Oh hello, how’s things? Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Not wearing black. Or brown.
The long dark winter has inspired me to wear more funky colour, and it’s kind of fun. I’ve now got a purple coat and a lime-green sweater and a stripey knitted hat. And golden shoes. I heartily recommend wearing colourful clothes if you’re in a winter funk.

Grappling with feminism
I thought adolescent-style world-grumps would disappear as I got older, but instead I’m getting more grumpy. I don’t like hearing my lovely and beautiful female friends talking about their bodies with disgust. I don’t like that even the most successful female pop stars on MTV are still half-naked in their videos. I don’t like the word ‘hot’. I don’t like that the Guardian website’s ‘Women’ tab is located in the ‘Life & Style’ pages. Oh dear. I’ve become a ranty blogger. Let’s move on.

Visiting a con
I went to the SFX Weekender to assist the boy, who was handling the awards presentation. It was cool.

All these people really like Ianto off Torchwood:



And here’s me next to the Tardis of Love, in which two attendees were discovered, ahem, in flagrante delicto.



As you can see, I am regenerating.

Wow, loads of things have happened in December. To start with, I turned 29 years old and the boy took me to London for an exciting weekend of eating ribs at Bodean’s and spotting Mika and Huw Edwards (not at the same time).

Despite such adventures, I’ve been in a dreadful funk all month and shall now gloss over this fact with a gallery of Scottish pictures. Huzzah!

Here is me with one of Chris’ new kitten brothers.



If you’re suffering a winter funk, kittens are a surefire cheer-up! This fella and his partner-in-chaos spent our entire visit chasing our shadows, curling up on our knees, sticking their faces in our cereal bowls and disrupting perfectly good games of Trivial Pursuit:



I also spent much time admiring the Palnackie chickens, whose main interests are hot water and brussels sprouts. The cold doesn’t really seem to bother them; they just hustle up into their coop and sleep through whatever the thermometer throws at them.



Then we went to my ma and pa’s and there was just arseloads of snow. Apparently it’d been snowing every day for a week, and everyone was understandably sick of digging out their cars. Having been away from this hardcore climate for most of our adult lives, and forgetting just how difficult knee-deep snow is to walk in, Chris and I went straight out for a mini hike.



Also, Gra and I made a MAGNIFICENT SNOW QUEEN:








Look upon the snow queen’s beauty and despair! Unfortunately, we built her looking into our parents’ bedroom, so now they have to suffer her piercing stare in the darkness every time they go to close the curtains.



Not to be outdone, my dad disappeared into the front garden to make a ... well, it started off as a Sphinx, but quickly morphed into a Wallace and Gromit-style giant were-rabbit. Arrrrgh!





Chris doesn’t look particularly impressed.

On the drive home, high in the hills outside Glasgow, temperatures dropped to -11°C and poor Carlos suffered terribly. His (anti-freeze!) screen wash froze solid, icicles formed on his roof and the condensation on the inside of his windows froze in little starbursts all around us. It was very beautiful, and only slightly hairy. The saddest part was the lonely sheep standing about by the motorway, scraping with their hooves to find grass.

Tonight is Hogmanay, and the boy and I will say a thankful ‘piss off’ to 2009. Have a lovely evening, everyone – see you on the other side! x

We had a lovely Saturday night/Sunday morning with Cope in Cardiff, where we made some experimental bread and made a holy pilgrimage to Cardiff Bay, Home of Barrowman. Eating lunch in Cafe Rouge, the boy suddenly noticed a long white hair floating in the wind. Cope quickly spotted another one and I was utterly perturbed.

When we got home, I made the boy take a picture. Once I stood in the light, he said ‘God, you’ve got loads!’ and, sure enough, there were several strands of white spread all the way along my parting.

Of course, living with a man who started balding in his late teens, it’s difficult to get any sympathy for sudden hair-whitening. The only consolation is that, while it makes me feel old, I bet it makes my parents feel ruddy ancient. SORRY!

Here are some grainy cameraphone shots from our trip to Brighton yesterday, where the boy was covering the opening of the new Apple store. While he went off to the press preview I toddled off for a walk on the seafront.



There’s a special corner of my heart reserved for Brighton; we used to come here on daytrips when London got hot and insane. It seemed very quaint then, although compared to Bath it feels like a bustling metropolis. I was on the pier at 8.30am, and it was delightfully empty, with lots of places to sit on the sunny side and watch happy dogs jumping around in the waves. Dogs love beaches!



The beach is very pebbly and I don’t usually bother going into the water, but when I arrived it was low tide, so took my sandals off and had a paddle along the sand. Lovely!

My iBook needs a bit of TLC, so the boy has lent me a Macbook Air to browse with. I'd swear it weighs less than my wallet. It certainly weighs less than my handbag. Apple, with these gravity-defying laptops, you are really spoiling us.

In other news, Scotland was ridiculously cold, the sort of cold where you keep your coat and hat on even inside the car, with the heating on full blast. The swarthy people of Edinburgh coped with it slightly better than I did, although I was vindicated by my mum's cat, who refused to go outside for more than a nanosecond before clawing at the door like a bad feline zombie movie. The good news is that it's time to put on my parka again, which is the closest I can get to going to work in a duvet.

This is my last school holiday ever. I can't help but feel I never really took advantage of them anyway, spending most of my time off either working or thinking about work. I am celebrating this milestone by doing work, hooray! Later next month I'm starting work at the mighty Future Publishing, in the same building as the boy. How very exciting and terrifying.

Today was a low-key end of term, and now I am in my flat with a six-pack of Coke Zero and a carrier bag full of lever arch files. My lovely headteacher has given me something of a reprieve, taking me semi-off-timetable for my remaining two weeks in order to finish some mad-urgent paperwork before I leave. Thanks!

On Sunday I am off to the Mother Country, leaving the boy at home to have a 36 hour Time Team marathon. When he's not eating or sleeping, you can be damned sure he'll be watching Tony Robinson standing in a muddy hole, holding a skull fragment.

In other news, my dad is now using his website to educate, postulate and develop bizarre strands of genetic research. Now that's good blogging!

Have a groovy weekend. x

What ho! On Wednesday I went to Cardiff and it was great. Cardiff has lots of things that Bath lacks, such as more than ten metres of level pedestrianism, a sea view, transport links and Welsh people. Despite the incessant drizzle and his poor health, Mr Cope was a paragon of hostly virtue, buying me a train ticket, providing umbrella coverage and, most importantly pointing out key Torchwood locations. Thank you! I feel I must pay more attention to Torchwood now, having obviously been utterly remiss in the past. It's worth noting that Cope knows more about John Barrowman than anyone else in the universe, possibly even John Barrowman. Sadly I forgot to take my camera to Cardiff, so instead of posting a photograph of a Welsh landmark, I shall allow you to pause and think of your favourite BBC science fiction drama.

That's enough.

In other news, to make up for the dreadful 'summer' 'holiday' the boy endured a few weeks ago, I am endeavouring to make his Bank Holiday as lovely as possible. I have bought picnic supplies and wine and am cleaning the flat to a sparkly state. I was even thinking of shaving my legs but LET'S NOT GO CRAZY.

I'm not the camping type, really, but we are financially compromised this summer and, frankly, it's camping or nothing. My camping stipulations include a tent that a) one can stand up in, b) has windows and c) accommodates a couple of folding chairs. Behold, the Orchy 400!

While the boy may mock my insistence on excessive tentiness, you can be damned sure he won't be complaining when it pisses down and we're trapped in that thing for days on end. There are skylights! And lantern-hanging hooks! And separate bedroom and living areas! The Orchy is essentially a super-light replica of our first London flat.

Our kit-list so far comprises red wine (don't need to refrigerate), an in-car laptop charger, bug repellant and sunscreen. We looked at stoves and mess-tins for about five seconds before realising we could never be arsed to use them.

So we're off to Cornwall for a week, hopefully for sea and sand and fish 'n' chips, probably for rain and endless wine-drinking. Cheerio!

On Friday the boy came to pick me up from work and we sped off to the glorious Bibury Court Hotel, an epic country pile full of eccentric toffs, oddball furniture and whispering Americans. Here is a moose that I became obsessed with:

The boy and I are, as regular readers will know, in our very element in the schmancy hotel environment. A switch flicks, synapses buzz, and our collective unconscious decides that all of those Wodehouse novels that we read in college were merely research and preparation for our inevitable arrival among the shooting classes of the early 1920s. This weekend was no exception. Cocktails were ordered, baths were drawn, rouge was applied and tea was strained by the gallon.

We had a fab time; thank you to the lovely sponsor of our trip. And now I shall watch Doctor Who and pretend I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

I have returned from the Mother Country and am back at the Ikea dining table, pretending to write articles. Not much has happened in the last fortnight, except this:



Which is a lot more terrifying than it looks. The deer kept sticking their heads right into the car and snuffling at the gearstick. Longleat Safari Park is pretty great, but I imagine if you're claustrophobic at all it might be a living hell. You're in a car ... but if you get out, a lion will eat you! Monkeys will climb on your face! A deer will lick your hand! Also, at the rhinoceros paddock there's a young man in a tractor, ready to head the rhinos off if they start to charge. What a job! Hours and weeks of tedium with the glimmering potential for an exciting rhino clash.

As you were.

ETA: A Roman centurion just clanked past my window. In full military uniform, including helmet. Ah, Historic Bath.

It's just after 4pm as I write this, but thanks to the wonder of international time zones I have been awake for 25 hours and counting. Unfortunately, this face-melting jetlag is only compounding the crushing despair I feel at being back in Blighty. We left palm trees and cloudless blue skies in California and flew for hours over snow-capped mountain ranges and twinkling towns and the mighty Atlantic only to land in drizzly Heathrow, greeted by surly baggage handlers and facing a three-mile stagger to the car park. It was all I could do not to turn around and get on the first available flight out again.

Anyway, I'm sure the post-trip malaise will wear off soon and we'll be back to crochet and Carlos before you know it. Here are some photographs (and an inexplicable gap) in the meantime:

Excitable Scotswoman makes spectacle of self in tram-riding palm-tree photograph shocker.


Chris made us walk up that hill. It was steep.


Lunch at the In-N-Out. Those are good burgers, dude.

San Francisco is sunny and lovely.
Everyone is friendly to me even when I am clearly a media event n00b.
I am learning how to overtip and eat meat. Haven't seen a vegetable in three days.
Telly is bonkers and unfathomable in a good way.
California much better than Bath. Would stay here forever if scary immigration men hadn't scanned my fingerprints and eyeballs. Oh well.

The boy and I have never translated particularly well to American soil. With the vocabulary of PG Wodehouse as enacted by The Broons, the fashion sense of retired geography teachers, and a list of interests that includes 'tweed' and 'data storage', we have never blended well in transatlantic situations. On our last trip to New York, we bumbled through Manhattan like Denholm Elliot in The Last Crusade, demanding civilised sit-down cafés and pleasant smoking areas and waiters with manners. Hopeless.

But! Despite our ludicrous past attempts at transcontinental travel, next weekend we are headed for San Francisco to report on the celebrated Macworld Conference and Expo. We will be there for a week and I am excited beyond measure. Much Californian wardrobe confusion abounds, so I reach out to all of you American blog-lurkers to ask some important questions such as:

Should I bring my parka?
Will I be cold?
Where can I find a brilliant yarn store?
Can you recommend any genius telly for me to watch at night?

Answers by comment or contact form, prize of a postcard featuring my brilliant 'drawings' for anyone foolish enough to send me their address.

In other news, back to work tomorrow. Ho hum.

Living in London, as the boy often observes, was a bit like having a stunning but impossibly high-maintenance mistress. We loved her with the burning fire of a thousand suns, but she kept us locked in a dingy little room and never let us sleep. She offered opportunities and excitement beyond our wildest dreams, then took all our money and mocked our lack of stamina. And, of course, she was very beautiful indeed, making every other town look dowdy and frumpy in comparison.

There is a part of me, and I'm sure a part of the boy, that just can't quite let go. If London really was our recently-dumped mistress, then our jaunt through last week was the equivalent of a drunken midnight phone call. I'd like to use the end of this metaphor to create an uncomfortable photographic juxtaposition:



Thanks. That's the carousel in Covent Garden, a place we never went before we moved. Proof that we really are just tourists in our former hometown. Sob.

To dampen our collective grief, the boy took a few days off so we could do the things we never did when we lived in the city. Namely, drive to Dorset and look at geological marvels. Here is the boy hiking the coastal path from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door, which is a pretty spectacular thing to do on a beautiful autumn morning.



The boy and I aren't really from hiking stock, as evidenced by our hilarious hiking 'gear'. Note the boy looks vaguely at home, if a bit Oxbridge-ish, with his duffel coat and chucks, but somehow I managed even to make my walking stick look vaguely out of place. Hellew! I say, it's a bit blowy up here for a pashmina! Do you know if there's a cafe?

On the way to the coast, we went to see Stonehenge, which is a lot taller than I thought it would be. I imagine that Stonehenge is very beautiful and peaceful on the summer solstice, but I can recommend a dark October afternoon. Just before closing time, with howling wind and whippy rain, it really felt like the edge of the universe.

We have been on holiday! Here is me with my holiday squint on:

Sadly this picture was not actually taken on holiday but in a beer garden in South London. Our proper holiday photographs are all of ducks. Witness:

Both the boy and I developed a bizarre obsession with the quacky feckers and now boast the world's largest private collection of duck images. I'll post some of my drawings later unless you send me cash. Lots of cash.