I am embracing my inner alcoholic this Christmas.

Come close enough and I'll probably embrace yours, too.

The booze has gotten me into a veritable landslide of trouble recently and so I have sworn off it until the festive season, at which point I want our reunion to be the most magical thing.

To create this magic, I have recruited Vlad here. He doesn't know it yet, but he is going to become the tastiest schnapps. But, as usual, I am racked with indecision and can't decide what to infuse him with. Cranberries? Cake? A torque wrench? I can't be trusted with these kinds of decisions. I want to be special, not a fatal mistake.

because

I can see that you are a human being and I would like to be one, too.

untitled.

Easy come, easy go

We are wicked crazy for Children In Need!

I read on the intranet that, among (many) other things, there is a Sponsored Head Shave to raise money for the aforementioned Children, and that only men had signed up to it so far. This struck me as sexist, and also lame because for most boys shaving your head for charity is just a free haircut. But, for girls, it is unusual! It is an event! It is a real statement! Also I have never had my head shaved and I am curious.

So, I told my team that if they raised £5000 between them by Friday (tomorrow), I would have my hair shaved off, too. I asked what the sponsorship total was at 4:30pm this afternoon, and the only answer I got was an enigmatic smile.

My job > your job!

I have a new job!

I've had this job for several days now, which I think is a good sign.

Everything is new and strange. I have to ask questions about everything, because I've never worked in an office before. Mundane things are unexpectedly challenging. I can't do my

job, but I can't find my desk either.

I want to get involved with everything. I volunteered to work on the phones for Children in Need. I accepted all my staff Christmas party invites, and all my supplier Christmas party invites, including those for suppliers I don't buy from. I smile at everyone. I want to make friends with all of you. I tell my team this and they smile indulgently, because they understand the scale of the company; they understand futility. I can't accept this. I'm still the new girl; I'll never get this chance again and I am going to make the most of it.

I'm still discovering things. Yesterday it was a new staircase. Today it was the company shop. Who knows, tomorrow I might find my desk!

Who history doesn't teach, it makes numb

This was so very close to perfect that I can hardly bear it.

This weekend, I went to see Taming of the Shrew at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford. Sometimes, I like to indulge my latent drama critic around vocally upper-middle-class English bourgousie and vacuous American tourists. I like the intellectual reassurance.

As a recovering feminist, this wasn't my choice of play. Theatres are no longer the stuffy and restrictive institutions they once were, but they still object to audible swearing and airborne missiles during Petruchio's key speeches. As a recovering feminist, I'm a bit touchy about the portrayal of Katherine's eventual, inevitable and complete capitulation to her husband's will. When I say 'touchy', I mean 'violently opposed to'. Let's face it, being a recovering feminist, I hate this play.

I loved this.

Propeller are an all-male company, which was the only historically accurate aspect of the performance. All my feminist posturing was solved. All dramatic texts lack something; this one had lacked Propeller. And platform shoes. And a balding Kate, wearing ripped fishnets, for me to fall instantly and irretrievably in love with. It had lacked wheeled wardrobes, and a man in a thong, and the use of the 'play within a play' construct, and a sense of complete animal joy. For a bunch of guys, and for all the joking, they made Kate's awful, impotent and completely powerless situation perfectly clear and desperately sad. I could write my thesis about the nuances of this performance. It was excellent.

I am giving up the theatre forever because nothing will ever, ever, be as good as this. Propeller are in Stratford until Saturday 11th, and then they're touring before transferring to the Old Vic. If you don't go and see them, you're dead to me. Seriously. If you see it and don't enjoy every last beautiful, hilarious, deliberately balanced second - well, you must already be dead inside. And there's nothing that I can do about that!