What, there's a lump on your eyelid too? Now that's a coincidence. Perhaps we should go to the doctor together. Doctor fieldtrip! It'll be like when we were in school and going on a class tour to a petting zoo, only there'll just be the two of us and it will be medical treatment we're after, not miniature goat-touching, and we won't have any wham bars or boxes of juice. Actually this is crap. Let's go to the petting zoo! You lead the way, because I can't see a thing with this growth in my eye.

I've said it before: I have a special love in my heart for Adrian Mole. Me and Aidy, we go way back. One time, Adrian makes an American friend called Hamish Mancini. When Adrian informs his grandmother, Edna May Mole, that Hamish is staying with them, she decides she won't be coming over for her dinner as she is simply too old for Americans. That passage made me laugh my head off, because I know exactly what she means. We cooked for a bunch of Americans last night. WHY ARE THEY SO DAMNED ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT EVERYTHING?! As demonstrated by the lunch-box episode, I am quite an excitable soul, but they make me look like a corpse. Although I can't blame them frankly for being excited about the dessert I made: chocolate fruit fondue. Being presented with an enormous paltter covered in fresh strawberries and pineapple plus a big bowl of chocolate sauce does rather make you feel as though all of your birthdays have come at once. (Actually if all of my birthdays ever came at once, I would know I was shortly about to die, so I wouldn't be too happy about it. )

Here's a window into a difficult topic. Speaking of birthdays and dying, my grandmother died there on my birthday. Only joking. I got a letter this morning in the post from Hodges and Figgis, informing me that at 11pm tonight they will be selling the new Harry Potter book, for which I have already paid a deposit, and which they failed to mention in the letter, and for which I fear I may have to fight. Too many whiches, ha ha ha! Oh God I need a holiday. Anyway, I won't be queueing up for the book tonight, because I am not INSANE, but I will be buying it next week, and it is possible that I will go to see the new film today. I may be some artsy fartsy up myself pseudo intellectual postgrad leeching off the state wannabe floppy-haired leather patch elbowed pipe smoking Dante quoting wet liberal, but a good yarn about teenage wizards isn't beyond me, no sir.

neuro-praxis -- deed done is well begun!