You wouldn't eat me!

I’ve discovered the craft of biscuit-making. I’ve also discovered Christmas Tree shaped biscuit-cutters. Add to this the final discovery of glitter icing and silver sugar-balls, and you have some very happy DPhil students reverting to childhood. H produced a very creditable dinosaur as well as her piece-de-resistance fish design, E's excellent decorating skills came up with ionic columns in front of a sunset (interesting choice for a Christmas Tree...), while our temporary housemate X gave us a lesson in Chinese writing which left us with a number of biscuits which are simply too pretty to eat. Guess I’ll have to bake some more, then…

Just possible that a poem might happen

So, did I tell you, dear Reader, that I’d been organising a poetry evening in Swansea? No? Well, I did. And it was tonight. My wonderful readers did a great job, and the audience (kindly described as “intimate” by one lady who attended) was appreciative out of proportion to its size. Though the otherwise wonderful K’s intro and outro entirely missed the point of the evening, it was nonetheless rather good fun. Though, I have to ask, why do churches have to be so cold that your toes go numb? Is it some kind of spiritual mortification thing? Do clergy think that, through the cunning induction of numbness, the faithful will be tricked into believing that they are having some kind of religious ecstasy? Or maybe it’s the Holy Spirit breathing on us, like in the hymns? Someone get the Holy Spirit a bottle of scotch and a good log fire, that’s what I say.

I’m so going to Hell.

Good night, sweet ladies

The ladies of 155 decided it was time for a night out, and so we threw ourselves with gay abandon at Somerville’s Michaelmas Dinner. (It’s free, so what more do you want?) Highlights of the evening included setting fire to orange peel, building towers out of combs, and singing carols. Badly. In many different keys at once. Oh, yeah, we’re sophisticated. Cracker jokes, as usual, caused a great amount of mirth, as did the whoopee cushion which came out of one of the crakers, though the comic zenith was the JCR President’s speech – kudos to him, whoever he is!

Food was, in fact, edible – though I had taken the precaution of eating dinner before we came out in anticipation of the usual Somerville culinary delights. The trip home was fun, as my housemate F decided I should ride on the back of her bike. It was about halfway up Woodstock Road, I think, that I began to pray in earnest. Thanks to her great skill, however, I arrived home with no more than a ladder in my nylons and a bruised leg. Well worth not having to walk back in stupid girly shoes.

Music which we seize

Went with C and T this evening to hear The Sixteen sing Tallis in the Sheldonian. Words cannot express, etc. They were sublime. It’s the first time I’ve heard Spem in Alium live, and, day-um was it good! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, and tell me so, I will force you to listen to a recording of it, so be wary.

Tomorrow, the idea is for a far less cultural evening, when T comes over for film and pizza. I’m sure Tallis would have loved pizza, though, so we can think of it as a homage…

All that is ill you may repair

Today, after nearly a week at home, I finally got to visit my grandmother in hospital. She’s not at her best, but still keeping up hope that she’ll be getting back home at some point, so all we can do is keep our fingers crossed.

To prevent our passing on, I dunno, plague or something, we had to wear plastic gloves and aprons. It’s amazing how plastic will make you schvitz – I really can’t understand how anyone would wear it for fun.

In other news, our wonderful friend H has set off for a trek round Africa for nine months, and we’re going to miss her!