Date: 8 December 2008Time: 8.05am. That's right.Location: HarbourWeather: post-precipitation, approximately 13 celcius. Slight windchill.Observation: four laughing, dripping wet, barefoot, teenaged girls wearing bathing suits, one carrying an inflatable rubber ring. Wrapped loosely in giant colourful beach-towels, they were clearly returning from an early morning dip in the frigid waters of

Last Saturday, we fulfilled one of our New Zealand ambitions: seeing the All Blacks* play. This match was against Ireland, as part of something called the IVECO thingamy-wotsit. I think IVECO make lorries. Who cares? It's fit men in tight jerseys, getting muddy.The day had been one of sunshine and cheer, so we were hopeful we would be nice and toasty watching the legends of the game of rugby

Something is happening, and it is becoming harder to ignore. Allow me to introduce the evidence.Category A: The Office Exhibit 1: One of my colleagues looks disarmingly like a young Luke Wilson. My colleague has longer hair, but truly, the resemblence is astounding. Exhibit 2: A separate colleague looks almost exactly like David Schwimmer, only with lighter hair colour. His personality is

At the tender age of 12, I first watched Aliens, and Sigourney Weaver became my personal hero. She's so statuesque, so strong, so wonderfully intelligent. I felt the same way the fifteenth time I watched Aliens. So I am very glad that Sigourney and I currently inhabit the same city. I hope to be swooning in the street near her soon. I may start carrying my box set of the Alien series around

I've been thinking, recently, about what living in London for 18 out of 29 years of a life can do to a person. I don't think about this in terms of negatives or positives, more by way of observations which cause my brain to hum slightly in protest at all the self-analysing going on around here of late.One of the major differences between Cowboy, who was brought up in the most stagnant,

Driving to work is a rare occurrence for me at the moment, since I prefer toa) save the $12 parking fee; andb) avoid polluting the world with another car's exhaust fumes and congestion.I have been getting a lift in with Cowboy to start work at 8am, finishing at 3.30pm, walking half an hour to the gym (or on the days I don't go to the gym, filling my time by window-shopping or having a coffee and

During dinner when you were a child, when she could think of no other useful interaction to have with you, did your mother ask whether 'you can tell me one good thing and one bad thing that happened to you today?'. Mine certainly did. I'm reasonably sure she then switched off her listening capabilities, and only woke them up again when my father decided he needed to talk about how the Xerox

I haven't managed a post in over a week...? What is that about? Well, very long story very short: work trauma. In summary:A) despite the fact that my line manager has known that we would need maternity cover from December-July since oooh, May, he failed to do anything about it, leaving us one out of four staff down for 4 months. Then he gives my co-worker (who despite being a useless piece