Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Things:
- The RFH stock a Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own tea-towel. The container with similarly branded rolling pins presumably went over the side somewhere in the Western Approaches.
- Beddingfield music leads to interesting scenarios. Specifically the cute guy on the checkout singing along (since when do they have music in Sainsbury's?) to "These words" and so calling out to me "I love you, I love you, I love you", possibly unintentionally.
- Discoballs/mirrorballs/glitterballs rock. There's one that catches the morning sun on the way to the Tube and so bounces joy all over M&S.
- I'm still not having much joy with moving anywhere, hence only getting to... I was going to write 'blog', but it's not just blogging, it's Flickring, GWLing, Facebooking, emailing and general internetting once in an oddly brown moon (ok, I haven't seen the moon for weeks, although it could just be the Daleks hauling things out of place, but the last time I saw it was through the London filter).
- Oh sugarbowls, which is not a hideously twee (incidentally, someone at work addresses the entire company as cherubs when emailing; it has yet to be confirmed if this person is a part of the seraphim) way of swearing. Simply it reflects breakage (not by me) and replacement, which I planned (the latter, not the... you get the idea. And what do we think of this London brought to you by IKEA tube map sponsorship thing?) meticulously, having discovered the only things I liked that vaguely matched were £40 (well, if I will think "Oh, I like that" in Heal's) so instead opting for a mini Le Creuset (or however it's spelt; the big, heavy, orange ones that'll be what the Armageddon-surviving cockroaches shelter in) casserole on the grounds that it is both far cheaper and slightly different (yes, I know probably not that different but John Lewis's - and yes I was having a hideously-consumerist-aspirational-or-perhaps-stolidly-middle-class-perk-me-up day; I may not have anywhere to put it, or me, but I can still recognise a good vase - doesn't really offer much in the way of left-field-ness [or perhaps silly-mid-off-ness]), only to not buy one yet and then discover that she-who-is-worrying-about-money had ordered one from that kindly Mr Lewis with ten minutes of the other one breaking (but then she is the only one who uses it).
- Sundry other things forgotten of late. But it's late (i.e. two hours after I got home) so I must to bed.

Anyhoo,

What is the etiquette concerning the repeated bumping into of somebody who is not your flatmate only because they applied an equal opportunities policy, but who you only know through house-hunting? Especially when they mention that their really great home turns out to have an oven that is so keen not waste energy that it uses none, that the drains don't and that they've found more than their first cockroach. It's quite hard not to smile while thinking that getting bumped so that the oft bumped-into could have her menstrual cycle fall in with someone else's perhaps wasn't so terribly bad. In the end I went with "But other than that?"

I'm not sure if I got away with it.

And in other news I really must stop wandering into the only Fopp in the city (I know it's an HMV in indy clothing, but it's still cheaper than HMV [except for The Devil Wears Prada, which is £4 in Fopp, £3 in HMV, and don't ask me why I noticed] and sells books). I'd previously missed Penguin reinventing their wheel (possibly because I don't do RRP), so have come away with a purple, a pink and a blue, but only because I'd read all the oranges I'd heard of*, all for £3 each, which is what charity shops seem to think they ought to charge for any old book these days, and not all that much more than a Ladybird book (universal inflationary indicator in pocket money calculations).

* Largely because my brother has non-unified copies of them, as he does of the purple as I've just discovered. Blast. But then I was carrying at the time a copy of Freakonomics and realised the classic edition won't let me cause consternation on the Tube by accidentally covering the next-line-down "onomics" bit, thereby letting all those to my left read the "freak" and strain to find out what the rest is (yes, madam, it is noticeable, and you could just ask, but then I didn't ask when I saw someone reading a Cryllic book with a title something like "Coda Da Vinci", which is quite hard to read upside-down in strange characters, and also rather disappointing when one eventually cracks the code).

Anyway, back to phoning completely random people with the faint hope that at least one might prove sane (i.e. I've forgotten all the other stuff that might have gone in).

Anyhoo,

I've already done the "I'd make a very good pet" bit, haven't I? Still applies as still not solved. Hey ho.

So house or flat or maisonette or apartment or pied-à-terre or mansion hunting has been fun. There are a curiously large number of owners and sharers who seem to think that non-smoking refers to the central heating, and so the smouldering ashtray wrought ingeniously from a Corona bottle is an irrelevance. Another wasn't smoking at the time but simply had scorch marks on the wall round the coin slot for the washing machine, which was shared with the two other flats in the building. And is it a good sign if the flatmate who shows signs of not quite having finished the nervous breakdown explains that the letting agent is really cool because she'll even pay people back for the mousetraps? And then suddenly somewhere fairly reasonable comes along (with a couple of quirks) and there's much bonhomie, then promises I'll hear by so-and-so, and encouraging emails explaining they'll make a decision soon, and then... well, I'm still waiting. So basically, the small, tatty, carcinogenic and infested want me, and the large, decent, carcinogenic-only-from-the-new-carpets and not yet infested don't.

Hence still looking. I think I can probably find a room fairly easily, but it'd be somewhere I hated living, which might not make the whole living thing too great. I need to get on with ringing and emailing, but at the moment it's all a bit why-don't-they-like-me?

Oh and if you've ever had a bad day of habitation-hunting, do not find yourself buying chocolate in Soho simply to convince yourself that all is right with the world (ok, wandering the streets of Soho was to remind me why I'm doing this, the chocolate was because I'd been wandering too many streets that day and the magical power of apples had been overwhelmed). Because breaking into a bar amid the rubble of Berwick Street means you'll be constantly wary of the oddities passing by begging for some while trying to work out what you can give without encouraging further requests yet still leaving a decent amount and since when were they only five blocks wide? At which point some scrawny wastrel with hungry eyes and a piercing that glows against the fake tan like a jewel in an Ethiope's beer will approach and ask if I'm looking for a woman. Turns out that Fruit and Nut may contain nuts and so may hurt quite a lot when traversing the nasal cavity. It also turns out that some solicitors (well, what else does one call her?) take the emission of almonds from the nostrils as a sign that she should ask if I'm looking for a man instead. I'm not sure if the tears were of amusement at the situation (you think I have to pay for sex? Ye gods, I obviously needed the chocolate more than I thought if I look like that) or just of pain from my literal brown-nosing. And yet having reduced me to tears (and giggles) she carries on offering really great prices. Eventually she accepts my 'no thank you' and wanders off to... best not to think about it.

So remember, kids, this is what happens if one shops in Somerfield.

What else am I to mention? Art stuff: Cy Twombly at the Tate has one decent room which is all one work, and the rest of it can be largely skipped, being beigely predictable. I've done the Street and Studio here, haven't I? Did I do the RA's SumEx? *Checks* Oh, apparently I've written about neither. Um, SumEx same as ever, so getting ever less awe-inspiring each year, though still worth going because being an art jumble sale there's always something to be found. S&S is photography so an instant yes. If you have time sit through the club videos at the end; very much an exercise in people-watching and not all of it on screen. But makes for dismal, terrifying and pitiful viewing, and yet there's an 'and yet'.

Hmm, the problem with not blogging is then I find myself unable to remember what happened and when it did (and if I didn't take an EXIF-tagged photograph I really have no idea when it was). Who knew technology displaces human functions? Which reminds me, just finished Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance; good if troublesome and I'm still not sure if the ending I saw coming early on is a good or a bad ending, and I suppose seeking to define it as such is probably comment on the insidious nature of the beast illustrated within it. So now back to the Bond books. Oh, also read The Honeywell File as it was flung at me. An amusing quick read, slightly tedious in parts, and very much of its time, yet possibly still largely applicable.

And yes, I will get round setting all those hidden uploads on Flickr to public (or whatever release suits) at some point, just as soon as I finish naming them all.

Think that's how for now.

Anyhoo,