Tidying up

To my immense surprise, I seem to have steadily worked my way through all the little bits of paper with notes for future blogs scrawled across them. There remain only a few thoughts to share before, hopefully, I can finish off my American journal.

I was in Stratford's Starbucks last week, where at the next table was a drop-dead gorgeous schoolboy - yes, I know, but just because he's a teenager and I'm not doesn't stop him being gorgeous - explaining the offside law to his girlfriend. Really and truly. And then he went on to attempt the lbw law. I hope this girl knows the prize she's got. This was all so engrossing that it quite distracted me from what I was doing, which was writing lyrics, so it was probably a good thing when they left, to be replaced by a gaggle of younger teenage girls, one of whom looked out of the window and cried 'oh my God! there's a big bear!', which is not the sort of thing one usually hears in Stratford-upon-Avon unless one happens to be watching The Winter's Tale.

Anent Bond songs, my friend Phil writes to complain that the egregious violation of all reasonable rules of grammar in Live and Let Die should rule it out of court, tout court. He is of course referring to 'and in this ever-changing world in which we live in' and he is absolutely right. However, I hold out the hope that the line actually reads 'this ever-changing world in which we're living.' This would make perfect sense, and I haven't googled to check just in case I'm wrong.

Christmas shopping is much easier when items instruct you to buy them. The company from which I occasionally buy wine, in trying to persuade me to part with more money in the festive spirit, as it were, threw all subtlety to the four winds and stated, very bluntly, 'do not be without New Zealand sauvignon this Christmas.' So that's now on the list: wrapping paper, tinsel, tags made from last year's cards, a diet of chocolate and satsumas...and Kiwi sauvignon. Phew. Although I'm a little concerned that my father's goat still hasn't arrived.

I do however notice, with some annoyance, that I haven't commented on the following (and this is a direct lift from scotsman.com, to whom I apologise):

'CHRISTIAN leaders have condemned Edinburgh University for banning students belonging to the Christian Union from teaching an abstinence course on campus.

The row centres on the decision by university chiefs that literature promoting the six-week course, entitled Pure, broke equality and diversity rules, following claims that it included stories from people who had been "cured" of their homosexuality.'

Hmm, so free speech has curled up and died in Edinburgh. I remember there was a facebook group called 'Stop PURE,' which I cordially didn't join. This will have to tie into Sin, when I get round to it. Damnit.

(And did anybody else notice Kofi Annan's interview, in which he apologised for not being able to keep Saddam in power?)

We have the Headmaster's Christmas Dinner tomorrow, which is a black-tie affair. I'm not quite sure how I contrived to shoot moisturiser onto the shoulder of my dinner jacket, and I'm positive I wouldn't be able to do so if I tried, but it does suggest that life is irrevocably loaded with the elements of comedy, albeit Terry and June. Fortunately my mother had the wit to send me off with a spare DJ, which doesn't fit and isn't quite the same shade of black, but at least doesn't look as if someone has been rubbing marmite into it.

Writing lyrics is one of the most agonising pastimes because it's a patently inefficient use of time. To spend a couple of hours pacing up and down - or, if you're in public, beating the air with a pen and mouthing potential rhyme schemes - trying to construct something clever, concise and meaningful is painful when the muse refuses to play ball and stays home with a cup of tea, and you're reduced to 'love/above' again. The flashes of genius do in some way compensate for the long stretches of adequacy, but goodness knows what will happen when I get a teaching timetable. To be fair to myself, I've wasted even more time this past fortnight, having discovered chatrooms. If there's a bigger waste of time than talking to people online you don't know, please tell me. So I've returned to my lyrics in an effort (a) to utilise some talents before I lose the available time and (b) to reduce my phonebill. And speaking of dating websites, obliquely, is it too much to ask that any prospective boyfriend should be able to spell? Is it too much trouble to get 'where' and 'were' sorted out? Or am I being too picky? (as the only chatroom user who writes in full sentences, the answer to that is probably 'yes')

I've been using a rhyming dictionary to assist with the lyrics, which I find has the very limited and specific use of avoiding the necessity to constantly work through the alphabet whenever you need a rhyme. Otherwise, as Mark Steyn pointed out in Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, it won't help with such brilliant constructions as Lionel Bart's 'please her / she's a' (living doll), or even 'control as / tombolas,' which could only be Tim Rice. Or, in my own case, 'Joshua / gosh, you are' (adorable), which pleased me. Although it is educational: who knew, for example, that 'sciuroid' meant 'squirrel-like'? Certainly not me, and though I'll try and slip it into conversation (possibly at the Dinner - 'goodness me Headmaster, but your wife is looking distinctly sciuroid tonight'), how in the name of Hades could anybody use that in a lyric??