about three quarters of the way up the street actually

The whole moving house thing wound up being being pretty easy, largely because we seem to have some of the best friends in the world.

The Pixie hadn't seen the house at all until the day we picked up the keys, so it comes as some relief that she doesn't hate it and that we we are all settling in quite nicely. So far the only unforeseen horror has been in the cupboard under the stairs, where we found an old wooden box containing a single child's slipper and a rusty saw.

Which is hardly horrifying at all, actually; and far less disturbing than our pet Frenchman's collection of sinister foreign foodstuffs.

Soupe?! What the hell's that?

Those labels could say anything, and there is literally no way of finding out.

all bets are off

We took the slag to it's first trackday at Castle Combe last week.

Most remarkably, and despite our best efforts, we brought it back in mostly one piece, too (I think we may have left a bit of rear mudflap somewhere on one of the grassy bits).

On the whole we had a good time, and learned a lot. Mostly we learned that it's really easy to spin rear-wheel drive cars on wet and greasy tracks when you have more enthusiasm than talent.

Still, the important thing is we didn't hit anyone else whilst we did immaculate pirouettes around tiny imaginary tracks of our own devising, and having returned with a still functioning slag we now intend to make it lighter and more imbalanced by taking out every single non-essential item. This does not include the stereo, which is of course essential.

I returned from our satisfying day of near-death experiences to find that Charlie Cat had taken delivery of one of her more recent eBay purchases.

We have decided to name him Mr BIMBLE; although certain less charitable South Africans have since dubbed him Mr Binnable.

We love Mr BIMBLE, with his orange fur and creeping horror and hat at a jaunty angle. But we're apparently the only ones.

And what else? Well, it was a bank holiday weekend, so we had to go to the Mendips to watch the bangers. To cut a long story short, there were limos...

...hearses...

...and Reliant Robins held together with bits of string...

...but mostly there was a lot of huddling together like penguins as we tried (and mostly failed) to shelter ourselves from the freezing bloody wind.

Schoolwork now. Get lost.

hammers

Last week, I was perplexed and amused in equal amounts by a woman who wanted to return a toaster to the store because her bread didn't fit in it.

No, really.

This drew a small crowd of perplexed and amused colleagues. A lady from the kitchenware department suggested that there was a degree of dimensional creep within the bread baking industry, and that loaves kept get larger. She asked if I had ever had problems with bread being too big for my toaster.

"Not especially, since I tend to buy bread that fits in my toaster, rather than the other way around."

This was as nothing compared to the woman today, who returned a kettle because it was too noisy.

"When you turn it on, it's just really noisy, and I don't think it's good enough for a kettle that costs nearly £60. It sounds like a rocket going off."
"Well, have you checked your kitchen for rockets? It could all just be a mad coincidence. There could be rockets hidden behind your kitchen units, and they're triggered somehow by boiling water..."

In the face of such irrepressible stupidity, you could be forgiven for thinking that I might be looking forward to my imminent return to university. And on the face of it, trading 38 of the 58 hours a week I spend tolerating self-important twat baskets for a load of mechanical engineering mind bending seems like a pretty good deal, if you like that sort of thing.

I like that sort of thing.

But in truth, I'm a little apprehensive. The last time I did any real study was in May last year, when I was preparing for my exams. And although I spent a year working in a job where the degree I am seeking to attain is a requirement for employment, the fact is that I applied virtually none of my learning whilst I was on placement. I am reliably assured by those that have been there and done that, that this is very typical of what I will experience post-graduation.

Partly I'm just unsettled by the uncertainty, the change of routine. Mostly I'm terrified of finding out just how much I've forgotten.

But not as terrified as I am of this.


Thanks, BBC news website. For all I know this fucking evil jumping fucking Cthulu spider fuck is the same size as a Toyota Corolla, can leap tall buildings in a single bound, has a petrifying gaze, and feeds on the gooey stuff that lives inside my eyeballs.