Hello

I have been travelling around Scandinavia - marvellous place! I have been living a log cabin, high up in the Norwegian Fjords and generally pottering around cities and spending far too much time on overpriced trains.

It has been notably reinforced that my sense of direction is shameful, my command of Scandinavian languages is appalling and i apparently lack the self-preservation instincts of a normal human being, as i am constantly injuring myself. Yet my trip didn't end in hospitalisation (or incarcaration for that matter.)

Anyway, i have been checking out lots of arty type things... highlights include: the picasso exhibition in Gothenburg and the sculpture garden in oslo.

Btw if you're remotely interested - here are some little heard of good artists - Albert Edelfelt - finnish chap, a little hit and miss but some impressive portraits. Jacek Yerka - intriguing, dali-esque, fantasy artist from Poland - i usually have little time for fantasy artists or polish people, but Mr. Yerka is rather an exception.

Also, really fit looking men in Scandinavia - beautiful men, cheekbones you could slice ham with! Amazingly dashing and graceful.

I was thinking today that Hezbollah have deprived some death metal band of a pretty good name. I'm still waiting for a band called 'roadside bomb' to appear.

That was all i thought really.... i'll try again tomorrow :)

I have moved house, i am living out of boxes until my furniture arrives. I am using internet through a free aol trial - i hate aol. Fucking dial-up. Who the hell choses to use dial up?

I have too much stuff - it's only when you have to unpack all your shit that you realise this. I have gained a cello and piano since i last moved house two years ago. I apparently have more clothes, shoes and handbags than ever before. I now have 4 computers and 3 stereos.

Furthermore, my somewhat obscure collections of interesting newspapers, early edition dicken's books and samples of volcanic rock specimens (collected by my own fair hands) now take up much more space than originally anticipated - not sure where to put them all! They're not exactly things that you can display either. The early edition books need to be kept in varying conditions in order to preserve them (usually darkness), i've been reliably informed that my volcanic rock samples hold no particular interest to lay-people and the newspapers are just newspapers at the end of the day.

But on the plus side - there are more butterflies here. Yet more moths ( the pleasure/pain dichotomy strikes again)!!!

I found myself doing an online quiz on Excel keyboard shortcuts

I scored 80%

Having spent a lot of time in Spain when i was younger and been fully exposed to the way that Spanish/Catholic countries idolise and worship pop culture. I can really appreciate the British ability to criticise everything. I think that us Brits are only surpassed by the Germans when it comes to slagging things off.

I was just looking what was on TV tonight, found Lost (i use 'Lost' as an example only because my American counterparts might have heard of it - other exciting programmes include "How to look good naked" and "The life and times of El Nino-the weather phenomenon." So in most countries the TV guide would say: "The focus of this episode is on Charlie, yadda, yadda, battle with drugs...yadda." Instead:

"Dear me, when Lost loses the plot, it really loses it. Tonight's episode revolves around the time Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) spent as a pop star in what's supposed to be Brixton in London. We see him at one stage shooting a pop video (or possibly an advert) with his band, and for some reason everyone in the studio is drinking tea from china cups and wearing Union Jack dressing gowns. Because that's what we do here. It turns out these wonderfully off-beam flashbacks are the most entertaining bit of the story, albeit unwittingly. The main plot involves Charlie having nightmares, sleepwalking and becoming obsessed with getting Aaron baptised. One for the bug-eyed devotees only. "

Indeed, why just say the facts when you can squeeze in an opinion? Criticising and generally being cynical is a national sport.

It's quarter past 10 and i realise i forgot to drink tea at 9pm.

must drink tea, must drink tea,...

i keep forgetting - damn it!

I was telling my husband about a street party at 2 in the morning that was going on down the road where we live. It seemed quite a spontaneous bash full of incredibly drunk people who presumably had nowhere to go (i didn't actually enquire as to why they had gathered). Anyway - one of the chaps brought out a double bass and started playing rifts from it and the whole street started singing, dancing, very drunkenly to the tunes being played by the bassist and other instruments joined in, etc, etc.

My husband who had just come back from 2 weeks of working in a hospital in luton laughed and pointed out that it could only possibly be eccentric cambridge types that pull out double-basses during ad-hoc street parties. (Most other university cities are desperately trying to stop the onset of racist riots, date rape and football hooliganism).

Living here has made me comparatively soft - although i still notice that i'm a hard person and could still kick the shit out of most of the men here. Because that's how you should measure yourself - by who you can beat up, the universal marker of success.