New years day 2013          1445

So much for being too tired to stay awake until midnight - eventually I crashed at 0330 after two bottles of Dynasty! No problem of course because I could sleep as long as I wanted couldn’t I? But I have four cats who not only open the curtains to let daylight in, but around 0700 chase each other all over my bed. Bastards.

However, what a glorious day today is, the sort on which you observe the deepest blue sky, the sun is shining, the temperature is up at 9C and you are glad to be alive. Oh good, I thought, I will go to town shopping! Oh no, the Chinese are cheeky buggers, they are not content with having their own new year, the buses don’t run on ours either! Sod it, if I had charged the bike last night I would have rode in but as it is I will have to do that tomorrow. As the high is forecast for zero I may have to take cattle truck 29 though - regardless, I must go because I will have run out of pet meat and cigars.

I am now the proud owner of half a dozen pizza trays and a proper slice but am now minus a summer quilt. It has been hanging outside my balcony for a few days to air and when I went to retrieve it I discovered the wind was too strong for the pegs and it now languishes on the outside laundry rails of the flat below. Which is unoccupied. I will probably declare it a total constructive loss and buy a new one when the weather warms up.

I bought a cap yesterday which has little ear flaps, not because I particularly needed one but because my hair is getting perilously close to having to be combed and I will need to get shorn before everything packs up here, it will get a tad chilly around my head once done. Not only did I find there are no buses but Barry Manilow has taken the day off so I was thwarted for the second time today and remain a long haired lout.

1915

Well I had nothing to speak of at home to make a meal unless I wanted to spend ages making macaroni cheese, so I invited Kiki for dinner just off campus at the sweet pork place. I am tired, she is studying hard for her entrance exams in 5 days time for further education and neither of us wanted to be out late. So it was a five o’clock assignation. No, I didn’t have sweet pork but we did have the prawns, cabbage hotpot and some chicken and Chinese chestnut affair which even Kiki didn’t like. Apparently in Beijing it is delicious but both of us found it tasted rather odd. Actually, I found it revolting. I really would love some good old pork bangers, mash and beans! Or fish fingers, mash, peas and parsley sauce. Even a Big Mac!

Tomorrow of course I shall content myself with either Chinese fast food or KFC when I go shopping, but I can see the coming holiday being filled with stews, chillis and bologneses. Or is it it bolognesi?

Eeyore still comes into season periodically. I could take her for a secondary operation to rectify the first abortion but seeing as she appears to be calming down (the last time she was rather vocal - as my mother will attest seeing as she could hear it on the phone) and now it takes the form of murmured sweet nothings and presenting her important parts to the two males who are incapable of satisfying her.  All credit to Tigger and Pooh, they bite her neck, pin her down on my bed and then display complete ignorance of which bits are supposed to go where. I have no idea if this is the reason, but Eeyore is a complete bitch in that she lets them go so far and then attacks them. There’s gratitude for you.