One billion angels come and love her now.

So pretty. You're quite kind. You watched with LE when I ate my chips and waited to watch me finish the last one. I couldn't fathom why. Did you just want to know if I uphold my own eating regimens, are you really fascinated? I couldn't tell. I like you a lot because you're kind and handsome, and shy and confident, and not in the least bitchy. It's the antithesis of you. We were all gossiping about GF and her weight, but you're so kind. You didn't defend. You looked at me and just stated, "aren't they mean?" then you walked away. You never denigrate. You've got your own level and you'll not sink. I like that about you. Your name sounds like bells on a chiffon hem, jangling and musical.

You are apart from people though; like LE, you don't like celebration and you don't go in for the social events. You aren't invited. Have you been? Or are you just not around. I suppose you're not strictly part of our department. I think they don't invite LE because she wouldn't come, or she wouldn't come because they haven't invited her and she doesn't feel welcome; it's chicken or egg. I'd like to invite you to something very much.

I wonder if you were a great beauty? You still are a beauty, but not in the pretty sense; you're more handsome, and you're beautiful because of what's radiating from you- assured calm. So maybe that's always the way you've been, but then you're shot through with shyness as well, not with the young ones but with me and with us. I suppose I'm looking for people like me that don't know exactly where they stand, and that's you in my mind but maybe not in reality. I suppose you were an asset, as a daughter, because you're clever and everything else a woman should be; I wonder what your marriage is like. You're sensible- you don't drag your children off to weddings they don't want to attend, you don't do things you don't like doing (a lot like me). I'd have gone over to sit next to you if I could have, but it seemed to obvious, and I stare a lot anyway. You're another one that doesn't remark on MR's weight loss, which I interpret to have the same meaning as my own silence on the subject; you don't remark because, good or bad, comments have repercussions and they're not always the ones you intend.

I can catch your eye across the staffroom, when everyone else is talking about what they would and wouldn't do to their bodies, or what they are doing to them. We eat silently, and I eat defensively. I chomp away because I want to show I don't care. It's my downfall that I do, but it's all modelling behaviour- if I do it often enough, I eventually won't. I already feel disdain for the attitudes of those on diets. So maybe you were the way I was? It could be labelled an eating disorder, but it's been too easily cured and I think it's just different. EDNOS they might call it, but it's not that either. It was what it was, and I am who I am. So who are you? With your dark wavy hair, always the same style, half up and half back in a barette, and your little stride that always looks as if it's vaguely stumbling (though you don't mock GF, who can't walk from building to building without breaking a sweat and gasping for breath) you manage to keep up with my Gulliver strides. We've got the same feet, short and wide. I can always talk to you and I'm never stuck for things to say, which is odd for me. I'd like to get drunk with you and see what happens.

1760 written somewhere else today.

I could do with going on a little light walk. I am not as worried as some of the staffroom women about my hips, but I do like to categorise. I don't know if I am as bad as they are, deep down.

I am vexed with my family. I will take some weed from my brother to even things out. I have to practice underhand retribution because none other is forthcoming; of course, he isn't malicious (though he is; he lies for himself but blarts his little sister's secrets to parents) and he doesn't get the same treatment as us; there's a lot more leeway for skiving school, something I'd never do.

I keep wondering if I'd have done as well in a state school as a private one, not least because of the options; at a private school you can do classics, and you must do one language. At a state, no classics is offered and you don't even have to do what I'd call a proper science. I know not all people are academic, but it worries me when I see bright girls going for GCSE's in Drama or Dance, when they could do either outside of school, progress and do something that would broaden their horizons otherwise.

I learned the truth at seventeen...

Is love made for beauty queens? Not for me. They seem sterile and aloof and unloveable. Too plastic. I have an aversion to pneumatic beauty.

Though Mother keeps saying I'm slim and pretty, and noone else I work with must be... why not? And why should either of those things make me better than anyone else? I'm never quite what it says on the tin. People think I'll be down with the kids, but I'm really the biggest loser on the block. MC's brilliant, but I'm just a little bit Rainman with a penchant for histories and books and love lorn looks. I'm the eldest, yet I'm not a leader. I don't incite admiration or inspiration... I just am. I'm the clown and the person sitting in the corner quietly watching then joining in, occasionally producing the odd good thing.

I saw a play tonight with one black character (out of nine) in it; it was kind of historical, and I'm trying to research her character; it hasn't got any history, and I thought there would be something to back it up. The character was like that in general; to add atmosphere, not for a purpose, and the actress was brilliant. She could act amazing and sing in a voice that left me slack jawed, and definitely could have done more than that part, with nothing to locate it in history like the rest of the women. I would like to know more about her character, more than just the typical scary black voodoo woman. I hate it when people are portrayed like that, it's such a stereotype. There's something more to everyone than that.

I will not be a baby doll. I never have been, and I refuse to be vulnerable and delicate because I never have been, I've never looked young, or I have but school boy young... I'm all hips and no breasts, and I'm not ashamed anymore. I will not play the part of the ingenue because I am not her, I'm something different and I cannot be shoehorned into it. I will take up that place, for the one ugly girl, at drama school, because I am broad and masculine and I am happy.

Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in.

Quite simply put.

I am tired, and I've ate so much today. I'm going to walk more and eat less tomorrow.

I am going to see B, or at least offer myself as viewing material. I am worried because she hasn't gotten back to me, but then I suppose it's because she's busy with things. I wonder if, maybe, she just doesn't want to see me? I have to think about it. No I don't, I've been overthinking, and Meerkat said I should just go for it, so I will.

I've got time off and I'm doing things with it. Which is nice.

Tell me am I right to think that there could be nothing better than making you my bride and slowly growing old together?

I could really do with you now, K, to say some well-cut reassuring thing and let me couch on your shoulder. That would be lovely.

You're not lovely in the way that people say, to children, "oh, that's lovely". You're not crayon on wax paper. You're like a packet that's not been opened, clean and safe, and you're incandescent. You're the lovely that means loveliness; there is nothing more lovely, or, she was loveliness personified, or, as lovely as the breaking dawn. Any of those. You're the delicate and ethereal brand of loveliness, you're valiant and strong and tender, the sort that's beautiful rather than pretty (because anyone can be pretty, it's a bland statement, like saying someone's nice. It's saying nothing much). But you're a beauty. You're lovely.

1540, minus about 400 or so for a 6 mile walk.

So I'm averaging out. I like walking.


There's a bypass I walk past with twigs grasping out into the road that I edge past, but they get the better of me and snag my headphones out of my ears, so that I have to spend time persuading them to give me my equipment back against the moon and the lurid floodlights. The branches feel concealing, as if they're hiding a dead hand or a predator, so that when they stroke me I'm always wondering if it's just twigs. I'm far happier on main roads or grass expanses by the byway.

You can play with me there sometimes if you catch me in the mood.

I walked almost a perfect semicircle round her house. I didn't think about it whilst I was doing it, but now that I think on it, I did. I need someone comforting at the moment, because I'm just feeling like I can't do a lot of things. When other people can, it throws into contrast that I can't- there's a girl my age at work that is far better than me at what I do, and I'm all wrong, especially when I'm tired- I can't even be properly enthusiastic that way. I disdained her because she was pretty, and I believed ineffective, but that's proved me wrong. Pretty and effective, people are often both. Or can be. Then there's B, and I feel guilty whining about my character flaws which are insignificant and alterable when she's got something looming so awful and definite. She's good with children as well and I know that this is a silly and self absorbed thing to be masochistic with.

I don't want to go out and see anyone. I want to go for long walks on my own and then come back to a place where B and our other three from University are, and lie down somewhere warm and watch a film instead of talking or doing anything. That's what I want. Failing that, taking some hard drugs would be a bonus. I just want something soft and comfortable and happy.

Self indulgent twaddle, as usual- do I ever write anything else?

Shining light.

It was the last of the April crisp days when we met on the heath. The northern places seemed to stay barren longer than other places, and the twigs on the trees reached like fingers for my skirts in the darkling day. I saw her coming over the dried mud and yellowed grass before she saw me. She hacked her way through the bushes and waved at me. I extended an arm to wave back. She was wearing wellingtons and a long white dress, and a red cardigan. The dress was as white as her skin, an extension of her flapping limbs. She looked like a child playing, though she was too old for that really.

Green judgement and cold blood.

clementines-40
pasta-350
400
smoothie-150
lemon pie -300
450
an oreo-50
apricots-100
200
a cornish pasty and spinach-600
2 bites of licorice-50
brownie-150

1600, if I have estimated correctly. I've got a nagging feeling that that's not all.

Tomorrow I have made myself a salad. Salad days. I hope B's salad days aren't over, because I still want to be green in judgement and cold in blood with her, but now we can't joke and I find it hard to mention my own mother, who is in rude health (there's never been a more apt expression). I am glad she is, but I hate that B hasn't got that as well. Touch wood, touch wood, toughen up because I can't do anything.