Hello everybody, I'm back. And amid gasps of total indifference and mutterings of, "I never even noticed he'd gone", I'll explain my absence. I unsubbed at the beginning of July to go on a two week mountaineering/caving Gold Duke of Edinburgh thing in Northern Spain, planning to resub when I got back, but too much shit happened, and it was only two days ago, when I recieved Jules lovely tape through Kaytee's tape tree, that I remembered what I was missing. But, to fill you all in, my summer has been shit - I think I've had enough misfortune to last me a life time, or at least a few months. The first thing that happened was the day I got back from my holiday, my best friend got hit by a drunk driver, and was paralysed. Yes FUCKING PARALYSED. That made me wake up and smell the coffee. Oh yes sirry. It was very strange though; he was and still is remarkably upbeat about not being able to walk anymore, and I was the one who spent all day crying for about a week and a half. So that made me feel shit, and so the prospect of rejoining the 'twee-brigade', as some of my other friends call it (is twee still a four-letter word round here?) didn't really appeal. It still gets me down to think that my best mate is in a wheelchair, but I'm getting over it. Apparently though, the chances are that he will walk again, a bit like Jim McDonald in Coronation Street (my mum watches it...). He's jazzed up his chair as well with lots of stickers and has fuzzy dice on the arm rest... which is actually really funky. But that was the first downer. Then in the second week of August, my Gran (who has been totally bonkers for the last ten years anyway) and Uncle died, within four days of each other, and that was also very sad, as my other Uncle is a money-grabbing bastard, who's trying to fiddle my Gran's will. The death of my Gran didn't really bother me much, becuase she's had about a month to live for the last three or so years, and so it wasn't much of a shock. My uncle, on the other hand, died very suddenly, and my Dad (his brother) was pretty screwed up over it. And so that also drew me away from Sinister, cos I was too consumed with family fuck-ups And then things began to look up. I had a wonderful Leeds festival (unlike a certain person I know and Erica, who I gather got on the wrong sides of each other - according to Erica's diary) and Pulp are sooooo brilliant, and I got my GAP year all planned (anybody else on the list doing doing a skiing season this winter?). The only moderately pissing off this at the moment is my job. I feel totally unqualified to complain following Jen's report earlier this week however, and Jen: you are a kind and more patient soul that me. However, I will complain, only a bit. I'm working for a solicitor's firm as a secretary, just typing letters and answering the phone, and my boss is the definition of the word moke; he talks to everybody as if they are five, and gives really unclear instructions just so we have to come back to him and say that we don't understand. And he looks like Monty Burns. Seriously. Anyway, I doubt many of you wanted to hear all of this (sorry Honey - forgive me this time), but for those of you (very few) who did know when I was on Sinister before, I'm back now, slightly changed by a bizarre summer, but back. Phew, that was close.... Am currently listening to: Kid A, but I won't talk about it because it seems to be a bit of a sore subject round here, Leisure by Blur, SelmaSongs and the White Album, all of which are fab, apart from Leisure, which is shite, but has nostalgia value aplenty. I've said far too much now, and I have a feeling that people are just going to see this in their inboxes and think "no, it's too big to read, click delete", which will, in all honesty, be totally justified. So thank you Sinister for being there for me to moan to, and everybody, don't panic, for I A M B A C K. Right, I think I'm going to go and hide under a rock now... love, S.x P.S. B&S content: they were the soundtrack to a lot of my shitness this summer... ========================================================== "one and one and one is three, got to be good looking cos he's so hard to see" - The Beatles _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. 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