dear diary...

26/10/05, 18.50pm: Oh, the bird has flown! I've packed up my baggage and moved to LiveJournal. Feel free to follow... ÿ

09/10/05, 23.15pm: It's been a busy weekend and I've barely seen my computer, or in fact, any computer since Thursday. Thursday evening was my leaving do with friends from Highgate. Quite a few people came out and, seemingly, most of them bought me a drink! I had a great time, although felt quite heartbroken over final partings.

Friday, I woke up with worst possible hangover and had to go to a meeting with my new line manager to be introduced to some of the people involved in the project in North London mental health trusts. So I gave a great impression of myself by looking like the living dead, my head nodding throughout, eyes barely focussing. Went into work afterwards and was scared to face anybody, feeling fragile and emotional, so I went straight to the ward and tried to tie up as many loose ends as possible in terms of inpatients database and filing. Still felt that I'd left loads of chaos behind me and, even though my Highgate friends were very much on my mind, I didn't get time to wander round saying my goodbyes and completely forgot to contact my current line manager before making my escape. At home Mark and I were both knackered and went to sleep within minutes of me getting in, woke up at 9pm still feeling befuddled but Mark cooked. Then we slept badly and woke up to...

Saturday, woke up late and decided that we'd go and see Serenity at midday in Uxbridge, then get my passport photos done for work ID, then go and help Mark's mum and dad preparing for our youngest nephew's christening party.

Serenity: without offering any spoilers, it's fantastic! Please go and see it. Even if you haven't seen the TV series, Firefly, on which it's based, you can watch this and enjoy it because the small amount of necessary history is filled in at the start of the movie. Which is good, because I didn't get to re-watch the series beforehand since I'd loaned my DVD set to my brother and forgotten about it. I think Joss Whedon rocks! Mark agrees :) that the script is great; it's the main thing that lifts this film above and beyond most other scifi films. I hope it achieves one of its stated objectives - to get funding for another TV series, although it'll be interesting to see where Whedon's going to go with that, given the ending. Perhaps they just want to finish the original series, or... okay, I promised no spoilers :) But I'm going to write more, I think, when I know that most people have seen it.

Then Sunday. Mark and I are proud godparents to our youngest nephew. The christening took place during a family communion service which is becoming the norm in the Church of England. St George's, Britwell, are a lot more charismatic than All Hallows. They have a mixture of age groups and are very encouraging of all their congregation getting involved in mission. They have a little music group, three teenagers playing, respectively, guitar, bass and voice - I loved hearing 'Just as I am' with guitars, which felt unusual, as I usually sing it as part of a choir accompanied by a fairly traditional organ, but the song has it's own beauty and always will. Everyone seemed to think the sermon went on too long, but I guess it's what you're used to. Mine are generally much shorter than average for my church, I think. St George's vicar is quite a lively and visionary speaker and I liked what he had to say, although I'm sure some of it might have been unnerving to some people - he was discussing his vision for the future of the church, which is something on the minds of a lot of vicars at the moment. Some of his words appealed on a personal level too. I'd quite like to keep in touch with that place, but we'll have to see.

Later, back at Mark's parent's place we ate a huge dinner and everyone wanted to doze but we managed to keep up some kind of conversation in shifts :) and played a bit with the two kids in the afternoon, then we had more food in the evening. And then we had christening cake! You will never go hungry at one of these family gatherings :)  But finally, we were over-fed and over-tired and had to come home. I did some prep for tomorrow. Trying to stay calm and unruffled by thoughts of my new job!

Have to remember to mention the ID photos briefly as they are quite bizarre looking, but that will have to wait until another day.

05/10/05, 23.15pm: At last I have an Audience for this waffle! Torn between flattered and disconcerted. Which brings me to a subject close to my heart... self-censorship.

There is a school of thought that says the internet is a great tool in furthering freedom of speech. It's so easy to put stuff in the public domain - I can put my whole boring life up here if I want to. There are websites devoted to every kind of political and religious doctrine, every kind of hobby or interest, every kind of sexual proclivity. Some of them I agree with or enjoy, some of them I tolerate, some I disagree with, some shock me, horrify me, scare me, or downright offend me. But if I can inflict my life on the e-literate world beyond my office, then how can I complain if they inflict themselves on me? (Who was it who said "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it"? I'll have to look that one up...) Anyway, along with the whole freedom of speech argument goes a parallel train of thought that goes, if we're going to allow everybody the freedom to express their own opinions openly then we have to be mature enough to recognise that we won't like all of it. Some suggest that we should deliberately avoid stuff we don't like - why deliberately upset ourselves? And then perhaps we might want to think about not making available material that we suspect may be offensive to others! Hang on, haven't I just talked myself out of my freedom of speech?!

I like to think I'm Mostly Harmless in the great scheme of things, but I'm sure somebody somewhere could find cause for offence on my site if they tried hard enough. Perhaps somebody might take exception to my poor theology. Or my poorly argued defence of free speech *lol*

Anyway, probably more pertinent in reality, I know someone who's had problems as a result of naming people, including a previous employer, on their website, so I know I have to be careful about that sort of thing. And I know that I wouldn't necessarily want all my family and friends having access to some of my writing, which doesn't all sit comfortably with what's already published here. And I certainly wouldn't want everybody in the universe having an opinion on what I'm doing with my life - there are far too many people in that position already, without enrolling the assistance of the internet!

So, now that I know I have an Audience, I'm in a Schrodinger's Cat situation. That's an illustration, by the way, that shows how observation of an event affects the outcome. There's a cat sealed in a box. It might be alive or dead, but if you open the box poison gas will be released that will certainly kill the cat. I think that's how it goes, anyway. And I'd just like to make it clear at this point that I do not in any way condone any kind of violence, against cats - it's just an illustration of a philosophical point. Look, the point is, I have an Audience - is their comfort their responsibility, or mine? It's an invited Audience so far, so I suppose I ought to take some responsibility. But do I care about their comfort anyway, or am I more concerned with my own? I might still have to face these people, after all. Well, I'm sure I'm no more selfish in this respect than any other human being. Am I? Must not feel too guilty about it...

Welcome to the Land of Ifs and Buts... moral dilemmas a speciality.

04/10/05, 20.50pm: Lunch with Sally and Sushma was great, and we've agreed to get together again. We're going to visit Sush at home to meet her kids, Karishma and Rahul. I've also been challenged to cook real food when they come to visit me! I told them about me and Mark eating mainly things that come from jars and they weren't impressed. Apparently it is my responsibility to make sure we eat properly, even though Mark is the better cook and enjoys it, ho-hum. Anyway, I will rise to the challenge!

Today I have been getting stressed about going for drinks after work. People expect a leaving do, and of course I don't need much excuse to go drinking these days (in fact, over the summer I've really become a bit of a binge drinker again). But I really hate organising my own event. I constantly worry over whether anybody is really going to turn up, whether it's the right day of the week, whether I'm remembering to invite everybody, whether everybody else shares my taste in pubs, whether the email I'm sending is worded just right! I had no idea I'd become quite so insecure. And it means that I'm spending all my time thinking about the event instead of thinking about the work I have to finish, of which there is much. The positive thing about all this is that I haven't had time to worry about my new job yet.

My new line manager has added me to her email circulation list and I've already received around three emails, which I am saving up in an email folder called Choose & Book, ready to review on 10th October. Yesterday, I received a circular asking six people, including me, whether they could attend a meeting in Barnet because she couldn't make it. "Steady on," I thought. "I haven't even started yet!" I wonder if she did find a volunteer...

I must not feel guilty about it. This guilt over nothing is completely crap, rubbish, unnecessary, irritating and actually harmful in the end. It's holding me back and I've had enough of it. Will keep trying to get rid of it.

01/10/05, 21.30pm: So, here I am, home alone. Mark was whisked off to London earlier today by Paul and Amit to join them showing their Bulgarian developer the sites of London. They booked hotel rooms for all of them without consulting Mark, so he has felt obliged to go and stay with them, even though we are trying to spend as much time together as possible at the moment. They arrived late, which was irritating because I'd put the day on hold to wait for them, but that was my fault so I had to put up with it. Anyway, I managed to find the phone number of the restaurant I wanted to book for tomorrow on the internet, so didn't have to worry about going into Harrow after all. I'm having a reunion with two of my uni housemates tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Then I did some laundry and sat down to watch Dog Soldiers - middle of the afternoon, brilliant sunshine, sitting on the bed with a cat in my lap and chocolate beside me, the only way I can watch horror movies. I love that film, I loved it from the moment I first saw the trailer on TV in fact. I had dreams about werewolves (very benign ones, I seem to remember that they were interested in politics!) until I went to see it with our friend Bryan, because Mark wasn't interested. Then I was alternately squealing with fear, and laughing at the oneliners - and it was still the same watching it today! I've continued the fear-fest by watching Afterlife on ITV1 this evening, which is spooky rather than scary. It's about a woman who sees dead people, and she tries to help the police solve murders, but of course nobody ever believes her, and she has a psychologist investigating her powers whose son happens to have died in a car crash. In tonight's episode, the ghost took action to solve her own problem anyway, which is rather odd given the effort our medium went to in explaining how helpless the ghost was, but led to a dramatic confrontation in which evil murderer met a gruesome end.

Should go to bed. I have a headache and I need to be wide awake for church tomorrow morning, and the rest of the day's events. But I find it hard to sleep when I'm in the house alone (apart from the cats who, while being lovely company, would be no use at all during a break-in) so I need to distract myself a while longer.

27/09/05, 22.30pm: This last week I have been asked some really Big Questions that have sent me reeling. Things like, what do I want from life? Who are my real friends? Do I really need to make God part of my life? These are the questions I've spent a long time avoiding and now they've caught up with me, so I will be giving them some of my valuable time in the coming weeks.

23/09/05, 22.30pm: I've been taking my lunch breaks alone all this week, getting a bit melancholy about leaving Highgate MHC and moving on shortly to pastures new. So I decided that today I'd make an effort to have lunch with two girl friends at the hospital. But, it was not to be. They were caught up with some tribunal work so I wished them luck and decided to go out for lunch anyway. I took myself out to the Fortuna Thai restaurant on Highgate Hill, a really nice friendly place where the owner always remembers his customers and has a conversation while he waits tables. I had a pad thai (their speciality), with Tiger beer, then apple fritters with syrup and ice-cream. The syrup was so sweet even I had trouble finishing it :) Yummeeee! It was so nice to have my own company for the hour, but to have the distraction of being in the restaurant eating a wonderful meal to stop me getting maudlin. Then it started raining while I was eating dessert and kept raining all the way back to the hospital. A kind of soft-focus romantic rain though, which I quite enjoyed walking through. And I felt like I'd reclaimed some sense of independence that I hadn't felt for a while. I went back into work feeling that, whatever happened, everything would be okay in the end.

19/09/05, 10.10pm: Just back from the annual audit of records at All Hallows Church. We did well and were encouraged to keep up the good work and look forward to the Quinquenniel Inspection next year. We all sighed with relief once Andrew Corsey, Area Dean, left the church. No reflection on him, just that we were all on the edges of our seats as to various issues that wanted to be recognised positively - and they were.

Two strange experiences today. In two separate incidents, two blokes said hello and told me I had 'really lovely long hair'. Well, I do have really lovely long hair (well, I do!) But I just wouldn't normally expect two unknown men to say so, spontaneously, on public transport and in the street, respectively. Nice, though.

18/09/05, 10pm: Went to a fantastic birthday party last night with Mark. Betty, a woman I work with, was sharing a party with one of her (five) sisters at a community centre in Finsbury Park. She and her family are Bolivian. They played Spanish music and had dancing all night. Two other people from work turned up with their partners. Hugo, who works in the Catering Department, is from Peru and his girlfriend, Maria, is from Columbia. They are both good dancers and game for a laugh as they took Mark and I for a turn on the dance floor! We had an invitation to Maria's birthday party the week after next, which surprised me because we'd only just met that evening, but they are lovely people and I'm looking forward to it. The other person from work was Dee, the Facilities Manager, and her husband, David. They are lovely people too and have also invited us to a dinner party, along with Betty and her husband, Angelo. Betty and Angelo are really good fun so it should be an interesting evening. Strange that just as one social life is ending, as I will move to a different site with my new job next month, a new social circle already seems to be forming. David works at St Pancras Hospital, my new base, so he will be the second familiar face there. I am also catching up with old friends from University days so, if I can keep up with everyone this time, I will have a choice of people to hang out with and the distress of leaving one group of friends behind will be slightly lessened, I hope. I spoiled an otherwise enjoyable weekend by getting completely drunk on Bolivian beer, throwing up when I got home, and feeling really ill throughout today. I really need to stop binge drinking. Really.

The situation with the MSN Space is not quite as bad as I thought. It turns out that you can access it, if you have a hotmail or msn email address and password, or   Passport. Although even that is uncertain, because tonight I was let straight through to the blog from my website link, when normally it even asks me to log in first! I think I may just stick to writing here for the time being.

17/09/05, 2.45pm: Mark and I watched Nick Rhodes on telly while in bed this morning. He was cooking breakfasts and we were inspired to do the same. Went to Tesco and bought in organic free range eggs, black pudding, large flat mushrooms, organic olive oil. Searching the cupboards at home we found a can of baked beans, a couple of slices of bread for toast, and some frozen Cumberland sausages. Mark cooked. It was lovely, and we're both full to bursting. We must do this more often.

17/09/05, 2.30pm: AAARGH! It's worse than I thought. Mark has tried to visit my Space and it asked him to log in and then seemed only to want to accept me logging in. What on earth use is a blog that only the writer can see. Oh, but not forgetting all the fatuous teens who have have Spaces and write in Txt about nothing at all. Okay, so I will continue my blog here for now. I still haven't made up my mind as to whether to switch to LiveJournal or BlogSpot. I know two people with blogs on each, so I need something to help me swing one way or the other. One person on LiveJournal has promised to friend me if I join there, but I know the other two would friend me if I joined BlogSpot. LiveJournal seems to have more silly toys though, which may be what swings it for me in the end...

16/09/05: My blog is currently supported by MSN Spaces. It's a beta-test version and has a tendency to fall over at the slightest provocation - it's already swallowed without trace a really long and detailed posting which I couldn't possibly have reproduced so I didn't try. Very irritating. It also has a tendency to be 'unavailable' more often than not, so you may not be able to access it anyway. If you can access it, you may not be able to use it.

If you investigate the archives you'll find the first three months or so are empty. I just secured the name and didn't do anything with it. Nothing very interesting was happening (not that that stops most of the other people with MSN Spaces), so I didn't bother to write about it. Then there are a few sporadic posts about my kittens and one about my sermons, but I still wasn't really making an effort. And as if to prove my lack of interest, I wrote a post on July 7th about the London bombing, saved it as a draft and completely forgot about it for a fortnight or so, hence it got posted eventually at the end of July.

But now, in September 2005, my eyes have been opened to the potential for keeping in touch. I don't have to think about huge group emails and who to include, or not. Just write my silly little 'Dear Diary...' entry and then, publish and be damned! And there are changes afoot, so I might even find something interesting to say, every now and then - who knows?

Enter, if you dare... The Land of Ifs and Buts Annexe