Good afternoon.

I was going to go on strike and refuse to post again - for surely tis the job of postal workers (ooh, how politically correct!) until some charming friend deigned to comment upon my magpie musings.

However, one dear sweet person just tried to (hurrah and huzzah for Matthew James!) and it disappeared, so mayhap this is not going to be a successful ploy, for the blog monkey is eating anything commenty - hmm, is he perhaps a magpiesque creature also?!

Well, all seems doom and gloom among friends and relations at the moment. I have decided (through laziness) to relinquish my task - set by Miss McAdam - to create a tally of the number of times I cry this year...I feel too many reams of paper would be wasted. And yet, joyousness and revelry abounds.

As dear William Blake said once, in his proverbs in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", "The extreme of joy weeps, the extreme of sorrow laughs...". Perchance the abundance of both weeping and laughing in my life to date reflects the manifold randomness and moments of marvellousness, interspersed with moments of monstrosity?!

I went to a prayer meeting last night that went on till 11.40pm - Great Scott!!! It was most enjoyable, though by the end, Dori, Sarah and I were all almost alseep. Note to self: do not attempt to pray in a fairly dark room while lying on a bed late at night.

Sarah, Anne and I watched Amelie last night - a very good, indeed, most excellent film. I get so bored of all the American rubbishy teenage ones (no offense Miss Katie Beth!) about blonde high school girls whose main aim in life is to straighten their hair and buy a nice pair of shoes, oh, and go out with the "star quarterback"...

But then I think about how shallow I am and realise that I quite like shoes (especially my pink stilettoes) and straight hair and boys (though I'm not so thrilled by the idea of a sports superstar, for in my youth I dated a sporty 'jock' and he was boring)...ah well we're all like those tedious silly girls then. But the beginning of Amelie when the narrator talks about what each character likes and dislikes is awesome as it's really random and perfectly captures what people are really like - full of quirkiness.

People's quirks should be celebrated (unless they involve making collages out of other people's toenail clippings, as one very "artistic" friend of mine once hoped to do)...

Hold onto your hats.

Dispose safely of your toenail clippings - you never know who might want to exhibit them in the Tate one day.

Don't drive tractors when drunk.

Love and pink polkadot ballerina elephants and castles xxxxxxxxxxxxxx