post-easter traumatic stress disorder

aaargh! I had to go into Claremont today. It's the school holidays, and the day after a long weekend. "Chaos" doesn't even begin to describe it. The Zip Zap Circus was performing in the area between the escalators in Cavendish Square, with loud (bad) music and lots of skinny kids in tight leotards achieving anatomically unlikely feats in imperfect formation. There were small children everywhere, a plague which I assume accounts for the fact that Exclusive were unable to give me the next two Lemony Snickett books, thus dooming me to an afternoon of marking instead of work avoidance in the realms of pseudo-Victorian ironic Gothic kiddielit. Woe. Now I shall be forced to watch the movie before reading all the relevant books, which I hate doing. The novel is forever after tainted by the film. On the upside, I marked 26 exercises on medieval romance, and only had to curse and throw pencils a couple of times. I also achieved, in various runnings-around this morning, a gadget for my sister's sewing machine, a 2005 calendar with pictures by Tolkien, the South African run of the kingdom newsletter, the postage of a big box to the Netherlands, a new contact lens case (mine cracked mysteriously overnight, suggesting that the contact lens solution reaction is somewhat more vigorous than I had suspected, unless the cats knocked it down and then considerately put it back on the shelf), and a headache. I blame this last for the unusual and possibly disconcerting length of sentences in this post.

I have been forced to confront another of my personality disorders, viz. over-catering. I love cooking for people. I fed my players a two-course meal last night. There is slightly more left-over food in the house than was actually eaten by the four of them plus me. Anyone who wants a slice of chocolate fudge pie, please come on over. It's taking up fridge space.