Looking at the ceiling, guidance and family.

Dear All, there are going to have to be a few changes round here for Creative Reasons. For a while now (ever since my internet provider changed the cut-off time for my free minutes from 8am to 7am and I decided the 3BTing first thing at work as Not On) I've been posting last thing at night. This has caused problems such as:

1. staring at the screen trying to remember what I did yesterday
2. pacing round the flat trying to remember what I did yesterday
3. weeping and trying to remember what I did yesterday
4. posting while drunk
5. falling asleep at my desk
6. trying to wash the dishes and myself, post and do yoga at the same time
7. not posting till the next morning and doing 1-3, except that it's now the day before yesterday -- this normally leads to 4, which ultimately leads to 5 and then none of 6 get done at all.

However, my internet people have restored my internet access between 7am and 8am, so I'm going to post first thing in the morning from now on. Please don't choke on your Konditor and Cook sandwiches.

1. A wobbly old lady helping a young blind man to negotiate the bus. I thought they might be grandmother and grandson because they seemed very close -- she held on to him even while they were sitting down.

2. Ellie -- that's my goddaughter -- is impeccably behaved, even at six months, because she is totally absorbed by everything around her. She loves ceilings and lightfittings, apparently, and can gaze enraptured for hours at a good ornate chandelier. Her grandparent's Brighton pied-a-terre has wonderful plaster scrollwork round the edges of the ceilings, and splendid ceiling roses. I could gaze enraptured, too, if it wasn't considered strange in a nearly-29-year-old.

3. Cat has a rambling family, and I love the way friends get sucked in. When I phone her I am fascinated by all the gossip. I wish my family was like that, but we aren't. We're what LM Montgomery calls "clannish", and we prefer our own company, so friends are not invited to family parties. I wonder if this could be changed. It might be geography: it's a complete mission to get to my parents', but it's as easy for me to reach Cat's parents' as it is to visit her in London, so I am as likely to be invited down for a family event as I am up to London. When I get my new house, it's going to have room for the entire tribe. And a garden.