Are you going to try and catch up or act like nothing ever happened?

That's James' apt response to my declaration that I'm writing this, my first blog entry in over a month. Hello readers; I trust the various blogging members of my family and Emma have been genial hosts in my absence.

The answer is that both alternatives would be a bit mad. I'm opting for some kind of middle ground and seeing how it works out. I'm afraid that I probably won't read my comments boxes, so you can talk about me via the blog, but it's probably not a good way to talk to me. I have a half hour lunch break at work as standard (flexitime don'cha know), and this time is very precious to me. Sorry. I might mention that my prayer-life has suffered quite a knock as a result of work, and probably needs some rethinking, but I do manage to read my bible quite a lot these days - there's a little alcove upstairs in the arts and libraries directorate...

man, i could be writing these entries for months at this rate

...which serves my turn. I was going to do a cursory review of work, but I've decided to do a cursory review of religious-type stuff first now. In order of appearance, I volunteered to play guitar at mass, so now a whole other church has to put up with me. I still go to CU a bit, but I've missed two; once because A Revenger's Tragedy was on, and once because I couldn't be arsed. I decided to go along to RCIA and ended up going to two; well sort of. Sacred Heart are doing one which is actually something like I would expect RCIA to be, this I attend on Wednesday's and is rather wetly called "Journey of Faith". Fr. Paul's (of the chaplaincy, not Sacred Heart) idea was to put us into a room and get us to talk about stuff. This happens on Sundays at 1 o' clock. I wittily suggested calling it "At one", but unfortunately they listened to me. There's a bunch of Christian's at County Hall, called Christians together at County Hall - get it? Well anyway, that's what my one hour lunchtime per week goes towards. Currently we're organising a carol service at County Hall and talking about a "room for for quiet meditation" that is apparently going to happen because of new religious legislation promoting vague tolerance. So far the interested parties have been Christians and Muslims. I expect there are a few Jews and Buddhists knocking around at County Hall too - maybe they'll express an interest later. Oh, I'm playing at the carol service too. I'm introducing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". The person who leads it lent me her tape of The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain. I had a talk with Will in the Artful about Catholicism. We'd never really discussed it before then, to speak of, which I was finding increasingly odd. We are at odds but not at one another's throats - predictable but still good to know. I got Augustines Confessions in Wesley Owen for a quid upstairs, and a book called, neither ironically nor aptly, but definitely somethingly, God's Payroll: whose work is it anyway?. I get the impression it would be a really good book for me to read, but I've hardly touched it. I should do something about that.

This is going to take years. Hopefully you won't need too much detail about my work, as I guess it'll kind of explain itself in time, but "I process wages at County Hall", as I have said about a million times now to various interested parties. I work in the contracts section, which handles an odd assortment of people who don't like to maintain their own payrolls, like the police and grant-maintained schools and colleges. Also Devon Direct Services, who are very closely linked to County Hall anyway, so far as I can make out. I think I'll say about people as the need arises. I don't really want to say too much - it seems awfully rude.

I've had a fairly action-packed weekend, so that seems like a good place to start. Andy came to visit on Friday - here 'til Monday actually, but I didn't see her before I went to Nina's party. Nina's party was good. It wasn't what I was expecting, but that doesn't much matter. I was thinking music, and altogether more standing up and movement, but we had Interview with the Vampire and seats, which I'm tempted to think of as a format infinitely more conducive to fun. Well, maybe not Interview. Paul came along too, after I finally worked out that Nina expected me to invite him on her behalf. Paul left about halfway through, worrying Nina a bit, who does always expect that people aren't having fun. She needn't have worried. When I caught up with Paul the next day he said that he was having fun, but he quite unaccountably found himself by the Cathedral and then wandered home. Well, unaccountably save for the fact of the large quantities of alchohol. There weren't too many people there that I knew, but Alwyn, who I'd met before played a bit of musica perpetua on the acoustical guitar and Simon, who doesn't like being called Odo, was also in attendance. Plus, I talked to a person named Amy for a while. She was incredibly, I don't quite know how to put it exactly, polite> to me. The phrase "It was very nice talking with you." sort of sums up the attitude I think. A very nice person. She expressed interest in seeing Mozart's Requiem. Personally I think everyone should. I've been shamelessly promoting the concert this term for some reason. I'm usually less forthright about it. Possibly because the fact that James, with whom I have lived for two and a bit years now, has never seen me sing irks me on a subliminal level. But it seems that other people have to bear the brunt of it.

I left Nina's party in high spirit's, having consumed a few. I found myself back at a fairly quiet house, but there was an Andy in the toilet. I couldn't actually tell it was him; I could tell it was a long person, and that in opening the door to determine their identity, I would be beating their head against wood, so I opted to go with the ambiguity and just leave the light on to wake him up in due course. He was moving. Naturally it was Andy. As he gleefully put it, the first time I see him in about five months, and he's unconscious on a toilet floor.

And so to bed.