A short interval in which to blog presents itself! Most of the girls in my life are over at Abbi's exclusive tea party for those with not one but two X chromosomes; I, meanwhile, am back home after Sanna's chrismation. (Don't fret, blog readers, I behaved. I even deliberately avoided having wine at the lunch afterwards for fear of any possible deleterious social effects. This was a good thing, too, given that I ended up sitting next to the affable Father Alexander who at the very least has an admirable faith in urban living.) The experience reminded me, once again, of the strange comfort I get from being in the presence of such good Marxist materialist stock in the form of Saoirse: someone else can be relied upon to raise an eyebrow at the idea of bestowing blessing on all those in political authority, at least!

What have I been doing? Lazy lunching, of course, with everybody from the hard-working Philippa to the sometimes-hard-working Book Club, my great uncle Leonard and Saoirse's 'lunch party' which was pleasingly extended to cover almost all of Monday. But, but, but! I also gave blood for the first time, accompanied by Sanna, which included being asked if my line of work required 'strenuous exertion'. (Hah!) Obviously there are all sorts of reasons why people aren't allowed to give blood, and fear enough if the idea itself makes you feel queasy, but all things being equal I do recommend popping in: it's a nice feeling, it costs you naught, you get free biscuits and it really doesn't particularly hurt. (Although if you do go, set aside a few hours - understandably they can't always keep to time.)

Purely for the purposes of fun, I thought I'd leave you with an amusingly awful photo



Thought for the day: pop videos had a greater sense of fun in the 1990s, didn't they?