Strange. I have gone through my life convinced that I am a ‘Virgo’, but now it seems I may have been living a lie. I was just editing my blogger profile and they’ve used my date of birth to calculate that I am, in fact, a Taurus. Is this correct? Am I a bull and not… hold on. I know what’s happened here. It’s
because the backward folk across the pond put their dates in a funny order. I’ve put in the 9th of May instead of the 5th of September, which explains the mistake. I’ll change it in a moment.

Actually, before I continue, I’ll have a bit of a rant about that. What on earth is the thinking behind ‘month/day/year’? It seems painfully obvious to me (and, I might add, most of the rest of the world) that logic dictates ‘day/month/year’. I can state precedence, Your Honour. Exhibit 14D, the digital clock display. ‘Hours/Minutes/Seconds’. Neatly in size order. I feel this American anomaly falls under the same category as persistent resistance to the metric system.

Of course, I don’t really give a stuff what star-sign I am, but a quick perusal of my horoscope can provide occasional amusement. For example, according to Paranomality.com, I am..

  • helpful and gentle with the helpless (such a good samaritan, me)
  • empathetic and sympathetic (well, I don’t like to brag)
  • humane (Hmmm… I was talking about my ‘crisp slowly over hot coals‘ list yesterday, so perhaps not.)
  • health conscious
  • charming and witty (this rings particularly true, naturally…)
  • affectionate
  • dedicated

and also…

  • critical of laziness in others (not in myself though…)
  • demanding
  • untidy (you have no idea, believe me)
  • somewhat a hypochondriac (see Of 40 degrees you say?)
  • moody
  • eccentric
  • anxious

It’s like they know me, it really is. (Cue barrage of comments from friends confirming second list, most notably third item therein…)

The untidy thing really is quite spectacularly correct. A significant portion of my bedroom floor is currently submerged beneath over a metre of assorted detritus. I’m in the process of moving clothes out of a chest of drawers, a task which I have started with considerable aplomb. I haven’t yet decided where they are going next though, or even why they have left the draws at all.

As well as clothing spanning several geological time periods, my floor is populated by myriad items of varying worth dating back to my early childhood. These include, but are not limited to…

  • A massive cuddly-toy ladybird (or ladybug for Americans) measuring over a metre in length that I won in a colouring competition at age 5
  • A wooden sword, ‘Excalibur’, used as a prop in a school play over six years ago
  • An original iMac, unused since it developed the idiosyncratic habit of wiping its own hard drive with alarming regularity
  • A tennis ball with a two foot diameter
  • An orange flashing light liberated from roadworks late one night many years ago
  • A four foot carboard stand advertising the DVD of ‘The Fellowship of the Rings’, borrowed from a shop by my sister

My room long ago escalated completely out of control, and I am sure there are parts of my floor that have not seen the light of day since sometime in the late 1980’s. One of my earliest memories is starting to tidy this room, and the project is still ongoing. A couple of years ago I started decorating it too, and eighteen months ago the wallpaper was removed. The sight of bare plaster is beginning to grow on me.

Good grief, this post is huge. I’d better stop now, for fear of wasting too much of your precious time. I’m sure you have things you ought to be getting on with. Go and mow the lawn or something.