And the award for most unlikely pop band ever goes to…

…The Housemartins, who bring you this week’s Much Love Monday tune, Happy Hour.

I loved this band, including the young Fatboy Slim. Their dancing is just about the least likely, least effective ‘boy band dancing’ ever. It’s amusingly bizarre. It’s like a bunch of nerds from school at the school disco. That’s one of the main reasons I like them.

I love nerds. Nerds are the loves of my life. I have been known to kiss a nerd from time to time.

My favourite fictional nerd is Dr Spencer Reid. Poor Spence just had a girlfriend who he’d never met, and she was murdered by a SWF. If only Dr Spencer Reid were a real boy. I love his ties and his tank tops, his glasses and his accidental hair.

What’s not to love about him?

Another fictional geek love I have is for Greg Sanders in CSI. Not quite so smart, but just as cute and geeky genius.

Now tell me girls, who doesn’t love a man with a pipette and a bunsen burner?

In fact, geek girls are just as cool. Abby Sciuto and Penelope Garcia are my two favourite geek goddesses. Smart is cool.

When I lived with Andy, he had lots of nerdy science-geek friends. Some verged on Aspergers’-like antisocialism; some tried hard to shake off the geek label. One or two embraced their inner boffin. I loved them all. They mostly worked in the tech/fixit department of Dabs, a computer company, and had Chuck been out, I’d definitely have christened them the Nerd Herd. Pete, one of my boffiny boyfriends, an actuarial wannabe, no less, got a first in Maths from UMIST – about as geeky maths-boffin as you get. I used to  look at his notes and revel in the incomprehensible splendour of reading something that made no sense at all to me.

It’s easy to have a crush on an expert, especially an expert in something difficult. It’s also easy to have a crush on a geek even though they’re weird. In fact, we love them because they’re weird. Intelligence is definitely a good thing.

So what else am I Much Loving this Monday?

I’m loving my friends, of course. It was one of my birthday parties on Friday. We went to the Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet in Angoulême where we ate all we could eat. We also guffawed, laughed, snorted, joked, cried and then had sensible conversations about knitting, crochet, cake-making and seeds. I got knitted socks, seeds, cake and a book for musings. What could be better?

I’d asked a couple of other friends who are ‘not the usual crowd’ along, mainly because it’s nice to have such a diversely amazing group of people about me, and the first thing one of them said to me on Saturday morning was “What a great group of women!”

It is true. Mostly, we did a lot of laughing at this top 25 best autocorrect errors which is pretty funny. In fact, it’s very funny. Bitchgobblet potatoes and chicken vaginas… I howled laughing. I like the ones that are between parent and child the most, because they are so funnily inappropriate, like where the father tells his concerned offspring that he had to take Mom to the emergency room and inject her with an epic penis. It’s funny anyway, but that’s the last thing you want to hear from your father. I can’t read them again because they make me wheeze laughing. The cold has almost gone, but not quite enough.

So, on with the marking, the surviving the cold, the attempts to stay warm. When will winter be over? I’m tired of it already. Actually, even though last year had very stupid weather, and an April and May cold enough for fires, by 28th February, it was 16° again. That’s five and a half weeks. Sure, we had three weeks of below zero weather, but it got warm quick. That means it’s not that far to go. It’s funny… I usually go to the BD festival in Angoulême (that’s bande dessinée for any kinky types, or cartoons, not bondage and domination!) which is at the end of January, and it’s always been absolutely arctic. Looks like this year will be no different. I think this year’s average January temperature will be lower than last year’s though. Last year, we had a few days where it was 11 or 12 degrees. Not so this year.

To bring a little light into my life, I have planted some seeds to go into the propagator. I’m also seriously considering getting a grow light. I’m getting horticulturally geeky. That’s bordering on obsessive. The electric propagator I’ve got is a bit like a seed oven: put the seeds in at the right temperature and boom, there they are. Unless they are bad seed or they are too dry or too wet. It’s actually the best invention. It takes all accident out of growing stuff and makes it much more reliable.

The things that get the earliest start are the ratatouille veg. Tomatoes, aubergines, peppers. They’re hard to get growing and enjoy a long season if you treat them right. A friend has given me bounteous seed, one packet of which has gone in today: Haddon’s Seeds sweet pepper ‘Sweet Banana’

I’ve also put in some Alicante tomatoes, though I think the seed might be a little old. I’ll see. It’s your typical salad tomato. Once these babies germinate, I’ll put in the next lot – aubergines and more tomatoes, I think. Maybe some chili peppers.

Anyway, enjoy your Monday. I’m off out to walk the dogs and sandwich in some GCSE marking. I need a bit of joy this Monday!