2004-03-11 - 10:13 p.m.

Yay, Chicken the cockatiel survived the night and when I got home she'd finally laid the stuck egg. Thank Christ - that's one less thing that could have gone wrong whilst I was taking care of the house/pets.

Without Phoe around I had to leave the house megga early, find somewhere to park and then run down the pier to get the boat to get to Uni for a 9am lecture. This time I made it without having to try and hitch or mouthing obsenities at elderly drivers. I hate thursdays, the lecture theatre is on the 3rd floor (6 flights of stairs and no oxygen tanks at the top) and the guy giving the lecture (which in theory should be interesting - critical issues in criminal investigation) is the most boring, monotoned voiced git I've ever come across.

Fortunately the second lecture which was about recovered memory syndrome was interesting and the lecturer was reasonably young and cute (if you go for scruffy Jesus lookalikes). He was going on about how easy it is to suggest things to people which then makes them believe all kinds of shit. He covered the shit surrounding the fake satanic ritual abuse claims and so much more. There was some fantastic research where some guy claimed to remember being attacked by a grizzly bear when he was a kid - even tho he'd got no scars, no marks, all his limbs etc etc. The guy would have been dead but he reckoned that he actually remembered it clearly, even giving minute details. The psychologist had suggested he'd been attacked by an animal weeks previously and the guy ended up adamant it had happened. The best thing tho, the thing that really takes the biscuit was a check list from a self-help book that someone wrote to help you find out whether you'd repressed any memories. It stated that if you remember, OR DIDN'T REMEMBER being abused then you probably were! What the fuck does that mean? It means that everyone in the world had probably been abused. There were other ridiculous points on the checklist too such as whether you thought you looked too fat or too thin or wore too many clothes.....!?!

Phoe's presentation went brilliantly and they loved her for her bravery. It was organised by Avon and Somerset police but it was for probation and court services personnel. They'd never heard anything like her story in their lives and were blown away. It made her really feel as tho she'd survived for a reason.

I had to have an insane conversation over the phone with her insane Dad today. He never even pauses for breath, you can't say anything and he just babbles on about shit. Apparently he'd driven past our house today and someone had parked outside in my usual parking space. He went on and on about driving past, wondering who it was and asking me over and over who was parked there. I just kept saying 'I dunno, I was out' to him but he still kept asking who the hell it was. Jeez, send me patience. Perhaps I'll scrape blessed brown banana off my back seat and see if it makes me a nicer person....actually, having seen it today, it'll probably make me a sick person.

Only accident: Pulled off the door handle from the new door (that phoe's mad dad put on).

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