who needs love when the sandwiches are wicked?

I'm writing this on a day without internet, which is frustrating, as I have a lot of nice stuff I want to write about!

So FINALLY Star Trek Live. Basically, it was an event at the Royal Albert Hall where a live orchestra plays along to the film. This may not sound like much, and secretly I was a bit worried it would be, well, just as stated. Still, it was good fun getting ready for it, as Lucy was coming to London for it as well. We all met outside the Royal Albert Hall and had a quick drink beforehand, before striding into the hallitself and going our seperate directions, as we didn't have seats togther for complicated reasons. Still, we headed onwards and I ended up having a truly marvellous time.There was Simon Pegg and JJ Abrams, and the music was just, oh. It was such a marvellous night and made me fall in love with the film all over again.

Afterwards, we went for Lebanese food and stumbled home, exhausted but happy.

The next day Tali was here for the Into Darkness evening, to which I didn't attend not least because I had to go to prep for my college interview. But it DID mean that we had Tali here for the weekend, which really was lovely. We didn't do very much in terms of excitement, but mostly sat around, enjoyed the sunshine, drank sider, and chatted. No complaints here!

The week after that was quiet, but on Friday Richie and I woke up early and headed up to Edinburgh. That is a VERY LONG JOURNEY and it didn't help that our route included Appleby Horse Fair and the attached road chaos. However, by the time we got to Katie's PALATIAL MANSION we still had plenty of hours to sit in the sun and marvel that Maisie is now old enough to walk and talk and play fairly comprehensive 'throw the ball at Auntie Colleen'. Again, it was another chilled out evening bur very lovely to catch up with Katie, and also to enjoy Maisie no longer beind afraid of me and indeed demanding cuddles!

Another early morning the next day, although we did get to watch the Avengers cartoon, which is sort of the gayest thing ever? Hawkeye was very offended about being winked at. We lol-ed.

Still, we had to move early to head up to St Andrews, which had been the overall intention. We were going to Peter and Tet's wedding, and very lovely it was too. It was novel to be at a wedding in St Salvators without being the one actually getting married, for a start! It was also weird being a wedding without drinking, but I had the chance to catch up with Ann and Dee, and meet new people, and generally have an awesome time. Unfortunately we had to spend the night away from St Andrews, socouldn't spend nearly enough time there. I really miss the place. Hope I can go back soon.

Sunday was a very, very long day driving home though. Ugh.

This week has been long, and tiring. Allow me to tell you the story of The Murderous Sparrow. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that a sparrow was throwing itself against the windows of our bathroom. It was aggressive, and really loud. We looked it up online, and basically the sparrow is a drunken Glasweigan. It's sort of drunk on the springtime, and has seen a reflection of a sparrow big enough to be a threat BUT small enough to be beaten. So he was flinging itself against our bathroom window. Make the window less reflective, the internet said. Some clingfilm later, we have succeeded! It is now no longer flinging itself against the bathroom and has taken to flinging itself against the kitchen window, which is much nearer out bedroom and waking us up at about 6am onwards. We would do the clingfilm trick with the kitchen but we are slightly afraid that it will instead just go for the bedroom window itself, which is hardly going to help the lack of sleeping thing. So, hmmm.

That said, I was up at 7.30am this to take my merry self to a family planning clinc in Leyton. I managed to get on a bus going the wrong way, for a start, but found my way there eventually, and also the old Walthamstow greyhound racing stadium, which was... odd. The family planning clinc is opposite Leyton Orient, too, AS YOU DO. I had to wait for quite a long time but the ball is FINALLY rolling on getting a coil in. Unfortunately it's a very weird and long wait to get things sorted. I have to wait two weeks for my swab results to come back in; basically they need to check I do not have unexpected gonorrhea. (I also hope I do not have unexpected gonorrhea.) Presuming that is all fine then I can get a coil fitted, EXCEPT it has to be done during my period. THINGS I DO NOT YET HAVE A SCHEDULE FOR: my period. I also have to avoid sex seven days before getting the coil fitted. It's sort of like one of those complicated maths problems, particularly in that I'm not entirely sure how to work it out. The receptionist has clearly seen this problem before and told me to quietly phone up the emergency line when I come on and to hope for the best.

SO THAT IS MY LIFE. Richie is in Oxford today and the internet remains soundly Not Working, so I am going to save this and post it soon. Hopefully. However Netflix is working on the telly so I am watching lots of Fringe and cleaning between epsidoes. A good day, I think.

And now I have internet back, so can EVEN POST THIS.

RIGHT I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT STAR TREK AND THE MURDEROUS SPARROW SOON I PROMISE but I really, really need to have a incoherant rant about the fucking uselessness of my fucking GP clinic and ARGH.

So today I went to have a chat with the nurse about changing my contraceptive and DESPITE THE FACT I had to tell the receptionist what it was about THEY BOOKED ME ON THE WRONG APPOINTMENT AGAIN so she couldn't DO anything other than go "hmmm," a lot and tell me about the doctor I needed to make the ACTUAL APPOINTMENT with. So I went back out the receptionist to try and get said appointment. "What's it about?" he asked and once again I drew myself up my full height and said "I'm actually not going to discuss that" which made me feel slightly better.

BUT CAN I GET AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE SPECIALIST DOCTOR? I CANNOT. I resisted the urge to wail "DO YOU WANT ME TO JUST GET PREGNANT BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'M HEARING RIGHT NOW."

So now I'm looking up family planning clinics and resigning myself to hoping for the best because actually oh my goodness this is RIDICULOUS. I'm writing a lot in allcaps to try and disguise the fact that I am actually a little upset at all this.

So let's talk about contraception.

I used to have a tag for this, but since those days I have cheerfully wandered off Microgynon 30 and onto Marvelon. That was about... five, six years ago? And generally it was working for me but over the last year, perhaps longer, not so much. I stuck with it though because mostly I am lazy, but the last five months have become intolerable.

( Cut because of slight TMI )

Anyway, I had made up my mind to talk to the nurse once this prescription was out because there's another reason behind getting fed up and that is trying to get an appointment. You know what I don't enjoy? Having to explain to the receptionist why I want an appointment. Oh no, just 'contraception' won't work, I have to give DETAILS. I have complained about this before, but it's clearly not working. I planned to speak to the nurse and perhaps go on another pill and then move from there, but I had a really distressing time with the receptionist ("No, I don't want to talk about why I want an appointment I'm in an open plan office and surrounded by MY COLLEAGUES!") and now I have lost my fucking patience with the damned pill. PLUS my appointment isn't for about another two weeks.

So. When I do go and speak to her, I will be speaking to her about wanting to go onto long term contraception. This is a new thing for me. I don't really want an implant on the basis that I tend to try and rip my eyebrows out at an ingrowing eyebrow, let alone something in my arm. The coil is a bit... odd, conceptually but I think I would like to start with it and move from there. I just can't face having to go through the faff of making an appointment every six months, even though I was cheerfully on a twelve month prescription when still living up north. I will be making this quite clear to the nurse. I can't find a local family planning clinic for over-25s, unfortunately.

In the meanwhile, I am now off any kind of hormonal contraceptive for the first time since I was 18. How alarming and strange. Obviously I am using other contraceptives, but it's a slightly weird feeling. I will try to keep up to date with any changes because I do think it's important to talk about this kind of thing. But still.