Well I may not have written a single word of my City & Guilds coursework, but I have put up the Christmas lights...


I've got eighteen months to do that diploma, so it seemed like the more pressing task. And besides, Amelie wouldn't help me with my essay. Admittedly, when I tried to pull everything down from a high shelf, and got hit on the top of the head by a falling Christmas tree stand, I did start to wonder if I'd be safer back at the computer with a stack of diabetes books, but to be honest, they can make my head hurt too.

Anyhoo, I'm not sure we'll make it to twelfth night without Amelie chewing through the fairy lights and electrocuting herself, but if you can see past the deathtrap and fire hazard issues, the place looks quite festive.

That aside, I managed to get quite a lot done this weekend whilst avoiding my City & Guilds. Nothing spurs you on to great achievement like knowing you should be doing something else. So the good news is that the flat is spotless, and my family now know exactly what to get me for Christmas. Obviously if I hadn't spent three hours on Amazon choosing what I'd like, I might have managed to write an essay, but that's just something my parents will have to live with.

Mind you, they weren't the only ones distracting me from my work. Having dropped Lisa at her Mum's on Friday, I had to revisit twice over the weekend, firstly with a cot mattress for Amelie who wasn't sleeping well, and then with some make-up for Lisa who wasn't looking well. It was during that second visit that Lisa persuaded me to return for a third time later that afternoon and take her to the cinema. I don't know what it is about these weekends apart, but frankly I've never seen so much of her.

So we headed down to Cineworld yesterday for the 2:40 showing of 'Paranormal Activity'. It's a horror film, and the most profitable independent movie ever made, having raked in more than a hundred million dollars on a budget of only fifteen thousand. So it has a lot in common with The Blair Witch Project. Namely that nothing happens in either of them.

To be fair, it was pretty spooky throughout, and the tension built quite well, but ultimately if you expect to see anything at all on a budget of fifteen grand, you're going to be disappointed. Having spent ninety minutes watching the interior of the director's bedroom, the scariest part seemed to be his taste in decor. The only time I jumped was when someone slammed the cinema door coming back from the toilets.