Have found an amazing site - www.factmonster.com when I was searching for pronounciations for some of the mathematical words in my monologue. Can't believe I haven't come across it before because pronounciation is one of my real difficulties. I find I take very tortuous routes through conversations sometimes just to avoid certain words I know I won't know how to say properly and so will make a complete fool of myself. Although I suppose if you say them confidently enough then everybody will just think you have a silly accent.

A conversation on a forum I belong to about the difference between male and female writing - and reading. Seem to have been here so many times before, and there's no resolution. One email talks about the need in societies for the submissive group to watch the more dominant group's behaviour closely in order to anticipate and mimic - will only be a matter of time before someone suggests this is why women are so good at writing male characters, but not necessarily the other way round.

Reading Toast by Nigel Slater - he uses food as the framework for his autobiography, chunks of time separated by different foods or ingredients. Some good memories - sherbert fountains, how difficult spaghetti used to be to cook - those long tubes of blue paper. Inevitably took me off on my own foodie trails - cheesy baked potatoes in front of the Flintstones, that horrible jelly in pork pies, how we'd never eat custard out of a matter of principle although I, for one, secretly loved it, how mum tried once to disguise it in trifle but we 'found her out', the day she gave us brains and we refused to eat them. The crushed iced surfaces in MacFisheries, blue and white tiled walls in the butchers, going round the supermarket stealing the gollywogs out of the Robinson jam wrappers - they were only tucked in, not sealed, jars and jars of sweets - coconut mushrooms, exotic american hardgums, wine gums we'd think made us drunk. We knew that we would be abducted for the white slave trade by men offering us boiled sweets, so we planned what to do - we'd pretend to accept and then steal the sweets and run away. But what if the sweets were poisoned? Once we - the group of girls I used to play with in the street at home - got ourselves into a state of complete hysteria because we saw some rope in a parked car and persuaded ourselves it was a murderer's. Strangely when we did meet up with a real life flasher, we all carried on talking to him unaware of what he was doing until a woman came up and told him not to make a fool of himself. A bit of an anti-climax all around.
Got my American page proofs - sweet little hearts by each footnote.
To the cinema last night to see Spirited Away, the Japanese cartoon, except it's not called cartoon for adults, it's an animation. Wonderful whatever.

"Associate with all the smart, funny, talented, creative people you can, learn to write beautifully, but don't stay locked in your room to do it: go out and try new things, meet new people, have a wonderful, rich, compelling, and interesting life -- and then tell me about it in the most beautiful prose imaginable." --Jeff Kleinman