I didn't want to hurt you but you're pretty when you cry

So, I am spending the next two days with amchau, and this is good. I have just watched the XF episode "Unusual Suspects", and that too is good, in a sort of crack-addled-omg-this-is-FIC kind of way. (Was that the guy off Homicide? With the world's best piece of dialogue, at that, featuring shoot-outs without bullets and blood without bodies and naked FBI agents babbling about aliens?)

But there is an awful lot about life which is not good at the moment, and right now I'm going to have to mope a bit. Please do bear with me, I'll be over it soon. I hope. But yes. Mope mope mope.

Up until this morning, I was quietly mourning the loss of my ankh. I don't know how I lost it, but I was very upset about it. I bought that ankh in Cairo, cast in silver with a silver chain and hallmark, and I put it on and the day after went to Oxford wearing it, and barely took it off for a year. Losing it meant, in the privacy of my head and its internal symbolism, losing a year; losing the person I became wearing it, losing the people who have only known me wearing a piece of silly silver jewellery that nevertheless means so much to me. It has turned up, happily; my mum found it gleaming between the paving stones in the garden, and I was so pleased to see it that I haven't put it back on yet for fear of losing it again. But yes, this is the only one of the things bugging me that has resolved itself.

I found out this afternoon that I am no longer going to Europe. This is another thing all wrapped up in symbolism, because it was my solo trip, my little thing to remind me I'm an autonomous person, and I can do some things even if I'm not departing off to Vietnam for a year or whatever, and thanks to Easyjet being sleazy bastards, I no longer have flights. They are apparently within their rights to cancel a flight with barely two weeks' notice. I can't replace it without paying over the nose, and worse, the airline providing the connecting flight, who are not Easyjet, will not refund me the money. I have lost £80 and I don't even get to travel. The only way I can get any of it back is to just cancel the whole thing. I don't get to meet biascut after all, and I don't get to see Berlin or Paris or Rome.

Oh, no. What I get to do, lucky me, is stay here and play host to American-cousin-who-makes-me-feel-bad. And her younger sister, who is my age and the living embodiment of Good Indian Girl, and will probably make me feel even worse, and I feel slightly numb and hysterical at the thought. The idea - no, you don't get to travel round Europe, you get to babysit for someone who makes you utterly miserable, and you get to pay for the privilege - is what makes me want to cry.

Err, yes. American Cousin strikes back. And in the news of awful relatives, one of my least favourite aunts arrived this weekend. Her speciality is snide remarks that are just understated enough to avoid comment. Yes, yes, I am a geek, yes, I wear glasses, yes no one else would wear my clothes if you paid them, yes, yes, compared to her I am fat and ugly and worthless. But so subtle, so nicely phrased, it's just her having a laugh oh yes. The net effect is making me want to cry.

But she's gone, thank god. She will be back in two weeks, and I won't be able to get away from her or American Cousin because I won't be in Europe, and then I guess I'll just have to bite my tongue and hold it together and think about the Visit of OMG. Because that's it, that's when I get out of here, because Claire Curtis-Thomas has gone to Spain for a month and is resolutely stringing me along re: internship. I have no idea if I've got it or not. If not, I have to come back for another two weeks in September, and be here, and be driven madder than a trapped hare. I can't do this much longer before I get overtaken by my own neuroses. I'm feeling agoraphobic and socially anxious and afraid of everything except the sky and the sea and I can't help it, because I don't feel safe. I want to go home. But I'm here already.

That's it, I guess. I did something else stupid.

Um. This morning, the rain battering against the shop window gave it all a pleasantly autumnal feel, and one of my workmates borrowed my hoodie and ventured out into the village for a bit, leaving me alone and content behind the counter. She got back with hot pies all round. It was somewhat Dibbleresque, but it was hot and I was hungry. I'd eaten four or five bites before I realised it wasn't pork and potato. I don't eat beef for religious reasons that are pretty complicated, and it's all very well washing your mouth out, but I'd already swallowed it.

So now I feel kind of ick. Combined with the bloody snide "fat and ugly" comments from above, I can't bring myself to eat. And my head hurts, and everything hurts. I am so glad of the rain. It's blurry and grey and it cools and calms everything down. I liked the village under rain, and I liked watching the drops trailing down the shop window. It reminded me of how it used to look when I first started working there, which means I must have been working there two years without noticing. I met an old acquaintance named Nick there today, who used to work there when I first started, and he proposed we start the world's most exclusive Facebook group - Oxford, Cambridge and Yale students who worked at Pritchard's bookshop. (That said, seven people fit into this category, with a possible eighth at Christmas.)

Um, I am babbling about trivialities. In the morning I will be much more sane, and I won't be here, I'm going down south to visit amchau, like I said above, and now my laptop is about to die so I must go.