 2 tsp of its juice
large glug of whiskey or brandy

Preheat oven. The margarine called Utter BuggeryUtterly Buttery or cheaper version thereof (full fat only) is best for this. The marge lightens the texture significantly so I don't mind using it in very strongly-flavoured cakes where its ersatz tang is undetectable.

Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest till fairly fluffy. Add the eggs which you should beat first with the lemon juice. Add the cocoa and the flour and then stir in the marmalade and the booze. Pour into a big round cake tin (I always use the floppy space-age ones as they are foolproof-ish) and cook for about forty mins or until it passes the knife test. It's got a rich, truffly texture and very deeply orangey flavour.


Rosa's Fearsome Multitasking Seville Orange Marmalade

1kg Seville Oranges
about a 3rd of a big pack of Splenda sweetener
One scotch bonnet pepper
one bottle of Tesco value Scotch or similar brand

Halve the oranges and scrape out their innards. Squeeze about an inch of the juice into a blender, add the deseeded chili pepper and blend till smooth. Roughly chop the peel. Only Quislings like marmalade with finely shredded peel and only people with no life have time to shred finely. Squelch all the rest of the juice into a pan, add the sugar and the 'whiskey'. Any old down and out gutrot will do as it's going to get boiled up to buggery anyway. I just can't put water in recipes; it smacks of poverty and failure and it doesn't taste of anything and we should be conserving it anyway. Reserve the innards and pips, and put them in a muslin bag in the pan as you need them to yield up their pectin. Add everything else and boil till it looks like marmalade. If it looks too thick, add more Scotch, if it looks too thin just keep simmering. Before it gets really thick, decant half into a bowl.

I just cannot be faffed with jars and wax discs and all that fake olde worlde codswallop. It needs keeping in the fridge in any case, so I just keep it in tupperware pots, with excess in the freezer. The decanted, runnier half should be whizzed in a blender. It then has the perfect consistency to be smeared as a glaze over pork, gammon or lamb joints without the chunks getting cremated or it can be used as normal marmalade if you are unlikely enough to be entertaining a Quisling. The thicker, chunkier version is fine for smaller cuts, such as duck breasts, which cook much more quickly. It isn't drastically hot when used as a glaze, but packs a kick when added to yoghurt or on toast.

How the devil have I ended up a left winger?

My Political Views
I am a centrist social moderate
Left: 0.41, Libertarian: 0.84

Political Spectrum Quiz

Gothadile A lanky long-haired male goth whose person emits a vague miasma of the riverbed.*

Gothapotamous Prey/girlfriend of a gothadile.

Oneone A really posh meme.

Monstrous Vegiment* Vociferous denizens of a certain online community for women. They are characterised by self-righteous, cod-empowering, neurosis-validating outbursts of pseudo-femo-eco-drivel, invariably accompanied by a relentless lack of humour and the assumption that playing the victim is a get-out-of-reasoned-debate-free card. One always has to fight the temptation to respond to their sanctimony with, 'You seem a bit cheerless! Have you ever thought that a decent bottle of inorganic plonk, a bloody steak and some vigorous bumsex with Jeremy Clarkson would liven you up a bit?'


* _{Not to be confused with a battered, ancient sex carp.
**See earlier phrase 'Monstrous Regiment'}

Just call me Bris. Hugh Bris. My goose is too big for my roasting dish and, laid lengthways, too long for my oven.

It isn't sitting in the dish, exactly; it is straddling it. Given its scale and its bright orange marinade and given the delicate dimensions of the roasting dish, it looks like a fat Essex girl straddling a Ghurka (I have seen this phenomenon and it is burnt into my memory). It's also leaking all over my lovely clean new oven. Woe. It's beginning to smell pretty good, though.

I started writing this last night and then got distracted by the fact that the heating had broken down. It has now been mended. Three cheers for the global economy and prompt, tidy and efficient immigrant labour.

I'm cooking an early twelfth night dinner this evening. Our menu will be mulled wine (sweetened only with the zest and juice of clementines) jelly starters - nice and light and palate-cleansingly astringent, then roasted goose covered with seville orange, cinnamon and chili marinade with a gravy made of the giblet stock and more of the marinade, leeks in stiltony sauce, butternut squash mash with red onions and caraway and red cabbage with pancetta. Then my newly-invented wheat-free cake as shown below. It may be free of wheat but it is shamelessly luxuriant; if it were any more rich and bitter I would have to call it Frac.

Chocolate Chestnut Truffle Cake for owlfish

100g ground almonds
500g of chestnut puree (mine was the sweetened type with vanilla, but I'd prefer unsweetened next time)
two tablespoons decent cocoa
250g unsalted butter
250g good chocolate - at least 70% cocoa
large glug of chocolate liqueur
large glug of chestnut aperitif
five eggs (you'll have one yolk left over)
double cream
mixed cranberries, candied peel and raisins
1 tbsp caster sugar
more chestnut puree
more chestnut aperitif

I only have exact measurements because I used whole packets of some things. The measurements do not need to be exact. Catering is chemistry and requires exact ratios and adherence to the letter; cooking is alchemy and requires a generous heart and adherence to the spirit.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a basin over barely simmering water (I did mine over the stock pot to save energy and washing up and suspect it got contaminated slightly with a drop of goose stock). Stir to a slithering, silky mass while thinking pure, artery-cleansing thoughts. Allow to cool a bit then stir in the ground almonds and chestnut puree and the glugs of boozes and the cocoa. The texture should be that of very wet, posh potting compost - tweak the booze and cocoa as necessary. Separate the eggs, discarding one of the yolks so that it can be used to soup up an omelette later. Beat the eggs gently with the caster sugar till they are pale and frothy. Add them to the mixture. Then beat the egg whites till they stand in stiff peaks and fold them carefully into the compost. Pour into a large silicon cake tin and put in the centre of a medium oven. I decanted six tablespoons into a muffin tin so I could test the mixture, but this wasn't necessary. If it had all Gone Horribly Wrong we would have had trifle with very exuberant chocolate sponges in it. Cook for about 35 mins. It will make your life smell briefly like Nicholas Sarkozy - hot, French and powerful. You can tell it is ready when it is springy at the edges and looks springy in the middle but feels dangerously quicksandy and fragile if you poke it there(/Sarkozy analogy).

If you try eating it warm it will be too dry at the edges but pleasantly squidgy in the middle and would probably work with posh ice-cream. But it is better left overnight to cool and become properly truffly. Cold it has a big, rich flavour and unctuous texture but a very light, clean finish in the mouth (/end Sarkozy analogy NOW). Overnight you can soak the dried fruit in some more of the chestnut liqueur. Brandy would also work - and I want to substitute amaretto for the chestnut liqueur and pureed dried apricots soaked in amaretto for the chestnut at some stage. I am going to spread the top of the cake with some more of the chestnut puree, cover it in cream whipped with juices from the soaked fruit and then sprinkle the soaked fruits on top just before I serve it. We will have little glasses of the chilled aperitif with it.

I've had a bit of a cull - mainly those who no longer update or only update with effing twitters (I have plenty of paint, should I be inclined to watch some dry).

If any one is particularly bothered I will put them back as there really is no drama intended.