percival

"You are an abomination!" hurled Jessica's mother. "Just look at yourself! How on earth could you let yourself go like that!"

Three months earlier, she'd sent off her sweet little girl to university in Edinburgh. Jessica's mother and her husband had been very proud. Getting into Edinburgh was difficult, even more so now that an upper middle class background was held against you. Grades weren't everything any longer - a B from an inner city comprehensive appeared to count more than an A from one of the top girls' boarding schools in the country.

Jessica's mother and father had driven her daughter up to Edinburgh all the way from Bath, followed by a small van with selected furniture and some clothes that had been bought in London after Jessie had gotten her A level results. Jessie's parents had of course bought her girl a flat in Edinburgh - not for their daughter the squalour of student accomodation, with draughty windows, dubious carpets and damaged furniture.

Buying a flat in Edinburgh was also quite a good investment - so much cheaper than London. Prices in the Scottish capital had risen steadily over the past fifty years - none of the boom and bust that they had experienced in the South.

Judging from their daughter's weekly phone calls, Jessica had soon found friends. She seemed to be part of a lively social circle of undergraduate English Literature students, and had snagged herself a boyfriend who apparently planned to become a barrister.

What Jessica had failed to mention in her phone calls was that her social circle mostly met in pubs, with the odd visit to a kebab shop or a chippie while in transit from one pub to the next. Meetings of her social circle were usually not confined to tea - rather, they tended to start at around dinner time and went on until the next morning. This gave her eye sockets a nice dark shade, which fit in quite well with the clothing style most of her new friends adopted.
Of course, Jessica's nice London clothes did not fit this life style anymore - neither in size nor in colour.

Strangely enough, Jessica herself was quite pleased with the abomination she had become.

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So you guys want more linguistics in my LJ entries? Well, your wish is my command.
But a warning is in order: As my RL jobs become progressively more interesting, I shall have less and less time to read LJ and comment on my Friends' antics.

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A RL update: I had a sort of interview today at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh. I'm going to give a couple of lectures there next year, starting soon - and hopefully also work as a Research Assistant one day a week. My new job world looks like a patchwork of different jobs that I do one to three days a week - which is fine by me! More excitement, more of a challenge to manage, but certainly more stimulating. I'm looking to reduce my hours at the company I work for at the moment - it's just not very exciting work, and I long to be back in academia now.