Does anyone understand this?

What's this fascination with the Hitchens sibling rivalry? I thought Christopher's article in Vanity Fair was in dubious taste. If you've had a longstanding row with your brother, and are claiming that it has been built up by the media, and feel that the time has come to move on, surely it's more appropriate to approach him personally* than to write a big bloody one-sided article about it? I suppose I'm being terribly suburban, not wanting to wave dirty laundry in public, but it does seem odd.

And it's somehow even odder to have The Guardian pick up on it. "Ooh goody, let's have them kiss and make up - as a scoop for us!" How prurient. It's Hello! for the literati.
_____
* Though I believe Peter says Chris did write to him privately - but at the same time as publishing the article. Not quite private enough, to my mind.

I just have one thing to say.

That is an egregious untruth. Three things to say.

1) STILL no home hypercyberinterwebnet*. This is agony. This is going to impede blogging a while longer. [wails]

2) Nothing I have said in any previous post should be taken as in any way unappreciative of you, my fabulous readers. I love chatty Yanks, yes I do. It's nothing but delightful getting to know you, and we all know the special love that comments bring. And I promise to be more attentive to you all - both here and in your own cyberhomes - just as soon as we get this damn connection sorted out. No, I don't know what's taking so long either.

3) I have cats. Two of them. They moved in last Wednesday night; it should be taken as irrefutable proof of the burden of under-inter-ing I labour under (and the remarkable pressures of last press day) that it has taken me THIS LONG to report this Very Important Fact. Harvey and Gemima**** will be appearing mostly on this page, not the Scrivenings, for the same reason that I don't post here about knitting*****.

We thank you for your patience during this difficult time and look forward to resuming our normal service as soon as possible.

_____
* Beloved recently heard me use the word "interweb" for the first time**. He hates it. Somehow he has never encountered anyone using this word ever. Somehow he feels it is Silly, and not in a good way. Go figure. I therefore feel dutybound to up the Silliness until he deals.
** Note, not "I used the word for the first time". He heard me for the first time. Not a great listener, my beloved***.
*** Sometimes Beloved actually reads this thing. I'm kind of enjoying the suspense of waiting for him to catch up. I'm sure I will be able to hear the howls of rage right across London when he reads this. And the whole phone post. Living dangerously, me.
**** Named by previous owners, hence the interesting spelling of Gemima. Oddly enough it's not the first time I've had a cat called Jemima. But I only looked after the previous one for a few days, so I reserve the right to claim that this is in fact the first time I have had a girlcat.
***** Niche audience. Or more accurately: I can't bring myself to actually not post about the boring stuff, so I just stick it elsewhere in hopes that it's not so boring to everyone - after all there's a ridiculous number of knitbloggers out there. And many of them have cats in residence.

Blog challenged

Being offline four days out of seven – those being the four days I am technically allowed to waste my time on frivolous online pursuits such as, say, blogging – is causing my relatively new and fragile blog muscles to atrophy. As it were. My three days in the office are taken up with – in no particular order, dear Boss – work; catching up on emails from neglected friends; and catching up on must-read blogs. In between, I would like to be blogging myself, but I am generally ambushed by extreme internet-abuse guilt (or occasionally actual work) before I get to that point.

Plus, having spent my four offline days mentally penning posts of truly breathtaking wit, originality and eloquence, somehow they all disappear in a puff of – something puffy – by the time I’ve read everyone else’s blogs and been distracted by particularly long and involved comments threads. Or intimidated by their far superior creativity and, well, time on hand. Or shamed by their sharp commentary on topics of such, er, sharp topicality into the realisation that no, I really can’t post about the Huf Haus show that was on last Thursday. If ever there was a time for that, it is long, long past.

So you’ll just have to wait a bit longer for my sparkling bon mots, yes you will.

Also I haven’t seen Star Wars yet. And I fear your wrath*.

And I was really disappointed by the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Although Marvin was cool.

_____
* I’m starting to think my blog has been hijacked by two particularly chatty Yanks. Naming no names, of course.

Two links for two people

Cate and Glorious: since you liked Store Wars, I assume you have also seen The Meatrix?

And of course, the best of all:
Cows With Guns.

Have a good day, now.

Where I want to go on holiday

Having just been given an amazingly glamorous travel accessory (for our leather wedding anniversary, on Sunday), of course my thoughts have turned to Going Away.

I think this would make the most perfect destination for, say, my 30th birthday.

Beloved? Are you listening? Dear? Um... never mind that business about the phone. I take it all back. Honey?

Husband management 101

My major achievement of the weekend: getting Beloved to buy a new phone. He has been talking about it for six months to a year; his existing phone is so unreliable, there's not much point to carrying it; it hasn't happened. The New Phone Campaign finally bore fruit - but it wasn't easy.

I give you a summarised transcript. Bear in mind, this cycle was repeated at length, over the course of several months leading up to the final act.

BELOVED: I need a new phone.
SCROOBIOUS: Yes you do.
B: I could get a phone with cool stuff on it.
S: Yes you could.
B: Cool phones are expensive.
S: Yes they are. You could get a basic phone, since all you really use it for is texting, and Snake is enough to keep you happy on the games front.
B: No. I could get a cool phone for very little on a contract.
S: *sigh* Yes you could. Here's some deals for you to look at.
[insert research period]

B: Contracts are expensive.
S: Yes they are.
B: They start at £15 or £20, and that doesn't even include free texts.
S: Right. So you're just paying for the phone. And at that price, you could buy the phone upfront in a few months.
B: Right. I could just get a pay-as-you-go phone.
S: Yes you could. Here's some deals for you to look at.
[insert research period]

B: Prepay phones aren't much cheaper.
S: No they're not.
B: And they're SIM-locked.
S: Yes they are. You could get a phone on your current network, or you could get any phone and have it unlocked easily. Or you could get a SIM-free phone for much the same price.
B: Right. I should look into that.
[insert waiting period]

S: So have you found a phone?
B: No I haven't.
S: Thought not. Here's some deals for you to look at.
B: Ooh! Cool!
[insert waiting period]

S: So have you found a phone yet?
B: Er...
S: *sigh* Have you looked at the deals I showed you?
B: Er, yes.
S: Did you like any?
B: Er... don't remember.
S: *sigh*
B: Look, I just need to do some more research. Just, er, not right now. I have very important and pressing things to do.
S: Like get a phone that works.
B: You know, actually I don't need a phone.
S: !!!!!!!!!
B: Er...
[insert waiting period. Rinse, repeat.]

All of this repeated itself at intervals until this weekend. After having revisited most of the above conversation on Friday, we had to go into town on Saturday, and since we *happened* to be walking down Oxford Street, I suggested we might as well pop into a few phone shops.

[enter phone shop]
S: Look, here are the prepay phones.
B: Oh. [wanders off to the shiny phones] These are nicer.
S: *sigh* Yes. Those are the contract phones.
B: Oh. [grabs salesperson] Tell me about your contracts.
S: !!!!!!!!!

After a few of these little visits, I informed Beloved that he WOULD have a phone by the end of the day. His frothy laughter did nothing to soothe my ire. We stopped going into shops. However! Later, we were at my office, so that I could do some work and he could research broadband providers. I finished my work; of course he wasn't finished. I did a little Kelkoo-ing. Eventually he was approximately done with the broadband research [insert cyclical conversations much like the above, but that's another story].

S: Look what I did. I found some great SIM-free phone deals.
B: Ooooh! Cool! How sweet and lovely of you.
S: Yes. Look here.
[insert lengthy conversation as BELOVED looks up user reviews of each phone, and suggests other phone models for me to find deals on]
B: This is fun.
S: Yes. Do you like any of these?
B: Oh yes, well... but I'm not supposed to be making up my mind yet am I?
S: You're supposed to be about five minutes away from placing an order.
B: [mouth opens and closes. No sound.]
S: I do mean that.
B: Er - right. [faces screen with new intensity]

[more discussions, browsing etc. Choices are narrowed down to five. The shortlist is compared in terms of phone features, user ratings and value. Mini-cycle of the following conversation is repeated a few times - S: "Right, so phone A is better than phone B, and cheaper. So we can cross phone B off." B: *squeak!*]

B: Okay, I think we have a winner. I want the N-Gage.
S: Okay. I'm placing an order.
B: Okay.
[insert web form filling period]
S: Okay. I'm about to hit the button.
B: Wait!
S: ...
B: The games for N-Gage cost about £20 each.
S: Do you need a lot of games?
B: I'm going to spend a lot of money on games.
S: Hm.
B: I think I want the cheap phone.
S: Okay.

Store Wars!

I can think of a dietician Star Wars fan who might like this.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The new Monopoly version has got it all wrong. Kicking out Bow Street, okay, but Oxford Street? Still one of the major London arteries! The London Eye is a tourist attraction, but not prime real estate. Canary Wharf is flashy, but the property values aren't anywhere near Mayfair - just ask those who were trying to flog sublets for FREE this time last year. Whereas prime West End rents are still at least a third above those in the City. And really, losing Angel to bring in Hammersmith? What?!

Dudes. If you're going to make over a classic, get it right.

Or maybe I'm taking this way too seriously. Ahem. I blame my job.

Some things

Things that have made me happy today:

The Thames, sparkling in clear spring morning sunshine.

My hair, growing. It probably does that a lot, but I haven’t been able to tell.

Lovely emails from faraway friends.

Knowing that I’m one step closer to getting a cat (the rehoming agency has been contacted and need to do a homecheck, whatever that means).

Things I have learnt from this move*:

Money helps. Paying double for two men and a large van, rather than hiring a small self-drive van, meant the difference between three hours of efficiency and a whole day of agony. When the men are big crocodile-wrestling, kangaroo-eating Aussies**, who seize a large box in each arm and bound down stairs with gazelle-like grace, even better.

There is no such thing as too many boxes.

There is definitely such a thing as too much stuff. Especially in a furnished flat. Landlords, take heed: if your flat has three sets of crockery, three sets of pots, three duvet/pillow sets, two vacuum cleaners, and two shower curtains – before tenants have even moved in – that’s too much stuff.

Cable providers cannot be trusted. Just because you have three conversations about location of your new home, booking installation, (un)availability of technicians, and so on, does not mean they actually provide cable in your area. Cross-examination may be useful in future***.

First thing you do with your new front door key: put in pocket. Not on the inside of the door. Especially not just before you go out and pull the door shut behind you. With useful phone numbers and working mobile phone on the inside. Got that, Beloved?

Things I have discovered from living in the suburbs (so far):

Birds. They don’t just come in pigeon or seagull shapes. Who knew?

Foxes. Much bigger when they’re standing still. Also, not exclusively nocturnal.

Neighbours: useful when you lock yourself out on your first day, but danger of privacy invasion exists. Strategies to discourage excessive chattiness must be developed. Any hints welcome.
_____
* Number two in a series. Number one was a special email-only edition last August. Lucky you if you were on the list. It was much longer and full of highly edifying information.
** Not really. While Aussies were implied, in fact one was a big Kiwi and one was a small Pom. Still worked, though. Although they weren’t all that graceful, either. But very effective.
*** So we expect to be offline EVEN LONGER. You can see how angry this makes me. Shouty, shouty. Meh.

Because I haven't opened myself up to mass scorn for a while

I am more than usually anguished by my self-punishing peek at Television Without Pity. Seeing that Lorelai and Luke are actually shagging and America's Next Average Models are in Cape Town in this mystical future inhabited by US television watchers is triggering the kind of frustration normally reserved for remembering that Survivor and Days of Our Lives go on, but I CAN'T GET THEM on any channel I've found here in the UK.

Just as well, really. If I could actually watch Days, I don't think I could trust myself not to blog about it. And then my readers would all turn their backs in disgust. Forever.

Don't hate me because I have risible taste in couch potato fodder. Please.

Orwell lives

A quick refresher on double-speak: use words to mean exactly the opposite of what they appear to mean. Thus, the "Ministry of Peace" is in fact the ministry of war. "Ministry of Truth" is the ministry of propaganda. And "an individual's right to choose their working hours" is "a company's right to impose working hours"
*.

Not that I feel particularly strongly on this subject. I just feel strongly on the manipulation of language in this quote. This is not about individual choice, this is about companies wanting to protect their right to demand longer working hours from employees. I don't know many individuals who willingly "choose" to work more than 48 hours a week; in fact I don't know many who feel able to choose their hours at all. And while I'm not sure to what degree this should be legislated or standardised throughout Europe, I do feel, passionately, that the prevailing work culture of longer and longer hours - especially in media industries - is Evil and should be fought at every opportunity.

Which is (partly) why I asked for a three-day week.

And ever since, regularly beat myself up over making such an anti-career move. But that's by the by.

_____
* I think I've been overdoing the new windows. After all, we all know how to right-click, don't we? No more new windows. Anyone who feels strongly that new windows are The Way To Go, please yell, in the approved comment format. Anyone who sees such comment, thinks they're a pain in the butt and wishes to defend the individual's right to open windows at will, ditto.

Creative sleep deprivation

About two years ago, I was woken up at about 3am every morning by the phone ringing. The caller, evidently ringing from far away, did not speak English. I did not speak their language (I'm tempted to identify as "Stupid", but that would be mean. Then again, so was waking me up at 3am every bloody night). Nonetheless, they called, regularly, in a futile attempt to get through to whatever faraway loved one they believed should have been at my number. Presumably, the call was important enough, and the callee loved enough, that the intended recipient would not have minded being woken up at 3am. Not as much as I did, anyway. Every night. Repeatedly.

I would tell the misguided caller, futilely, that they had the wrong number; knowing they did not understand me, but hoping they would at least realise that I did not speak their language, nor know anyone at this number who did. I would hang up. They would call back. I would hang up, and unplug the phone. Silence might ensue for, say, half an hour. Then they would call back. I (or Beloved; he was not on the phone side of the bed, but was sometimes kickable into action at this point) would stumble out of bed, out of the room, into the lounge, and hunt in the dark, behind the desk, for the plug to the second phone. We could then sleep again.

We learnt to unplug both phones before going to bed. This continued for at least a month. My theory at the time was that this might be part of a cunning demoralisation campaign being launched from the Middle East: hey, you wanna bomb us? We will keep you awake. So there. See how you like conquering the world on insufficient sleep. Ha! If only I could have explained that they were targeting the wrong people; that I would gladly have passed their "Iraq called; please don't bomb" message onto the Powers That Be, but they weren't taking my calls. Or those of the other million people on that march. Ahem. Never mind.

So, that was then, and that was tiresome, and peculiar. However, in the inexplicability stakes, it pales into comparison beside last night's 3am wake-up call. Which wasn't a call at all.

It was a jackhammer.

In a quiet sidestreet, at 3am, someone was running a bloody jackhammer, drilling up the tarmac.

I stumbled out of bed in an effort to see what was going on, and perhaps vent my feelings in a choice manner, but was foiled in my attempt to shed all dignity by the three cubic metres of boxes between me and the window. Luckily, I could hear someone else yelling on my behalf. But all I could do was crawl back to bed and pull the pillow over my head.

Only two possible explanations present themselves.

One: a very stupid benefit fraudster was doing a bit of manual labour on the quiet (not realising that the extreme and unlikely volume of noise produced would render this rather less than ideally quiet). Probability: extremely slender. I doubt anyone other than the council would be paying anyone to dig up the street, and I can't imagine anyone having the balls to defraud the council by working for the council.

Two: a very stupid murderer was trying to hide the body. Probability: also slender. In this neighbourhood, even the very stupid would have to realise that a better option would be to leave the corpse lying around with a strategically suspicious needle.

So I'm stumped. Any ideas?

Staring into the abyss

Beloved has just called me with some bad - no, terrible - no, DEVASTATING - news. We're going to be offline for a bit longer than previously anticipated. Due to some missing mail (c'mon, people! Mercury isn't even retrograde!), shortage of technicians in the north-west area, woolly mammoths*, whatever, the good people who supply that miracle known as broadband will be keeping an impolite distance for, oh, 10 days, two weeks, who's counting?

ME, that's who. Desperate little ME. I'm not sure I remember how to manage my life without Google. How am I supposed to handle the traditional post-move Ikea trip without some serious pre-shop planning on the website? I wibble just thinking about it.

And please, for the love of all that's holy, do not mention the painful absence of email and [shudder] BLOGGING! Oh sweet blog, how I have come to love thee, in thy six short months of existence. You're the cutest half-year-old ever. And your lovely little friends, they delight me. They call to me. They keep me glued to my desk for far, far longer than is healthy.

The mature response to this situation might be to welcome the chance to break my 40-a-day habit (40 clicks, that is, not counting comments; well, on a bad day). After all, I won't be completely incommunicado. From Tuesday to Thursday I can abuse the company server to my addict's heart's content.

But then, I'm not very mature.

_____
* A joke for three people. Or possibly none, since the mammoths appear to have wandered out of their usual terrain, where they nudge misbehaving adventurers back into line, and into the streets of London, where they are seriously getting in the way of some no doubt confused technicians.

Maybe.

The champion defends her title

While some have made claims to the contrary, I still maintain that with an average of nearly 1 change of address for every year of my life, I have moved more times than anyone I know. (Greg: if Jacqlyn wants my crown, bitch is gonna have to come over here and take it from me.) And I can tell you that this experience has come in handy. The secret is all in the preparation. Wisdom that I have, on this occasion, applied as follows:

1) Ordering in supplies. Many, many boxes. Possibly too many. A situation I would never before have believed possible. Final verdict to be delivered after D-Day (Thursday). (Still keep running out of bubble wrap, though.)

2) Ordering in really essential supplies. Unfortunately, Beloved got at my Jaffa Cakes and I am temporarily low on fuel. I'm sure this can be rectified, however, before crisis point is reached.

3) Getting started rather ahead of time. I have therefore spent the weekend - while Beloved was at work - packing, and doing laundry. It normally takes about a week to get through one average-sized load of laundry in this flat, for two reasons: first, we have a teeny little baby washing machine. Second, we have just one clothes airer, and one spot (handily, right in front of the radiator) to stand it, fully laden with damp clothes dripping on each other. One half-load thus requires a few days to dry. UNLESS you exert Scroobious Superpowers as follows: keep the radiator on a few hours per day, despite the weather; rotate the laundry on a two-hourly basis to ensure that the garments closest to the heat source are turned around and dried in double time, removed, and next driest garments take their place, enabling another small load to be added before the whole airer is available. Success! Four loads in one weekend. So we can move clean clothes, not laundry. Which satisfies something deep in my anal soul.

And packing. It's rather odd tackling the packing of an entire two-person flat entirely by myself (well, almost). Especially when Person #2 is famously Swiss and has the ability, unique in my experience, of being able to treat any packing exercise as a 3D jigsaw puzzle, and ensure that when done, not so much as a cockroach has room to turn around* inside the packed box. Or van, for that matter. I have photos that would astound you. (Can't show. No idea where the photos are.) So, I have a little performance anxiety; it's tough living up to such genius. And plus, when confronted with his files, I simply seized up and refused to continue. The first two box-fulls, okay. Man needs to keep records. But then I discovered the stash under the bed. Who on earth needs that many files? For the love of space, what can he possibly be keeping in there?

I'm getting a little distracted here. My point was, I been busy. Packing. Laundry. Packing again. At this point, there is precious little free floor area at Chez Scroobious. There is nearly nowhere to sit (desk chairs and bed are about the only options). The morning sun peeks in only to taunt, because it's impossible to get anywhere near the one corner of this little rabbit hutch that actually gets any sun. I'd show you, but no idea where the camera is, either.

And it's only going to get worse. Already, there's pretty much nothing that can be done here except: pack; eat (assuming you can navigate your way around the kitchen packing zone enough to find comestibles); sneeze (thanks to all the dust that has been stirred up from its happy resting places behind couch, etc); watch TV and sleep. This is perhaps a good thing, as it encourages maximum packing, out of sheer boredom if nothing else. I'm hitting the most difficult patch, though: the point at which the easy stuff (books, clothes) has all been packed, I'm halfway through the kitchen - tricky, since we still need to eat here for three days - and then I'm just surrounded by all the little knickknacks that will be shoved on top of things in the nearest open box when all the boxes have been filled with their Core Ingredients. And of course there's all the electronic stuff. Which is most certainly Beloved's territory. So, um... what next?

[twiddles thumbs]

Hey, who else is gonna have a go at Red Meat?**
_____
* Cockroaches being the fiendish little buggers that they are, they might get in initially, but then they'll find themselves forced to simply move along in a straight line until they find an exit point. Or starve. No three-, four- or even six-point turns will be possible.
** Gersh, I admire your recharacterisation of the Lonesome Cowboy into the Bragsome Cowboy. A bold move, and one that I feel has paid off.

Make your own comic!

I tried.

Now you try.

Three things I learnt in Hamburg

1) Dogs can play football.

2) When a gorgeous blonde is telling a joke involving a gorgeous woman, she will describe her as "gorgeous woman, long, dark hair..." Anyone else would simply say "a gorgeous blonde". Interesting.

3) When non-English speakers sing English songs, they learn each line as a single word. I observed this both at Angie's nightclub, and in conversation with an Italian man, second language German, who was trying to learn to play and sing rock classics. He asked us to help him with the pronunciation; we said it, he repeated it, he wrote it down. ("Mama tek dis begg off mi," was his exact notation.) Fortunately, he wasn't much interested in having the lyrics interpreted. Explaining A Whiter Shade of Pale would be a bit beyond me in any language.

Ich bin ein Hamburger

hummel
Originally uploaded by Scroobious.

...big, round and greasy.

But we're back on home turf now, away from mammoth 5-hour brunches and excessively generous Turkish restaurants, so the overfeeding should stop forthwith - indeed, it already has - and I hope to resume my regular, slightly less overstuffed shape shortish.

We went up the Michel and down the harbour; into museums and out auf der Kiez. We saw erotic art and exotic dancers*. We have blisters, postcards, and absolutely no better German than when we left.

Selected observations and hypotheses:

1) Hamburg Krauts are sauer. Except when they're gay men. Those are quite friendly and have even mastered Advanced Smiling.

2.a) Hamburgers are very concerned about their coiffures. At least, that was my assumption, after seeing a Friseur on every corner. But,

2.b) closer examination of Hamburg females on the street seems to contradict this theory. Final conclusion still pending.

3) For a media town, Hamburg is really not very stylish.

4) For a party town, Hamburg is really not that vibrant, even when the whole town is out to tanz in der Mai.

5) If I'm getting snitty about a perfectly civilised city, just because it's not as fashion-conscious or as busy as London, I have been in London way, way too long.

So let's drop the generalisations and pick out some highlights, courtesy of the Scroobious Guide to Hamburg. Gentle reader, should you be dropped off in this charming northern town one weekend, you could do worse than to try the following.

1) Have a drink at superstyling harbourfront bar Au Quai (the pics really don't do it justice). You could lie on the big cushiony-table things lining one wall, and raise an eyebrow at the passing crowd; or you could sit at the cushiony spiral thing in the corner and raise an eyebrow at the pretentious types by the wall; or you could sit out on the terrace and raise an eyebrow at the bizarrely angled warehouse/office/who-knows-what that has just been dumped in the middle of the dock. (Really. The dock. Not the dockside. The dock.)

2) Visit the Miniatur Wunderland and take a close look at the little people. The very first thing I saw was a corpse lying in the river. Other fun details are the riot outside the football stadium; the picnic raft heading over the rapids; the avalanche on the ski slope; and - no, it's not all morbid - the seven dwarfs in the mountain mines.

3) Have lunch at Turnhalle St Georg, a converted gymnasium on the Lange Reihe. Wins points for a friendly gay waiter, good food and good looks.

4) Go to the Kunsthalle and admire some of the most beautiful art in the world, beautifully presented. Then go to the Erotic Art Museum and shake your head over a good concept, atrociously presented.

5) Wander along the harbour. Go on ships. Stuff. My feet hurt too much at this point for me to be concentrating on my duty as a tourist.

Also. Hummel-hummel.

_____
* Not really. We did go past the sleazy clubs, but not into them. Sorry.