How to turn 30

It is common to harbour some anxiety about exiting one’s 20s. Having just survived the experience, I can assure you that this anxiety is entirely misplaced. In fact, I thoroughly recommend turning 30. This special Scroobious Guide will explain what procedure to follow for maximum enjoyment. The method described does require the full engagement of a willing partner, however, so some forward planning may be required to find such a person.

How to turn 30

1) Pack your bags. It’s going to be a long weekend. You needs lots and lots of glamorous clothes, plus a swimsuit. Under no circumstances should you pack a laptop or anything to remind you of work (much less enable you to access it).

2) Be whisked off to a very smart hotel*, preferably in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Tell guest relations no, you do NOT want to know how to access the internet, thank you.

3) You’re going out tonight, so start primping. Ideally you want to be wearing a cute new outfit, with shoes that look like you can’t dance in them, but that are actually quite danceable. This is important. Apply maximum glamour.

4) Get a taxi** to the trendy nightspot carefully chosen by your loving partner, who has of course reserved a few tables for your many friends.

5) Graciously accept bags full of gifts from your many friends, but don’t open them yet. Partake of the lavishly flowing champagne and nibbly bits. Marvel at the Black Forest martinis. Dance. Dance a lot. Dance with everybody. Nobody cares that you can’t actually salsa.

6) Take a rickshaw home at 3am. Collapse into that huge, snowy, delicious bed. Darling, you were fabulous.

7) Breakfast in bed, obviously. Read the paper, enjoy your mocha. Mmmmm. Maybe you want to get up and go out. Maybe you don’t. (Maybe your feet really don’t.) Maybe you want to go for a swim (there’s underwater music in the pool, you know). Maybe you want to take a nap. Maybe you can think of other things to do in that bed. Maybe there isn’t anywhere better to be in the whole world than that bed. Maybe you should make the most of it.

8) Sooner or later you do have to venture outside, if only because you have theatre tickets. You could visit a little museum if you want (nothing too challenging). Have dinner. Enjoy the show. Go for a drink. Stay out late — after all, you don’t have to worry about getting the last train home, do you?

9) Good morning! It’s your birthday! Get your partner to pour that lovely champagne the hotel sent up for you, and bring you all those gorgeous presents. Open them while sampling your scrumptious chocolate truffle birthday cake (also from the hotel). Wow! So many wonderful presents — jewellery, music, Tim Burton! Aren’t you spoilt.

10) Breakfast in bed, again. You don’t have to check out just yet.***

11) Okay, now you do have to check out. Go to an exhibition. Stroll around town. Have tea. Someone else still wants to spoil you, you know.

12) Meet your dad. Watch a movie. Have dinner.

13) It’s probably time to go home now. Your cats are missing you. Get a taxi. You’ve done well. Tomorrow morning you can start catching up on all the work you expected to be doing over the weekend… and dealing with the guilt of being so very scandalously spoilt.

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* A quick peek in hidden corners of the room will determine whether the hotel is suitable — both posh and playful. There should be chocolate-dipped plums in the mini-bar, and the Gideon Bible should be accompanied by How to Change the World for a Fiver.
** Cute new shoes, remember? So what if the venue is a mere five-minute walk from the hotel? Save your shoes for dancing; it might be wet out there.
*** Even if you’re terribly unlucky and your birthday happens to fall on the first day of British summer time, meaning the one hour of the year that falls into a black hole gets stolen from your day… not that you’re bitter.

Because we all love a good photo story

Shakespeare's Sister brings you Bush's plan for victory.

The next few days are looking to be quite full, what with birthdayfications and trying to get things done around them. Terribly busy and important, that's me. So I'll see you on the other side of 30. Or just before. Oh! The suspense!

Just in case

None of you are going to the Rectilineal Swine tonight, right?

Cos I won't be there.

Announcement

I have had perfectly polished nails for almost two whole days now, with nary a sign of chipping. I must be growing up.

However, I don't seem to have gained much in the way of self-awareness, over the course of three decades. I'm still caught quite unawares every time my body affects my mood. As for instance the onset of excessive grump that has been hitting me roughly once a month. I turn into a tantrumy overgrown toddler and then am quite surprised to discover, a day or so later, that there might have been a hormonal reason for that little outburst...

Or, consider those occasions when I'm Coming Down With Something. Just t'other day, Beloved asked me if I was getting sick. When I realised (about a day later; I'm a bit slow) that yes, I was, I mentioned to him how my mother always knew I was getting sick before I did, because I'd get all tearful and pathetic over the slightest thing, and would insist that no, really, this broken nail (say) was terribly upsetting and the whole world was against me.

"Like how you almost cried over Movable Type on Sunday?" he said.

Oh. Yes. Like that.

(And yes, I will be migrating to MT shortly. I'm trying to set up two MT blogs at the same time — one shiny new Scroobious, one Purlescence. And I've come to realise I'm just not clever enough for this and shoulda settled for Typepad*. Luckily I have Beloved to help... if I can just get him when we're both awake and at home.)

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* No, I shouldn't. Easy, but not nearly flexible enough. So.

Far too good to languish in the comments

That lovely and talented man, X, alerted me to this: the Hokey-Pokey as written by Shakespeare. Verily, 'tis a thing of euphonious charm.

Update

Still March.
Still cold.
Still busy.
Not old yet.
Very, very stupid.
Grrrrr.

Back soon.

On the thickness of blood

Anne Arkham describes how it feels to be comforted by her dad. Beautifully written as always, but reading that, and the comments, left me feeling strangely alienated. I don’t seem to know what they’re talking about.

I can’t even imagine opening up to either of my parents in that way; still less feeling better for it. With my mom, the tables were turned too long ago – she’s been the little girl in the relationship for at least 15 years. My dad only needed comforting more recently, but before that, we just didn’t relate in that way. We’re friends. We care about each other. But he’s not someone I’d turn to for comfort.

I don’t mean to sound sorry for myself. I have an abundance of love, friendship and support in my life. I feel plenty cared for. It’s just that “family” is not a concept that has ever meant much to me.

A friend said to me the other day, “But you do love your mom, right?” Well, I guess I do. I care what happens to her. She has the power to hurt me. I want her to share what’s going on in my life… to an extent. When she’s not really pissing me off, I can feel affectionate indulgence for her, and I remember how close we used to be when I was little. I have a picture of her at age three, or thereabouts, that fills me with tenderness and heartache. But I don’t feel warmly towards her. I don’t feel able to say “I love you” without a liar’s guilt.

And I feel a little bit sad about that.

Because it's my civic duty

Help Candy googlebomb Bill Napoli.

But only if you think rape is only a problem when the victim is really religious. If you think atheists don't mind, or that it's okay to rape someone who wasn't "saving herself", feel free to ignore this.

On the dreamblogging bandwagon

Everyone's dreaming about Angelina Jolie these days. Not me. This was last night's entertainment:

I returned a library book, only to realise I'd returned the wrong one and had to go barefoot in the cold.*

I made polite chitchat with the librarian, who told me excitedly about all the plans she'd made for my imminent childbirth experience, where I had to go, etc etc. I was too polite to tell her (a) how freaked out I was by her extreme involvement in my pregnancy, considering she was just some librarian I barely knew, and (b) the pregnancy was off. False alarm.**

While making my escape, I took acid, for the first time and for no apparent reason; got a bit freaked out when I thought I was eating my fingers and resolved to Get Over It, which I successfully did.

So I went home and blogged about it.

In the dream.

I blogged in my dream.

I really don't know what to say about that.

_____
* Oh, like your dreams make sense.
** No, this has absolutely no bearing on reality.

The Almighty speaks

'"If Tony Blair thinks his friendship with George W Bush is worth rubbing out a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, then that's something he can talk over with me later," said God. "But when he starts publicly claiming that's the way I do the arithmetic too, it's time I put my foot down!" It is well known that God has a very big foot.'

God: I've lost faith in Blair

[Ed's note: poor God. That whole performance review thing in January seems to have got him on the defensive right from the start of 2006.]

Girl is to mother as boy is to man

In honour of International Women’s Day*, I bring you a Serious Post. I was going to write something fluffy about fashion. But then this particular issue started to really get on my tits.

Madeleine Bunting wrote in yesterday’s Guardian that pregnancy is no longer seen as something to congratulate someone on. She coined the term “anti-natalist” to describe this “bias against having babies [that] has permeated our culture”, and refers to those births that do indeed take place as “spectacular everyday acts of rebellion”.

It’s an interesting argument, and I can see her point about how motherhood flies against the consumer culture. But I take exception at the implication that not having babies is a selfish, immature, inherently consumerist choice.

Mostly, though, I take exception at the way a private decision to breed or not to breed has been politicised by all sides. And when attacks on breeders are being made, it’s women on the receiving end. As Zoe Williams recently pointed out, also in the Guardian, people seem to forget that this is — generally speaking — as mutual a decision as it is possible to make. Why? Because deep in our collective unconscious is the idea that having babies is absolutely integral to womanhood.

A 12-year-old girl getting her first period (and hence a potential mother) is often congratulated: “You’re a woman now!” Really? The law doesn’t consider her a consenting adult for another four years. New mothers tend to gush about finally feeling “fulfilled as a woman”, and conversely, childfree women are used to being asked if they don’t feel they’re missing out on a vital experience of womanhood. When these questions are directed at men, there is a full stop after “vital experience”. I have never, ever heard it suggested that a man isn’t fully a man until he’s a father.

Women, even childless women, are often described as “motherly” or “Earth mother types”. The closest masculine equivalent, in common usage, would be “avuncular”.

So it’s no wonder women have to bear the brunt of all this concern with the reproductive rate. Women who don’t have babies are called selfish (despite the very reasonable arguments that can be made that it’s breeders who are the selfish ones). Women who do, and work? Also selfish. How dare you put your career ahead of your children’s quality time! Women who have babies and don’t work? Betrayers of the feminist cause, letting their education go to waste that way.

We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. And they say feminism has nothing left to achieve.

_____
* It's also National No Smoking Day. Kids, don't puff. There, I've done my bit.

Things to make you go Ooooh!

This is really rather wow. Choose the flash version, the html just doesn't compare.

I like the lizard-eating trees. Also the skeleton of... that weird little flying thing, right above the hippie kids on clouds. Nice juxtaposition.

Why hobbits are better than elves

Best fan quote from Ringers: Lord of the Fans:

"A hobbit will still be there in the morning. You think an elf will still be there? Fleetfooted elves — no. He'll take off. But a hobbit, he'll want to cuddle, and he'll still be there the next day. And then he'll make you breakfast."

FYI

Parcelforce is the devil.

The. Devil.

That is all.

Edit:
...but Google Analytics is Da Bomb.

Up, down, up, that's me.

A rash and foolhardy proposition

Right, so I might have mentioned this birthday thing. Naturally an event of such enormous importance to the citizenry cannot go uncelebrated. And naturally if you know me, and are in London, you will probably already have received your invitation to the champagne-soaked revelry, unless I don't like you, in which case sod off.

This is for the rest of you.

I will be available for pre-birthday drinks, probably at the Square Pig in Holborn, on the evening of Thursday 23 March. You could call this a blogmeet, except that I may well have a few work mates there too. Does that sound scary? Good. It is a Test.

If you're dedicated enough — either to me or to Johnny Depp — to attend, and if you don't all prove to be a distressingly peculiar lot, there may be a follow-up meeting. With DVDs. And cake. And pink leather sofas. Patroclus is to blame, although not for the sofas.

See what I mean about a rash and foolhardy proposition? I haven't even mentioned this plan to Beloved. I fear his wrath. Or that he'd talk some sense into me.

March 2006: the Scroobious preview

Coming soon!!! Blogging to look forward to in the month ahead:

Whining about the weather
Heavyhanded hints about my birthday
More whining about the weather
Whining about my heavy workload
Did I mention my birthday?
Whining about the bloody weather, bloody country, I should go back and live somewhere with a real climate…
Blogging against sexism on International Women’s Day
I’ll be turning 30 soon, please make the pain go away
Ooh, hangover
Sunshine! No, hang on, it’s already gone again*
Whining about bloody Mercury going bloody retrograde again, which is just bound to wreak havoc with giftage, not that that should stop you
Footnotes, obviously***
And to round it all off, maybe a special bloggy surprise. If I can be arsed.

Are you excited yet??? I know I am!!!

Ooh! Somebody's just given me a box of chocolates for no good reason! I take it all back. This month is going to be fabulous.

_____
* This is a projection based on past experience. In fact today is sunny and gorgeous. As long as you don't actually venture outside. This being the fundamental difference between here and Real Places: weather forecasts truthfully say only "bright" rather than "sunny". Because "sunny" would imply warmth. [insert hollow laughter] Yesterday I saw people sitting eating their lunch at pavement tables, so desperate were they to enjoy the illusion of spring. This despite the fact that a mere five minutes later it was snowing. What is that? Jakkals trou met pikkewyn se vrou?**
** Non-Saffers, don't ask, it'll only confuse you.
*** Not sure what it says about my state of mind that (almost) the only full sentences in this post are in the footnotes.

o-HO!

Now we know who to blame.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, may I direct your attention to paragraph 13: "...She is the personal stylist to, among others, Keira Knightley, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Kate Beckinsale and The OC's Mischa Barton".

The Fuggers' hit list, in other words.

Her crimes against fashion are great. Now, if someone reading this were to take it upon themselves to, say, kidnap Ms Zoe ("rhymes with low", and do you think that's a coincidence?) and incarcerate her for a week or so with nothing but a selection of, say, large coffee-table books celebrating the genius of Prada, or Dior, or Armani, but NOT under any circumstances Christian Lacroix... and maybe a little electro-shock therapy...

Well, if that were to transpire, and I'm not saying it should, I'm sure we could all sleep just a little bit easier. Don't you?

Oh. And while you're at it, maybe you could burn the world's supply of Uggs. The greatest ever fashion mistake that Would Not Die.