Happy new year!

What, you mean the year doesn't start on the first of September? It certainly feels like that to me. A fresh start, blank copybooks, resolutions you know you won't keep, all that sort of thing. And a new batch of students, none of whom seem to be at all stupid! Wow.

There are too few of them, though. Far too few. I have half the hours of last year, acres of time and am going 'la la la, I can't hear you' to the big shaggy Poverty Beast slouching inexorably up behind me. I've so often wished for time to write, and hated teaching IT (there's hardly anyone doing IT this year, they must have figured out it's a crap subject). Be careful what you wish for, etc.

Where the heck am I going to get money? Anyone want their tarot read? Anyone need private tuition? Or perhaps you'd like an authentic, retro 1999-style website made for you? Want me as an extra in your blockbuster movie about short people? Or have you lot got any other interesting suggestions? (Anyone who suggests prostitution will get a slap. Or not get a slap, if a slap is what you'd like.)


My new obsession is Japanese characters. I've learned some basic ones, you know the sort you get on Feng Shui candles, wood, water, earth, fire etc, but today on the tube I started finding out how to put them together to make new words. The character for "man" is made up of the characters for "rice field" and "strength". How weird is that?

Leprechauns

Imagine this is a real poll:

- What are the characteristics of leprechauns?

- What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a leprechaun?

- Would you buy a used car from a leprechaun?

- Would you sleep with a leprechaun?

- Would you ever take a leprechaun seriously?

Your opinions are of the most crucial and pressing importance to me....

(edit, since lots of you have answered)

...because lots of people have suddenly started calling me one, and then wondered why I got touchy about it. Thank you all! That's why! Leprechauns are frivolous and devious and greedy and evil, are probably the least glamorous/aspirational of all the supernatural beings, and above all, THEY'RE ALL MEN!. What are they trying to tell me?

And why the sudden leprechaun-comparisons, after three years living in London without any? At first I was Paranoid Chicklit Girl and thought "oh god, I've got fat and leprechauns are chubby", but now I think it may be my lovely new jade-green corduroy jacket which I thought made me look so natty (in a hippy sort of way). Now it seems the thing makes me look like a foot-high middle-aged man. Bah.

On the other hand, bateleur's description of badgers reminds me of me a few years ago in my goth/nocturnal phase. I think I'll be a badger instead.