"You probably get this all the time, but..."

I get compared to Drew Barrymore semi-often. One time, in LAX, a confused family actually asked me if I was her. I take this as a big time compliment and am very unsecretly pleased about it, as Drew Barrymore is quite a cute lady. Usually if someone starts a sentence with "You know who you look just like..?" I just sort of presume that's where things are going, commence feeling good about it, and get my smiley face on. Since moving here, I've been told by a number of ladies (and one old man) that I bear a striking resemblance to the singer Adele. On the one hand:

I guess?

On the other hand: 

I bought a fur hat, everyone be cool.

You know when you go shopping by yourself and somehow end up sucked into a delusion-vortex where you are completely cool and can pull off anything you've ever wanted to wear in your wildest dreams? Typically, I call this Euro-shopping, where you go out to a store in Italy or something, and everyone else is wearing camouflage jeans with "Sexy and Military" written on them in rhinestones, so you think your shirt with the see-through sections over the shoulders is cheeky and fun, instead of super weird and embarrassing. Or you go to France and decide that since the gamines can do it, dammit you are getting one of those gray tunic-y sack things and rocking the HELL out of it, instead of looking like a B-list celebrity trying to start pregnancy rumours. The good thing about Euro-shopping is that it only happens in Europe. (In the twitter version of this post, the hashtag is #ohshitiliveherenow.)

I went to a vintage market in Brick Lane the other weekend, and had been looking for something fur, as well as something leopard. Drunk on my obsession with the '60s and that weird mildew smell that is ubiquitous wherever second hand clothing is sold/your great aunt's basement/Miss Havisham's house, I found EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Then I took it home:

some pictures

I am really terrible about taking pictures. I know in this age of flickrtumblrtwitter "check out our brand on facebook" that if you don't document it and then post it on the internet, it didn't happen, but a lot of stuff happens too fast to take pictures, okay? Anyway this is the best I could do:

Somerset house is right beside my campus. Amazing.

See all my sexxxxxy pixxxxx below. ($1.50/min)

ill, bruv.

That's me. (Artist's rendering)

Have fallen ill with that grimey cold that seems to always coincide with the start of winter in earnest. It does not help that the weather for the next week is slated to be 100% Go Back to Bed weather. Which, I'm realizing, is England's default forecast.

Today I caused a minor scene in Sainsbury's while trying to get some Neocitran. I guess the cashier had never heard of this brand, but when I tried to explain what it was and how it worked, he looked at me like I was an alien. In an effort to be helpful, he started listing brand name products, but I had no idea if liquifen or any of the other context-less names represented what I was looking for. A line (sorry, queue) formed. It was awkward. I eventually struck off on my own to find the medicine section. Sainsbury's, riddle me this: why do you have three different brands of anal lubricant but no lozenges?

Point-form weekend

1. It is 'bonfire night' in London, also known as Guy Fawkes' day, also known as the weekend everyone, regardless of familiarity with pyrotechnic safety procedures and/or blood alcohol level, lights fireworks and bonfires all over the city, in backyards and on street corners. It is also the first week of London's firemen and women going on strike.

2. I have spent the weekend being a hung-over academic at a gesture lab/conference at the Globe, which has led to a lot of doodling, most of it Shakespeare-based, all of it embarrassing.

3. The gesture lab has involved a lot of professional actors explaining their theories of early modern performance and workshopping ideas/methods of staging. A lot of it has involved some very floofy acting-type exercises, including something about 'floating' and 'falling' based on Chekov, and actors moving feelings and colours to different locations in their bodies. It has been a cruel reminder as to why I ultimately failed as an actor: my complete inability to let the colour purple govern my movements.

4. Spent last night at a party in Peckham talking about time travel and the way British people say the words 'pedophile', 'hummus', 'yogurt', and 'albino'. (Spoiler alert: they say it weird.) In the name of bonfire night we sent up this firey lantern thing into the air, although as it floated into the night sky it looked suspiciously like it was about to become consumed in flames and maybe land on someone's roof. Whoops. No one called 911 because a) I don't think that's the number for emergencies here, b) The firemen are all at home on strike laughing at their genius trick, and c) It was pissing rain and went out on its own anyway. All's well that ends well and all that.

Here is one of my aforementioned doodles. I presume by now I don't have to preface this with NERD ALERT:

Home is where your psychotic pet is

Monica: For the first time since coming here, I'm legitimately homesick today.

Emily: Why?

Monica: No real reason, that's the worst part!

Emily: Oh, I thought you might have seen a crazy dog, or a dad having portraits done of his daughters.

I miss my weird family and my weirder friends.

listen up London, you too crowded

oh, oh dear, terribly sorry, would you excuse me, just trying to get by, ah, yes, mmmm quite.