My current spell of employment for my parents' business ended today. I have worked there off and on since I was seven. Have my days there finally reached an end? It really doesn't feel like it, even though it struck me today that if I start a PhD now I may be able to start renting my own (really small) place not in Cumbria! Better still, my parents have previously talked of helping me *buy* my own (slightly bigger) place (renting out any spare rooms to start with), if I'm going to stay in one city for three years! How good would that be?

Quarter of an hour before I had to go and meet Alex (who's visiting for a few days), I was finally given my own stapler. A black one at that. I would have appropriated it as a leaving present, except I already have a perfectly good stapler at home. (Question: do staplers ever actually "die"?) Naturally, I spent my last fifteen minutes looking around for things to staple.

I showed Alex my old "house" (actually a castle), former church, and primary school, which has all gone horribly wrong. They've built several unwieldy extensions since I attended, and the playground has all these new (if equally incomprehensible) games painted on it. Gah! It never changed at all in the nine years me and my brother went there!

Sad truth about living in this day and age: as a weird-looking person loitering around a church and primary school at an odd time of day while the kids were outside, I had to hope no one suspected me of being a grave robber or paedophile. Naturally, all I was doing was going, "See that bit of wall? I've spent weeks of my life leaning against it, craning my neck to see the oncoming traffic, hoping the next car would be my Mummy's" and so forth.

Int evening, we were going to see a film, but just ended up sitting in Carlisle's supposedly goth-friendly pub. But only because we were having a good conversation. There were a few people in band hoodies, but we still got plenty of weird looks, even though I just looked like your standard greeboid - unable to drive in my platform boots, I wore trainers, and blue jeans to match. And how goth-friendly is a place when the first song you hear is Shania Twain? Oh, I am glad to be leaving Cumbria forever (I hope!) on Monday!