Tuesday Night is Curry Night

Tonight's topic is what we would put in Room 101. (By the way we ate vegetable pathia, dhansak, plain naan, chapatti and a pilau coloured in a manner no natural foodstuff has ever been).

Velouria's Room 101 wishlist is:

1. The entire Bedingfield family
2. Tracey Emin and that buttock-clenching post-modernist claptrap ("she is a lout" Brian Sewell)
3. Licorice
4. All Saints studded belts
5. People that try to high five you, especially those aged under 16
6. Pretentious marketing speak
7. Sandals All Inclusive Resorts and anyone who would actually go there

My list is:

1. Freddie Mercury
2. Small beige houses
3. Foof belt skirts
4. The food served by Betty's Tea Rooms which tastes delicious but makes you feel sick for hours afterwards
5. Personal statements that start "I have wanted to study Logic and Metaphysics since I was an four years old...". No, you haven't.
6. The phrase 'in terms of'
7. Men who steer their girlfriends by putting their hand proprietally in the girlfriend's lower mid-back.
   

Next week's list will be brought to you by an unknown, but voluminous, quantity of Indian Food and Top Ten Totty That You Shouldn't But You Would.

Your turn: please comment on what would be in your Room 101. Velouria would appreciate it if someone would pop X-Factor in as she's run out of options.

Enjoy the silence?

Right, imagine your job. What is the essential tool of your trade? (If Belle de Jour is reading this, which I know she's not, please don't answer. I grew up in Watford and I don't need to hear about foofs. Cheers).

I know what is vital to my job. It's my voice. And, rather unwisely, I have lost it. Since about 11am today I have gone through a gentle transition from:

Slightly raspy (hmmn, worrying warning sign)

V

Husky (a la Honor Blackman, or so I'd like to think)

V

Croaky (a la Kermit the frog)

v

Tuning in and out (a la 14 year old boys with hormone issues)

v

whispering (Bob Harris, obviously)

v

Nada, nowt, nothing at all.

The thing about lost voices is that you need to rest them and not do any talking whatsoever. Since my ex left this is now easy for me as after I put my son to bed at 7pm at night I know I won't speak again until he gets up at 7am (unless I talk to the TV - c'mon, I know you do too). At first this silence upset me. I am a chattery person and I found it wholly unnatural to spend hours in silence. But now I'm starting to get used to it, particularly as I have found my 'voice' on here. Too many of the words I used before my ex left were 'I'm sorry', usually for things he'd done but that I apologised for in a pre-emptive anti-strop strike.

These days I have restorative and recuperative evenings where my voice gets a rest. Tonight it's vital to give me my teaching tool back for the morrow. However, it's also good that I don't have to speak to defend, or explain, or deny. I'm starting to enjoy the silence.