I went to the supermarket and bought sweets'n'treats last night to take around to my friends and then... didn't go. I just got a very strong feeling not to, and you know me and following my feelings. Also I had some washing that needed doing. Anyway, I spent Samhain alone, aloooone, alooooooooooone and it was really rather good. I think I have invented a ritual which I will do every year. No, not going to the supermarket and buying a carrot cake and then eating half of it, that part of last night was a mistake. No, right, what I did was this:

Spent half an hour on the phone trying to convince my esteemed colleague this was The Turn of the Year. The Old Year has all died away and The New Year is waiting to be born (at the December Equinox, see?) I couldn't see him but I think he might have been pulling a face.

Then I ran a steaming hot bath and put on a face mask and washed my hair and generally bathed. I cut an apple in half and counted the pips (the more pips the better - each one represents a change for good in The New Year - I had three. Not too shabby, I suppose.) Admittedly I forgot to take my athame (okay, my kitchen knife) in the bathroom so I had to get up out of the bath and get it. And I forgot my lighter for the candles so I had to get up AGAIN and get that. And then I thought I ought to be drinking some wine (that's ritualistic isn't it, drinking a glass of wine, even if it is some pin grig out of a tumbler rather than distilled from the blood of ravens in a silver chalice or something...) so I had to get up again AND find a corkscrew AND open a bottle of wine with wet hands. Next year I will be more organised.

I'd written down things I wanted to banish from my life on a post-it (I think you're meant to write with red ink on white paper but I didn't have any) and after I'd eaten my apple (oh man, I even said an invocation thing over the apple - I can't remember what it was now cos I read it out of a book but it mentioned The Fruit of the Underworld -how cool is that?! Although I'm pretty sure apples AREN'T The Fruit of the Underworld, but anyway...) after I'd eaten my apple (very slowly and thinking about all the things that had happened the year before and all the things about to happen) I set fire to my post it in the candles. Only where I was holding it had got a bit wet so I don't think I'll have managed to banish everything I'd written down because that bit wouldn't burn. Never mind, eh? I threw the bit that was left out of the window into a howling gale. Very apt. Then I blew out the candles and dipped the wicks in the bath water (don't know why, just seemed right) and put the apple pips in the candle holders before putting the candles back in. Don't know why I did that either.

Best of all, I did the whole thing listening to a live session from Zombina and The Skeletones.  Aces. Then I went to bed and dreamed about trying to get a dog I've never met (but feel as though I have) out of customs. It was a bit sad.

Oh, oh! And the best bit of the evening - when I was coming home from the supermarket there were some trick or treaters next door who saw me going in to my house. I couldn't just not answer when they flipped the letterbox, but I didn't have any treats. Well, I had wine and cake and a copy of Take A Break but I doubt they'd have been very pleased with those things. But I did have some dried fruit I'd been eating in the theatre the night before. Dried fruit! I opened the door and knelt down and said 'don't I have just the best thing for you guys?! Oh yes! They're yummy!!' and gave them some apple rings. They were over the moon.

Kids are weird.

I've had me hair cut and now I look like a grown-up. Scary! The salon had wine and a dog. Need I say more? Twas lovely and my hair still smells all hairdressy and I keep sniffing it like a mental. Nuff props to Katey, who suggested them. They were aces.

Also, I have a problem I can't blog about here but you canny 20sixers should be able to find out where I have.

I have class tonight so anyone who's going out please stay late so I can drop in and say hullo.

Having been robbed of my playmate by a hangover (his) I have been so bored this afternoon that I just read back all my emails to and from friends from this time last year.

I think I have grown up a lot. I am certainly a different person by a long stretch. I think it's all down to not taking the pill, I really do.

Just to let you all know!

And so this time next year I can look back and cringe and go 'oh my god, I thought I was acting grown up?'

I got my job. I'm not a temp any more. I'm a real person. Yikes.

I was thinking on the train in to work this morning (the train that only costs me 14 quid a week! that I always get a seat on!) as I was admiring the particularly beautiful weather  (I could see for miles! I could see everything - The Eye right down to Canary Wharf! I saw St Paul's! I live and work in The Capital!) and berating myself for not taking the morning off (every other Friday I have to be pushed out of bed and onto the floor otherwise I'll not leave - I even set my alarm for a whole extra hour in bed and it still wasn't enough) I was thinking -

What on earth would have happened to me if I hadn't stumbled over 20six?

I think I would be dead or dying. I think I might have been killed, or I might have killed someone. I think my liver (okay, I'm aware 20six has not been that kind to my liver, but honestly I am better now than I ever was) would have packed in, or I might have got pregnant, or even had a baby. I think I would have been very lonely. And very sad and angry.

I moved to London because I knew I had enough love and support to make it okay, not just from my boyfriend but from the friends I made in London too. Spuds put me onto her temping agency and through them I got this job and in a roundabout way my flat (because I found it through someone I worked with.) And let's not foget who is at this very moment in time watching Car Auction Booty Challenge from my bed. The fundamental interconnectedness of things.

The fundamental interconnectedness of things. But then I got to thinking - if I hadn't dossed about in my first year of A-levels, and if my tutors had predicted the grades I actually wound up with on my UCAS form, then Warwick would have accepted me. And I would have gone at the same time, reading the same subject as our very own Mr. Malden and various other Indie Boy rabble and a certain Babouin would only have been a couple of years ahead and working on the college rag...

So, you know, I bet I would have ended up here anyway.

Life, eh?

Life.

Am I impatient? I was going to say I don't think I am, but, thinking about it, I am.

I still feel like... oh I don't know, like I'm trying to get off the tube and I've got one of my braids caught in some guys watch and the doors are beeping and I'm tugging my head and realising I'm running out of time to get off the damn train because the watch guy is oblivious to the fact there's a girl trying to yank her hair out of his rolex.

(I have seen this happen. She managed to fall out of the doors just in the nick of time and he ended up with a braid stuck in his watch. I think it was extensions. I hope it was.)

No, that's not quite right. I don't feel as though I'm running out of time, but I feel like it is time for something to happen. I feel like I have done my bit and everybody else needs to look sharp and get on with theirs. But they can't get on with theirs because of really sodding silly reasons that aren't even their fault.

I'm all dressed up and I know where I want to go but the taxi I've got into keeps stalling at the lights. I'm sat in the airport clutching my passport but the baggage handlers have got in a sulk and nobody knows when I'll be able to fly. I'm waiting for the go-ahead from mission control but a mouse has got in and chewed up the wires and our comms have gone down.

I'm ready, I'm willing and I'm able. I am just waiting, waiting.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Blam.

Friday

colleague: your boy - he works in a uni, right?
me: uh-huh.
colleague: does he want a job here?
me: whut?
collegue: come on , you know how it works now. does he want a job here? just for a couple of months - maybe more if we like him.
me: errrrmmm...

Today

me: so... it sounds okay? they liked you?
him: it's exactly what I do now. but here. I'll give in my notice tomorrow.
me: blimey!

Hooooray! Something happened! Blam blam blam!