Ok. I hereby give up with discs. I suppose I'll give in and get one of those USB keys and work out how to use it with three different computers. Farewell, lengthy e-mail and chunk of story! It was nice writing you. How unfortunate it is that no one else will ever behold their glory!

Other than that, Tuesday was pretty sweet. In the absence of any of my files to work with, I started writing a new computer game. I went for lunch with former classmate Teresa, then headed into Canterbury to continue Sensible Shoequest, armed with advice from Soppygit on where to look.

Now, I had a fantastic time. First I ran into cybertrousers bloke who I said hello to randomly on the campus roundabout over two years ago. Then, on my way to town, I found myself walking behind Chris, Formerly Of Christchurch University, so I had a pleasant conversation with him. In town I ran into more acquaintances and had an urge to acquire further reading material (fortunately, the more literary sort this time) and so bought books by Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami and William Nicholson (who writes children's low fantasy, but it's really good).

But did I get any shoes? Yeah right! Oh, I went into several shoe shops, and I got as far as trying on two pairs, but they were so horrible and so uncomfortable and the shop assistants were so unfriendly that I was forced to flee in terror.

I give up. I will simply have to turn up to my job/university interviews in my five-inch platforms boots. If I don't get employed on account of them, well, I don't want to work for their smelly organisations anyway. Well, my five-inch platforms are fairly smart, as goth boots go, and I can always buy a long plain black skirt to cover most of the buckles.

I hope . . .

In the evening, I watched lots of bad TV with Sleeve and Emma (Oh dear, "Brat Camp" - a series about some (actual) British kids who get sent to this behaviour correctional camp type thing in Utah - is so addictive), read and wrote a bit, and spoke to my Mummy on the phone.

I spent Wednesday morning writing, but got distracted in the afternoon reading about blaaaaack metaaaaaal!!!, via the special feature about it in Terrorizer magazine and my book about it. Well, it does constitute novel research. I also watched more bad TV with Sleeve and Emma (oh dear, "Wife Swap" is so addictive) and spoke to Chris O Liverpule on the phone, but the black metal was the day's predominant theme, as I dreamed Varg Vikernes (famous black metal artist, currently in jail for murder) took over the world, opened a trendy nightclub next door to my house, and decreed that every household should only have one album representing each musical genre. Sleeve and I were debating whether to keep Slipknot or Staind (I was in favour of Staind, on account of them being more generic (?)), while livejournal fiend bridge_troll was agonising over which obscure Windir EP (?) to keep.

On Thursday and Friday I was ill. Just with a bad cold, but it kept me in bed most of both days. I had to miss the Thursday night curry ritual and going to an indie night last night with Soppygit and female Alex, but I'm still glad it happened this week and not next, as I'm seeing Megadeth and Nightwish in Nodnol, and really want to go to Slimelight and see Leisur Hive too.

(Also, I'm very glad I decided seeing Rammstein - who are playing this week - would be too much of a rip off at £30, since I paid £13 for the privilege four years ago.)

I managed to spend some more time with Sleeve and Emma on Thursday evening. (Oh dear, "Sex In The 70s" is so addictive . . .) Emma, who I think gave me her cold (not like that!), was also still too invalid to go for curry, and when Sleeve returned to the house four hours later, he was thrilled to see we seemingly hadn't moved. I literally hadn't moved, Emma had got up once to use the bathroom, and her essay and the books I'd ordered off Amazon for research purposes had remained untouched: we'd been talking the entire time.

On Friday, though, I could barely speak. I read a bit, coughed at my Mummy down the phone, and felt bored and lonely, but not actually up to doing anything.

So, today, I decided I was going to be well again. In truth, I have a coughing fit whenever I as much as think about speaking, and still feel really dizzy, but too bad, illness! You will not have the better of me any longer! Ha!

On the bus to campus, I passed a building which looked for all the world like it was called "Ideal Spine Centre".