The problem with London (reprise)

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!

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* 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.

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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.

The Problem with London*

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.

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* 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 am very busy and important.

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.

Reflections on a girls' night out

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.

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* 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.