never start any sentence with

And slowly the schedule is filling up with rehearsals and I am busier than I thought I would be.

And I'm trying to get used to the trying-to-spend-time-with-parents thing before they leave for a protracted period of time to Tanzania, East Africa, land of mountain water, tea, ostrich eggs and uneaten shrimp.

And I'm reading. Finished Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills today, to which my response is 'huh?'. I figure the cryptic meaning will come through eventually, but to dispel the fog I read No Man's Land by Graham Greene. His explicit descriptions of soul scourges are so cathartic. Janet's Repentance by George Eliot definitely deserves mention. It's about a battered wife, religious sectarianism and the essence of True Religion (not the jeans). I love the way the authorial voice, with all its astute social observations, comes through so unabashedly. The blurb at the back describes the book as strikingly modern, to which I wholeheartedly assent. Read it, even if you have no time. (If you are easily bored you can skip the first few paragraphs in which she sets the scene and introduces all the random characters).

And I will be getting a new student next week, who is described as 'quite something', which I reckon is the British version of 'one kind' in Singlish.

And since I have said goodbye to school, grammar conventions are being defenestrated in this blog.

And.