Even less to say about this day. I did nothing except have a terrible hangover. Lay around occasionally groaning and feeling sorry for myself. Ugh. That'll teach me to... um... drink beer in the absence of anything more entertaining.

Not much to say about this day really. Got up, said goodbye to John, and then hung around the house waiting for the rail-fares to become off peak. When they did, I headed in the approximate direction of Wimbledon train station, then to Victoria, then to the coach station, and then to Swansea. There are some spectacularly ugly places in Wales, Port Talbot being one of them. It's not all bad though.

Got to Swansea bus station, by a shopping centre called The Quadrant, and waited for Nicholas to show up. When he did, we headed bak to campus and had tea. I was massively over-charged for a small portion of some acceptable vegetable balti with rice that was apparently worth one pound. My arse. Met his friends Matt and Mark, who seem nice enough. Talked to them a bit more in the evening when we went to the pub.

Hello. Internet isn't quite as readily available in Swansea, which is one reason I haven't blogged, the other being a massive hangover, which is, of course, all my own fault. More on that later I guess. Let's imagine it's Sunday.

Didn't exactly leap out of bed this morning, as the only thing on my agenda was going to church. The nearest Catholic one was St. Winifride's, so John and I strolled along for 1000, only to find that the service was at 11. Bum. I'd suggested playing badminton in the afternoon, so we ambled to the sportscentre to try and book a court. However, gyms are apparently more profitable than fun things like badminton. They haven't had courts for two years.

So we went to Wimbledon village up a hill, which John seemed to think was quite steep. There were some posh shops at the top, and a little park where kids were riding ponies/horses round (they love horses best of all the animals, I expect). There was a pond with ducks in as well. We might have stayed a bit longer, but I have both a watch and a keen perception of the passage of time which exceeds John's, and I thought we ought to get moving.

This time we actually did go to St. Winifride's. It was okay - I always find going to an unknown church makes worshipping seem more difficult, but that's hardly their fault. James has said that he's not sure about the amount of solo singing that goes on at mass, but I think I'm all in favour. Here, they had a choir upstairs, and they sung the Psalm. I'm not sure whether it was the sound system or the actual balance between choir and organ, but it was by and large unintelligible. I very much like the idea of hearing a sung Psalm, but if you can't hear it, scrap it. The less voices, the easier it is to achieve clarity I think. Now seems like an ideal time to say that if, at any time, my shoddy playing inhibits the word of God being proclaimed, please tell me - I'll be as unhappy about it as you are. After that we filed straight out, as their didn't seem to be anywhere to congregate. A good while later, John told me there was a church hall. Doh.

After that we went along to a market and wandered round it. Didn't buy anything really, as I only had 50p on me, but John and I combined forces to purchase, for one pound of the realm, seven cinnamon donuts, with which to spoil our appetites. Or John's appetite anyway. Found a cheap bookstall, promising books for 50p, but none of them were any good, and, what with the amount of unread books on my shelves, I don't feel very happy about buying anything which doesn't directly pertain to the end of helping me to be a better person in some way.

I think it was then that we had dinner. In any case, when we did, we went to John's house by yet another route. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but John was very much into the idea of never approaching his house by a route which I would recognise, thus rendering me confused and disorientated. Never mind. In any case, we had dinner, which was very nice. Had some mustard made from powder, which coursed enthusiastically along the path of my sinuses. I was amazed at how quiet it was - I felt positively extroverted.

Went for another wander. These are some shops in which we bought nothing; PC World, Curry's, Comet, Carpetworld (I only went in to confirm that I didn't much like the smell of new carpets) and Sainsbury's Savacentre. This last had a travelator, which is a strange idea - feels a bit odd to stand still on a moving slope. Wandering round we found the kids section and were arrested by a lift the flap book in which you attempt to identify cartoon animals by looking at their cartoon arses. Surreal. I tried to eat the leftover cinnamon from my doughnuts while John looked round the sweets section for some "Tangfastic" Haribo, but only succeeded in covering my coat with it. I made as dignified an exit as was possible I think.

The sign said that there was a Hobby Crafts around. This I was keen to find, as the last time I was in one I found a print of the 'anecdote free angel' by Fiorentino Rosso. A little frustratingly, not even the shop itself was to be found.

We went to a petting zoo next. There were huge chickens, normal sized chickens, ducks, ducks which walked funny, ducks with daft hair, goats, budgies, pigs, chicks, sheep, cows and ostriches. Oh, and a peacock. They were all rather good in their various ways. There were also more kids riding ponies/horses.

Mostly TV in the evening. We saw a smidgen of Crufts, enough to be persuaded that dog-lovers are funny/sinister. Also a programme about volcanic eruptions, some of Fit Club and SAS: Are you tough enough? It killed the time. Actually, there was a documentary about Michaelangelo, which was quite good, despite having a cheesy actor to stand for Michaelangelo.

Ruth, who just phoned me, was told that I was in Swansea, but I'm not; I'm still in London. I leave John's house tomorrow at 1000. Won't get to Cardiff 'til 1630 or thereabouts.

Hello. Today was a long day, but we were very vague and got little done I think. John might be a working man these days, but we still have different apprehensions of how time works on weekends.

Went into Wimbledon for a quick look at CD Warehouse, and I came out with two early Fall albums, Live at the Witch Trials and Dragnet. John ran into a girl he knew from church and afterwards said how unlikely it was that that should happen.

We went to the Tate Britain and looked at the pre-Raphaelite exhibition and looked at the pictures. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." Actually, I'm not even sure what I like. John likes Turner, dislikes Constable. On the way out I ran into the man who used to run the AV department of Exeter University library. I know it was him because I asked him, and when he said he was I said I hoped he was having fun.

We ate at a Wetherspoons at Canary Wharf, where I paid too much for a five-bean chilli which, to be fair, was very nice. It had tortilla chips and rice. And I did some lunchtime drinking while John clung to his sobriety. I had a pint of Dob's something or other, brewed in Devon, which was somehow reassuring. Reminded of how John doesn't find children very easy to deal with, and would rather get some distance between himself and them. I'm the same with animals, though I do appreciate them in the abstract. On some bizarre little train back from da wharf we ended up quite close to a very loud child who kept moaning for no readily apparent reason. Poor John.

We thought we might go to the Science Museum, but neither of us knew where it was. South Kensington apparently, so there we went. Either I'm to morbid, or John is too squeamish, but we went to a special exhibition about pain, compassion and religion, and followed that up with a trip to the top floor which is about medicine through time and different cultures. Both of these things were gruesome, but interesting. Saw some shrunken heads too. Strange idea. Apparently the were meant to pass on the virtues of whoever's head it was.

We came back and John used the internet to talk to Paul and browse the internet. After a fairly long time John put some pizza in the oven. When it came out of the oven, I determined the existence of cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes squirt a little way if you're not careful.

Went to a loud pub in the evening, forget what it was called, but it's right by the site of a little market which we went to today (Sunday). We sat in the non-smoking area and talked religion and families, to a soundtrack of mostly Alanis (Uh-LAN-is) Morisette (Mo-ri-SET). I had some Essex-brewed bitter to drink which was 5% but not very nice, and then opted for coke.

Good morning. I'm in John's house. It's quite good.

I thought I should blog because I can, but I'm not sure there's very much to say as yet. Went to work as usual yesterday, bearing a huge bag with a sleeping bag that no-one commented on. I'm not sure too many people knew I was going on holiday. Kinda like when someone doesn't know it's your birthday - either you just explicitly bang on about it, or let things be. Speaking of which, this is a busy time for birthdays. Neil's, my cousin Charlotte's, Dad's and Nicholas's.

So after work I got a coach from Exeter Bus and Coach Station. It seemed to be about ten minutes late, but I arrived at Victoria on time nonetheless, after sleeping for a little bit of the journey, and staring out of the window most of the rest of the time. I had my bible on me in case I got bored, but I can't read very well in automated vehicles. I did read whatever chapter of Leviticus relates to the varying uncleanness of "discharges", ejaculation, and periods. I don't have any exciting observations to make about it. Something to do with incarnation, and the (derivative) dignity of humanity becoming explicit perhaps. [The sentence you have typed is a fragment. No suggestions.]

John was waiting for me in a pub, so we both got a pint in before heading back to Wimbledon. I was a bit tired though, so we haven't done much yet. More excitment to follow today I should hope.

Have fun all you peoples.

So... change of plan. Today I go to Plymouth Cathedral for the rite of election. I wasn't going to, and I feel I must apologize to everyone at the chaplaincy for not strumming at them this morning like I was going to, also to Fr. Paul for not being round to meet a person he thought I should speak to, and to whoever might miss me on the walk to the Double Locks. Sorry.

I think they might forgive me given that my reason is that last night I decided to throw my lot in with the Catholic Church. That's slightly misleading actually - it wasn't like a decision at all. For a very long time I've been thinking and occasionally saying, to whoever seemed to want to hear, that the decision to join the Church really seems too big for me. How would I know what criteria to apply? How could I go against the principle of the authority of private judgement and yet commit myself to an organization that claimed to mediate that responsibility?

Actually, I still don't know. What I do know is that I was reading, and then I was praying, and after that I was sort of past the decision. That's probably the best way of describing it. It was there in my mind that the natural thing to do was to become a Catholic, and it stuck, and I was bewildered. I sat there for a long time on the floor in my sleeping bag (it seemed like a good place to pray at the time), critiquing myself, thinking things like "Well, I do feel a little feverish.", "Perhaps it's only because I like the idea of authority* - that's no reason to attribute it to the first body arrogant enough to make that claim." and other such things. And they seemed less real than the decision which I believe God brought about.

Upon stepping outside my door it still seemed to be there, and it also survived the rather prosaic spectacle of seeing Norris playing Nightfire in the front room, occasionally muttering things about skags and floozies.

For the rite I need a sponsor, something I hadn't arranged because I hadn't intended to go, so I roped James into it. It means that I need to do other things to, like get hold of a copy of my baptismal certificate, and probably re-arrange how I spend my Easter, though I'm going to try my best to be at home for it if possible. I should also point out that I won't, um, officially speaking, if that's an adequate way of phrasing it, come out of Plymouth Cathedral a Catholic this afternoon. Assuming things run according to their ordinary usages, I would be received into the Church at Easter, hence the bother about whether I'm at home or not.

So, yeah. A more dramatic evening than most, I thought.

* That argument had a good airing today as well. We had spent most of a day doing a personality test which suggested the following; that I desire security above many things, that I doubt and fear greatly, that I desire a trustworthy authority, that I tend towards obedience and conformism, that I desire to know where I am located within a hierarchy, and, last but not least, that I am happiest in acting with the backing of "dogma", or an analogous rule-book. In short, that I tend towards being a sheep, which should be okay so long as I have a Good Shepherd.

Good afternoon. Well here I am at work, trying to think how best to summarize the week. It would be a start to say that Ella was here, which seemed to involve the watching of many films. Perhaps more exciting things happened during the day, but I was not around to see. They flew kites I believe, and I went to the Ram quiz for some reason. Joint second we were, I think.

Stayed up till one playing Scrabble on Thursday/Friday night, which made Friday a little weaing, but fortunately there wasn't an insurmountable amount of work to do.

Now the weekend was rather fun. Ella left on Saturday, but before she did, we watched Police Story, and shortly afterwards decided to make a kung-fu movie. But not kung fu. And probably not much of a movie. We shot some of the scene on Saturday and some yesterday. Cushions were piled, head-scratching was engaged in, about a million poorly-executed flying kicks were, well, executed and my forearms came in for a prolonged bruising by Norris while James pondered why it was that Jackie Chan looks cooler than Norris and I put together. Naturally in respect to myself, I have no idea, but the principal difficulty with Norris is that after a maximum of half a second's quasi-seriousness, he tends to turn as camp as Christmas and gyrate worryingly. Still, all good fun, even if you can tell that James doesn't really have a vision other than it being "dead good."

I also wrote a song on Saturday. It has chords and words, and I can't remember it now, but I wrote it down.

Sunday was good. I got a bit emotional in mass thinking about the theophanies of Isaiah and Ezekiel in contrast to Jesus as a child and on the cross. Guitar playing was a little ropey, but I sang my responsorial psalm okay. A clarinetist(?) joined us, but I think she may have been a little disheartened after finding herself overwhelmed by transposition issues, which I was of no help with. I meant to have a word afterwards, but she went off while I was suggesting to Irene that we check whether the double locks would be open next week. We had an idea we should walk there after mass.

Last week it was duck-feeding, this time Irene, Rachel and myself went for a little walk in Sidmouth, which was kinda cold and windy, but nice. And the sea looks really cool and more analagous to infinity the higher you are. Chatted in a pub called the Black Horse after this. Talked about various things. Rather "weirded out" to discover that Rachel is younger than me. That's just not right. Foreign students are meant to be older than me - it's the law. It came out that I never dated anyone at uni and Irene said she was shocked and jokingly suggested that I might like to meet her daughter who apparently shares my birthday.

And that's about it broadly-speaking I think.

Gosh, what a flurry of blogging. I'm feeling all left out, not having written here for quite a while. Now I just need to think of something intelligent to write.

Erm.............

Hi!

Erm............

We just got a DVD player. It plays DVDs. Many a happy hour will be spent watching Count Duckula. Quality. I expect Rosy will be round to force me to watch Spaced. He's got it on DVD, despite not having anything to play it on, and periodically lends it to someone at gunpoint. I like Spaced, so this isn't a problem. Why haven't you brought it round yet Rosy? Oh why? I want to watch Spaced now.

Oh well, I'll just have to watch Duckula instead.

Good afternoon people. Yesterday I said to Zosia that I'd blog, so... I am.

Yesterday then. Should probably start with CTaCH wherein it was decided that we would offer to make intercessory prayers for all and sundry in County Hall throughout Lent. Coincidentally, this was about the same time I decided what I was going to do this lent. So Karen (Silcox) and I should be doing a lot of praying soon. At the beginning there was a lot of talk about Melchizedek. Someone thought that Jesus was descended from him apparently, which rather negates the point of the passage.

Oh, and that morning Ella had a stomach-ache, so I got James to make her some ginger tea and apparently it hit the spot.

After work I went over to Nina's. Nina is a genial hostess and not averse to feeding me. Thank you Nina. I had some veggie lasagne, mange tout and lettuce, a banana soy milk-shake and another drink which I can't recall. It was lovely. Just sat and chatted really, as ever; apparently Nina thinks this is not good enough, but I would differ.

I was a bit late leaving Nina's and just got to RCIA on time. I found myself instantly bewildered by the fact that whereas it's usually a local group, today every candidate and their kid brother was there. And I walked straight into the middle of it, which is an architectural necessity. I'm now borrowing a book by Cardinal Hume off of one of the catechists. I shall have to see if I can't finish it off before I forget what Newman's on about. Mike gave me a lift home, and I popped into the house to drop my stuff off before heading over to CathSoc, where drinking games were being played, but without drink. I dread to think how much more slowly the whole thing would have gone if they had been drinking. Then we played Taboo, which I was expecting to not find fun, but it was rather good. And after that, Bible Challenge. That got a bit personal; I was playing to beat Lisa basically. She was far too nice about it, and kept on giving me answers and things. I did beat her, but she helped, so... hang on - I see what she's done, the cunning minx! Well, perhaps not. It's possible she was just being nice. Zosia related her stress and I made soothing ocean noises but it got old a bit quickly. And I made too much noise crushing cans, and got KAren's e-mail to apologise remotely, which I haven't actually done yet, so I better had now. Blogging in the space of half an hour sucks. I could have said a lot more.

I've met several members of David's family in the course of working at his shop, his parents and his sister, Lynda, the latter of whom works in the shop some of the time. She seemed impressed by my houseworking skills, however since I was brought up to do my own housework it's hardly surprising.

Working for David has been a sometimes exasperating experience, the amount of cleaning up I've had to do over the past few weeks has been a little aggravating. It seems that David's shop is a magnet for people who make a mess, I've cleaned takeaway remnants from the front, someones kitchen waste where they had left it by the telephone exchange box in nothing but a black plastic sack, where the local wildlife had torn it open. Most aggravating was someone who has repeated left birdseed, lots of the blessed stuff outside the back door, undoubtedly attracting both rats and feathered rats. The first time the bin was half full of the stuff, the next two times the birdseed was actually collected for Trevor's mother's chickens. Trevor who works in the workshop part of the shop told me that the last person to do something like this died recently, so I'm keeping an eye out for the culprit. I left a couple of polite notes out the back asking the mess makers to reconsider.

The actual work has been going quite well, part from a "flower pot" clock that has kept stopping for no apparent reason, but that's par for the course when working with French-style clocks. David seems to appreciate my computer skills, especially with his new internet connection. I help out Norman, the chap who mostly deals with customers when I can, especially when disposing of the packing material that comes with new stock.

Last week David asked me to move the replacement watch straps into their new stand, and he seemed surprised at the speed at which I was able to handle the changeover, especially as I was reorganising them as I went. Mum seemed to really appreciate the hyacinths I bought for her birthday present, which reminds me that "Birthday Season" is approaching rapidly.

I started my new job today as a Project Assistant. I had to report to the same office that I have been working in as a temp since last July (when it opened), to my manager Mal who is on holiday all this week, at 9am - no chance. So I just turned up for work as usual and got paid alot more than usual. Only difference so far is that I had to go to the town hall this afternoon for an induction which was so boring.

While I was there though we got handed our personal files for some reason and then had them taken back off of us. An excercise to show that they are not keeping stuff about you that you wouldn't like I think someone said. I was being nosy and found my references in the file and my tutor wrote me a really nice reference. I don't actually think that he could have wrote a nicer reference. It was really nice.