I sometimes want to post a picture of everything in our tiny, messy, nice flat. At the moment I'm sitting in front of a shelf with lots of happy things on it, each of which have memories, some of the things are:

- A giant six-eyed, purple papier mache mask that mrcameraman made, wearing a crown saying 'murdering scum'. He was given the crown at an arts event when two people dressed as policemen took polaroid pictures of 'suspects' and got people to vote for the most sinister looking person (he won).

- An inflatable pikachu that R and A brought back for me from Goosefair when I was feeling ill (it also squeaks).

- A wavy hand cat our friends Sam and Mark brought back from Thailand.

- Underneath the shelf is a piece of string holding up loads of cards that people have made for us or just given us that have sentimental value.

I've been really busy and focused recently. Focused on work, focused on teaching, focused on helping mrcameraman get through a work contract he finds exhausting and generally not-fun. (My way of helping him through that is via making exciting packed lunches and getting up early and heading in with him each morning.)

I'm teaching Introduction to Communications Studies, which I like whilst facing the simultaneous problem of worrying about whether I'm doing ok at it. I hope so. It'll inevitably be a learning curve though. Suppose all I can do is be prepared and go in with confidence (or at least feign confidence).

Life's been very up and down, but I've actually managed to stay fairly constant in terms of mood-management, for possibly the first time in my life. It's been like that for the past couple of years, and is probably due to a combination of things: getting older, being in a stable and happy relationship, learning restraint etc etc etc. One of my friends said he thought I seemed older than I am because I always act like I'm happy. I dunno if I agree with that, as I know I can be really immature sometimes.

All I do know is that happiness, for me and possibly for a lot of people, is something to be worked at. My problem's always been having the right attitude about stuff, as in the past I've often seemed balanced on the surface but been knotted up inside - which hasn't been good when people have got close to me. I think I'm sort of internalising the external stuff though and forcing myself to be balanced, optimistic, pragmatic etc etc etc.

So while there's a lot of awful external stuff that's upset me, particularly in political terms, I've been able to cope and do what I can.

I'm still feeling really nostalgic at the moment though, I miss Edinburgh and Edinburgh people.