1. Returning to Cambridge is unpleasantly like defrosting, or perhaps more like freezing up again. I remember the last time I came back, though I hadn't been away properly then because when I worked in London I commuted down rather than moving. It was probably worse then because a) I was leaving a job I really didn't want to leave with excellent people and b) my new Cambridge job was chaotically unready for me in a way which turned out to be unhappily typical of the whole experience -- no one had considered that I might need a key to my office, for example, or a computer. This time I'm only leaving Italy, which was interesting but unsustainable, and coming back to a job with great people where everything has been got ready for me -- before I arrived there were even major arguments over my contract with HR, the two professors who are in charge having decided that it was a terrible insult to my dignity for me to have a three-month trial period, which was rather sweet of them. So I don't know what's making me feel uncomfortable about it all. Perhaps it's the fact that I have now lived in Cambridge twice as long as I have lived anywhere else in my life.
2. I have now acquired three rats, mother and two daughters. Mother and two daughter groups from literature or popular culture with acceptable names are harder to find than you'd think -- I toyed with Judy, Liza and Lorna but decided it was too camp. In the end I have called them by the late medieval names of some Anglo-Saxon saints -- Audrey (for Æthelthryth), Edith (for Eadgyth), and Osith (for Osgyth). They are not yet sure that I am a good thing, but they are very curious about me. This is such a sensible response.
3. If you read cuteoverload you have already seen this insane woman and her cat. I like to see this one from the husband's point of view -- so dull an eating companion that his wife has to train the cat to use a fork just to get through mealtimes.
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