Dull week, spent mainly working away. I managed to do 3 8-hour days in a row, which was a huge achievement. Uni starts again in about 2 weeks so I am feeling great pressure to earn as much cash as possible before the Great Poverty begins again.

I went to a Valentines Day Massacre party last night at Claire's house. Ben and I left the house all decked out as gangsters, him in a dapper suit with slicked-down hair and me in a 50s black wiggle dress (an Ebay success story), neck and arms laden with diamante jewellery. I now know why they call them 'wiggle' dresses... a straight skirt with no split in the back plus murderously high heels means that the wearer must adopt a very prissy, ladylike, mincing style of walking that does indeed force the rear end to wiggle from side to side. We missed the bus so decided to have dinner at the Thai restaurant up the road, as the next 413 wasn't due for another hour. Sitting in the restaurant, we remembered that we were still in fancy dress. It must have looked as though we had dressed up to go out for a romantic Valentines Day dinner. Ben considered staging a fake dramatic marriage proposal, in the hope that we might score a free bottle of champagne or something. Not such a bad idea.

Party was a blur of miscellaneous cocktails. I have no idea how much I had to drink, considering that no matter where I went, delicious and highly alcoholic concoctions were thrust into my hands. Excellent. I said 'NO' to free drugs, for the first time in my life. I'm extremely glad now that I didn't partake, as I feel ill enough now as it is without any added bonuses. I spend most of the night sitting in the living room playing with Claire's dog, a large, doe-eyed, painfully adorable silvery Weimeraner. I'm always the life of the party. Talked at length to Jo and Jono, a brother and sister team who I used to work with at the hellhole. Jo and I amused ourselves for a little while looking up rude words in a Spanish phrasebook that we found lying on the coffee table. Juvenile? Yes. We were by far the youngest people at the party (the mean age of the guests would probably be about 35) so I feel that this behaviour was appropriate. I felt quite young, bland and naive. Age doesn't usually enter my radar when socialising, but sometimes I do feel a little intimidated by people who are older than me.

Genna and Nathan, two friends of ours, had a baby this week. We went round to meet him on Thursday night. I'm the least maternal person in the world, and babies often inspire mild repulsion in me, but I have to say that little Jet is a very beautiful baby. Quiet, calm, constantly looking around at what's going on. I'd love to know what he thinks of it all.

Must go and watch crap TV.

Almost a week later, very little to report. I went out on friday night (gasp!) with Ben and Nicholas, to see Further. We sat in the beer garden (if you can call it that, it being small and devoid of anything resembling a plant) for most of the night. Nicholas left before the band started. Fair enough, it was extremely hot in there, and the crowd were pretty rowdy. I managed to watch their set right to the end despite the hellish heat and the fact that even my shins were sweating. Ugh. Staggered outside feeling rather faint, sweaty and awful. Cleaned on Saturday morning, sang some songs with Nicholas Saturday afternoon (we recorded 2 tracks which we promptly lost not 20 minutes later, so we kind of gave up), and Simon came over on Saturday night. We watched The Iron Chef and went up the road to get Thai food. I'd never been to this particular restaurant before, so we were all amazed when, instead of just receiving our takeaway in a crappy plastic bag, we were presented with a SHOWBAG. Fancy printed carrybag containing our food, as well as a tub of COMPLIMENTARY fruit salad, little bags of cutlery, and COMPLIMENTARY chocolate mints and miniature bags of cashews. (I thought the cashews were a slightly strange addition, however welcomed them anyhow). I was so excited I could barely contain myself.

then, later, while we were watching yet more TV, we spotted a mouse running around in the kitchen. Simon tried to catch it in a plastic container but alas, it was too quick. I immediately became terrified that it had been nibbling at everything and proceeded to go on a frenzied throwing-out rampage, tossing various foodstuffs into the bin with abandon. I hate rodents, no matter how cute and cuddly they are. I was most concerned about it having eaten my cornflakes, and sadly had to dispose of them, and thus was forced to eat toast for breakfast this morning. Which really wasn't what I felt like, it being hot and all. I CRAVE cornflakes. Sometimes they're the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning.