Thursday was very eventful for me. The first thing in the morning, I dutifully arose and got ready to go to work. The train was one of the fancy new ones. It was very crowded, so as I pushed my way on (no begloved Japanese pusher-onerers at my station), I rested my hand on the top of the doorway. The next thing I knew, the doors had closed on three of my fingers, and there was no way to force them. I made repressed, manful noises that to the trained ear would indicate I was in a considerable amount of pain, and even uttered a few quiet profanities. Other people did what they could in their extremely restricted situation, which was to offer sympathy as the train pulled off with my three fingers hanging in the breeze. The two minute trip to the next station has never felt so long (except for another time we were waiting ten minutes for a freight train). By the time we got there I was going into shock. They didn’t look pretty, but fingers are tough little buggers, and now you’d never know to look at them. They even feel fine. My poor right middle finger has been in the wars though. Three weeks ago it bore the brunt of a steam burn, and was looking like a zombie’s rotting flesh a few days later. On Monday I gave it a nasty foil cut while over-zealously serving myself some cheesecake, and on Thursday I decided the squashed purple train-door look would be interesting.

The next story also happened on Thursday, and requires a diagram:

This is my house, more or less. On Thursday, my new housemate Hilda moved in. She brought her first load of stuff in the morning when I was at work. I left work early and took the opportunity to meet the lovely Marion, as we hadn’t been able to see each other the whole week. We had coffee, I had lunch, and we went back to my place. After a suitably lascivious midafternoonish time, we freshened up in the shower and were drying ourselves. This is when the gate opened and people started dashing through the rain with boxes and various items of clothing and furniture. Neither of us had our spectacles, so it took our myopic eyes a while to work out that there were three people- Hilda, her father, and a ≈12-year-old boy, maybe her half-brother or cousin. I sensibly had taken the precaution of not having the light on in the bathroom, making it possible to see out without being able to see in.

At this stage, we were stuck in the bathroom with towels and one bathrobe between us. I thought a Hiss style welcome to chez Josquin, while friendly, may have made the wrong impression on my new housemate and her older and younger male relatives. With nothing on me but my wits, I formulated a plan…

First I put on the bathrobe and waited until the coast was clear. I scampered through the kitchen, the lounge and into my bedroom. I quickly and silently put some clothes on, hiding behind the still-open door. Then I carefully gathered up Marion’s clothes (taking care not to forget anything), and waited again until the coast was clear. I walked back through the lounge and the kitchen (where people outside have a clear view in), and delivered Marion’s clothes to her. Soon after, we were both decent (though bare-footed), and waited for the coast to be clear again so that we didn’t have to leave the bathroom together.

The first Hilda saw of us was us sauntering casually and barefootedly out of the kitchen, offering to help move stuff in (once we had our shoes on). It was quite a relief that everyone was too busy running furniture through the rain to need to use the bathroom.

Alas, that story had a few more details that I’ve forgotten about, which made the whole thing a bit trickier than my description would make it seem. Dodging people as they rushed predictably back and forth with furniture made me feel as if I was in Frogger.

Finally, I’ll clarify a couple of things about my last entry for the lovely Hiss, who said:

What exactly do musicians do in December, dear? The only thing that springs immediately to mind is carolling. (And making frustratingly obscure [poss. metaphorical-allegorical?] references to the comparative endowments of pasta in one's diary, of course.) Happy a-wassailing, darling! Love, R xxx

Firstly, she’s right about the carolling. I’m the master of carols. I know what page most carols are on, but I rarely need to look at the music. It can be lucrative. My pasta references were boringly literal. Fusilli cook without supervision, drain well, and I one know how much cooked pasta a handful of dry pasta will make. Linguini, on the other hand, stick to each other, don’t drain well, and a handful of linguini makes enough cooked pasta for a grumpy three-year-old, which is how I ate on Thursday. Is there any reason all pasta should not be fusilli? Except for gnocchi of course ☺

Here’s an interesting entry I’ve been reading by .

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