I had a very vivid dream last night in which I had bright blonde hair. I've never been blonde and don't think it would look good on me. But it was such a vivid dream that I've had to keep double checking I do still have brown hair.

I do know that language changes and adapts but I really do think we could stand firm on what a black tie dress code is.

The jump map on the BBC coverage of the figure skating is hilarious when people are doing spins. Just a dot jiggling in place.

Minor complaint from the land of no driving licence or car: good grief it is nigh on impossible to find a way to dispose of paint in Home City. 99% of the time not driving causes me no problems but that 1% is a fucking nightmare.

It pales in the face of it all but a weird element of the Mandelson stuff has been trying to explain Mandelson to our 21 year old colleague. She skimmed his Wikipedia article and went "there's so many scandals!" And yes, yes there are.

Just bringing this one back because I'm reconciling my work credit card and was reminded of it. I paid for some data from Yorkshire Water. What do you think the merchant category code is? Do you think it's "MOTOR FREIGHT CARRIERS, TRUCK-LOCAL/LONG DIST, MOVING & STORAGE"? No, well Barclaycard does.

I'm re-reading Anna Karenina and, as always, slightly bored (not by the writing, I think Tolstoy is great) by the main Anna and Vronsky plot, and entranced and delighted by Levin's plot. It remains a book where I am desperate to read Karenin's story of his marriage.

Bunch of lads at Manchester Airport confidently proclaiming that Northern Ireland is part of England. Let's hope they avoid saying that in Northern Ireland.

If you'd like to feel the age of dust, I recommend listening to someone trying to tell a Youth (17?) abt Robbie Williams. The Youth had no idea who he was. For best effect follow up w/ a Millennial asking if they've seen any old Doctor Who & The Youth replying "yeah I've seen the David Tennant ones"

Literally just remembered that this guy also said "NASA can't even show me a picture of the earth that isn't CGI and I'm expected to believe them when they say the earth will lose gravity for 70 seconds during the solar eclipse". I ... whatTTT?

I simply don't think that on my birthday of all days I should have to talk to an American antivaxxer.

I need to move to Iceland purely so I never have to be without the truly staggering water pressure of my hotel shower.

Finally some good news!!

The disparity between walking into work to find my desk covered in 40th birthday confetti & my father being a) convinced my birthday is a date it isn't, b) my father being convinced I'm an age I'm not & c) my mother always saying I was born on my due date & not two weeks early is, frankly, bonkers.

There is a special place in hell for drivers who gleefully fly through puddles so they send water cascading onto pedestrians. Or; I'm very soggy now.

Current mood: trying not to laugh out loud in the office whilst keeping up with the Grauniad liveblog of all of ~~this~~. www.theguardian.com/business/liv...

I just think that if you are a university governor and part of your job, for which you are compensated financially, is signing legal documents that you have to sign because the financial regulations mandate it, THAT YOU SHOULD FUCKING SIGN THEM IN A TIMELY MANNER. Ahem. As you were.

I'm not exactly a Bring Your Whole Self To Work person but I do bring enough of my self, it turns out, for a member of my team to send me a link to Heated Rivalry's imdb page and say "this feels like something you'd like". So, I am just going to sit with that.

I really wish chiropractors weren't dangerous bunkum practitioners because by God and all the saints and sinners all I want on this earth is for someone to crack every single one of my joints.

A governess who is also Death's granddaughter, a psychic spy and a slutty chef. (Three books, one non-fiction, not one very weird book.)

As someone from a small and quiet family (well, in the immediate sense), I feel such empathy for Meredith in The Family Stone. Large and loud and exuberant families are great but experiencing one for the first time is like going to the Mariana Trench and being expected to know how to survive.

Oh no, I'm all cosy and in my pyjamas and I forgot that it's Bin Night. In my defence it is not usually Bin Night on a Monday, usually Bin Night is Thursday night and I put them out when I get home from work. But it's Twixtmas and I'm not back at work so I'm hazy on what day it is anyway. Grump.

The Unexpected In-laws Have Left!! R has sworn to not wear a bra for the next five days.

For the Rex (Not My Cat) fans: he came into the house at 10am, went upstairs, and has just - at 6.56pm - left.

This afternoon I have done some cross stitch and watched most of The Ipcress File. The chicken is now roasting, and the potatoes have been sliced for the dauphinois.

My father's contribution to Deep Christmas Thoughts: "it seems like it was easier to write a carol in the 1800s. Pick some lines of the gospel, set them to a night on unsingable tune, laugh and consider it a job well done."

Current status: shoehorn achieved, R considering midnight mass for the first time in a decade because a) she hasn't been able to take her bra off yet & b) it would be, relatively, quiet. This means that a disparate group of us are also considering mass but we'll all have to put bras back on.

Calloo callay, it's #DuvetKnowItsChristmas Day!

One of the reasons I read the Jhalak Longlist every year is that it brings new authors & books to me. I read a lot and try to do so widely. This is part of that widening. My work & local libraries do book displays for Black History month each year. To widen patrons knowledge of what is out there.

The Christmas cheese and the Christmas chicken have been collected. The pepparkakor is made. The tree is out of the cupboard. I am doing far better today than a friend with Unexpected In-laws whose husband is on a shoehorn hunt because his father a) finds them essential but b) didn't bring one.

Thankfully this was delivered to my Helpful Neighbours who dropped it round before they disappear for Christmas and not the ones who once accepted a parcel knowing they were going away for a month that same day.

Ah, wonderful service from Yodel as always. Parcel delivered "to neighbour" but no details as to *which* neighbour.

As is now tradition, I am day by day listening to the glorious BBC World Service The Dark Is Rising. Beautiful and scary and, ultimately, hopeful. I am one of those weirdos who loves the deep dark days of December and this story is so wonderfully evocative of the peril at their edges.

Look, I too cried at Heated Rivalry episode 5, and genuinely think it was good and heartwarming and important. But. Well. All the internet people being all "THIS IS THE BEST EPISODE OF TV I HAVE EVER SEEN"? You need to watch better TV. Idk, try Spooks. The House of Eliot. Hell, try Buffy.

This film has made many weird choices about France and the French but they have managed to get it correct that champagne is best served in a wine glass. Did they get the cheese course right? Oh no. But this, yes.

Right, the Christmas food shop has been put away and it's time for a bad Christmas film. Champagne Problems is tonight's choice. Because every French champagne house needs a perky American buyer!

Dog-whistle and factually incorrect. Ladies, raise your hand if you were sexually assaulted by a boy at school? I’d wager this or a family member is most women’s first experience of sexual violence

🎵 Hark the Herald Tribune Sings / Advertising Wondrous Things 🎵 Or; it's the most wonderful time of the year because the 2025 Hater's Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catolog is here! defector.com/the-2025-hat...

I just want to mark a Christmas Miracle: C and I went out for post-work Christmas drinks and dinner and are both home before midnight, not incredibly drunk, and ready for our busy long weekends. C is packing up her flat and I have friends visiting.

I don't often pine for locked accounts but I have the Greatest Work Story and I don't want to risk entirely giving away where I work.

Have I managed to get The PSF to agree timings for this yet? Or tell me what he and his wife want for Christmas? No, no I have not. Am I metaphorically gnawing the skin on my fingers about it? Yes.

If I ever become Democratic Dictatress of the UK I am going to enforce a series of trivial but important to me laws. One of them is going to be an enforcement of references to the Twelve Days of Christmas being correct. Today is *not* the fifth day of Christmas.

The Christmas cheese order is in! Is it, as always, entirely too much cheese for one person? Yes. Yes it is.

One of the weirder bits of my job is that sometimes I have to read tax advice (usually related to leases) and my god the things this reveals that I do not understand and do not wish to understand.

Ah, I see that the person I have a similar email address to is busy booking their December spa treatments again. I do hope they have a good time, and that the change from couples massage to a singles massage is not an unhappy one.

It's easy for me to say this but I do think both they and the Guides should have fought this. And IANAL, but I don't think either organisation would have been in breach of the law. (Of course, that doesn't mean SLAPP isn't expensive to fight, nor that there wouldn't have been other unpleasantness)

Someone bought a house on a road which backs on to the university campus. I receive about three emails a semester from them complaining that someone is staring out of the window of one of our buildings into their house. Or, in reality, someone is in an office looking in the direction of the window.

I've had Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky in my head all weekend. It's a great song, I love it very much, but the punctuation of the talk radio show in my brain with "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name / Hi!" is wearing thin. If you too would like an earworm: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCr-...

My external examiner had to say "given that Liseuse didn't write about witches and midwives and has explained why, can we just move on in a non-witches and midwives direction and suggest it as a future project?" to my internal.

I love panto season