Friday October 22nd

Well, I am definitely enjoying being back at school. I'm really good at it this year. I'm so on top of my marking I haven't had to bring any home over the half term - totally unheard of! I have successfully applied for a grant to buy Latin books, bought Latin books and am poised to launch a Latin class following observations at my old school (I am now wondering how I could have been so terrified of my A-level Latin teacher, she's not nearly as dragonesque as I remembered). I've got teaching students! They're quite funny, more on them later. My tutor group are being lovely, they are so good at following instructions that, after their CATs, I was the only year seven tutor to be rewarded with a bottle of wine for perfect administration. I was amazed, I beat the head of geography AND Pam, the scariest, best organised teacher in the universe. They didn't do well in their CATs though, bless 'em. They're not very clever. In fact, they're the dumbest class in the entire school - the class average is a full 9 points under the national average; only 6 out of 25 are above average, and 4 are below 80 which makes them about as sharp as a bag of wet mice. It made me so sad to read that these kids have a 7% chance of passing 5 A-Cs at GCSE - some of them are the sweetest kids. Sooner or later they're going to realise that the work they're putting in isn't going to pay off and then get disenfranchised and start playing up. Awww. But for the moment, at least, they're loves.

Some of them are starting to show their desnity though. We finished for half term on Wednesday and one boy was away, with what his friends diagnosed as "skivitis". I didn't quite believe them until the afternoon, when he turned up with three of his mates and started playing football in the car park. My classroom overlooks the car park. He knows this, he registers in it twice a day, every day. What a total idiot!

Went to see Jen last weekend. She's got this Scottish toyboy now called Ben (bwah ha ha, onomatopeia is always the sign of a lasting relationship) and he lives in London, because, well, she lives in Nottingham and it has to be complicated. He's very ickle, like 12 or something. Well, alright, 24. She met him on Avalon (it's like Dateline but they don't advertise in TV Quick) and his ex-girlfriend has been bad mouthing them to everyone who'll listen, so Jen thinks she's cursed now. This is because the first time she visited Ben...
1. Her wallet got nicked and the thieves managed to cane her card for £250 in the half an hour before she cancelled it. In fact, they spent £250 in eight minutes, and then she had to rely on Ben for the whole weekend, which is sort of funny because Jen hates blokes paying for things.
2. She got wasted on tequila and passed out on the bathroom floor.
3. She got a £50 parking fine.
4. A week later, she got a £50 congestion charge fine because she forgot to pay it.
And when I went to visit her, we went out quite late on Saturday night and she picked up the wrong keys and locked us out. And her landlady lives in Germany. So we rang the police who told us to break in or call a locksmith. Luckily she hadn't taken in her Yellow Pages so we looked one up. He turned up five minutes later, slid a stiff, pliable piece of plastic in the door which popped open and said, "That'll be £45 please". Bastard. He claimed to be cheaper than his competitors, but that was still a bit steep I thought, he hadn't had to come far.

Anyway, so Jen is all loved up (think, constant texting/messaging and if we'd been out in London and she'd probably have chucked me in favour of a Chinese in his bed like she did once with R) (but then once I left her alone in Manchester while I went round to the Thug's so I suppose we're even, except what I did was worse) but also cursed, but not really cursed and just happy, so that's very good. We drank far too much wine on the Saturday night after I drove up and only got a bit lost. Then on Saturday we went to see Yul and me'Julie cos their pub is right round the corner from her, and we did a little shopping and she got a nice coat and I got a top and some bling, and then we went to Walkabout and this bloke tried to chat Jen up and another bloke grabbed me by the ears and tried to snog me (I was screaming, he nearly pulled out my massive bling earrings, see left), and then we went to Burger King and got the nightbus home. And impressively I *still* got up at 10am the next morning and marked some coursework drafts. Mmmm, I bet those were accurately checked.

We had a good old reminisce about times past, particularly drunken ones about how we used to get wasted. I can't believe what I used to drink, it would kill me now. We remembered the party she had round hers when Rob the shortarse declared his eternal love while Kez and I tried to unsubtly listen in through the front room window and then I comforted Kez on the stairs about her lack of bloke, and then I threw up shredded chicken in the sink and had to force it down the plughole with my fingers while I threw up more in the bath. Then we were doing hideous blowbacks from this French dude none of us knew, and Jen ended up talking to the Thug because I was lying on the kitchen floor giggling incoherently. Then Jen put me to bed in her room and I ended up going into her male flatmate's room "looking for my tights", knocked over his video pile and ended up sleeping in the other bedroom. And the next day I made Kez go for a disgusting greasy fry up at Turnpike Lane, and all my B checking from that day got returned because I was still wasted, and Rob turned up at lunchtime and quit because he was so embarrassed. We never saw him again after that. My hangover kicked in at 4pm and I still had to go and do my cleaning job at 6. It was killer. There was another Thursday night we'd been out and I'd taken Friday off evening work for us to go out but we were all so hungover that we couldn't cope (Jen had an ORANGE JUICE for crying out loud!) so Rob and I bought vodka and bitter lemon and went back to my flat, where he sat in the kitchen with the windows open playing the German national anthem on my guitar using a 50p for a plectrum (I lived in Jew Heaven aka Golders Green at the time) and then he looked up porn on my computer.

Then there was my "tarts and pimps" birthday party when Neil kept hitting on Jen and Gitboy snogged Kez and then told her he had a girlfriend, thus proving what a Gitboy he really is. We had excellent parties in Golders Green. I had my own tequila experience there, which put me off for life. I was dressed as Xena, and I remember sending Gitboy out at 9pm for more tequila because I'd managed to neck a bottle (well, I was doing shots with everyone who came into the kitchen). Then my memory goes, but apparently (according to Sib, who was present with his friends) I started adding black pepper into the tequila "because you can get pepper vodka, can't you!". Then I fell on my arse. Then I started chucking up in the bath (it's embarrassing that that has happened to me more than once) and passed out on the floor with my feet propped up on the sink, and Gitboy had to put a sign up on the door saying the bathroom was out of order. Sib came in to say goodbye and I nearly cried with shame at being so drunk, then threw up and passed out again. And I woke up five hours later wondering where the party was, but everyone had gone home. After that I couldn't even SMELL tequila for months. Four months later I went to Mardi Gras and poured a tequila shot for Panda and retched when it wafted at me. I can just about cope with tequila in a cocktail now, six years later. But it's like my whole body thinks it's a poison and tried to reject it, I can't imagine trying to do a slammer, my stomach starts to feel wobbly. It's wobbly now just thinking about it. So I know what Jen is going through.

Ah, those were the days. Five bottles of wine between three of use, four nights a week in Frank Charlie's, then falling asleep standing up holding a kebaba on the N5. Tuesday night "is girlie night" at Little Havana. I had a wine box on the mantlepiece and lived on sweet and sour tofu and toasted sandwiches. It's a pity I didn't start keeping this Diario sooner, I'd have more of a record of the stuff we used to get up to. I don't think knowing Jen has been very good for my liver. And she always makes me drink cider.

And another thing - what do you bring to a lesbian threesome? We were talking about someone we know (better not say) who got invited to one once (not to participate, but I think he thought he was in luck) and he turned up with a tube of Pringles. Jen said this seemed highly innappropriate, but I'm like...seriously, what do you bring? Lube?

I have just been reading over my earliest entries. I've realised several things -
1. This Hallowe'en, it will be five years since I started writing.
2. A conservative estimate puts the word count at 200,000.
3. I have changed SO MUCH in five years.
4. Before, when I used to write about our drunken antics, I barely went into any details at all - now I waffle on for Great Britain.
5. I was totally obsessed with the Thug, how on earth could I not have noticed?
6. I used to write very regularly but only short bits. Now I write about five pages, once a month (if you're lucky).
7. In spite of the fact I used to ask rhetorical questions ALL the time and then say, "Answers on a postcard..." nobody EVER sent me an answer on a postcard.

Mr Z has just been in and asked what I was doing. When I told him, he said, "Yeah, you don't update that thing enough." Huh! I've been saving up loads for this entry. I've been listening to Radio 4 to brush up on issues so I can make myself sound big and clever and everything. And then I just end up talking about how I once dressed up as Xena and threw up in the bath, and now my computer battery is almost dead and I'm knackered, so all my intelligent stuff will have to wait until tomorrow, only I'll forget or be too busy or tired and then I won't update again until November by which point....

*Trails off in hysterical daydream*