Looking at an old book on reading theory today, I have been involved in some reading theory of my own. One chapter is scribbled and underlined, not with my notes, but my son's. I can remember him doing it - after years of telling him never to write on his own books, he'd just discovered me making notes on mine - but what I couldn't remember is what it was he was writing. And then I got it. He'd crossed out many times any word he couldn't understand, he'd put circles round the name Woolf (and this was a chapter about Virigina Woolf so there were a lot of them) and by the side of any name he thought was funny, such as Arbuthnot, he'd drawn a star linked to the comment 'hahahah' in the margin.
I've got to say there are some theories I've been trying to work out recently that make his look positively useful.
And following this obvious academic bent in the family, my brother has just started researching as a - very - mature student in a university and is usefully filling in his times sending us links of websites featuring ugly babies and extraverts at the point of orgasm. The future of green agriculture is safe in his hands.

Not particularly proud of it, but there's something about handbags that makes my heart race. Not as much as some though. Found this wonderful handbag blog - http://www.purseblog.com/ - which makes me feel like a complete amateur. I love the fact that these women are actually watching films looking at what handbags the actresses are carrying and being able to identify most straight away. I don't think I've ever written about any of my characters' handbags. Obviously a trick missed.

One of the joys of having a teenage daughter is that early morning hunt for all the cosmetics and clothes she's borrowed from you. This is made even worse because somehow, in our rented house, she's bagged the bedroom with the en-suite shower. But this morning's search for my conditioner was put on pause when I spotted the collage of family photographs she'd made. In every single one of them, I'm eating. No one else, just me. Stuffing my red face in every beauty spot we've visited. I thought about throwing a CZJ hissy-fit but something stopped me, and that was the realisation that - come adulthood in a therapist's office - she'll obviously see me as an all-devouring mum anyway. So I left, leaving the conditioner too.
On Saturday I went to a poetry workshop on passion led by the beautiful Catherine Smith. All wonderful apart from that moment when I shut my eyes to think of objects of desire and saw, not Russell Crowe, surfers on Cornish beaches or even tanned feet in leather sandals, but the exact red I want to paint my kitchen walls.
So it's official. I've turned into a woman with wispy, unconditioned hair who takes paint samples and tap catalogues to bed. There are worse things in life, I suppose. Untanned feet in plastic smelly sandals?