Last night was of the most fun evenings I’ve had in a long long time. And best of all, it was free! (Apart from the kebab at the end of the night. Which Therese put in the microwave to heat up and Steve nearly rugby-tackled her to make her stop nuking it, as he has heard ‘statistics’ saying that one in four kebabs, when microwaved, produce maggots.) Therese and I went to Liberty for the cardholder shopping evening, and there was free booze. Two glasses of wine and two giant gin cocktails each later, we plonked ourselves down in a £2,000 leather armchair and contemplated our next move. Miss T was craving a kebab so I had to go along with her. My kebab was tasty enough, but later I had two eyelashes in my mouth. I think (and hope) they were mine.

Purchases

Ilona: fig perfume by Dyptique, an off-cut of amazing brown, orange and white cotton, to be used to make nice headscarves

Therese: two pink London A-Z tea towels, Neal’s Yard box set for friend

The weekend seems a long time ago, but the high point was definitely seeing the Actionettes at Bush Hall. It’s about the loveliest venue in London, and I bumped into my friend Jim, who I hadn’t seen in over two years.

Bugging me today: that BBC2 programme ‘If…’. I really wanted to see it last night, cos it was called ‘If…women ruled the world’. (But I am a video retard so managed not to tape it.) Apparently, in twenty years time women will be ‘running tings’, and this is a terrible scenario and must be nipped in the bud before all those power bitches start castrating nice, non-aggressive males. Ok, I am exaggerating, but is it not true that all the other ‘If’ programmes have presented Doomsday scenarios showing how the western world is spiralling out of control? Previous ‘If’s have predicted what could happen if the divide between rich and poor people (a bad thing) continues to grow; if there is a giant scary power cut (a bad thing); if we don’t stop pieing it on a daily basis (a bad thing). So the obvious continuation of these catastrophes where our children are fat, we use too much electricity and the rich live in gated communities which the poor attack with pitchforks, is a world where women have power. Oh hell, I just give up. Read the dumb BBC website for more info: they have the requisite ‘The death of feminism?’ piece, and an article, illustrated with a picture of Superman, titled ‘Why we will always need men’ (which almost brought a tear to my eye. Men, do you really feel you are on the way out? Cos everywhere I go you seem fairly prevalent, going about your business, being mine and other peoples’ friends and lovers and relatives. The defiant stance of the piece – here is an argument that we’re not totally redundant! – is really quite sad. Rest assured, menfolk: I love you and I don’t want to see you sent to the glue factory!).

In other news: my company runs a graduate recruitment scheme. Each year one person does what is basically glorified work experience for a few months. I just saw the CV of this latest new grad: white, Oxford educated, won awards, lives in Surrey.

Glad that the ‘Diversity in Publishing’ campaign is going well, then.