If you could see me right now, you would laugh I am currently sitting wrapped up in a mustard yellow blanket, trying to drink decaff out of a toothmug. It’s a rather ancient looking blanket which is probably none too clean, but it’s so absolutely bloody freezing cold where I am that when I randomly discovered it at the back of a wardrobe I decided that cocooning myself in it might be my sole chance to escape death by hypothermia. In fact, it looks very much like the sort of blankets which we used to use in the Girl Guides when we were working towards the Fire Safety badge, and needed to practise rolling somebody who was supposedly on fire along the floor to put the flames out. As for my rather strange manner of refreshment… well, first I probably need to explain where I am and why I have the misfortune to be here. (more…)

My experiences with Valentine’s Day have been somewhat mixed over the years. When I was at school, I loathed and detested it and was overjoyed on the years when it fell during the half term holiday, because I hated feeling like the only person who didn’t actually know any boys and thus wouldn’t be getting a card. When I started university I quickly found a boyfriend, and was terribly excited about my first Valentine’s Day with him. As luck would have it it was on a Friday that year, and so the plan was to skip our afternoon lectures and go to the cinema to watch Leonardo di Caprio in Catch Me If You Can, then back to his flat to eat pizza. The going back to his flat part was highly contentious. As far as my mother was aware, I had never been to his flat at all and when I requested to be picked up from there at 10pm she started having conniptions and asked me why I thought a strange guy would invite me back to a flat full of other strange guys in the middle of the night. To be fair to my slightly hysterical mother, she hadn’t actually met my boyfriend at this point and so had no way of knowing that he didn’t have enough imagination to seduce me (more…)

I feel somewhat guilty today because at the weekend I suggested that my boyfriend and I went to watch the film “Cloverfield” at the cinema. It was quite honestly one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life, and whilst I can’t undo the damage I may have done to my boyfriend by making him sit through it, I can at least try to warn others against making the same mistake. To this end, my Facebook status is currently set to read “Clare does not advise anyone to waste money going to see Cloverfield. Crap film ” (more…)

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and I ate a creme egg. That seems to me to be the height of secular decadence. The Catholic part of me is trying to convince the heathen part of me that it was just an unfortunate accident. The heathen part of me knows this isn’t strictly true and that halfway through the said crème egg I became consciously aware that it was in fact a day of fast and abstinence and I shouldn’t be eating it. At this point the Catholic part of me should have spat out the rest of the crème egg and put it in the bin. Unfortunately, both parts of me are rather partial to crème eggs, and this didn’t happen (more…)

I finished two books this weekend, both of which were set in the former Soviet Union, and both of which were a severe disappointment.

The first, which I confess I have been reading disjointedly over a period of several weekends, was “Pelagia and the White Bulldog” by Boris Akunin. For the past few years, Boris Akunin has ranked without doubt as one of my favourite authors. Well known in Russia (possibly under a different name) as a prolific writer of detective fiction, over the last four or five years his works have gradually begun to be translated into English. As a rule, I have to say that I’m not a fan of translations into English, because it annoys me if something doesn’t flow well, but on the whole I have found the Akunin translations to be excellent … with the exception of the fact that his first series of books has been translated in the wrong order (how did the publishers allow this to happen?!) with the result that I accidentally read the third book first, then moved onto the first book, and then had to wait twelve months for someone to fill in the gaps and translate the second.

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I have spent this week staying in the Travelodge at Leicester. There is no particular reason why I am doing such a random thing, except that I have the profound misfortune to be dating somebody who comes from Leicester. I thought it would be nice for us to spend some time together, since we didn’t have much chance before Christmas, and I managed to get a room in the Travelodge for £30 a night.

I am not a snob when it comes to hotels, but my feelings about Travelodges are mixed. I love Premier Travel Inns, and would happily stay in one any time, anywhere; their breakfast is of the highest quality and their rooms are always clean and comfortable. Travelodges, on the other hand, seem considerably more basic although they aren’t always considerably cheaper, and so many little niceties like soap in the bathroom are missing. The first time I ever stayed in one I was most put out to discover it didn’t serve breakfast and that instead my £5 a day would earn me a brown paper bag placed outside my room each morning, with a dubious looking apple and a yoghurt pot of cornflakes (more…)