In 2006 I...
learned I can run a business
learned I can run 10km
missed one chance to learn to ski...
...but learned to ski in the end anyway
meant to go to Cornwall
went to Scotland instead
went to Switzerland, twice
turned down a promotion
took a stunning new job
turned 30
made some new friends
got to know some old friends a bit better
filled in a few details on my big life picture.
It was a very good year.
In 2007 I will...
Get My Shit Together.
I am resolute.
Day 7. I have made great strides in my integration among these people. Today they invited me to undergo initiation in one of their most sacred cults. This religious practice, which combines mortification of the flesh and spirit, is undertaken in the most remote and inhospitable locations, at the very top of icy mountain peaks.
Setting off early, we travelled for two hours to reach the nearest sacred place. I then had to be dressed in the appropriate garb - layer upon layer of thick, padded, colourful clothing, functioning both as protection against the biting cold and as clownish costume, drawing attention to my status as initiation candidate - and prepared for the challenge ahead.
The point of the initiation itself is for the candidate to demonstrate his or her bravery, and hence worthiness, as well as to transcend fleshly limits through extremes of emotion - terror and exhilaration. The process is quite hair raising. One has long, unwieldy planks strapped to one's feet, and is equipped with a pair of sticks to aid in navigation. Through an ingenious pulley system, the participants (new initiates as well as elders) are brought to the top of a snowy slope, and must descend - battling the disadvantages conferred by these "skis", which not only create hair-raising speed if they are unwisely pointed downhill at any point, but which also of course tend to get tangled together, to trip up their wearer, and of course to impede attempts to stand up if one has once toppled over. The affront to one's dignity is an essential part of the spiritual development this rite promotes.
As it was explained to me, initiates devote many hours to this rigorous physical exercise in their desire to ascend through the levels of enlightenment. These levels are described by colour - rising from blue through red to the black of total ego annihilation - and correspond with greater levels of difficulty in the slopes descended. As one masters the higher levels, one also climbs higher and higher on the physical plane, so that the black "pistes" lead down from the very tallest and steepest peaks; thus the initiates aim ever closer to heaven. I find the close relation between physical and spiritual aspects of this rite quite striking.
One last element worth noting: as in many sacred cults, there is a sacred, mildly narcotic substance to be ingested as an aid to achieving the transcendent state of mind. The twist is that this "rumpunsch" is served in mountain huts that must be reached by ski. Thus, the rumpunsch is both a lure and reward for the derring do needed to attain it, and an aid to further courage - much needed, I can assure you, for the remaining descent.
Day 1. After a taxing journey, lengthened significantly by inclement weather, we make it to the village. Our hosts welcome us with smiles and offer us a simple supper (some sort of mushroom stew). I do my best to convey my thanks, and we retire early.
Day 2. The weather continues poor. There is a heavy mist, and the trees are white with frost, but no snow. I gather that the mountain people are preparing for a midwinter festival, much like our Christmas; the menfolk spend the morning on a hunting expedition to gather provisions for the upcoming feast. Later, we are taken to visit a branch of the clan in another village. This seems to be part of the seasonal bonding patterns. We are given a fizzy drink called "sekt".
After the evening meal, our hosts guide us on a walk around the village, pointing out the community's quaint seasonal decorations with pride: almost every hut is bedecked with white lights. Outside one hut, a tree sports blue lights; this seems to attract the disapprobation of our hosts. I think I hear the word "Englisch" muttered with scorn.
Encouraged, however, by this familiar sight, I resolve to share some of our own Christmas traditions, and give them a large box of mince pies. The reaction is ambiguous. They nod and smile, my translator tells me they think it good, but nobody takes a second one.
Day 3. Festive preparations are gathering pace. From quite early in the day, the cooking areas are full of bustle. I am curious to see what traditional midwinter feasts are eaten here, but it is hard to say; all I can see are small pots of different kinds of sauces, and some breads. No doubt there will a roast pig or some such brought out on the day itself. In the afternoon, I am invited to help with another familiar ritual: decorating the tree. I suspect my translator of contaminating the purity of my research by telling them about English traditions, for surely if they had their own tree tradition, it would have been decorated long before now? But he of course denies this, claiming that the tree is always put up on this day. A likely story. One other great difference: these people have no fear of fire! Their tree is bedecked with real candles.
In the evening, the clan gathers in the chieftain's hut and more sekt is drunk. In their strange, gutteral language, everyone exchanges greetings of "Frohe Wiihnacht" - my translator tells me today is Christmas itself; not, as by my English calendar, only Christmas Eve. My mince pies are handed round, but I think they are eaten with more politeness than zeal. We sit down to a meal, which to my very great surprise, is what they call a "fondue chinoise"; we each cook our own scraps of meat in shared pots of broth, adding sauces from the pots I saw earlier. I cannot deny that this is a sociable affair, but in such a cold climate as this, I expected something more robust. Afterwards we enjoy an "apfelstrudel" and gifts are exchanged. My translator and I congratulate ourselves on our choice of gifts: we brought a selection of puzzle games, designed to challenge and develop their primitive minds. I am touched by the gift I receive from the chieftain: a cunningly worked sack, with a map of the village attached. So truly thoughtful a gift for a traveller.
We end the evening with a noisy game of chance. My translator tells me it is called "Scheisse", but I find this hard to believe, since I have already worked out the common use of the word.
Day 4. It seems the feasting is not over. When we rise, we find a lavish repast of breads, cheeses, cold meat and fruit, with all kinds of preserves. Having eaten, we are invited to join our hosts for a walk around a nearby lake. This is very refreshing, as is the "weisse gluhwein" we are given along the way.
I am starting, however, to suspect my translator's skills. According to him, these people are constantly commenting on how warm it is. There must be some language error, however, since the swimming hole back at the village is entirely frozen over.
Although most of the mince pies remain untouched, I offer our hosts a Christmas pudding. They look slightly suspicious, but agree to let me have the use of the cooking area. After dinner I bring out the flaming pudding and they seem impressed - it seems fire helps to make an impact with these people. They taste the pudding and their faces soon show their enthusiasm. An animated discussion ensues; my translator tells me they are discussing how they might get hold of more of this pudding next year. I promise to send them one every Christmas, when to my delight I find that the chieftain's wife, at least, has learnt some of my language. She points to me and says: "Bring! You bring!"
It seems my future welcome in these parts is assured.
So I've finished work for the year. That is, I've done my last day in the office, and I'm near as dammit finished with website work too. I've tackled most of the things on my list (well... sort of most. Most of the urgent ones. About as much as was ever going to get done in the time available), and the panic has subsided. I'm pretty ready to get on a plane in two days, I reckon. Really very ready for a holiday, that's for sure. I have quite a bit of knitting yet to do on the stepmother-in-law's* gift, but that's good, because it gives me a most excellent excuse for not budging from the couch. Or possibly even bed. I have a bit of a cold and am eager to indulge it.
And the weather is very conducive to staying in bed, too. After weeks and weeks of oddly mild weather, suddenly a cold snap. With fog! Not exactly the London pea soup of song and story, but natheless a pretty fair showing. Or lack of showing. Picturesque factor high, visibility factor low. Marvellous. Mar-
Wait.
They're cancelling flights?
Well, at least I have for once invested in travel insurance.
_____
* Modern relationships. So complicated.
Two posters recently spotted that should never have been produced. First, the HP PhotoSmart "Photos of the Christmas party at the Christmas party!" ad.
What a remarkably horrid idea that is. Imagine it. The family's gathered round, digesting their turkey. Uncle Mike is the bore with the camera. Now, normally he'd just wander around making everybody grin inanely a few times; today, he then gets to run off and fiddle with the printer every half hour. The hilarity! And he passes around the pictures, which frankly, aren't very interesting and of course half of them are blotchy or squinting or pulling an unflattering face — so he has to take more pictures. And print.
And the afternoon, instead of being given over to that warm festive ritual of looking mildly bored and stuffing yourself with mince pies, becomes a farce of trying to look like you're having such fun, and trying not to be confronted with yet another picture of yourself with mince pie halfway to your face and chocolate smears down your front. And then afterwards, you entirely miss out on that happy ritual of "ooh, the pictures have arrived!", prompting the jolly postmortem that is so often more fun than the party was in the first place.
But that's just a little bit stupid. Here's the really stupid thing. The City of Westminster's admirable Safe Streets campaign has plastered tube stations with the well-meaning statement:
Some things you only do when drunk.
Starting a fight shouldn't be one of them.
I guess there is a logic to suggesting that starting a fight is a pleasure best enjoyed sober... but I'm not entirely sure that's their meaning.
So there I was, minding my own business, when to my shock I felt a copper tapping me on the shoulder. A novel and frightening experience (yes, I have led a very sheltered life). In a very British bobby sort of way, polite but firm, he suggested that I might want to oblige him with a list of 10 things I would never do.
Well, that's a tricky one. After all, helping the police with their enquiries is pretty high on the list of things I never expected to be doing. So having mulled* the question for a while, I've concluded I really don't dare make an official statement of such a very... definite nature. What happens if I'm wrong? Bad things happen to people who lie to coppers. I watch TV. I know these things.
Here, therefore, is a list of 10 things I think it would be highly unlikely for me ever to do. I hope this satisfies my civic obligations.
1. Undergo gender reassignment surgery.**
2. Eat baked beans with anchovies.***
3. Complete a knitted project correctly, on the first try, without changing my mind about any of it.****
4. Do work as soon as I can, rather than as late as I can get away with.****
5. Retrain as a marine biologist.*****
6. Join Rotary.
7. Stop whining about the painful absence of Days of our Lives and Gilmore Girls from the TV schedules.****
8. Eat a spider. (Knowingly. Before I start one of those conversations about how many spiders the average person ingests during their sleep, can I just emphasise: knowingly.)
9. Reject cookie consumption as a valid strategy for coping with the size of my thighs, stress and unhappiness caused by.****
10. Get a tan.****
_____
* Lots of cinnamon, not too much naartjie. Tasty.
** But, y'know, if you want to, that's cool.
*** Baked beans with anything would be pretty darn unlikely, but I figured I'd add anchovies to be on the safe side.
**** These items are all statements of simple probability, rather than principle.
***** Although I'm sure it's a lovely career for some.
...was chaos and disarray.
The rooms need cleaning, the linen needs washing, the freezer needs defrosting, the larder needs stocking. My hair needs trimming, my nails need filing, my legs need defuzzing, my desk needs clearing. My work needs doing, my business needs managing, stock needs reordering, inventory needs checking, sales need promoting, customers need tending, competitions need judging, books need updating. Presents need buying, and in some cases knitting.
I think, with the services of a particularly efficient personal assistant, a marketing assistant and a housekeeper, plus judicious use of sick leave, I *might* be able to get everything in order before our Christmas break, and start 2007 on a sound footing.
*sigh*
"Where in South Africa are you from?"
"Pietermaritzburg."
"I'm from Cape Town."
"Oh," she said. "Are you."
And turned away.
So on changing jobs, I merrily deleted all my bookmarks without bothering to save myself a copy, because I figured if they were that important to me I already knew them well enough anyway.
Of course I now can't for the life of me remember where to find that really nifty blog/discussion type place on the proper use of English.
I'm pretty sure I posted a link here once. But I really don't have time to trawl through my archives. So, to my fellow grammar geeks... if you happened to read it, and bookmark it... please help me out?
1. Choose your venue.
You can learn to ski on proper mountains an' all, while on a skiing holiday, or you can get lessons on an artificial slope before your holiday. Proper mountains are of course the prettiest, but you'll spend half your holiday doing idiotic tricks like hopping over your skis because the instructors have placed bets on which one has the most gullible lot of newbies.*
Artificial slopes come in two flavours: outdoors (using weird "snow-like" surfaces; personally I've never seen black, bristly snow, but what do I know)** or indoors (using actual snow). Both of these lack a certain glamour, but on the plus side, they're cheaper than proper ski resorts. Also, they are more likely to offer a fast-track 8-hour Ski in a Day lesson, as for instance at Milton Keynes.***
If you plump for this option, your friends will laugh at you and assure you it can't be done and you'll be exhausted by lunchtime and you're crazy. To them I say: "HA HA HAHAHAAA OUCH omigodihurtallover ouchy ouchy."
2. Wear proper gear
You need warm and waterproof clothing. The waterproof part is important, unless you're on one of those weird dry slopes. There may be some falling over involved. You can wear your own (remember to bring dry clothes to change into at the end of the day), you can hire suitable jackets etc, or you can borrow your boyfriend's at the last minute. I recommend the last option, since not only does it save you money, but with judicious application of snow, you can ensure that his jacket is far too wet for him to wear on the trip back home. It is important that he should suffer some discomfort, because he is going to be laughing at you (and possibly poking your bruises in a particularly sadistic fashion) for at least three days.
Depending on the rules of the slope, you may also have to wear a helmet. Even if it is not compulsory, do take one if you can get it. The great advantage of the helmet is that to some degree, it provides a cloak of anonymity, thus delaying the inevitable point at which the snow patrollers realise that you were at the centre of every one of the day's most spectacular pile-ups. With luck, and a really ugly helmet,**** you can delay this discovery until the end of your session, thus avoiding an embarrassing escort out and ban from the slopes.
3. Listen to your instructor. Watch your instructor. Obey your instructor.
Except when he says "You — you're looking good, follow me up to the number 2 slope."***** He may be under the impression you're doing well because you are zooting downhill at great speed and sliding up to the poma queue in one elegant swoop. But what he doesn't know is that you were trying to travel at half that pace, and in a completely different direction. Do not go up to the number 2 slope until you are able to descend as slowly as it is possible to move without actually coming to a grinding halt. Because the second you get up to number 2, you will realise that it is a whole lot steeper than it looked from down at number 1, and you're about 3 seconds away from another one of those excitingly dramatic swoopy descents, which is all very flashy and may attract applause from the peanut gallery, but ask yourself: can your nerves take the strain?
4. Develop a thick skin.
Your fellow beginners will be remarkably forgiving, thank god, even when you've scooped them up by the knee and whooshed them right into the netting with you. But the instructors may take to saying things like "here's trouble" and "oh... you again" as you approach. Remember that you are, out of the kindness of your heart, providing them with a rich vein of entertainment and pub stories, so what they're really saying is, "Thank you, o thou perfect comedienne!" Nod graciously, smile and swoop on. Just as soon as they've hauled you to your feet... again.
5. Develop a philosophical approach.
It's a little known fact, but skiing originated as a spiritual exercise among the more ascetic type of monk. The combined affront to personal dignity and mortification of the flesh is particularly good for your soul. So when you've just managed to fall over for the third time while standing completely still... embrace the humiliation. It's making you a better person.
6. Don't envy the snowboarders.
Sure, they're pulling all those sexy moves; but those are the only guys who are falling down more often than you.
7. Know your limits.
By the end of the day, you may find you're not improving so much; in fact, you will probably be finding simple things like hobbling to the poma, turning neatly, or indeed simply standing up, harder than before. It is only to be expected that your muscles will reach a point of exhaustion and you will lose some control. Remember, there is no shame in admitting you have had enough and taking a break, or even going home early.
Of course if you do, you're a lazy-assed pathetic wuss. But there's no shame in that.
8. Allow time for recovery.
Don't make any plans for the evening after your first lesson. Or the next day. Or the day after. It's only then that you will realise just what a whole-body exercise skiing really is. You may consider hiring a minion to accompany you at all times, taking care of such strenuous tasks as filling the kettle, or indeed lifting the teacup to your lips.
Although it's possible that skiiers who fall down less often (and hence have to push themselves up less often) don't experience quite so much pain in the upper arms.
_____
* They will tell you they are "getting you used to the equipment". Right. Because it's very important to be able to hop around in rigid boots when you're out there.
** Of course, that's the old type of surfacing. Nowadays there's a much better kind — white and everything — and those crazy French are slapping it all over their mine dumps. Saffers, take note: ski resorts, coming soon to Joburg!
*** A very odd town. Clean, well laid out, and resembling nothing so much as a giant business park. Or possibly Sasolburg.
**** Hired jackets have their uses here too, since they all come in the same colour.
***** I leave it to you to make your own jokes about "little accidents". This is a civilised blog, we don't go in for that sort of infantile humour.
Good things about this week: plenty of fun was had. Friends, music, champagne and similar. All good.
Bad things about this week: hm, let's see; going out, you say? In London? Of an evening?
Oh yes. The Curse of the Public Transport of Evil strikes again.
Case study no 1: a delightful burlesque show in Holborn. Well, sort of delightful. The audience — all decked out in fishnets and corsets, frock coats and trilbies* — looked marvellous. It's hard to critique the performances, because we couldn't see them. Being standing tickets only and all. And with half the audience in high heels and big feathery hats. Hm... maybe they should have thought that one through.** Anyway, so the show happened, and the top half of the performers looked very pretty, and then we got to hobble off home — an hour late, thanks to the ridiculously late start. So we'd missed the last train. Thanks, chaps.
Case study no 2: the very delightful Scissor Sisters at Wembley. Fabulous show, I have no complaints there. And we should have made the last train, too, except that I spent five minutes trying to find a bus that would take us home instead. It just seemed to make so much geographical sense: Wembley being west-north-west, home being west-south-west. But no. So, two hours spent getting back into town and then back out of town, when we could have driven home in 20 minutes. Huh.
Case study no 3: the quite wonderful sociable dinner at friend's home. I was due there around 5.45 and the journey should have been straightforward. But a lorry went into a bridge somewhere nowhere near my destination, throwing out the entire train network (so we were told; though from later stages of the journey, I have reason to doubt the integrity of this information). So, one tube and two trains later, I arrived at 7pm. To get home again: left at 11pm, to get one train, one tube and another train... and then, as it turned out, a rail replacement bus, thanks to engineering works.
Now I realise this is about as dull as blogging gets, and I swear to shut the hell up about trains from now on. It's just that the fun does rather go out of having fun when you spend twice as long getting there and back as you do at the event.
Still, though. A lovely week. Which also included a very delicious and civilised dinner with jazzy cabaret, from which we got home in reasonable time. Hurrah! It can be done!
_____
* Not usually on the same person.
** Quite apart from the visibility problem: high heels. Standing tickets. Show starting an hour late. Really, Ms Blaize. That was just mean.
I think what the wired world is really crying out for is blogger's insurance. How many times do you read comments to the effect of "coffee sprayed all over keyboard... again"? We need insurance that covers these little mishaps. Perhaps providing a courtesy laptop while ours is repaired or replaced.
Health insurance would be a valuable addition — ROFL could lead to all kinds of injuries. It's just not safe. And maybe we could get well-being benefits, the ROFLMAO package, for slimmers.
It needs a little work, but I think there's some potential there. Budding entrepreneurs of the blogosphere, go find some venture capitalist and explain how they can laugh all the way to the bank.
So my Saturday plans included an Evil Dead fest** on the other side of town. Not that much the other side, mind. An hour's journey — hell, everywhere's an hour's journey for me.
Part the first:
I get on the tube in the middle of the day; I resurface in the middle of the night. Wrong on so many levels.
Part the second:
I leave shortly after 11pm; I get home at 1am. And that's without recourse to night bus or similar evil. That's a perfectly respectable tube journey (only briefly interrupted by failed attempt to catch a train). That's riDICulous.
Conclusion: London is a myth. It's an illusion to think that I live in the same city as my friends. It's a lie that I live in a town where there's all this stuff going on. I have access to this exciting cosmopolitan centre, yes, but live in it? No. Few of us do. We live in what used to be villages sort of close to the capital, and now are considered part of it, but they're not. It would be fairer to say that Pretoria, Johannesburg and Germiston are the same city.
_____
* No 1 of a potentially infinite series.
Not that I'm a whiner or anything.
** Also a ludicrously excessive sugarfest. And, surprisingly enough, a knitfest. I don't think I could ask for a more perfect social gathering. Muchas gracias, chaps!
I'm still alive. And life is good. Busy. But very good.
First two weeks in the new job have proceeded rapidly through abject terror, to the thrill of realising I can DO this shit, to the enjoyment of getting this shit done, meeting people, talking to people, talking to people in meetings and having them listen (!), etc, all at high speed and — for bonus points — on my first press day, interrupted by a fire in the building, forcing us to complete production from an excitingly bunker-like dungeon office nearby. Drama!
Yes, it's all been very much like scenes from Newspaper! Which isn't yet a farcical terror-in-the-newsroom thrillercom, but it clearly ought to be. Fast talking, chain smoking editors warring with sassy subs, phones ringing, proofs flying, and then — the ominous tendril of smoke rising from the basement. Electrical fire? Or... a seditious plot? Chaos ensues; factions form; it's advertising against art, writers against repro. But at the end of the day, the deadline is met (of course the deadline is met, this is a Newspaper!) and over a pint at The Local, the healing begins.
1. I bowl the way I sing karaoke: with passion, conviction, and a distressing absence of accuracy. Which is more painful for innocent bystanders depends largely on whether I drop the ball.
2. Every CD collection should have a karaoke shelf: music you don't necessarily want to listen to, but that brings out the warbler in you. This is where you'll find Power Pop Anthems, the Jungle Book soundtrack, Grease and Billy Joel's greatest hits*. All together now: "I YAMMMMM... an innocent MAAAANN..."
3. Starmadeshadow is a lousy steenking liar. "Never bowled before", my eye. All that shifty mumbling about "it's physics, see" wasn't fooling anyone, missy. I mean, I'm as fond of Newton's laws of motion as the next prematurely senile arts graduate who's forgotten most of high school science, but they never helped me in any endeavour requiring physical co-ordination.**
4. As long as you keep the mic away from them,**** there is a definite benefit to having opera singers in a karaoke room. Someone's gotta hit the high notes and it won't be me. Or the low notes, either. Or any of the notes in between.
_____
* Polite readers will not enquire as to how many of these I actually own, even before having formulated the Karaoke Principle. Or how many of them I do sometimes want to listen to.
** Although I'm not as bad as P seemed to think, with her anxiety that the ball was going to go flying off behind me...***
*** I wish I was making that up, but I'm not.
**** To give the rest of us a chance and spare our vanity. Not because they're limelight-hogging divas. Honest.
Sweatpantsmom Reveals The Secrets Of Blogging!
"Can anyone start a blog?
"Yes. In fact, that's the comment I hear most often after people have read my blog. 'Oh, I see anyone can start a blog.'"
Marvellous rant against single-serve coffee filters and other idiocies in today's Grauniad. This is a pet hate of mine — the can't-live-without items brought to us by the Economic Imperative, aka the eternal drive to come up with new ways to get money out of jaded consumers. What can you sell them when they already have everything... oh yes! Refrigerated butter dishes!
Not to mention disposable cameras, which of course the whole world loves. But really. Before they came on the market, nobody ever thought "gee, what this wedding really needs is a camera at each table so all the drunken guests can take hundreds of almost identical crappy out-of-focus shots and then *throw the whole thing away*!". And now that we all have digital cameras and cameraphones, they're even less useful. But somehow the disposable camera has become one of those widely accepted things, like disposable razors (why why why?). How much plastic goes into them every year, and how much cardboard goes into their packaging? How much do they add to landfill? How much would we not care if they disappeared from the market overnight?
The only disposable product I really like is of course the humble tissue. Because hankies are just gross. Disposable nappies are no doubt a great boon to parents too — but cloth is seriously underrated. (FYI, I have spent a year of my life changing nappies almost constantly. I'm not mouthing off on something I have no experience of.) For the rest... disposable is a dirty word.
So you know that, although it's only 11pm, you're not going to make it to Waterloo in time for the last train home. You wave goodbye to your friends hopping on the tube to Ealing Broadway, figuring you'll get the next tube to Richmond and the bus from there. You wait a while. 'Sokay, you have your crochet, you don't mind waiting... as long as you get home eventually. You realise that actually, Ealing is closer to home than Richmond, and anyway if you change to the Piccadilly line at South Kensington you can walk from Osterley. You should have travelled with your friends, and gotten home earlier. Bum. You start to worry about whether you will make the Piccadilly connection. The tube arrives (it's for Ealing Broadway). You get on. You sit. You crochet. You sit and sit and sit. This is a looooong tube journey. You're crossing all the way from zone 4 east London to zone 4 west London. Good thing you've got your crochet. Damn, you're tired. You wonder whether people are staring because of the crochet or the ghoulish Halloween make-up.*
Finally you make it to South Ken. You get the Heathrow tube, yay! Last stretch. Just as well because your bladder is fit to bust. You can make it. Everyone is looking about as tired as you, even without benefit of ghoulish eye shadow.
Wait. Not quite everyone. Dimly you become aware of a very enthusiastic Irish somebody trying to pep up the passengers. Pep up Londoners on their way home on (nearly) the last tube? Is he mad?
"...so everyone over here, let me hear you say yay!"
"Yaaayyy!"
"And everyone over here, let me hear you say yay!"
"..."
"Oh now, that's just pathetic, isn't it? C'mon, we'll try again. Let me hear you say yay!"
"..."
"Well now, what's wrong wit' you lot? These guys over here, they're doing great. Listen to them: let me hear you say yay!"
"Yaaaayyy!"
"That's just fan-tas-tic. Now you guys, you've got two-t'irds of the carriage, you can do better than that. Let me hear you say yay!"
"..."
Dude, you think. Seriously. I've been travelling for well over an hour. My yarn is getting all in a tangle and I'm not quite sober enough to fix it. I'm still six stops and a 20-minute walk from home, and I am experiencing increasing discomfort in the lower abdominal region. Yay? I Do Not Think So.
"Well this is awful! Come on guys! Don't you feel great? You're in one of the biggest metropolises in the world-"
...and that's the problem right there, you think bitterly...
"-let me hear you say yay!"
"..."
"Oh come on now. You're in London. You're going home. And tomorrow you're going to tell everyone a great story about this crazy guy on the tube."
Ah. Okay. You got me.
"Let me hear you say yay!"
"Yaaaayyy!"
_____
* Slightly gothy outfit + heavy shadows under the eyes + really, really big knitting needle/stake = suicidal vampire = laziest Halloween costume ever!
A perfect morning for a run. Blue sky, apple-crisp autumn air, trees gently turning gold and squirrels scampering away as I pass.
Pity it made my throat hurt so. And pity it clouded over the very second I hung the washing.
Now, requests have been made for pictures of the coat. I want to oblige, but...
1. I try to keep the knitting (mostly) out of this blog. Once I start posting pictures of finished objects, it's a slippery slope.
2. I take crappy pictures. My phone — while reportedly the best cameraphone on the market, and doing a remarkable job on landscape shots — doesn't really like yarn. And I am too lazy to figure out how to use Beloved's camera, and so on. I'm also too lazy to keep trotting back to take new shots when I see that they look like crap on screen.
3. If I want to keep the option open of publishing a pattern for one of my designs, then I shouldn't really post pictures of it before publication.
All the same, though. To prove that I do occasionally knit things, I give you a twofer. Make it last.
New coat, with new scarf. In pink. I never wear pink. This is a randomly occurring freak development, owing to a strange concatenation of events (sale, gift, other stuff, I won't bore you with the details). It remains to be seen whether these ever actually get worn.
Also, the coat — while a damn fine coat and well structured — is in fact a little wider than I would have liked. Somehow, while it seemed to fit beautifully throughout the knitting and sewing up phase, in the attaching of the final button, it grew an inch or so. Most mysterious. So if anybody wants a size 16 black and pink coat, with optional matching scarf... raise your hands.
Hands that would be kept soooo snuggly warm in these lovely pocketses...
It's grey and wet outside. I'm under the duvet, with the laptop, Beloved next to me working on his laptop, and two purring cats keeping our toes warm. We've had breakfast in bed and there is chocolate in the house. We're starting to plan Christmas in Switzerland.
I'm starting my new job soon. Esteemed Father (whose life has again been difficult lately) has finally got a new job, a very promising one, and he too starts next month. Beloved has just, quite unexpectedly, got a very gratifying promotion.
I finished knitting a coat yesterday - one of the most successful projects I've done in the past couple of years. It fits beautifully.
I like today.
I seem to be having a severe attack of the spendies. It happens sometimes. Without quite intending it, or having any noticeable reason, I find my wallet lightening and a mysterious pile of shopping bags building in a corner of my home. The doorbell keeps ringing and the postie is giving me a look that frankly I regard as a little personal. Has he never experienced the pure, true joy of online shopping? Why must he judge me so?
I think it's under control, though. Really. I haven't bought any shoes in, well, months. The new clothes — well, it's autumn, right? Time for a little wardrobe renewal. And I've lost a little weight, so it's very important for me to have skirts that don't turn into hipsters when they weren't designed that way. It's all very sensible.
The books, now, I guess those weren't entirely necessary. But you wouldn't have me turn my back on knowledge, would you? The books are food for the soul. We can't have an emaciated soul situation.
And the yarn. Look. I know I already had more yarn than I can knit in a year. But it wasn't the right yarn. Creativity needs abundance. And plus, half of it is for gifting, so there. I will not apologise for my natural generosity.
I admit that maybe all that champagne was a little excessive... no. No I don't. The champagne was compulsory, every delicious drop. A celebration is a celebration, after all!
Next up on the Scrivenings — Advice from the heart: be well prepared for salary negotiations.
Calling Miyazaki fans in London: free screening of Howl's Moving Castle at the Renoir, Saturday 21 October, 11am. As part of the "Bloomsbury festival", which is really just a Big Shiny Shopping Centre Opening thing — but props to Allied London, they have made that horrible concrete block the Brunswick look remarkably passable.* And the festival does look rather fun. Even with the singalonga Messiah.
(After I got all those lovely comments on my last post**, and after Tayster called me "the Katherine Hepburn of the blog world"***, I thought: gosh. People still show up here? Oh bollocks. I'd better write something interesting. Right, I'll do that, um, tomorrow. Day after, for sure.
Time passes... and this is all you get. It's like I'm pushing you away, isn't it?)
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* Interesting tidbit: it was never supposed to be exposed concrete. The council was responsible for painting the housing (i.e. most of it), and of course being a council, it didn't have any money. Fast forward to the redevelopment and the story repeats itself — but they seem to have reached a compromise, with interesting vertical panels of paint. O'course, it looks good now the concrete's been refinished and all, but in a few years... grumblegrumble.
** For which, thank you most sincerely. It made me very happy to hear from you all.
*** I don't really know what that means,**** but I'm hoping it means Cate Blanchett would play me in a movie. Since "married to alcoholic closet case" doesn't seem to apply.
**** Well, it means he was looking for a suitably grandiose acceptance speech, yes. But apart from that.
I will shortly be writing headlines for actual news.
And doing other stuff too, because it's, like, a Very Cool Job with Lots of Responsibilities. But still three days a week.
This is Enormously Exciting, so modesty be damned: three cheers for me! Hip hip...?
Update: first day 7 November. So now that's settled, I can spend the next four weeks letting the fear and trepidation set in. Marvellous.
So a while ago I had a great rush of blood to the head and thought, "I know! I'll start a competition! A fabulous, exciting knitting competition with tons of marvellous prizes and, like, it'll run for SIX MONTHS and there will be SO MUCH FUN and it will all be BRILLIANT!"
So, um, now it's launched, and I really need some entries. A LOT of entries. So, like, tell your friends, ja?
Further in the series of "I'm not a real blogger any more, I just post occasional links", I heartily recommend Anna's Invalidding for beginners.
I would like to point out, in the interests of random sympathy generation (despite the great rudeness of my health just now), that while I frequently do have someone on hand for "kettling, duveduty and on-demand-biscuitage", that someone has an unfortunate tendency to let illing bring out his very most unpleasant Teutonicnesses. Viz:
"Tea? Of course my love. Here. Drink it while it's hot. Now. Now. It's hot. Drink it! Drink it up! It's hot! DRINK THE DAMN TEA RIGHT NOW WOMAN!"
[while plaintive meeping from self goes along the lines of "too hot to drink! Leave it there! Go away! You're scaring me!"]
"Let me tuck you up my love. You're not warm enough. You need to sweat it out. Lie still now, I'll bundle the duvet. Stop! Stop moving! You need more blankets! All the blankets in the house! Wrapped tight around you! You're not sweating enough! STOP MOVING AND SWEAT DAMMIT!"
[plaintive meeping: "but I'm too hot! is horrid! feel awful! can't move limbs! go away you're scaring me!"]
"Biscuit? You want a biscuit? Sick people don't have biscuits. No biscuits! If you're hungry for biscuits you can't really be sick! You can have tea and sweat, that's all!"
[I must admit I generally win this one in the end. He's not *entirely* heartless.]
And now, please excuse me; the rain appears to have stopped, so I must go run. Dammit.
Waterstone's drops silly Amazon tie-in. I hated that. You may recall that I hate Amazon. And while of course we like independents the best, I am quite fond of Waterstone's. And I love online shopping. So this pleases me enormously.
I'm sorry, I realise this isn't exactly the spice of blogging life, but it's good news — very good news, for me — and I like to share. Apart from anything else, it makes it so much easier to get knitting books. Hooray!
Must now sit on fingers in desperate bid to avoid shopping... I may have overdone it a little lately.
So California's getting all gung ho about climate change. That's nice. And it's tackling it by... suing the bastards. Well, it's the American way, right?
Now, I haven't been to the US, ever, not even a little bit. But I hear things. For instance, I hear that in a lot of American cities (Houston is often mentioned), it's practically impossible to get around without a car. Not just because of the distances, and the lousy public transport. More because there aren't actually any pavements (sidewalks, to the Yanks). Roads are for driving on. Cities are for driving in. Wouldn't it be a good idea to give the citizenry an actual option before slamming the car industry?
O'course, San Francisco and LA do appear to have functioning public transport systems (so I gather from my blogroll), so maybe going after the cars is *completely* sensible. What do I know.
Luckily it's just a quickie.
"There have come fogs, too — yellow fogs and brown fogs, and fogs so black they might be liquid soot — fogs that seem to rise from the pavements as if brewed in the sewers in diabolical engines. They stain our clothes, they fill our lungs and make us cough, they press against our windows — if you watch, in a certain light, you may see them seeping into the house through the ill-fitting sashes. We are driven into evening darkness now, at three or four o'clock, and when Vigers lights the lamps the flames are choked, and burn quite dim."
Well, it was supposed to be quick. Dang, Sarah Waters writes long sentences.
That's from Affinity, and it's actually page 125. Because p123 is entirely taken up with "Part Two".
So here's how it is: you grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 123, go down five sentences (note to RaJ: "scrolling" down five sentences only works for your eBook, not so much with treeware), type out the next three for our reading pleasure.
Then you tag three people. Always with the viral stuff, these memes. Thing is, though, there surely aren't three people reading this. So: you! Gosh, thanks. (I would really like one of those three to be Extemporanea, because I'm sure she's got something fascinating at her elbow, and one to be Starmadeshadow, because I'm hoping for a little microeconomic edification. Oh yes. Hey, if Strawberryfrog is out there, you'll come up with something fun too, won't you?)
Good news: "At this year's fashion week, models as thin as Esther Canadas will be offered medical treatment."
Bad news: recent warm weather means more spiders around.* Ewwwww.
How weird is it that the good news comes from the fashion world?**
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* No link yet, I just saw this on the BBC and can't find any online stories.
** In other good fashion news, I've been tempted to blog a little about how happy I am that tops are finally longer, but try as I might I can't find a way to make that interesting.
I'm sorry. No. I am not going to replace my coffee habit with a tea habit. Nuh uh. I love tea, but somehow tea in the office *always* tastes disgusting. I don't know why. So I'm going to have to find another way to manage my coffee problem. (It's a problem when you get withdrawal headaches all weekend. All four days of your weekend. Because you drink coffee for just the three days in the office. I'll leave you to figure out just how much coffee I must be drinking in those three days to have this effect.)
In other news:
...oh. I have no news. All work and no play makes Scroobious a very dull blogger.
Look, don't complain too loudly or I'll start talking about knitting.
Look! Fluffball!
Well, Antisocial September started with a little twist or three. Nasty stinking lurgi. (Note to self: next time you find yourself sandwiched between two colleagues both with colds for a few days, try taking the echinacea early, okay?) Which definitely boosted the antisocial quotient*, and got me out of running the 10km race for which I was most certainly not prepared, but didn't do much for the productivity.
Second twist: turns out I have a prior engagement next weekend that I'd forgotten all about. Well, okay. I had counted on one social activity for the month, so I guess the universe has just bumped it from one weekend to the next.
Third twist: suddenly I have a bunch of freelance work. More than I had anticipated. This is always good news, but it will really cut into my knitting time.** (Not to mention the hoped for productivity on other fronts.) Ah well. Time to test that new feng shui, eh?
Anyway. All that bed time, plus a couple of truly delicious long conversations with faraway friends, plus considering other recentish conversations with less faraway friends, and I have been pondering some Happy Thoughts. Bear with me.
Growing up rather rocks.
Starmadeshadow recently mentioned, casually, that she noticed she was much more unflappable now than, say, five years ago. As for instance, getting on the wrong train and ending up in a very wrong and unfamiliar place... then: Eeep! Now: *shrug* Okay. Dealing.
And I thought, yes. Quite. And a related point: now, we have a bit more cash, which also helps with the problem solving. We may not be exactly free from pecuniary distress, but parting with an unbudgeted tenner doesn't hurt so much. This is, when you think about it, a really rather great pleasure.
Plus, you find out that there's more to you than you thought. You can look back and think, huh. Ten years ago, I never would have imagined I would [run a race/move to another country on a moment's notice/get married/start a business/like wearing high heels/insert your own surprise discovery here]. I wonder what I'm going to surprise myself with in the next ten years?
You get a bit of perspective. You realise that, no, you aren't quite the exceptional [knitter/writer/business genius/insert your own secret ambition here] you thought you might be, there are others who have way more talent than you and are doing more with it, but hey: you can still do your thing, your way, and that will be Just Fine.
And there is also the sudden discovery that, while you may not be doing anything that will make headlines, somehow you have developed a respectable career while you weren't looking. Suddenly you feel a bit proud of where you are and what you've done. And even more strikingly, who you know. They're just the same old friends you've had for a decade, but hang on, what happened here... they are published poets, awardwinning journalists, entrepreneurs, publishers; your actual Success Stories. It's most peculiar.
So here's to us, friends. We done good. Here's to being 30-something. (And for the 20-somethings reading this: trust me. You have a lot to look forward to. You may not be able to see how you'll get there from where you are, but that's the beauty of it: it will happen anyway. Relax and enjoy the journey.)
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* Would you believe Beloved won't let me kiss him at all when I'm sick? Not even a little bit. He also gets all grouchy about me "breathing on his pillow". I mean, aren't lovers supposed to share everything? EV-erything? Germs included?
** After waaaay too long working on ridiculously tiny needles, on projects with a halflife of approximately a century***, I have now cast on for a huuuuge chunky coat that's just whizzing by. Cast on: Monday. Progress so far: one sleeve and half of one front. Oh yeah. That's more like it.
*** One of them has reached the sewing up stage - for a second time - and I am pondering its Divers Imperfections and considering tossing the whole thing. Grrrrr.
Today we are abusing the Scroobious Guide format somewhat, but work with me here. We are taking an Inner Journey to Harmony and Happiness.
This is the Way.*
1. Eliminate clutter. (Also known as the famed Chucking Shit Out technique.) Your guide is pleased to report that very recently, with the help of streetcar and directions to the local re-use** and recycling depot, piles of crap were removed from her space. Following on the happy disposal of the infamous pink leather sofas (plus scatter cushions, coffee table and random duvet), this engendered a most pleasing sense of lightness in the Scroobious home.
2. Eliminate chaos. Now that the crap is gone, further feng shui enhancement can be achieved by rearranging your space. That same streetcar experience took us to Ikea, and enabled all kinds of Shelving Wonders to take place.*** More lightness. Suddenly it seems so much more possible to actually get things done.
3. Eliminate commitments. A couple of days ago it dawned on me that I could give myself a truly marvellous gift: an Anti-Social September. Beyond this weekend (when I have two unavoidable prior engagements), I have vowed to ruthlessly turn down all invitations. This way I stand a chance of actually ticking off everything on my list, plus get to spend some quality time with my knitting and my Beloved! You cannot imagine how this pleases me.
So here I am, in a clean (mostly) and uncluttered (relatively) living space, with an (almost completely) clean and uncluttered month stretching out ahead.
Say it with me:
Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
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* It is possible that this particular route only works for fellow Scroobii, whoever they may be. Your mileage may vary.
** I cannot tell you how tickled I am that they only had to change one letter to rename a “refuse depot” something altogether more 21st century. Small things. Small, wordy things.
*** With comic relief provided by Beloved, who responded to my comment that I was (still) running short on space for knitting books with the suggestion that I “sell some”. Oh! The hilarity!
My first Scroobious Guide* came naturally. Switzerland is a bizarre and beautiful place that I've come to know moderately well (parts of it, anyway), but I still feel alienated enough to poke fun at it. The second was much harder, because I know South Africa too well and love it too much to be funny on the subject. This one was also terribly difficult, for the opposite reason: I hardly know it at all, and I know that many of my readers** do.
So what to put in the Appendix? What cute and mildly crazy thing can I possibly highlight to wind up this patchy little virtual tour? What can I say about an entirely delightful, unpretentious country — of which I have seen only a tiny slice — that justly takes pride in its charming, even award-winning, attractions?
Oh. Yes.
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* Actually, the first one was Hamburg, but that was really short and unstructured. Doesn't count.
** For a given value of "many", considering that I don't have "many" readers.
When to go:
Not in August.
I cannot emphasise this enough. By all accounts, September is delightful, and the autumn colours are fabulous later on, and winter is cosy and marvellous - plus there's skiing - and spring is beautiful, and July can be quite lovely. But August sucks. Summer's over (all five weeks of it) and all you have is rain. Torrents of rain. And wind. So stay away in August.
Although even if you do go in August, you're sure to have a lovely time. How could you not? It's a marvellous place. But you will wish you had experienced it under slightly better conditions.
What to bring:
Well, that rather depends on when you go, but I think it's safe to say that at any time of year, a good waterproof jacket and some solid boots will be required. Your little strappy sandals can probably stay at home. If you're travelling in July, and you're lucky, your swimsuit might get an outing; but don't count on it, and don't forget your warm woollens.
Cameras good. Midge repellent very good. Thermal underwear excellent.
Knitting essential.
My idea of a holiday has a strong focus on a horizontal experience (on a beach, under a duvet, I’m not fussy) and food. Beloved’s is rather more energetic. (Practically anything would be.) From what I’ve seen so far, Scotland can happily accommodate both types of visitor; but I wouldn’t count on too much lounging under the sun. And it would be a waste to stay in bed when there’s so much pretty to be enjoyed.
How to be a tourist in Scotland (select suggestions):
Take a distillery tour. Most of the whisky distilleries offer free tours and tastings, which depending on your point of view is either a great way to get a free dram, an educational experience that enriches your appreciation of the water of life, or a cunning ploy to convince visitors that your whisky is the very best in all the land and soften them up with a little free alcohol, just before letting them loose in the shop.
Go monster hunting. There are plenty of Loch Ness cruises to choose from; the shorter ones will get you out on the lake, waffle sonorously about “these mysterious depths” and point at the pretty ruined castle.
The longer ones might include a cruise down the Caledonian canal and a tour of the castle, or a trip right down the full length of the lake (it’s definitely on the large side) with optional stops. I liked the idea of going halfway, taking a bike ride** down to the southern tip, and going back up by boat again; but time was not on our side. Anyway, you won’t be able to avoid the squillions of Nessie artefacts around the place, so you might as well go through the motions of looking for her. Plus, it’s a pretty lake, and boats are fun, no?
Visit castles. Mostly that’ll be ruined castles, thanks to those pesky English, but there’s also Balmoral (when Her Britannic Majesty isn’t in residence) and, um, some other places. Whatever. Castles. Meh.
Explore the mountain wilderness. Ah yes, now we come to the primary motivation for our trip, and to the primary problem with same. Learn from our mistake, readers: Bring Waterproofs. And thermal underwear. And midge repellent. (Naturally, since we had that part covered, that was the part we didn’t need so much. On account of the midges all being drowned or blown out to sea, presumably.)
Explore the mountain wilderness on skis. Exciting! Well, so I imagine. Never having been on skis myself, I can’t say how Scottish skiing compares with Gstaad, or Zermatt, or Aspen. But I’m happy to undertake some research. All funding offers for Comparative Skiing Studies will receive serious consideration.
Go wildlife hunting. Not actual hunting, please, that would be mean. Shoot only with the cameras, yes? This can be done from the comfort of your car, or on another little boat trip (for the marine wildlife, that is; not so much the reindeer), and the list of native wildlife includes:
Reindeer
Eagles
Minke whales
Dolphin
Porpoise
Seals
etc etc.
What we actually saw:
One reindeer
Bunch of red deer
One roe deer***
Three seals
Three dolphins
Some of these****
And an awful lot of pheasant and rabbits on the road.
Literally ON the road.
I comforted myself with the inane thought that this vast amount of roadkill clearly indicated the vast amount of wildlife happily roaming through Scotland’s fields and forests, rather than large-scale destruction caused by encroaching civilisation.
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* Not that I’m knocking this. I have long ago made peace with my inner tourist, and am happy to go Tour the Sights on occasion. But generally it’s much more fun to steer clear of anywhere that involves queues, cash registers, and T-shirts with the name of the place you’re at done in the font of a corporate logo, don’t you think?
** No, really. Once you get me out of bed, I’m perfectly happy to do the active stuff. As long as it doesn’t cut into good cake time.
*** Red and roe deer identified purely by what we were told was likely to be spotted in those parts. I don’t know one from another, myself. Pretty. Bambi-like.
**** Not technically wildlife, maybe, but as cows***** go these look pretty damn wild. Dontcha think?
***** Or bulls, even.
It’s not all blue Mel Gibson and sword-waving Christopher Lambert, you know. Nor is it all men in skirts. Or a good walk spoiled. Nor it is all about whisky.
Okay, maybe it is quite a lot about whisky.
Once again, though, I’m forced to confess that we weren’t on a cultural trip. We were on an active trip. (Supposedly.) So I can gently suggest that you might want to go to the pub for a bit of jolly dancing, or taste the glories of the Edinburgh Festival, or investigate the country’s Viking history by visiting some of the many museums. Or even help Patroclus with her Pictish project. But I can’t really TELL you about any of those things.
Sorry.
The food, though, the food were lovely. Admittedly, after a series of UK breaks where our enthusiasm for the trip was gradually (or not so gradually) worn down by a series of horrible meals,* my standards weren't that high. Still, I think you'll find Scotland can offer some properly Good Eatin'. Best for carnivores, I reckon. Meal choices tend to run to the dead-flesh-and-two-veg side of things, but it is such tasty dead flesh. Often smothered in whisky cream. Mmmmm.
And of course there's the infamous Chieftain o' the Pudding Race: haggis. No. No, I didn't. No, I don't plan to. Just as I see no reason to ever try mopane worms. Some things are just wrong. When it comes to traditional Scottish foodstuffs, I'll stick to shortcake, thank you. Lots of shortcake. Piles of it. Mmmmmm.
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* Worst offender: Wales. Don't believe anything they tell you about marvellous fresh Welsh produce, lovely farm cooking, etc. It were nasty. Very nasty.
I have no idea. We studiously avoided anything like a museum in favour of the Great Outdoors. Which, thanks to the climate, turned into more of the Great Indoors – of the car; the B&B’s lovely hot bath; the tea rooms…
As for architecture: meh. Some houses. Some ruins. Some peculiar looking castles. Next.
Scotland is divided into the Highlands, Lowlands, Speyside and Islay.
No, wait, that’s just the whisky.
Okay, try this: Scotland is divided into Highlands (north), Lowlands (south), west and east coast (you can probably interpret that yourself), and a bunch of islands. Not so much divided, really, but those are the regions people tend to refer to. We toured much of the Highlands, sticking to the east coast and a bit of the north. The main cities are Edinburgh (south; kultcha!), Glasgow (west coast; shopping!), Aberdeen and Inverness (east coast; um… Scottish!). By all accounts Edinburgh is terribly pretty and Glasgow a bit rough. But I’m sure that’s just nasty talk.
As for climate, I was warned darkly “you’re on the same latitude as Alaska”. So: brrrr! Summer, apparently, lasts from the beginning to the end of July. Although it won’t necessarily be anything South Africans might recognise as summer. Then the rains come. And believe me, they come. More things I should have found out before I chose to visit in August: September and October are actually better weather, in the sense that they are drier. And you get lovely autumn foliage later on. Winter is of course proper winter, with snow and stuff. Again: brrrr!
But before you complain about the cold, consider: without this urgent imperative to warm up, would we have Scotch whisky?
Many street signs in Scottish cities are delightfully Tolkein-esque, with the English name followed by Gaelic – in lovely Celtic font. But if you can’t understand a word your waitress is saying, don’t ask her to speak English. She already is.
Cultural note:
Remember that the Scots – while British, and speaking mostly English - are not English. It’s all very complicated. Look, the United Kingdom (sometimes called “Britain) includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Great Britain is just the island containing the first three. Wales is sometimes called “the principality” and Northern Ireland “the province”, but I’ve no idea what Scotland might be called.
It’s definitely not part of England though. They have their own parliament and everything. And they haven’t really forgiven the English for beating them up all those centuries, and blowing up all their castles. (I believe there are no intact castles in Scotland dating back more than a couple of hundred years, and that’s why.) So consider yourself in a foreign country, of sorts, and be grateful that they’re talking a language you can understand.
Yes, you really can understand. Try a little harder.
(I would like to state for the record that I had no problem with the Scottish accent. No, really. Beloved, on the other hand…)
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* No, I hadn't forgotten. Honest. Just a little distracted. Back now.
Hitherto unsuspected drawback of orange juice with bits:
When you spill, those bits are really hard to get out of the carpet.
Useful, this blog, don't you think?
Interesting, isn't it. After five years of the "war on terror", the net result seems to be that the average citizen* is more jaded, more cynical, than we were before. We know that we are under serious threat from aggressive, fanatical, homicidal maniacs who are out to destroy democracy... and the suicide bombers aren't very nice either.
Ahaha. Couldn't resist. Sorry.
Anyway, as I was saying. We know that there is a real threat. We also know that our Inglorious Leaders' response to said threat has been... questionable. They have systematically lied to and manipulated us and ignored the public will — and done so in a way that's sure to increase the ire of the extremists, while not really making us any safer. In fact I don't think they can make us safer, other than perhaps by making the societies we live and participate in so very objectionable. We're moving in the wrong direction then, aren't we?
So this — lies, misinformation, abuse of trust — is now what we expect. So there's a new scare... so an increasingly large chunk of the population thinks, Hm. Is this just another big lie?
I was on holiday when I heard about the Big Airport Meltdown. I didn't have an emotional reaction to it at all (beyond "hey, good thing we travelled by train"). I didn't think, "Ooh, how lucky they caught the plot before it happened." I also didn't think, "It's all a big lie, evil bastard politicians." I pretty much marked it with a question mark and stuck it into a folder in my mind labelled "undecided". And I'm still undecided, because I haven't really bothered to follow the story. I am pretty sceptical about "intelligence", under the best of circumstances, and this was clearly very far from the best circumstances. Apparently I missed the small detail that said "Pakistani intelligence" came from an interrogation.
Oh. Yes. Somehow that adds to my scepticism quite a lot.
Thanks to strawberryfrog for a predictably cynical take on the matter. I don't necessarily trust Craig Murray either (no offence Craig, I just don't know you), but it's an interesting read.
Anyway, one good thing may yet come out of all this (considering that global warming could pose a far greater threat to our civilisation than any political or religious extremism). Fear of terrorism, or even just of hassles with security, might succeed where eco-campaigners have failed in discouraging unnecessary air travel. Score one for the planet.
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* This may be a complete untruth. I'm not even sure it's true of the "average netizen", which is already a very different thing. It's just a broad impression I have.
Not just the place we have to thank for Sean Connery, Scotland is a country with a proud heritage. The landscape is full of reminders of past cultures, from mysterious Picts to pillaging Vikings; the visitor can partake in rich traditions such as watching beefy men in skirts chuck trees around, listening to beefy men in skirts blow into goatskins, or seeing haggis fired at monsters.* Local crafters produce pottery, jewellery, glass and a peculiar beverage brewed from rotted barley. Urban centres ferment with theatre, fine dining and luxury shopping, while the craggy mountains and heather-strewn hills invite days of happy exploration.
I wouldn’t know about that. It was pissing down and we stayed in our car for four days solid.
Still, complete ignorance has never stopped me before, so this week I bring you the Scroobious Guide to Scotland. We will be taking questions from the audience after each session. I thank you.
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* I can’t find any online references to this, so let me explain: there is a trebuchet** in the grounds of Urquhart Castle that is still fired once a day – loaded with haggis, to tempt Nessie out of the depths. So I’m told. I leave it to you to decide whether they’re baiting the tourists or baiting the monster.
Links for the day:
"When people here are confronted with any task, the stock phrase is, 'Make a plan,' and invariably people do."
The Guardian's Joburg correspondent tells us why he doesn't love SA, despite recognising how all-round fabulous it is. Perhaps perversely, this story rouses my (steadily mounting) homesickness in full force, while also rousing the heartsickness that comes from acknowledging how deeply screwed up the place is.
It's still an amazing place, though. And bless Rory Carroll for his honesty. It is wonderful - definitely perversely so - to have a foreigner engage with SA's contradictions and challenges in exactly the same way as many of us do. Okay, so he doesn't quite love it. It's not his home. But at least he can see what there is to love - as well as why many white (liberal) South Africans don't behave the way liberal outsiders think we should.
And we will make a plan. And it will all come together in the end. But the end is still a long, long way away. I hope to be there again one day, to be part of that plan coming together.
So much for words. Look at some pictures. Pretty! Totally not political!
And finally for something completely frivolous: let me share with you the tri-partite Scroobious Rule of Shopping.
a) Don't look at the price. Seriously.
b) If you don't love it, don't buy it.
c) Conversely, if you really do love it, take it home.
Properly executed, this strategy will be good for both your wardrobe and your budget. I mean that. You will never again fall into the trap of buying something you don't ever wear because it was "good value". But "properly executed" means, of course, that a degree of discretion must be applied in two key areas: Exposure and Application. The first dictates that the shopper Must Not go into shops that she can't afford (or must not go into any shops at all if the budget is under particular strain). Not that hard for me, I hate shopping. The second applies to what the "it" may be, viz: don't go buying ballgowns if you're a Chinese takeaway kinda girl; don't shop for stilettos when what you really need is trainers.
Why am I sharing this with you at this juncture? Well, for the good of humanity, of course. But also, in my great humility, to invite you to laugh at me and the little flaw in my Brilliant Strategem.
It's the Exposure angle.
Monsoon has gone and opened a store on Waterloo station. Double negative result: I can overspend and miss my train at the same time.
To compound the problem, they don't have a fitting room.
Don't make me take them back.
(in my defence there were oh so many dresses I loved but DIDN'T buy and they're not actually both red the one on the left is black and a girl can never have enough dresses and dammit they're pretty)
So I left London a week ago. In summer. I went to Scotland, where summer was clearly over.*
Now I'm back and... hang on, summer's over in this city, too? Really? [looks at calendar] Are you serious? Isn't it traditional to give us until the bank holiday?
I mean, I like autumn and all. In its proper place. Its proper place not being about two scant months after spring. I feel I have done some time travelling and have accidentally misplaced the summer. Most distressing.
PS For the record, I have decided not to take the promotion. This feels inexpressibly weird, but I'm pretty sure it's the right choice.
_____
* Note for Scots: it's not very comforting to tourists to hear "Oh, you should have been here last week, it was lovely. Only started raining this morning." Over and over.
I've been trying to spare you the nasty little details of my ongoing travails with Parcelforce, because it really doesn't make for very edifying blogging. Besides, it's been a while since I had a really explosive run-in with them. They hardly ever deliver on time, they never reply to letters, they are impossible to reach on the phone, but that's all just what we expect, isn't it? I can't resist, though, sharing this latest little nugget.
They have a new policy. If you're not in when they try to deliver, instead of getting you to phone them to request a redelivery, or trying again the next day — either of which have worked fine in the past* — they will now take your package to a "local" post office for you to collect.
Sounds reasonable? Well, that all depends on your definition of "local", and whether you have a car. In my case, collecting the package means lugging this big, heavy box over two bus rides and 15 minutes of walking.
"Many of our customers find this more convenient," I'm told. Do they bollocks. I'm sure Parcelforce finds it more convenient, but I bet they never asked any customers. And no, they won't redeliver, under any circumstances.
*sigh* If only I could afford private couriers. If only.
_____
* Assuming that wasting hours on the phone and having the parcel delivered a day late after all falls within the definition of "fine", anyway.
Meez is a very bad place. Don't go there. Not unless you have too much time on your hands, anyway.
Now why is it, do you suppose, that given all the vast possibilities of an online avatar, I pay careful attention to trying to replicate (to some extent) what I actually look like? To the extent of fretting that I can't have both freckles and lipstick?
I never wear jeans, though. That is a truly radical departure. Also, Jemima* would never stand for being held that way.
_____
* Conveniently, the ginger cat also happened to be the chubby one. "Fluffy had a big lunch," indeed.
I recently met someone who, while utterly lovely, is utterly unforgiveable for the following reasons. She:
publishes a monthly online magazine*;
sells, both online and in meatspace, hand-dyed yarn — much of which she dyes herself;
is launching a sewing shop;
is launching a quarterly magazine;
is writing/editing a pattern book;
has two small children (and a third on the way);
OH YES AND SHE HAS A FULL-TIME JOB.
I haven't quite recovered from this meeting.
I am also increasingly aware that as a knitter, frankly, I suck. I think I actually suck more with the passing of time. Each project seems to take twice as long as the previous one, and require more frogging.** And while I'm trying to learn things like planning, and structure, and technique, really I am, when I consider the incredible proficiency of someone like Eunny, who is a whole 23 YEARS OLD, I want to poke my pointy sticks into my eyes and be done with it.
More seriously, there is the question of What Am I Doing With My Life? I have a part-time job that pays the bills and is really rather dull. I work with lovely people, which is a great plus, but it is terribly dull, and I can't envision it getting any more interesting if I climb the ladder.*** I have occasional freelancing, some of which is more interesting than the job, some not. I have a little baby business venture that I am carefully nurturing, a venture that is thoroughly unproven and may yet turn out to be founded on a deeply flawed business model****, and of course it's just me running it — me with a profoundly Non-Business mind.***** And I have vague, half-formed ambitions in the designing and writing areas. The design ambitions are of course looking increasingly risible.
This little business thing, though, it is something that makes me deeply happy. So far it is making me deeply broke and causing stress and anxiety aplenty, but it is by far the most exciting thing I have ever done. And the most fun. I even enjoy the spreadsheets. (Okay, not that surprising. I always did like spreadsheets.) It's the only "job" I've ever had that I can happily imagine doing for the rest of my life. It is, in other words, For Me. This is what I really want to spend my time on.
On the other hand, I am hopelessly undisciplined and disorganised. I have four non-office days a week; yet I get very little done. I am seriously lousy at imposing my own structure. If I had any time management skills, my little venture should be running very smoothly, with all kinds of long-range ideas already implemented; plus I should be working on some of those design ambitions, and have a social life too. It's really not unreasonable to expect that. After all, look at the Nameless Wonder above!
Which is why I'm seriously torn about this promotion I've been unofficially offered.****** A promotion that would require just one more day in the office.
One hand: If I can't make the best use of my time on my own, a little more enforced productivity may be no bad thing.
Other hand: What kind of logic is that? I'll still be the same person, with the same lousy discipline, and even less time to work on the things I really care about.
Hand 1: But in practice, the website can be managed with less time than I have now, right? And I'll always find the time for freelancing somehow.
Hand 2: Bollocks it can. When everything's running smoothly yes, but when there's a problem, it's bad enough that I only have two weekdays to chase suppliers and sort things out. It needs and deserves more of my time, not less.
Hand 1: Well, it's my job to make sure it runs smoothly, then.
Hand 2: Which will be even harder to do when I have less time. And the chances I'll manage to work on designs etc will shrink to near zero. And by the way... four days in the office will be SO DAMN BORING.
Hand 1: But what if the business doesn't succeed, and I'm basically cutting off my career development at the pass?
Hand 2: Oh that's good. Let's make a decision based on fear, and on protecting the more boring career possibilities at the expense of the exciting ones.
Hand 1: Piffle. Let's make a grown-up decision based on pragmatism and the understanding that with just a little discipline, the exciting possibilities don't have to be jeopardised at all. Remember the Nameless Wonder!
*sigh*
Conundrum.
_____
* Knitting. This is all about knitting. Move along now if you're going to laugh, please.
** Knitting slang: because frogs go "rip it, rip it". Oh yes, knitters have slang. I don't know if this is a new development, born of the Glorious Interweb, or if it has been ever thus.
*** Unless I made the great leap into Consumer Press, which is glamorous and exciting, but (a) really hard to do, (b) filled with nasty people I hear (on the magazines at least, not the newspapers), and (c) probably not fun enough to keep me interested for long anyway.
**** There are at least three possible Killer Flaws. No way to know yet whether they really are killer flaws, or are rather Excitingly New and Different Thinking.
***** Bizarrely enough I have a Bachelor in Business Administration. I don't think this imparted anything in the way of actual knowledge, but I did enjoy the economics.
****** In the unlikely event any of my colleages are reading this: sshhh...
I am alive. Really.
I am even doing things. Occasionally I think these things would make good blog content. But then I get so busy doing other things that I never get around to the blogging. And then it’s all too old and there is too much and it has lost its flavour.
To assure you that there is life, however – that I am not just sitting in a darkened room working all day, although there is a fair amount of that – let’s have a quick run-down of the past couple of weeks.
Beloved had a birthday. We celebrated. We had a Very London Weekend – that was supposed to be a good thing, but turned out more mixed, as is itself a Very London Thing. Exciting events and entertainments got scuppered or spoiled by transport troubles, or turned out to not be quite as exciting as hoped. Viz:
Went to see Fuerzabruta*. Very fun. Planned night of dancing afterwards but everyone ended up doing the last train home thing instead. Plus, tube left us stranded three stops from home, grrrr.
Tried to go to the Electric Cinema. Foiled by slow bus. Tried to go to a West End cinema instead; foiled by unexpected show times (demonstrating the truism that one should never, never try to wing it in London; that way lies extreme frustration). Tried to have dinner by the river, but you already know how that turned out.
Tried to catch a ferry to an exciting outdoor film festival. Missed the ferry by minutes. Eventually got to the festival, to find it added up to rather less than the sum of its parts. (Or maybe the parts just weren’t that great to start with.) Still, watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in a big damn field on a warm and lovely summer evening was enjoyable. Two hours to get home. Less enjoyable.
Since then, I have been mostly fighting with my phone company, although that seems to be resolved now. And there is a happy outcome, which I will share with you tomorrow. Probably. Meanwhile, I would like to let the internet know that there is a very, very nice man in a call centre in Scotland who is going to a happy place when he dies. I hope he will go to some happy places before then too. Mwah!
I have also been booking a little mini holiday-ette for next week. Hooray for hiking in the Highlands! We hear there may be some midges, but we’re hard. We can handle it.
Oh, and I also attended strawberryfrog’s wedding reception, where I got to stand around in cute shoes on a waterfront balcony**, drink champagne, eat insanely delicious cake, be served by quite the most miraculously attentive catering staff I have ever encountered anywhere, discuss religion and cute shoes with the self-proclaimed Jewish Contingent of e2 (who were very lovely), and get a cab home because I complained loudly enough about the pain of the cute shoes and the great distance of the night bus stop. Hooray for being grown-up and having a (sort of) high earning husband!***
There was also a company away day in there somewhere. This involved fish and chips on Brighton pier (cue my usual plaintive cry: Why am I not living in Brighton? Whywhywhy?), not nearly enough funfair rides (damn wussy colleagues), and careful explanation to confused Polish bar wenches of how to make a rock shandy.****
Just one more news item: the pink leather sofas are a thing of the past. We convinced the landlady to get rid of them, because I need more space for knitting stuff. Heh. Who needs furniture when you can have knitting stuff, eh? (Not to worry, we still have something to sit on. Though Beloved complains that the futon isn’t nearly as comfy. Honestly, some people, never satisfied… first he hated the pink leather, now he misses it. Tut tut.)
_____
* With apologies to The Magnetic Fields, we bring you a peek inside the mind of Fuerzabruta’s creator/s:
“A pretty girl in her underwear
A pretty girl in her underwear
If there’s anything better in this world
Who cares…
"Ooooh! A pretty WET girl in her underwear! No – FOUR! Four pretty girls in wet underwear! Four pretty girls in underwear getting wet! In – in – in the sky! In mid-air! Four pretty girls in wet underwear splooshing around with each other in mid-air! COMING DOWN ON THE AUDIENCE! Four pretty wet girls in underwear in a big wet thing of water being lowered slowly onto the audience’s SEA OF GRABBING HANDS!
"I am a theatrical GEEENYUSS!”
Not to disparage the show, though. It is undoubtedly the most inventive performance I’ve ever seen. I love that they take the conceptual leap from theatre in the round to theatre EVERYWHERE – on a moving stage, on the walls, on the ceiling! So it’s a bunch of fun. But I would have preferred there to be something more behind the energy and adventurousness of the staging.
** It was quite like the old days, when we lived on the river, but with better shoes.
*** Who has just gotten a rather nice raise for being extremely cool and clever. Hooray Beloved!
**** Pint glass with half soda water, half lemonade, lots of ice and Angostura bitters. Quite the best alcohol substitute on a hot day. It’s a South African standard, but mysteriously no one in the UK has ever heard of it. Ditto Dom Pedros. This really needs to be fixed.
1) Look, Mr Conran, what's with your peculiar booking policy? I reserved a table for 8pm. I was told you didn't book outside tables, we would just have to take our chances based on what was available when we arrived. Fine.
Due to an unfortunate chain of events, we arrived two hours early. Clearly this sort of undisciplined behaviour cannot be indulged, so you told us no, we could not have one of the outside tables that were standing empty. Because there were reservations. Not that the *tables* were reserved, but they were nonetheless being held for people who had booked for 6.30 or 7pm, not 8pm like us slobs.
So I think I've wrapped my head around your peculiar "tables are neither reserved nor unreserved" policy. I think I understand how it works, if not why. But sir. What I do NOT understand is why nobody explained it to me when I phoned and expressly ASKED if I should book for a particular time in order to improve my chances of getting an outside table. Because dinner by the river was my entire motivation for eating there. (And frankly the "cricket pavilion" interior? You might want to rethink that. Unless a 1970s dining experience is really what you're after.)
I'm just saying.
2) Dear Potters Fields People. £3m to tidy up a bit of grass? Seriously? How much does a new kiosk and a few benches cost? THREE MILLION POUNDS? I guess it's because you're putting in "high quality grass". Not just any old muck. After all, it's not as though it's going to be withered by the drought and trampled to death within a couple of weeks by the millions of tourists thronging the Pool of London...
Oh, wait.
3) Dear Thames Water. That "this is how much water our new pipes will save every 12 hours" ad campaign. You do realise that what you're really telling us is "this is how much water we're presently wasting because we put off replacing the Victorian pipes as long as we possibly could", right? Do you really want to draw our attention to that?
4) Dear lastminute.com. What misogynistic swine is in charge of your advertising? Look, the "hard decision: sell the wife for a camel?" ad is stupid and offensive. But whatever. I'm actually much more worried about the "hard decision: Brazilian or Hollywood?" one. When did those become the only two options?
You sadistic bastards.
It's Bulwer-Lytton time again. (Thanks, extemporanea!)
Today was a fabulous day. London has never been so magnificent. My job has never been so entertaining. My hair has never been so well behaved. I ate a salad for lunch — and enjoyed it. That was the giveaway, really. Something was up; but what? Why was I in such an insanely good mood? Better random happiness than random crabbiness, obviously, but why?
And then this afternoon, I got an unexpected email with some rather cool news that opens up exciting new worlds of possibility.
Suddenly it all made sense. I was clearly in a temporal loop that enabled me to feel the buzz before I knew its cause. I like it. Maybe I'll call it PJS: pre-jubilation syndrome.
bouncebouncebounce...
PS And THEN I got home to find Beloved had ironed my shirts. It really doesn't get any better, does it?
So the Grauniad is on the fat discrimination case. Clearly the hot button topic of the day.
Let's be clear: I don't think there is any justification for the "fat isn't that unhealthy" argument. I don't believe that truly obese people are genuinely happy with their size. Of course I don't believe that obesity is purely genetic — of course it is primarily a lifestyle problem. I do believe, with the writer, that the fat rights campaign is largely (sorry) a question of transference. But does that make it okay to judge a person based on their size? Or to criticise them in shockingly personal ways "for their own good"?
Speaking as someone with just a little bit of chub, I think it's that kind of attitude — which even the writer doesn't really manage to suppress, despite her noble efforts — that makes it all the harder to deal with a weight problem. Like I said before, it may be childish. But it is still so.
So who can explain the completely pointless spam I get? Spam without attachments or sales pitches. Spam that consists *only* of random text like the following:
They'll never find all your bones. Or maybe the mosquito mange would appearover, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing "Just don't forget to give me the order," Tender wheezed. He was allanswer "Woman" is disallowed as too obvious a rejoinder.)
The only thing I can think of is that the original attachments have been automatically cleaned up by some cunning process of Gmail or other servers. But that doesn't sound very convincing.
Meant to post this about a month ago but was strangely blog-deprived at the time. Never mind. It's never too late for:
The End of the World
(Completely pointless without sound. Sorry.)
So Extemporanea wants to know what 7 songs I'm into right now. This is no doubt supposed to be terribly revealing of my musical tastes and what have you, but I'm not sure it is. I don't actually own any CDs by any of these artists, though I see a FOPP trip in my future that may remedy this. I had to look up who actually performs a couple of them. They all seem to have come my way by some random means, such as via iTunes' free download of the week or a Q compilation. In fact two of them are from the latest Q CD — 80s covers — which I heartily recommend. (Don't roll your eyes like that. Yes, I have cheesy taste in music, but the operative word here is covers. The selection does rather rock.)
So. Seven songs.
"Fill my little world", The Feeling. Yes, the one that's on the radio every bloody time you turn it on. Yes, the totally fluffy teenage poppy one. It's perky and catchy and I am greatly enjoying it. So there.
"Life is so easy now", Son of Dave. Just gorgeous. Bluesy harmonica-y mellow gorgeousness.
"Heartbeats", Jose Gonsalez. Yes, the one from the Sony TV ad. I am clearly hopelessly impressionable and boring. Tough. It's a lovely song and I like it. So there, again.
"Personal Jesus", Johnny Cash. A very unexpected version. Touch of the godbothering, but it intrigues and pleases me.
"Burning sands", Silicone Soul. Gorgeous hypnotic electronica. Very enjoyable.
"Faith", The Boy Least Likely To. This, and the next one, are off that Q 80s mix. I never liked the George Michael original, but this has a perky fingersnapping cuteness that is very infectious. And surprising. I really like surprising covers.
"Running up that hill", Placebo. Sheer genius. Measured and just a little bit sinister. I can't leave the room if this is playing. (Apparently you can get hold of it on the special edition of Sleeping With Ghosts.)
There you have it. Three covers and five perky songs. Hm. Representative? Probably not.
I'm supposed to tag another 7, but I can't imagine who would be reading this that hasn't already done it, or doesn't regularly post whatever they're into anyway. (Yes, Patroclus, I'm thinking of you.) So I'll fall back on the traditional "I'm tagging YOU... if you wanna."
