this week, i am off to australia, via manchester and singapore. which means that i’m rushing around today getting organised, working all day (and i do mean aaaaaaaaaaaaaall day) tomorrow and rushing around again on tuesday. but i’m not complaining! although i can’t help wondering why, however far in advance i plan, there’s always so much to do at the last minute? an extra week to prep would be perfect.

anyway… this is my last post before i go mad. i just wanted to thank you all for reading during this time of lean blogging (that knicker story was good value though, no?) and let you know i will be updating from oz, i’m just not sure when or how much. i still have some writing assignments to finish while i’m there, but i’ll be making sure to have time off to relax. (i’m so in need of a holiday that i can’t wait for the 12 hour plane journey, ‘cos there’s no way anyone can email or phone me about anything! plus i’m dying to use one of those chair-back TV screens for the first time).

what i will definitely be doing is continue to twitter. (in case you’re still not sure what that means, it’s micro-blogging - telling the world (or just your friends if you activate privacy settings) what you’re up to in 140 characters or less. it’s fun, and a looooooot quicker than blogging. you can catch up with my “tweets” (twitter updates) here or in that red “what am i doing” box in the sidebar to the right>>>. and if you join, we can totally be twitter friends!

speaking of tweeting, i wanted to capture the weather when i woke up this morning: the ground and trees were covered in snow, the sky bright blue. so i opened my window and snapped some shots. i could see movement at the bird feeder but as i’m shortsighted, i couldn’t see what was there, and so just zoomed in and snapped blindly away.

on a total fluke, i captured this, which i think is the perfect “bye-bye, britain!” parting shot:

this morning, i had one of those experiences that makes a person (a person like me) shriek, “what’s wrong with people?!” at a very high decibel. i’d be honoured if you’d let me share it with you. (it involves knickers, if that swings it…)

i was headed to my desk to finish an article i’ve been slaving over, and i noticed there was a pair of knickers (mine, clean, plain cotton, don’t get excited) on a plant in the communal garden outside.

i could see what had happened: they had escaped from the washing line over the weekend. when my mum brought in the washing yesterday, she hadn’t seen the knickers lying abandoned and only in the clear light of day were they, well, clearly visible.

i didn’t exactly jump up to do something about it. because i didn’t think it was that big a tragedy - things have fallen off the washing line before, a t-shirt here, a sock there, and somehow i’ve managed to deal with it. i made a mental note (promptly forgotten) to ask my mum to grab them on her way out or when she next went outside (seeing as i was in my PJs and planning to stay that way). then i pulled up my article and got to work.

a couple of hours later, when i’d moved on to writing about biometric scanners and laverne and shirley (god, i loved that show!) i heard an infernal banging at the door - like the force of ten men. then i heard a whisper.

“diane… there’s someone at the door.”

“i know mum,” i whispered back… “who is it?”

now i know of course there’s a foolproof way to find out, which is to open the door, but my mum was about to have a shower and i was in the aforementioned PJs (yes, still). the post had been delivered, we weren’t expecting a parcel, the meter readers had been the previous week, and so, our rationing went, it couldn’t be good news at the door. so we waited.

then came the infernal banging at the window! what madman was this?

“it better not have been a delivery,” i whispered, as we heard the sound of something pushed through the letterbox.

when we were sure the banger had gone, i went to look. and it was… knickers. my knickers. what the…?

then we heard the creak of stairs and the door of the upstairs flat go bang.

our upstairs neighbour. the one who “can’t do anything else” (apart from look disdainful) about the noise from their television. she had seen the knickers in the plant, and taken it upon herself to rescue them. despite the fact that she had no other business in the garden at the time and it involved trekking up and down stairs to do so.

and then, instead of quietly and discreetly posting them, or leaving them in a subtle place, she decided to bang on our windows and door as if it was a matter of national importance that she embarrass me as fully as possible.

what was her motivation - to let me know that people round here do not put their underwear on top of plants and leave them there? to let me know what a great knicker salvation worker she was? or to comment on the size, style and colour? i’m sorry lady, but you don’t know me well enough to knock on my door whilst holding my underwear.

the implication is that we’re the slobby kind of folks who think chucking underwear around is okay, and we need her to educate us otherwise. but how up in other people’s business do you need to be to care that much about their knickers that you take it upon yourself to ‘rescue’ them from… what, public ridicule? i doubt more than four people had seen them, and it really wasn’t international - and what’s more, who effing cares?

well, my neighbour for one. and clearly, she wants me to know it.

please tell me i’m not the only one who finds this crazy…

i’ve just realised that three weeks from now, i’ll be spending the weekend in asia.

ASIA!

even better, i’ll see my dad for the first time in three years.

THREE YEARS!

i am very, very excited and happy about this.

but sitting here in my dressing gown after a long day of work and period pain, looking at the piles of clothes i have yet to wash/pack/try on and send back to online retailers, it all seems a little hard to believe.

EEK!

i got in to uni!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i’m not sure i can express how much this means to me but those exclamation marks should give you a bit of a clue.

after almost a decade of illness-induced misery and pain, i feel like i’ve been given another chance at life over the last year or so - and this cements all of that and proves i haven’t been kidding myself about what i can achieve. (now might be the time to credit gemma for such a rocking recommendation).

so, naturally, i can’t stop crying. it’s either the emotion of the day, or the thought of all those essays… 

think of me today at 1pm, when my university open day/interview (for a place in 2009) begins - eek! the worst thing will probably be getting there, which involves two buses and a tram, and probably all kinds of confusion.

luckily it’s not an all-afternoon affair, so i can chill out in a coffee shop later and read a book by someone i actually (virtually) know!

i know i was (am?) having a hiatus (i’m still feeling a bit rough to be honest, also: grumpy) but the site wasn’t supposed to totally freaking disappear!

after two days, i got in touch with my blog host, and it transpired they had changed some of their settings (why? why?) and made my blog go ‘way as a result.

so i had to go and change my settings with the company i bought dianeshipley.com from, where it was a dark world of ‘nameserver this’ and ‘DNS settings that’ and ‘this is not the email address you registered with’ and ‘please log in again’ until i nearly tore my hair out.

but i made it back!

and if you missed it, while the site was down i got another blasting in wrote another piece for the guardian: don’t bite the hand that feeds the inner you.

is there a good self-help book for dealing with criticism and blog disappearances, do you know?

my mum: “is it all right if i start to be senile now?” 

…except when i say ‘going to the chapel’, i mean [drumroll please…] i’m going to australia!

and when i say ‘i’m gonna get married’, i mean i’m not. (and perhaps i should have picked a more appropriate lyric to title this post).

anyway… i leave (i think) on april 10th for about three months.

so i’ll either be blogging loads or not blogging much at all until then.

is it wrong - or so very very right - that i’ve already started packing? 

i’m researching australian visas because i might just HAVE to go before this rain DOES ME IN, and there’s a few different options to choose from.

all the different explanations on the aussie government’s website say at the top:

this one is for you if…

but i haven’t found the one that finishes that sentence:

you’re struggling to feel positive, PMS-ing like no-one’s business and worried that you’ll never feel happy again.

i’ll keep looking.