So an admirer of mine gave me three Noel Streatfield novels for Christmas, including Ballet Shoes, and I spent the better part of four days reading them at my ancestral home, curled up under the covers of my girlhood bed and eating sticky buns. And this occurred to me: it's creepy that the clearly lesbian pair of lady doctors (academic doctors, mind you, who used to be exam coaches?) who let adjoining rooms in Great Uncle Matthew's large house and gave the Fossil girls their lessons for free, insisted on calling the delicious treats they shared with the children in the middle of lessons "beavers."

Yikes!

In other news, no quiz for you this year; I didn't do any peyote on New Year's, but rather counted it down with one glass of champagne and fell promptly asleep in the arms of a young man (with whom it had been prearranged that I would sleep, so no raised eyebrows!)