I am about to die. I stripped half a room of wallpaper using a steamer hired from the Hire Shop. The wallpaper was fine, it was the wall plaster falling to pieces and ancient… oh, even the thought is disgusting to me… ancient glue gunged in to the wall, probably made of whale blubber or something - the steam ungluing it from the wall and sludging it down in waves that splattered on to my by now ruined boots.

That, then the party. Pat was there! I don't see her often enough, she's so… just so lovely it's almost as if she isn't real. Lottski, Yoz, Dave, who I suddenly realised looks like Bill Hicks when I watched the video. No drugs. What I don't like is that because I was in the mood, having no drugs became a focal point of thought for a while. I think I picked that up from er, someone. But it was lovely seeing everybody. I guess I'll have to wait until our friend returns to have an evening of heavy duty smiling.

The bloke from Radio Rentals came over to sort out the video - turned out it's heads were dirty and that's all. Still, I suppose it's useful to see what the picture looks like in that condition, so when I buy a reconditioned one (renting is for suckers, I must have paid to that damn video four times over by now) I can clean the heads myself.

Anyway, so the bloke took a video from the shelf, and It was "Relentless". I didn't think about it, just clocked the video being taken from the shelf but he fast forwarded in to the tape to view some… there was Bill, talking away in his Southern drawl, face wobbling in and out of white spaghetti strips all over the screen, looking like a visual equivalent to radio tuning. I go feed the cats, only to come back in to the room to see Bill, now fully realised, saying "Bill, honey I'm so proud of you, that you use your given name to do the 'suck your own cock' routine". Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dear.

I have an incredible urge to smoke. It's a perversely sensual feeling. It starts at the bottom of my ribs, coils around the inside of my chest in both directions, one end leading up to clamp itself around my shoulders, and one end reaching down to nestle in my pelvis. I can feel my fingers tingling wanting to hold one.

Damn. And who would have thought it after this long. A warning to kids who don't smoke. DO NOT START TO SMOKE. IT IS REALLY SO STUPID I CAN'T BEGIN TO TELL YOU.

Another shake up at work. At least I get something interesting to do for a while. I started to learn Frames properly today. No, listen - it's not me being hypocritical - I've got to know how they work so I can tell the users, you get me? I promise - this is a Frame free zone. Frames suck! Remember that! Until we have dynamically changing content available on every browser in the world, I refuse to join in this compartmentalisation bullshit navigation drive. Er, apart from in that the image map might as well be in a horizontal frame but, er, that's irrelevant.

Carl is obsessed with Jon Ronson now I've told him about him. Jaysus, I've hardly seen Jon for about… uh.. 6 years. However, I suppose I'd better do the decent thing and get hold of him. Christ knows how though - maybe through Elaine.

Oh! Which reminds me! John ex-boyfriend is the Jazz Editor for Time Out!!! I'm very proud of him. I ran in to him on Oxford Street and it was the usual laid back "Hi, I'm going to take the piss out of you slightly now" type deal, and he said "Oh, I'm up at Time Out today". Pheeoooweee. Still, he is the only guy in London who could do it properly. Well, he *is* the only guy in London who is doing it properly, so there you are.

Wisdom tooth hell - PAIN
Period muscles pulling my abdomen to pieces - PAIN
Politics here driving me to the wall even more than usual - PAIN

On a skew-wiff note - just outside the French church on Soho Square this morning, a van was being clamped and removed on a lorry. Not too unusual I grant you. Except, much to the amusement of onlookers, it was a Westminster Council clamping van.

I've got to tell you - Tod has applied for the job she is doing as a temp at the school for Autistic kids. Oh… I am so pleased I can hardly put it in to words. Very proud, and she'll love it to *absolutely* pieces too. I'll try and get some information about the school. God, it sounds so interesting you'd almost pay to work there.

I dreamed that in the past I had killed someone, but that I'd buried the thought so deep I couldn't find it. I saw flashes of what happened. I'd dumped the body somewhere it couldn't be found. It felt so real. I… it felt very real. I was scared of myself.

I'm going to archive bi-monthly. I write to damn much junk. Oh, yeah - wow… nearly there with the domain. Blimey, then I really will belong here. I know just how ludicrous that sounds, I've been *here* for uh… two years, basically. But only blethering. Unlike now, obviously.

Bad Cait. I had a JavaScript error yesterday. Still - who would have thought that, uh?

The Receptionist here broke her head at the party last night, apparently. The venue was the size of a pebble, and you had to queue for food, and stand around like a lemon. Ok - you want the truth it was very boring, I wasn't in the mood to party and I did the usual, which is to stand around feeling as if I was a social leper. Sorry I haven't got juicy details for you.

Even worse though was "The Montrose Avenue". They sounded like a mix between ELO and "Ocean Colour Scene". In other words - nice harmonies, ultimately boring. Lawrence from GLR was there and stood behind me for ages, the freak. What was he trying to do? Threaten me with his awe-inspiring presence? Weird being around students though. I noticed that they were all, without exception, wearing trainers. Some girls who were standing near me were also wearing glitter under their eyes. What is this, 1973? Oh God, wait until Velvet Goldmine comes out.

Danny has told the powers that be that he's going. Now that does freak me out. I'm too used to him being around. What the hell will I do without him here? I'll have to defend myself and act like a grown-up. But I don't WANT to (laughs). But… but he's my current surrogate Owen. What am I supposed to do now?

The broken dead bone under my ripped out wisdom tooth seems to be breaking through after a year of waiting. Ow. Ow. Ow. Now I really know what it it's like to be a toddler. And this morning, the inevitable abdominal pain, horror and return to the animal like state of bleeding that this women does once every, well 25 days at the moment. 3 Nurofen and it still hurts. And yes, I am aware what that is doing to the insides of my stomach.

uh-oh. Bad Cait. Sick Cait. I had hormone flushes yesterday afternoon. Do you ever get those? I can't be the only one with hyperactive hormones around my period. Hey, maybe I am. I've always wanted an excuse to say I'm different. Did the usual nearly fainting and puking and cold sweats - and found I couldn't work anymore because I was shaking too much. Damn. It was raining in the street, I had to go to Paolo Gardini or whatever they're called (Soho Cycling Club in other words) to pick up a new puncture repair kit (and managed it at home too. On my own and everything). Felt queasy, back hurt, suddenly, water coming out all over. Including the sky - tried putting my coat hood up but that made me feel like a whistling kettle so I braved the blackened water and air and walked back to work. But not before checking out something so cute in a shop - I think I'll get it for Danny's b/d or Kai's in July - but… psht. It's yet another nick-nack. The world is full of fucking nick-nacks. I hate all that junk sometimes.

So it's the V/Net party tonight, not that you'd know it from the rows of miserable looking faces around this joint. I think we all need a holiday. Instead we get a mid-week party no one seems to care is on where we're all supposed to iron out the bad stuff by drinking heavily with each other? Jeez… good thinking.

Oh yes. Housekeeping. I'm going to change "Links" (it still doesn't have anything in it. It's a complete waste of space) and keep the smiling face for the Asides. There's going to be too many of them over time. Then I can expand the content of "Cait" accordingly. I was thinking. This whole thing is very anti-top ten (you know - "Here is my very favourite music ever! Here are my top ten favourite films! I am defining myself as this exact person for all time! Er… no. Actually. Sorry.)

Horrified by how good my mood is. I'm… uh, ok, Monday morning, doing work I find more monotonous than I can possibly tell you, trying to focus on some new brain pattern that's been happening for weeks but I can't really work out what's going on… and instead of feeling confused and foetal I'm breathing in this polluted London air like it's my lifeblood. Wasgoinon?

Perhaps it's got something to do with "the big idea" I had on Saturday morning, sun streaming, eyes streaming, nose streaming, ears itchy, lungs shallow, pollen literally kamikaze flying in to my cranial orifices when in that beautiful (and you're not going to hear me say that again) moment when doing a tedious task allows you to focus on real thoughts (washing up - ech) I thought - I know, get my Dad to do a diary.

Except... you do have to know HTML. And have a computer, and a web account (yeah, yeah, like, what do you think I am some sort of Silicon Valley hippy? I am aware of the cynic angle. Just choose to gloss over it mostly) And at the age of - uh, 58, although John might not be averse to a bit of learning, I don't think it would be a good idea to place any obstacles in his way, otherwise he would find any excuse he could not to do it. So I'm going to have to work on that. I've been talking to Danny about it, and I don't think him sending stuff to me is a good idea. He's got to have unfettered access to it on his own terms. And just because I'm doing my own thing this way, doesn't mean to say that that would be right for him.

I had a puncture this morning. I can't believe it. It's like - I have never had a puncture. Annoying, annoying, annoying. I've only cycled in to work one day this week. How slack is that, my God.

I had a dream about escaping London. I ended up in Poland in what appeared to be a rented room, but sometimes part of the room was an open meadow. Makes a change from the usual dilapidated houses. Kai was there, except mysteriously he kept turning in to Stephen. Well, not really very mysterious, considering Stephen has been to Poland and lives only a few hundred miles away from it. We looked through a guidebook searching for clues about jobs we could take. Working in a school seemed like a good option. We could learn Polish from the kids. It didn't seem to occur to us that they might want to learn English from us.

I had lost all my clothes. They were in a suitcase left on a bus while we were still in England. I had to phone my Mother to see if she could retrieve them, at which point a voice over started in the dream "It took us all summer to retrieve those clothes". Meanwhile the dream was running real time, so I had to live without them, thinking: 'Well, I will get them back, I think - or did I imagine that voice over?' The anxiety about losing my clothes was curious. I imagined when I packed the case - my favourite shirts and tops. Clothes are very strong extensions of your personality after a while.

Sometimes I can remember my dreams as if in hyper-detail. I love that. They're like having your own personal cinema experience. When you have an extraordinary dream, no one else can know exactly what that experience was. You can explain it until you're blue in the face but it doesn't matter.

So that's that. Kai might, well he almost certainly has got an advert that will pay him a load of cash. Hoo ray. I have to try and persuade him to open a savings account with some of it (if it's a lot) so we can start really putting money aside for a deposit. I can't afford to save ten grand on my own, that's for sure.

There's something in the back of my mind saying "Start taking insurance measures - you should be saving for that sort of thing on your own anyway". Defeatist. Realistic.

Weekend… thank the lord. "Invasion:Earth" (play the game, it's sooo cute); Frasier, Southpark, decorating, wine, sleep, cat snuggling, sex. Sleep.

Monkey and Elliotte get their anti-flea injections tomorrow. Poor wee bunnies. Poor wee bank account, more to the point.

I was miserable as hell, then I listened to "Pet Sounds". what is it about that record? Kai calls it "relentlessly cheerful". It's beautiful (man). My job is now driving me to the wall, but today, the Bell Jar can be squarely laid at Mr. Coupland's feet.

Never ever read any books by Douglas Coupland. You know that, yet you still persist in trying.
"But... but he's a good writer. He captures the zeitgeist of the thinking thirty year old at the turn of the century"
So what. He still makes you miserable as hell. Why persist?
"I don't know… I thought I was supposed to read him in order that I could comment on the foremost cultural commentator of our times in an up to date fashion. Besides which, Microserfs had a really cute ending. I thought he might have fallen in love or something - got happy, seen a future that was not so empty. Maybe I was wrong".
Well, you know what to do then don't you?
"Uh?"
Erase him. It's the only way out.
"What?" You have to. Rub him out, for all our sakes.
"Have you been talking to Mr Hat or something?"
Who's Mr Hat?
"He's a pretend character in South... oh, forget it"
Forget what?
"Forget this. It's going nowhere. I'm just wasting space having a cod-Aristoleian conversation about nothing"
But I thought we were making life-changing decisions.
"Life doesn't change. You reach a point where you are at the top of the hill and you and see both ways. Behind you, all the cool stuff - all the joy, the anger, the sex, the drugs and the bonkers-ness and in front of you - its like a low grade pulse. Nothing much, only the occasional blip"
You're talking like a Coupland character but not as eloquently.
"Oh get lost. Turnip for brains".
Hey, I like turnip.
...And so on...

Watching Radiohead's "7 TV Commercials" last night reminded me of the 20 seconds of "Paranoid Android" that appeared on The Chart Show a few weeks before it was released. Not having access to MTV in those days, that's all I was privy to. It made me cry involuntarily. I had never heard the song but the combination of those silent visuals and this… this just amazing song. All this water welled up in my eyes. I wanted to swallow all the images and sounds, to ingest them. Does that make me strange? That's how I feel about 'stimuli'. You know, that desperation to cling on to every last nuance of the experience you are having. Time for a Radiohead Aside. I've been reading "Girlfriend in a Coma" at the same time. Somehow, Mr Coupland's strange fondly distant writing tone fits well with the Paranoid Android video. Funny him talking about Grouse Mountain and so on, having been there.

Ally McBeal starts tonight on Channel 4. Two things. I read someone saying that yer woman from 'This Life' - Anna? Would piss all over Ally McBeal any day of the week. Have to agree with that one. Anna - real woman shaped, sarcastic, not babe of the year but quite-sexy-actually-thank-you-very-much, and an alcoholic versus Ally - Skinny McBony. Hmmm. Secondly - the last thing we need in the world is yet another bloody Bridget Jones nonsense. And this one is written by a man, for Chrissakes. Listen to me - by accepting this pathetic stereotype ("Oh" Bridget Jones is me! She's written about me! It's so funny!") you're playing in to their bloody hands. Jaysus, Bridget Jones? FUCK Bridget Jones. How can anyone possibly assume kinship with a useless, stupid fatuous nitwit who wouldn't know what an inner-life or soul was if it spewed itself out of her mouth and stood there in front of her saying "acknowledge me or die". The reason? If Helen Fielding actually *likes* Bridget Jones, God help Helen Fielding. I think she wrote her directly to take the piss out of her - and then a nation of women raise their arms and say "Yes, I'm as vapid as this too". Run! Run for the hills!

Weather v.changeable.

Pret Sandwiches for lunch.

I realised that the Steadperson's writing reminds me of Jon Ronson. It's that slightly doubtful and cod-humble tone, relying on pretend conversations with "characters". Secretly, I wince slightly at that. I'm afraid to say, Jon, that I stopped reading your columns in The Guardian after a while. I know. It's disloyal. I got bored. What can I say? The last time I saw Jon was walking up the hill to The Pleasance:

"Jon! Hello"
"Cait. (pause) How are you?"
"Good. I'm going up to see Ben's show"
"I'm doing this interview so I've got to go. See you later."
"Yup"
So that was that.

Finished Ardal O'Hanlon's novel, "The Talk Of The Town". Would it have been published if he wasn't Ardal? Oh yes. Is it in awe of Mr McCabe? Obviously. But it's ok. It's fine. The frightening truth that Mrs Doyle is the Irish Mother - I mean - all Irish mothers is strange. She's in Ardal's book as Patrick's mother; she is my Dad's Mother down to the ground - and there's no one seems to be allowed to talk about the steady stream of violence hidden within traditional Irish families except the Irish. The tirade of abuse against "Eastenders" I remember when they tried to have a drunken, violent Irish character was a hypocritical bunch of crap.
I miss Graham when I think of things like this.
So - there were a few passages where Ardal got a bit too over enthusiastic with the 'trump cards' type illness conversations, for example - so I didn't mind skim reading the odd page here and there. Am I jealous that he managed to write it? Of course I damn well am, but then he was writing un-published short stories back in the days of the first series.

Looking at a couple of other online journals, I focussed my notion of what I'm trying to do here. I am an observer. I observe. I report. I don't want to write about me in short pithy sentences that reveal fuck all. (Question: what's the point in a journal that hardly says anything about our place in the world and the world that you inhabit? A pose? I don't get it).

News: Liam and Noel Gallagher may be asked by President Blair to 'represent England abroad' or words to that effect.

Run! Run for your lives, God damn it!

I am now Ginger Virginnette.

I am wearing "Mars Attacks" green nail varnish.

I am going.

If you do more, it lasts longer. Biking around Richmond Park on Saturday, walking close to stags with spring fur still clinging to their antlers. Beautiful. Then went to Deep Impact in the evening, which was… terrible. Awful, awful film.

"Daddy…!" Best thing that could have happened to the whingeing woman. Although, alright - yeah, the acting was ok, even if they had all had it explained to them very clearly that they were only doing it for the cash.

If you do less, it lasts shorter. Danny was asleep all day Sunday so couldn't do any decorating. On Saturday night, he tugged on my trouser leg and looked up at me with puppy eyes asking me to please get him up on Sunday morning so he could experience daylight.

Hmmm.