Downbeat

Well, the online forms to apply for teacher training are all filled out, with a "Personal Statement" that describes my small teaching experience in such glowing terms that I'd blush to post it here.

But in summary: "I'm a friggin' genius mate and you should be honoured, I say honoured to have me on your poxy little course."

There's the small holdup that my referee has to confirm my existence/worthiness/non-paedophillia/sanity before the GTTR can issue me with a personal code without which I can't phone up the universities and apply to them, personally and individually.

Yes, that's really how it works. The branch of the civil service that, prior to July 31st, applies for courses on my behalf when I fill out an application form...after July 31st requires that I apply in person, but prevents me from doing so until I've gone through the procedure which formerly instructed them to do it - a procedure which now has no function because I do the applying not them! I hope that's all perfectly clear.

The referee should be a okay about it, seeing as I periodically delouse his computer.

Although he did roar with unbelieving laughter when I said I wanted to be a teacher. Come to think of it, so have quite a lot of other people. Absolutely no one thinks I'd make a good teacher. Apparantly I'm too nice.

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Tom A and Roxanne C have split up. It's all very sensible and amicable (apart from the tears and the lonliness) - just a case of two fundamentally good people who on the one hand love each other, but on the other have become bored and annoyed by each other's company. And don't tell me that's an impossible combination - I've seen it too many times to doubt.

I don't know where he is, but she phoned me for some support and company, and we spent far too many hours getting far too drunk in the usual scrote-hole of a pub, both almost but not quite getting off with other customers.

There was a smooth talking wideboy called Lee who's charm didn't extend to having a place to take Rocks back to, and for me a cute black guy who was happy to flirt and "kiss" through a window (what?), and was up for more, but couldn't quite work up the nerve to snog windowless in front of his mates. Very nearly though.

And I managed to lose my wallet. Again. That's now three (empty) wallets I've managed to lose in that place.

Comfort junk food and comforting cuddles with Rocks back at her flat. Part of her wished I was Tom...and part of me wished she was him. Yep, Tom was never bothered by me cuddling his girlfriend because he knew I was really thinking of him. I'm not mixed up, just complicated.

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Spock is fading slowly - no dramatic changes, just a continued general decrease in energy and appetite. How do you measure "quality of life" for a housepet that's in no physical pain but must in some way be miserable? At what point can you say "he no longer has a life worth living" when his horizons have always been the walls of a house and a feeding bowl?

I haven't heard anything about or from Dunkan. He seems to spend most of each day exhausted in bed, not communicating with anyone except theough Donna, his partner. It's like he's the unseen but omnipresent "thing in the attic" from so many bad horror movies.

I catch myself wondering which one will die first, and who I will miss more.