Guess what amount of degrees it is today?

None.

Today for lunch I had peanut butter on crackers and a diet coke

No one in jd salinger ever eats lunch, but that's what they would eat if they did.

"Spotted": yet another not very famous or attractive English actor whose presence nonetheless makes me go all weird

Him. In the Starbucks in Richmond. The thing I am bad at is famous people. I'm the most uncool about it ever in the world. But I can't HELP it. It feels like a LIE. He knows that he is famous. I know that he is famous. It feels like some kind of riddle, to which the solution is, apparently, look at him out the corner of my eye so much that my head starts hurting, and then get up all in a rush cos he saw me STARING, and forget my wallet and the flowers at the table, and have to run back and get them and then drop the wallet and make an extremely, extremely loud rustling noise with the cellophane around the flowers as I walk out the door BACKWARDS. Like a CREEP. Like someone's terrible servant in a PLAY.

Beth's Duncan told me last night that he saw Emma Watson in a pub in Oxford and he stared at her so hard that she left. I can relate completely.

This is one of the nicest self-portraits I know

There are a lot of Panel Shows here

Some people would say too many. I don't say too many. I just say "a very very high amount". I would say that one of English people's defining characteristics is an enduring smugness about "their" facility with the Dry One Liner. I mean that is the thing they are most happy, as a nation, to kind of take possession of. All countries with a strong national identity do this. Obviously now I can't think of a single other example of this that doesn't sound absurdly racist.
All I mean is that English people seem to have the idea that they have cornered the market on "understated and/or satirical humour". I think it's a way for them to still feel good about themselves because America has stolen all the other things that they are meant to be the best at. Like "you may have all the sweet writers and all the sweet musicians, but we have that show called Eight Out Of Ten Cats, headed by that complete weirdo called Jimmy Carr."
I actually have a lot to say about this. But I won't, because it is mean and, now that I am leaving, seems a bit ungrateful.
The main thing I wanted to say is that I love all the panel shows. I love all of them. I watch every single one.

if I was the king of everything

These are some words that would be banned: Fuckstick, rad, fuckbag, douchebag, so rad, whilst, totally rad, vom, fuckery, actually kind of creative use of the eff word would be very frowned upon. Not that I think it is a special word or anything, and GOD KNOWS that language is an ever-changing sea, pulled about This Way And That by the shifting tides of whatever. It's just that I don't like it very much, all this sort of Withnail and I-esque "play" with Curse Words. It's just that I think it is stupid.

When Serious Journalists are trying to be a bit lighthearted and things, they often ask whether the interviewee has a sort of secret talent. And then Charles Saatchi or whoever will go, actually yes, I know all the words to all the songs in Grease, thanks very much. And then everyone goes aaaaah, look, he is a human being after all. And then you wonder if they have cultivated these things. Because it's often the more obviously sinister plotting and scheming ones that have the most adorable secret talents. Like if I were David Cameron's PR person, I would advise him to say that his secret talent was being able to trick a cat into putting smartie tubes on all its legs and making it walk like a robot. Cos it's a bit sort of weird, but also a bit funny, and then you'd imagine him doing it, and then you'd think that he couldn't be really so bad. And it would all be a lie.

The thing that made me think of this is that my secret "talent" (ie not a talent in the traditional sense) is the "ability" (ie not an ability in the traditional sense) to stage an argument with someone entirely within the confines of my own head. I had one just now. It went just exactly, exactly like this:

My mum (tentatively): So, ah, I noticed that you haven't really been writing too much on the blog lately
Me (irritably): What do you mean?
My mum (attempting to be Airy. Failing): Oh you know, just that you haven't been writing as much as you used to.
Me (sitting up REAL STRAIGHT now and kind of plucking edgily at the neck of my fucking lambswool jersey which is now suddenly just the itchiest thing I could ever have imagined): What do you MEAN as much as I USED TO? Do you think I've just STOPPED WRITING? Mmm? Hmm?
My mum (very tired): Oh Pippy, don't get ratty.
Me: I'm not! I'm not ratty! I'm just so BUSY. Okay? I'm just SO FUCKING BUSY.

And So On. Really. I know that, were this argument ever to take place, that this is exactly how it would go. I'm hoping that by imagining it in such unnecessarily vivid detail, I will have sort of cut it off at the pass. I doubt it though.

Imagine if this was a dream diary

Where I just wrote down my dreams every day. I think it is safe to say that not a single person would read it. Not even my mum. Hearing about other people's dreams is the absolute pits. However. The other night I dreamt I was looking after Nick Clegg's baby* in a furniture shop**, and I lost it, and I was terrified, and then I found it after ages sitting right in the middle of a huge chair, like a young prince. If I was a very slightly different person, I would say "Make of that what you will" now. That's the other absolute pits. That sort of pseudo-formal "witty" thing really gets me down.
The other night in Oxford my mum said, "Making friends with someone isn't necessarily bonding over shared likes. More often it's bonding over things you both find terrible." Which is true. I think it is safe to say that I am very likely to make friends with someone who would get kitsched out by a dream blog where every post ended with "Make of that what you will." If they hated this hypothetical dream blog as much as me I would probably marry them.

* I don't know if he has a baby
** Woolworths at the Waterfront, "since you ask", which you DON'T.

My mum is here, and obviously it is the best

When you read that, it seems like it's going to be followed by a "but..." "My mum is here, and obviously it's the best, but actually it's terrible and the worst." Maybe I just think that because there was a thing in the paper yesterday where a Tory MP, as a nice joke, said on Twitter that this journalist should be stoned to death. And everyone, especially the journalist, went Oh My GOD what is the MATTER with you, and he issued this most feeble and half-hearted statement where he went "Obviously, I apologise". And I don't even know what it is about that which makes it seem that actually he doesn't at all apologise. Maybe I am too sensitive to nuance. Not in a way of being smart; more in a way of fault-finding.
ANYWAY.
My mum is here, and obviously it is the best. I'm so pleased to see her. Yesterday we spent a quite long train trip flicking through the newspaper and agreeing about everything, and I just loved it. And then we came home and watched the news and agreed about everything again, both very vehement sitting up real straight on the couch and kicking our little legs with indignation and/or happiness. Today we are going to the British Library and then Ottolenghi and then Hampstead Heath, "weather permitting", which of COURSE it won't.