Woo hoo! I did it! I finally gave blood! You can read all about it here.

Click and head down towards the bottom. God bless us, everyone.

Hatfield is becoming my new favourite place. Oh dear?

Cheese was excellent last night bar lack of advertising: a loopy evening punctuated by teaching Anna to ride without a horse and teaching her how to tack up - ditto. Nice wine is clearly a brain distorter - hurray!

Oh. God. The fear is gnawing through my bones, brain and body more than ever. Why is an italian spell check so hard to find in a bloody unviersity? Why can I not think of three hundred more words? And why am I still panicking about my heart?

Looking for the HIM site. Found Humberside Industrial Metal instead. Wouldn't it be great if that was a real honest to god genre?

Elliott Smith has killed himself. A tragedy for music, his family and friends. I hope he's happier now.

How is it that I could buy over 50 flights to Europe for the price of a return train ticket to Norwich? Where is the logic or the bloody fairness?

With my birthday imminent, I have been deluged with requests from people wanting to know what I'd like for my birthday.

Alright, that's a LIE. Nobody cares. Everybody is secretive and I may end up being the little girl with NO PRESENTS AT ALL. Do you want that to happen? Well? DO YOU??!!!

*Ahem*

Anyway, should you the humble reader wish to buy me a present then I will accept a pony, "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs, an adopted shark, "How the West Was Won" dvd or a horse or any other fabulous present you care to get me. I have a wishlist on Amazon.

Those of you who don't care, I spit in your eyes and fork bad luck your way. Hssssss...

You wouldn't think I give money to charity would you?

I want to download a song. You'd think this would be easy but oooooh no. Ares has no songs. Kazaa has no software and requires shutting down every two minutes. Happy day then that O Zone's Online Tuning Fork exists. Only an A mind you, but in cool, bright reality playing sound. Awesome. Better (just) and more fun are the online piano keyboard's you can get. This one's a bit basic but hey, it works.

None of them beat this though: turn the sound up.

Well friends, Finding Nemo was indeed a beautiful, beautiful film. Not enough sharks in it though considering the amount of build up about Bruce etc. What the hell, we saw most of the film in the adverts before hand anyway - McDonald's Finding Nemo Happy Meals, Fairy finding Nemo toys and towels, the Finding Nemo video game...jesus, just show us the damn film and fuck off.

"Hello, I'm Charlotte Green. Jordan for the Home Counties."

Thank god for Radio 4's Listen Again page for Dead Ringers. Eastenders, Brian Perkins and a drum machine. Nuff said. Calm, calm tranquility in a beautiful rose garden, little pixies flying around dropping lily blossoms at my feet...

Tick...tick...tick. Like a bloody bomb about to go off - term, essays, Finding Nemo coming to Durham, trekking off to Newcastle to see every other film in the world that will never get a release in Durham, working, seeing, blah blah blah aargh. Head exploding, too much, too cold, too soon. Hmph.

Tomorrow I begin my "Insight into Management" course on the Hill. My dad rang me up tonight, ostensibly for nothing in particular but probably with a nervous thought that I might make it up there and run screaming, arms wide open, mad and flailing into the mountains of Durham. I'm actually rather terrified the people there are going to sniff my lazy Arts student status upon entry and scream "FRAUD" and point and start crying cos I'm taking the piss or something. Alternatively I could climb out of my own arse and stop believing that people who seriously want to work in business/ management/ industry are strange and incomprehensible beings with permanently earnest expressions. Damn my inability to say no! Farewell my dears...building exercises involving straws await me.

BASTARDS!!!! Fucking Dame Edna playing Bruce in Finding Nemo?? Possibly the best twist in a film ever and they put it in a damn film review? God I hate this life. The only way to make myself feel better is to throw toys out fo the pram and spoil the surprise for everyone else too. Humph.

Sing ho for Angle Grinder Man, the parody activist fighting for our rights against wheel clamping and bloody traffic wardens. Hurrah for the man! Bloody funny.

Need money? Sell you soul! While your at it get a free quotation! we want your soul has just valued mine at £36990 - only 21% of people have a purer soul than me. That's told you hasn't it! Buggers.

Oh. Webmail's been made all sexy and somewhat unuseable. I almost wish it was back to being useless and ugly. *sigh*

Handel's Messiah given X rating. "Obviously, there's been some sort of error," said Lara Vacante, an Apple spokeswoman.

Everyone! Forget your lives and embrace the new Spaced/ Black Books/ whichever slightly odd Channel 4 show you love the most. Watch Peep Show next week!

The world of Durham grows ever smaller as a mate I hadn't seen since sixth form turns up in Walkabout to do a PGCE. Not in Walkabout you must understand...

What the hell are Neigbours playing at sending Dee and Toadie over a damn cliff?! Is nobody allowed to live happily in Soapland anymore? And what's their obsession with the sea anyway? Bloody ridiculous.

Oh dear. It's actually true - English is an easy language for easy people.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro

Damn these essays. Damn them damn them damn them.

Huzzah! Prospective hair power meet and greet ahead if people don't decide d21 to be of less importance than actual printed things. Bastards. Damn them and their inky blasphemy.

Hot damn, enough use of the word "wow" I feel. Which is a pain in the ass when you want to wax lyrical about the prospect of rescuing your mundane out of term existence through getting SKY. Hurrah I say, Hurrah!

Wow, The Flaming Lips are touring with the Chilli Peppers! In America. Damn.

Wow! Urinals in the street! Swanky new alcohol providers! No bloody cinema! How nice to be back in Durham.

Anybody know spanish? Learn, and while you're at it, translate this for me! Answers on a postcard to the usual address x

"The Flame" es el nuevo disco de DOVER que amenaza con arrasar los escasos y débiles buenos sentimientos que nos quedan en este verano flamígero, arrastrándonos al feroz torbellino que solo ellos saben desencadenar, pero probablemente nos dejará a su vez la sensación de que todavía podemos disfrutar sin avergonzarnos de ROCK hecho aquí sin complejos, con naturalidad, intensidad y furia como para liberarnos de la mezquindad musical que nos invade.

By the by, who's bad?

Well kids, Reading was better than expected - lots of toys being thrown out of prams (Squarepusher, Good Charlotte); Metallica having muchos fireworks and winding up the crowd with three encores (or truthfully, seeing how many times they could get away with walking off the stage before people started getting bored.) Lightyear secretly ending up as headliners by playing in the corner of a field for six minutes before getting ousted by security, the bewildered donut man besieged by three hundred drunks paying homage to his royal Hulk Hogan-ness, twenty thousand people rediscovering their testicles by singing along like a cathedral choir to The Darkness and having the best time ever. Man, this year was about JOY! Not about the damn Polyphonic Spree who contrary to expectation were just too scary to stay around with. And of course, Longview. Magic.

Hurray! Off to Reading tomorrow - plans for this year include not getting sunstroke. Like last time. Bastards. Pot Noodles no longer have the appeal of three years ago but it's tought titties as I am not forking out £££ for a pitiful little potato covered in slime. My mum has made the Mother Of All Fruitcakes for me and my bro though - mmmm, stodge and fillingness. Went round Winchester with the Siena kids yesterday - Andres badgered us to see the Round Table which was complete bollocks and stuck on the side of a wall. Wow. The Cathedral was great though apart from testy tower tour women, but respect to the ladies from the library. Well done you nice ladies!

Bless google and its magically strange workforce...

"I found a fantastic picture of Enoch Powell MP on a pogo stick, and so decided to write to a load of MPs and Peers, to see whether any of them had ever been on other forms of children's locomotive toys."

Boo. Must work. Will stop wasting time browsing for X-men biogs. Lame Kat, lame.

Boo. Must work. Will go now and stop wasting time on the internet looking for X-men biogs. Lame Kat, lame.

Back to googlism. kat brown is just me. on the other hand "Katherine Brown is provided courtesy of Christ." nice to know don't you think? Well enough of this egotistical surfing, onto the matter at hand - bought The Darkness album today, yes, it's all the AC-DC and hair power gigs you ever wished to see but were too unborn to do so, wrapped up into a handy Freddie Mercury-esque package. Legend. The new Goldfrapp, Black Cherry is cracking too, and you don't get bored of it which is rare for chilled electronica - mainly cos it's incredibly short. Boo Goldfrapp, make it longer.

Wild in space indeed kiddies, or would be if like Rankin I had ambitions towards geology...in space! Quite how much one can do with rocks is beyond me, but then I was in the silly set for chemistry, physics and biology and school. Bless Mrs Green and her unnerving tendency to control us via her pencil case sigh... In the meantime googlism has this to say about frogs: frogs is a fairytale gone funny. For this and about five hundred equally staggering facts about frogs, go if boreD.

All the kids are gone and the house is empty. Tant pis, we get to skid around mountains and sing along to Stoosh very loudly - hurray! Found an awesome little icecream cafe half way up only to find it was closed god damn. Am now in the process of finding guitars on ebay for 62p. Found seven, hurrah again! IIf anyone at all wants to buy me this one I'll buy you a sausage. Can't say better than that!

Dannii Minogue 'invents new dance' as she tries to alert crowd to sinking boat. Dumb ass english tweenagers.

New favourite hobby - approximate poker. Half the rules and fuzzy headedness, also known as International Sketching Poker. Awesome!

Ho-hum. Day 3 in the Geneva holiday household and now only Cesco and Kenya are still virulently ill with horrible bacterial plague. Poor ducks, it's a real horror as they were and still are really ill and probably won't get better til Monday. Boo to virulent bacterial plague and yay to life-improving antibiotics. Jon has now been cleared as the cause of this illness, Paleo killed them all.

Planets around your wrist. "At the date and time of your birth or other special time, the Sun, Moon and planets described a pattern in the sky. The Planetary Bracelet freezes that pattern, with each of the planetary bodies represented by a different gemstone (amber, amethyst, lapis lazuli ..). Makes a great present." HINT hint hint... Courtesy, as ever of popbitch and her great classifieds.

Access Denied

The requested document, http://www.thelithiumteapot.blogspot.com/, will not be shown.

Reason: DDR score = 79. This page will not be displayed because it contains prohibited words or it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words.

If you feel that this page has been blocked in error or you require access to this page, please click here to see whom you should contact.

ha ha ha, libraries are cute

Remember dear Billy from Neighbours? Rather than taking the traditional post-Ramsay Street track of minimal clothing and decamping to the UK, he's wearing clothes and er, heading for the BBC for a PD James adaption. Yum!

Forget the various guises of hot or not (turds? Kittens? I ask you...) the latest rating crapness to push our addiction buttons is rating potential baywatch lifeguards. *huh*, I could do that too. If I actually liked peroxide and the gym.

Been a bad kitten? No worries, they can't hate you anymore than if you're fool enough to actually send them this!

Fucking godawful poetry. When will people do something decent with my name, seeing as I am clearly destined to a life of drudgery and coconuts? " Words of A Broken Heart"

(NB: goddawful poetry removed as it was giving me a headache)

Chicken tied to helium balloons up for adoption. Another KAt Brown doing good work. Another one? Anyway, rated by Simon who approves of the "pretty chicken". Doh. Worryingly: "Kat Brown, deputy director of the shelter, said: "This is a great chicken, a friendly
chicken, a chicken that is ready for a relationship."

Clearly, nobody has anything to do in their holidays. Hurray! Better then that I get sent lovely stupid things like this - when office supplies attack

Go to googleand type in Weapons Mass Destruction BUT don't click search, instead press the "I'm feeling lucky" button, and
read carefully.

harry potter is now swinging around London somewhere - this is the problem with being nice at 4am and lending it away. Maybe one of the six million copies lying around at home will fill a gap. Did i mention we're getting a puppy? And who the hell wants to go to Glastonbury anyway? *Uh, I do.*

by the way, if you haven't read harry potter yet, it's bloody good. I need to read it again.

(disclaimer) yes, i realise it probably does.

Damned pedants.

HURRAY!!! I'm in Durham, it isn't raining and my family is getting a puppy. Does life really get better than this?

Courtesy, as ever, of the wonderful popbitch
Samuel L Jackson has been staying in the
Sanderson hotel in London for a month or so.

He's fascinated by British soap operas
"because they contain ugly people, especially
Eastenders. In America, Phil Mitchell
wouldn't get the women he does."

A new and somewhat sophisticated form of spam is flying into my inbox. I haven't had a penis enlargement email for about a week now, instead it's all virus warnings, depression solutions and, bizarrely, spam software spam. Redundant no?

My god, how hot does it have to be before we explode into a puddle of flesh and sweat? 8.30 this morning and I am crawling to class in a mist of my own overheating. Our dearly beloved landlady switched our heating onto full as well - is she sane? Who cares? I'm finally leaving Siena on Saturday having been here for about two minutes - can I fit the Campo in my suitcase? Sadly no. England should build one and generally have nice people in it.

Bloody hell! Song of my childhood, Mr Vain by Culture Beat (don't laugh) has been re-released - happily not in the UK. Altogether now, call him mr raider, call him mr wrong...

how dodgy are you? I am due Years in prison: 8 Potential fine: £7000 Plus a possibility of the death penalty. Bizarre crime examples: "In the UK, it is still illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day." "Placing a postage stamp that bears the Queen (or King) upside down is considered treason in the UK." The one about the boy and the shop dummy is weirder - fuck hte States, lookcloser to home!

Mmmm....Sunday! Beach,sun,frisbee, volleyball,swimming and biscuits. My feet and ears are burnt, otherwise high power suncream saved me from more embarrassment. Lots of distressingly svelte/fat (one extreme or other - why never a middle?) topless women and even more distressing,ageing lotharios in speedos. SPEEDOS ARE WRONG! Still just as wrong but more amusing is fuck socks which takes the Chilli Peppers famous piss take to extremes of farness hitherto unreached.

This amuses me lots. Then again, I have just spent the best part of half an hour looking at how many people have my friends names. Annoyingly, most of them are unique. I think I need more icecream...

"Find out if your an age billionaire. We invested 45p and hired the brain power of 7 ex tea bag monkeys to figure out how how old you are in days, hours, minutes and seconds.

This is vital to the survival of the human race. Why? Because we don't enjoy ourselves enough. These complex monkey based calculations now give you at least an extra couple of birthdays a year. Never mind your 30th birthday, how about 'today I was a billion seconds old'. Now that's much more spectacular although if someone offered to give you the dumps I'd avoid it.

We'll also tell you how many days there are until your birthday so you can bombard friends and family with daily update emails to make sure they are quite aware of your alcohol and gift demands. All you need to do is register and all this information will be available when you log in for your constant amusement and horror.

Click me to Register

No monkeys where harmed in the making of these web pages"

And, as I always thought, there is only ONE person like my grandma.

Like all the best website,. poiintless but utterly addictive: yourenotme.com tells you how many people there are in the UK with your name. And that's almost it. "There are 290 People with the name Katherine Brown. You are like a rare bird, Lost and pecking at nuts."

Damn. My work exp editor Eric has left the Gazette and moved to Germany where his fiancee works. This is mightily annoying both cos Eric was very cool and also because he was going to give me lots of interviews to do. Blast. I am going to get an icecream and wonder how the world can even stand without falling over.

Thanks to BBCi again for this handy guide of when you can speed. "Diarrhoea is a good example of what a court might accept as a special reason for speeding, though not if you were going at 110mph."

Today's "aren't children sweet" newsbit: Police in Florence detain a 7 year old Sheffield boy for chucking terracotta off the Duomo. Silly fool.

hurray they're making a Garfield film! Boo, it's going to be CGI. Worse news is that Avril Lavigne's had Skater Boy (spell damn you idiot child) optioned into a film. Er, right. Hmmmm.

Does Skin suit hair? Hmmm, not sure. Check out here.

I managed to pass an entire weekend in Vienna without culturising (is it a word? Who cares) at all - yes! I saw everyhting from the outside on the trams, trees, parks, buses, u-bahn, schwarzfahring all the way which was bad in a twelve year old sort of way. Ha! The cathedral is stunning though, if only for the windows at each end which are just staggeringly gorgeous - in a way I'm glad we bypassed all the museums and going in to pay extortionate fees because now the predominant image in my head is of those two windows and the paintings at one end. Vienna's parks are lovely too, filled with students "revising" and playing with hacky sacks and stuff. We did end up on the Eurovision Song Contest though which was bizarre - we met some people at the town hall to find shed loads of drag queens and people in crazy costumes going in to the Lifeball. We went in to find it was the "Hallo Vienna! Hallo Europe" point so we looked slightly perplexed before going full on weirded out when a Pet Shop Boy came out and spoke about the Elton john Aids Trust which the Life Ball is in aid of, then bloody Elton himself turned up and sang a song. How very english!

Wow, spam get original! It sounds like someone that knows me, involves someone called Mike and gives me a cool link instead of Saddam playing cards or photos of singles in my area. afireinside has articles on anythign and everything from Clark's Magic shoes (damn you if you got a pair) to Google porn searches and intelligent bitchery about Evanescence. Cool.

Greetings from Horn (god bless the austrians for having such ludicrous city names.) Cat and I drove here from Vienna yesterday in her new car - sqeaks and a dislike of first gear are rendered unimportant by the sheer SIZE of the bass. Mmmmm.... rush hour traffic was not the best time to leave - it took two hours to get of the bastard city but the drive was beautiful and more amusing town names. And the bass of course - again, mmmm. Sara´s house is fucking huge, our jaws scraping along the floor, we were shown various gadgets, enormous wardrobes and an obsessional towel collection. Creepy. Also the biggest tv I have ever seen - goddammit I want to be obscenely rich! Taking the kiddies out for a jaunt in the car, various children piled in on laps and all will be fine. Just don´t tell the insurance company. red tape in Austria might be a fuckload worse than in Frnace. Sheesh.

Oops again,but amusing - DVD mix-uip has kids watching The Exorcist. "According to The Sun, Jessica managed to watch five minutes of satanic possession before she told her father, 'It's scaring me.' As the idle chap was sat in the bath, he sent Jessica's 11-year-old sister in to sit with her before she came to him saying that the film definitely wasn't Harry Potter." Indeed!

A Texan racing driver is suing Simon Cowell over the rights to the American Idol format claiming he came up with it first and is seeking 300 million dollars in damages. Slight problem with this being he wasn't aware there was a British version first. Dumbass!

According to high times, my stoner name is Vulgar Cougher. I thought it was "I can't roll, don't make me."

Useful info from popbitch: Five people were injured by a crazed badger in Worcestershire this week. One of them ended up needing skin grafts. Oops.

Ow. Ow ow. Owowowowowowowowow. My legs resemble a boiled ham and a big lump of coconut ice. So attractive, and sooooo painful. Finished Stupid White Men last night - if you haven't read it already then stop what you're doing and go out and read it. I'm going to be an MP when I grow up - I have never been so outraged in my entire life. Read a bonus chapter here.

And once again, i hit my head against a brick wall as half an article vanishes mysteriously into cyberspace.

So much for a gentle flush. In the hour I've been sitting here, my shoulders have started twingeing painfully and are violently red. Erm, oops?

Junk mail's getting a lot more random than the usual penis enlargement adverts - I have been selected to win 1000 dollars worth of groceries. Erm, yay?

Weddings are a lot more fun than I remembered. England is a lot more cold and wet than I wanted it to be. Oh well, it's about 30 degrees back in Siena, I've had an icecream, I've got burnt shoulders and I'm going to a festival in Bologna if all goes according to plan. The joys of Italy...

I love champagne. I love it so much i have drunk about five bottles this afternoon. Brilliant! Have to be up at five to get a plane tomorrow. Can't i just stay in England? Boo! By the wya, X2 will fulfill every single geeky comic book wish you ever had about an X-men film. Bloody brilliant. I almost did something bad so god was this film. Aaaaaghhhhh, want to see it again...

You get brilliant tat for doing airport surveys - I got a money detector! According to the packaging it's "the newest product in the new century, the smallest and novelties mini detector". Noveltiest eh?more worrying still "if it is realy money you can see the shining lines"!. probably from fainting at the idea of possessing real honest to god cash.

Tim, your computer is shit.

Bollocks, why does channel 5 get all the good shows (well, er, one anyway) when nobody can pick the bloody station up? Why hasnt it been struck off yet?

Off home tomorrow for a wedding and the weekend - have big plans involving Buffy, soaps and a bloody huge bar of Dairy Milk. Yesssss!

Mmmmm...I want to see the new Matrix film NOW. In English. No more bad dubbing and aged voice over artists thank you. I saw Bowling for Columbine in Italian the other day which was a joke - they still had parts of the original script underneath so i went cross-eared trying to listen to both at the same time. What the hells' wrong with subtitles anyway?

A while ago my friend Ol did a search on the net to see which terms brought him to his site. Clearly he forgot how many ol, oliver and oliwoods there are, harry potter aside:

"OLIWOOD is the best purveyor of classical music CD's, sheet music, and conducting education."
"Oliwood Holiday Home Great holiday accomodation in exciting, scenic and historical Crowsnest Pass,
Alberta!"
"The following communities are also interested in "oliver wood"". (dont want to know where that turned up)
We also have Oliver Wood to blame for Pluto nash and I-Spy. Boo sir, you know no shame.

next week on searching your friends names for no particuliar reason...^failure##brainmelting...^

Ooh! Gaines is on the net! Check out the uber sexy Samaritans photo competition site, then go to the winners gallery, click on 19-24 age group then commended. Sara's lying on a very blue floor looking beautiful and only slightly stoned. Nice one Sara's brother!

Sigh. For three, breathtaking seconds the words "Linkin Park pulls out of UK festival" had me thinking it was Reading. Chance would be a fine thing. As if you needed any more convincing what a bunch of bumbling twats they are, their new release will be called "Party Sniffing". On the count of three, start banging your head against the wall...

"Do your children respect the hours of hard work that you invest in them? No! Children exploit their parents in much the same way that McDonalds corporation exploits the poor and weak people of Canada's rainforests. It's time to take matters into your own hands and force the little bastards to behave properly. The time for calm exhortations and promises of extra cartoon time is over. Use our stencils to decorate your neighborhood with messages that will make your kids behave and stop treating the place like a goddamned amusement park.
It's for their own good.

Warning: Police may confuse your activities with illegal grafitti vandalism"

Bloody brilliant! Guerilla Parenting

This is such a good site, especially if you're fascinated with them to the point of your mum giving up on your growing out of it. Hurray!



Sharkattacks.com

This is the last one. Form now on I'm sticking to virtual pigeon shooting.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Low
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Moderate
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

I have a feeling I'm getting addicted to doing tests. Is this wrong? Or have I just got too much time on my hands? Sod it, lets do another one...

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Goody I'm evil! Hands up all who's surprised...

Oh joy. My teacher told us today that contradas will be waking me nice and early every single Sunday until the Palio, or until I leave. Apparently a lot of people outside the centre pay up to be a part of the action, hence military medieval wake up calls at obscene hours of the morning. Here's to getting the hell away for the next two weekends >:(

Oh yeah, if anyone can find anything nice for me to do for a day in Vienna that would be good. The tourist sites are incredibly earnest and everything sounds expensive. Boo to expensive tourism.

And yeah, I know it's summer (well for me anyway hehehe) but dammit, I want a snowball fight.

hehehe. are you pregnant? I'm dropping a beautiful baby girl any moment now - joy. More amusing than the actual test is the fact the guy who runs it gets tearful emails from people about their "pregnancy." Yeah kids, technology's just not that advanced...

One of the joys of living in Italy is the amount of culture you soak up. This morning for example, I was rudely awoken at 9am by a whole boatload of the stuff going past my bedroom window. Even living a good twenty minutes from the centre of town is no protection from the contradas eager to drum up enthusiasm or lurid oaths at the very least in preparation for the Palio. The Palio being two months away. Someone should tell the bastards they really started early this year. Not even the sight of grown men in medieval tights could do anything to raise a smile on my incredibly bleary face - been there, done that, got all the pictures last week. Fair enough if they were being quietly medieval, but I meant "drum up" in the most darkly unfunny punning way possible. Tambours and big fat sticks and unified rhythm are not what I want on a Sunday morning and next week they'd do well to remember that. oh! Ha! Next week I won't be there, nor the weekend after! God bless the god of travel.

Breathe. The joys of speaking to a world that doesn't consist solely of failed publishing and the finer points of FTP. If anyone wants to teahc me sometime that'd be great. (yeah right...)