But it sparked a shopping spree. I bought a total of five books today, Orlando being one of them. The others were A Lesson Before Dying, two Heyers and a biograpy of Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. I have been reading up a lot on Marie Antoinette these days, as well as Anne Boleyn. I still cannot find Robin Maxwell's Secret Diary of Anne Boelyn despite haunting every bookstore in the metropolitan area. It will be a happy day when I do get it. But I bet the book will be a raving disappointment once I read it. Anticipation flavours the book far beyond its worth most of the time. But I am rambling and my metaphors are melting together.

I wrote a better entry in my head again, having been all fuzzy and warm in my cosy little bed and just letting the mind roam free like a dog that needs to be let out after being cooped up in the house far too long. I still feel like that sometimes. My mind cannot write. My English is stilted and funny. Childish, childlike and far too charmingly Singaporean. I find myself adopting the soft slurs and slang of the Beau's speech because I spend far too much of my time with him. I slip between the cracks of my proper bookish British Council trained accent and my far more localised accent until I feel like a phony.

It is funny because when I argue with the Beau, in the heat of passion and fiery righteousness I descend into the modulated tones of proper English, stumbling as usual over certain pronounciations (because I speak the word as I see it if it is beyond my spoken vocabulary), rather than the Singaporean accent I have with the baby voice I use in happier times.

I asked the Beau the other day if he recalled the last time I really laughed in his presence. And like me, he cast his mind out as a lure and came up with no answer. I can't remember the last time I laughed. Truly laughed. Except once. But that was because I was happily anticipating food at a restaurant. Sitting down with a beatific smile, and a beaming radiance, Mage pointed out that I was happy.

That was four days ago.