nick watson says we must take one day off every week. i certainly shouldn't like to say that to any of my colleagues; it would be most insensitive and probably also life-threatening. but i don't see why i shouldn't ask a different person to have tea with me every friday. i don't give large parties and i don't go to departmental dos, but afternoon tea at home is a much more intimate way to enjoy conversation and catch up with the people i don't see from not going to the parties. i'm asking one or two people from the department each week, and then i'll ask some of the perkins people from last year - i haven't seen most of them since the end of last semester! - and then perhaps some of the first years, and a year will have gone by!

for thanksgiving week i shall ask galena to come over. i forget if all her housemates are american, but thanksgiving weekend generally gets lonely for international students. and i meant to give a makeup tea for the one she had been invited to on the same day i fell. next week i'm asking odile, who is an american poetry specialist with a particular interest in wallace stevens. she is a ballet dancer and had been so so kind to me before. but this week, tomorrow in fact. i'm having the canadians over. margaret and shari, who both lived on my floor in perkins last year. margaret is a hardcore medievalist especially interested in monasticism and with background in greek. she studied with anne carson at mcgill! shari is an expert on shakespeare and can tell you anything you wish to know about the early modern body. it'll be jolly good fun! i'll get a selection of teas tomorrow from tealuxe - i think strawberry sencha and the lady londonderry would be good - one green and one black, but both of similar fruity notes. they'll go well with the fruit (i've got strawberries and kiwis) and the biscuits which i got earlier in the week: butterscotch shortbreads, ginger-lemon cremes, bahlsens chocolate wafers, almond butter cookies, anna's orange thins and butter leaves. i'll bake a strawberry cake and cover the top with any leftover fruit. mm?