The joys of spring

Ah, spring, when a young woman's fancy turns to thoughts of pedicures. And springcleaning.

If you were to visit Chez Scroobious today, you might detect a certain tension in the atmosphere. The walls are brighter, true, the air is fresher, but beneath all that... is the building actually shellshocked? Why yes. Yes, I think it might be.

There has been activity, you see, of the type that normally only happens when you move. The type that involves moving heavy furniture* and scrubbing in every nook and cranny. The type that drives your duster to start emitting pathetic whimpers** after the first room. The type that comes with running commentary like, "I didn't know it was that colour!" and "Oh, so that's where this got to."

It's been fun.

And that's not the only thing. In further frightening domesticity, I am all excited after visiting a lovely little shop full of fabulously colourful and shiny kitchen equipment. You know, real copper pots, that sort of thing. A Nigella Lawson fantasy. I came home with a titanium frying pan and some big knives. Most pleasing. But I keep having flashbacks to a conversation I had, at around 16, with a lovely woman who was almost a mother to me. She was really pleased with her new pots. I said, "If I ever get excited about pots, just shoot me." Yes. I actually said that, to this wonderful person whom I loved and admired very much. And yet we're still friends. I don't deserve such people.

Anyway, I'm excited about pots. It's the beginning of the end, or something.

Oh, and our long neglected posters have been dragged off to the framers. I tell you, we're going to be doing things differently around here, oh yes. Stuff will get done, not put aside for dealing with later. Uh huh.

Well, a girl can dream.

Further signs of spring:

1a) Catnip resurgent.
1b) Stoned cats.
2) Birds. I'd forgotten how many of them we get around these parts. Cool.
3) My fingers are starting to itch for weeding, not knitting. (Well, not only knitting.)
4) Men are still crazy. I got a wolf whistle the other day, from a chap so old and toothless it came out as more of a wolf wheeze. Oh, and of course I shagged George Clooney on Friday night.

Uh huh. He wanted a threesome; he let me pick the other girl. She was dark and exotic, very sexy, but disappointingly passive. Still we had fun, me and George.

I never had a movie star dream before. I like that I go straight for the best.

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*A particular challenge since this little flat is so very crowded, with our furniture on top of the landlady's. In some cases literally.
** If you don't believe cloths can express themselves audibly, then you just haven't been cleaning enough.

No accounting for tastes

Since yesterday, two men have tried to pick me up in the street. This hasn't happened in aaaaages and frankly, I'm confused.

Yesterday: long dress, high-necked jersey. None of it tight or indeed particularly shapely. Hair (frizzy) in ponytail. No make-up. And this chap drives past me three times — leaning out window, grinning like a loon. Finally asks for phone number.

Today: running togs. Running togs. Every lump and bump unforgivingly revealed in cotton lycra. Sweaty. Frizzy haired. Another chap tries to get friendly.

Now, the first one, okay; maybe he has a thing for Puritan chic. I don't get it, but okay. The second one? Seriously. There is no explanation.

Request to the men of the world: please, consider checking me out when I'm actually looking cute. Lipstick. An outfit with a shape to it. Clean, shiny hair. Then, I might feel flattered. As it is I'm a little bit creeped out.

PS. Thank you, oh wise and thoughtful Interwebs, for your response to my glum. What an unexpected bunch of linkage. (Gapingvoid? Love that site, read it often, but not sure why it's supposed to make me smile. Thanks, though.) I'm especially fond of the weird knitting stuff, btw, please keep that coming. You are all very lovely.

Commercial break

A very peculiar thing: I have signed up to do a 10km run in July.

I'll pause here to allow you to collect yourselves. ...Have you quite recovered? Excellent.

Well, as I was saying, I appear to be committed to getting sweaty in public. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, but since the organiser is one of my Truckles buddies, there's a fair chance wine was involved. Also, I think she mentioned the magic words "brunch at the finish line".

So anyway, the training has commenced. On Friday, and again this morning (in the rain!), I ventured out onto the streets of Isleworth for a gentle jog. Redolent as that word is of 80s-style rayon shorts, I'm forced to use it; "running" would be a completely unfitting description of the activity I performed. I think I was actually overtaken by one of the old ladies from The Producers. But the general picking up of knees, kicking up of heels and bouncing of bosoms seemed to indicate that I was doing something more than walking.

I'm pleased to report that I made it to the end of my route (I'm no judge of distance but I reckon it must have been, ooh, 500m at least) without a walking break. Or, for that matter, a collapsing break. At this rate, the 10km will be a doddle; after two months of training, I'll just trot lightly through central London till I get to the pastries. No problem.

There's just one thing. Scarier by far than the training. Part of this whole race deal is getting sponsorship. I've never quite understood that; asking people to pay you to do something completely pointless. But there it is. Our team is running for Muscular Dystrophy; or rather, we're not actually for it, we're against it, even though I hear it kills little kiddies, and I'm kind of against little kiddies, so this is a bit confusing for me.* Still, if you think horrible muscle-wasting disease is a problem (I admit I wouldn't want it), or if you just like the idea of paying me to humiliate myself in public, please donate a few pennies.** It's easy, which is more than I can say for getting me out of bed to pound the pavement.

Edit: of course yesterday was also the London Marathon, which does rather put things in perspective. Look, there are people who will run for 26 miles in chicken suits, and the word for those people is "insane". And then there are people who will run for 10km in tasteful sportswear, and the word for them is "courageous and inspiring". Right? Right.

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* It's a good thing I have so few readers, or I might get into trouble for saying things like that.
** I'm not in that picture. If you give generously, you might eventually see a pic of this year's team, which will include me. Not sure that's an incentive...

Brave new world

Last night Beloved's beloved died. The other woman, obviously, being his iMac. The one he leaves me alone in bed for. Well, my rival, she dead. (I didn't do it. Honest.) No warning. No explanation. Just quietly expired. It is an ex-Mac. It has ceased to be. It has gone to meet its maker. (Except Steve Jobs is still alive, isn't he, so that doesn't quite work.)

Major stress induction here. Not only is this, well, his one true mechanical love, but he had scheduled a rather packed weekend of working on my website (all rather urgent stuff). And I had scheduled a rather packed weekend of freelancing (all rather urgent stuff). Cue visions of the two of us fighting over my PC, wailing at each other to work faster, etc.

Also cue great anxiety over the larger question of dealing with the iMac's untimely demise. How to rescue data? How to replace iMac? Computer purchase is, after all, a major investment requiring weeks of intensive research, financial juggling etc.

Or maybe not.

He's just popped off to the discount Apple Centre up the road (handy, that) to get himself a shiny new laptop. Well, he wanted one anyway. And he's paying cash.

Conclusions:

1) I really, really, really like having a husband in (very) gainful employment.
2) Stress is a great way to concentrate the mind. Considering how hard it was to get him to choose a simple cellphone, this should have been much harder. Let's hear it for stress.

Wibble

I am having lots of homesick right now. Also lots of worry. And frustration. And more worry. And then some extra homesick. With a side order of fretting. There's a lot of chocolate in the house (Beloved went to Switzerland to visit family just before Easter; meditate for a moment on that happy, happy conjunction), but it's not really helping. I haven't put back (much of) the weight I lost in recent fever, even after substantial Easter choc consumption, and even that isn't really helping. So. Help? Tell me something to make me smile. You're the All-wise Interweb, I know you can do it.

Quiet news day at Scroobious Corner

Summary of today's emails between Vivaldifan and I:

"BORED."
"..." (He is actually quite busy, apparently.)
"STILL BORED."
"..."
"BORED AND STRESSED."
"[yawn]"
"NEED COOKIE. SEND COOKIE."
"When is a cookie a cookie, and not a biscuit and not a brownie? Go blog." [Translation: make your own entertainment, woman, and let me publish this here newspaper.]

Which is why we will now broach the Great Cookie Debate.

It is commonly believed that cookie is merely Merkin for biscuit. While this theory has its roots in truth and is appealingly simple, I maintain that this is not so. A biscuit, you see, is a dainty thing that can sit neatly alongside a teacup without completely overbalancing the saucer and causing slooshy mess. It is also light, crunchy, and possibly iced. It may contain raisins (though most do not), but is generally of a smooth consistency.

But a cookie, now, a cookie. A cookie is a great big childish messy thing. It is never a neat circle; it has oozed joyously in the oven. It is full of chocolate chunks, or raisins, or similar textural goodness. It is possible (though, obviously, fundamentally wrong) to get a small cookie, but a cookie baked in the true spirit of cookieness should be bigger than your palm. Preferably much bigger. The mere thought of eating more than one should cause a happy blend of fear and excitement to roost in one's belly. And it is chewy. It tastes of grandmotherly ovens and Saturday afternoons. (Not Sunday. Biscuits taste of Sunday tea with your other grandmother, the ladylike one, the one who tells you that blue and green should never be seen, and who serves tea with biscuits from a tin.)

Brownies are not cookies. Brownies are just dense, chocolatey cake. I have to admit I don't quite understand brownies. And what do you call those divine chocolatey-fudgey things with huge chunks of biscuit in them? They deserve a proper name. Like, say, "manna". Or "mine".

There you have it. I hope that's cleared a few things up.

Now I want a cookie even more. Also a grandmother.

"Intro: Something about Aprille"

"The Reves prologue and Tale: not svre yet – but definitlie haue an ironike aubade and vse the word 'fnorten', for 'fnortynge' ys aboute the funnyeste worde of which y kan thynken)."

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.

Free advice

Here's a career tip. No charge.

If you are the kind of insecure, neurotic wussy who's inclined to wail "nobody loves me!" when your inbox stays empty for more than a few minutes;

if you obsess over your website stats and see every dip as a sure sign that your visitors have realised you're a waste of time and the end is nigh;

or if you have a tendency to spend hours on insanely detailed budgeting and cashflow forecasts, updated as often as new information comes in (i.e. every other day), and to seesaw between rapture and panic at the implications of these extremely dicey calculations:

DO NOT under any circumstances start an online retail business. It will drive you CRAZY.

Dimensional telecommunicational slippage

Oh TITS. I have lost my goddam cellyphone.

And apparently in the time it took me to realise it was lost (two days), the battery died, so that old where's-it-ringing trick isn't working.

And it's my business cellyphone. Well, I try not to publicise the number, but nonetheless it has been printed in two magazines (as well as on every invoice) and theoretically there could be dozens — dozens, I say — of eager customers wondering why I haven't returned their messages.

What kind of stoopid idiot loses their cellyphone in a rather small and fairly tidy (it's just been cleaned goddammit) flat? I know it's in here somewhere. I had it when my mum phoned on Easter morning. I didn't have it this morning. I haven't gone out in between those two times. Possibly not something I should admit so readily, but there it is.

Where is my bloody cellyphone?* I have hunted in and around the bed and bedside tables (I was in bed when my mum called). I have checked all my handbags and jacket pockets, even those I definitely haven't touched since Saturday. I have checked in the bloody pillowcases. I have checked in the deep and cavernous folds of the sofa (an exercise that yielded nothing, not so much as loose pennies, which I'm sure is against the cosmic laws of something or other). I have looked underneath every item of furniture in the whole damn flat.

No cellyphone.

You know when you look in a particular place, and the thing's not there, and five minutes later you look in the exact same place and there it is? A friend of mine calls this dimensional slippage. I believe in it fervently. I'm ready for my phone to slip back now please. Into this dimension I'm in. Please thank you.

Or maybe Jemima swallowed my phone, like Martin in Green Wing. I do hope not. That radioactive wossname can't be good for kitty digestion.

Seriously now. Coo-ee! Cellyphone! Come to mommy!

SERIOUSLY.

Almost instantaneous update: I HAVE FOUND MY CELLYPHONE! Dear little phone. How I missed you.

Apparently I had not checked every single jacket (there's one I forget qualifies as such, which was hiding in a drawer). Apparently, too, I did in fact leave the house on Sunday. Gosh. Mystery solved.

Now I must run away to fill my cellyphone with electrical love. And check messages.
_____
* Also, what on earth did I do to vent my frustrations before blogging? What a sad and dark time that was, to be sure.

Calling MT geeks

Right, the first in a possibly infinite series of stupid Movable Type questions. (I could figure it out slowly, or I could ask for help. I'm asking.)

1. How to change the wording of "X comments" to something cooler?
2. How to post pictures?

Your help appreciated. Assume I know nothing whatsoever about The Internets.

Spring has sprung

Ah, spring. Daffodils in the garden (finally). A touch of sun on the skin. And lunch at Truckles.

Time was, I could tell the instant spring arrived because the air smelt different: greener. Brighter. But that was in Cape Town, and since moving to the Big Smoke, I’ve had to learn new ways to read the changing seasons.

Let’s be clear. I’m not talking about the calendar; 21 March means nothing to me. (Well no, it means “five days till my birthday!”, but that’s not the point.) And I’m not talking about the daffodils — yellow splashes are all very well but they completely fail to lift the gloom that six months of grey dankness soak into me. No, I’m talking about Truckles.

Truckles is a little sun trap near the office: a wine bar stuck in an enclosed terrace, blocking out the wind but basking in the sun. On a day of even moderate temperature, you can sit there with a glass of wine and imagine you’re on holiday far, far away from London. Makes it a bit hard to drag yourself back to the office, but while that lunch break lasts (maybe a leeetle bit longer than it should, teknikly), it is heaven.

And today was the first Truckles day of the year. I guess it might have come earlier, but I was sick, wasn’t I. So today I headed back to the office, and the sun was out, and it was a Truckles day. Spring is officially here.

Your turn. How do you know it’s spring?

And the winner is...

After a stupidly long delay (thanks, kidneys!), I can at last announce the winner of the Scroobious caption contest.

That would be the one person to even try. Demosthenes. Whose entry was so darn good it put everyone else off completely. (Wussies.)

Step up and claim your prize, Dem. What would you have me write about?

How to not learn to ski*

Some eight years ago, I found myself closer to snow than my little African heart had ever quite believed I could get. I was in London. Obviously, there wasn't much snow there — enough to thrill me, admittedly, but not enough to kick about and play with. However, just a short plane hop away was Switzerland, home to cheese, chocolate, crazy soldiers, ski resorts and (temporarily) my own dear Beloved. The plan was, I would join him for a week or so, and while our starving student budgets didn't extend to visiting the mountains, he promised to teach me to "stand on skis" on the gently sloping fields behind his father's house.

Imagine my excitement. Imagine the anticipation.

Imagine me arriving slap bang in the middle of Switzerland's warmest winter in a century, with the fields insufficiently frozen to allow me to bounce on them without damaging the crops underneath. (Or something.)

So. After eight years of talking about "next time", we finally get around to booking a trip to an actual ski resort in actual ski season. (Weeelll... the "in season" part might be stretching the truth a little. But it would be possible to ski.) Just a long weekend, so I'm still not expecting to learn much more than "to stand on skis", but still: me! on skis! At last! As the time approaches, we realise that this agonisingly long winter we've been complaining about will actually have one great advantage: the snow will be better than we might have expected. Beloved spends hours telling me how, exactly, one must stand on skis, and why I mustn't be scared of breaking myself, and how carefully and patiently he will teach me, and how great Rivella tastes after a morning's snowy exercise.

Imagine my excitement. Imagine the anticipation.

Imagine me coming down with a raging fever one day before the trip.

Imagine me hopefully tagging along anyway, because I feel much better this morning really, and surely by Monday at least I'll be ready to do a little on-ski-standing. Imagine that bastard fever giving me the runaround all.bloody.weekend so that by the time I'm on the plane headed back to grey, miserable London, I still haven't gotten any closer to the glorious icing-topped mountain goodness than the flat's sunporch.**

Still, silver lining. I did lose 5 kilos.

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* An infinitive split with care.
** Which I must admit has a lovely view and I spent a couple of very happy hours there on Saturday morning, rolled up in about three duvets.

Meme slut

Patroclus gives me a great excuse to talk about movies, which is much more fun than work, even if I have already laid bare my celluloid loves in previous posts, memes, etc. This is not a proper meme, it's a simple list, which means that (a) I can defend my lack of Proper Blogging with the old "but it's not a real meme!" excuse, and (b) I don't really have much of an excuse for posting this at all.

Like P, I wouldn't get far with the original "best films ever" list, mostly because I haven't actually seen many classic films. So we'll stick with the easy and fun part: my favourite films. Rest assured, most of them won't be sullying any "best ever" lists anyway, so I've pretty much complied with the original instructions without even trying.*

Here we are then. In no particular order, the 10 films I can watch over and over and over:

1) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Gary Oldman has never been as good as he was here. Superb comic timing, brilliantly circuitous logic and smart dialogue, and the cutest Hamlet I've ever seen on screen. But don't worry, this is probably the last "clever" film on the list.

2) Moulin Rouge! Because it's just a great big all-singing, all-dancing Pierre et Gilles fantasy. Sparkly stuff! Fabulous music! Nicole Kidman in amazing outfits! El Tango de Roxanne! What's not to love?

3) The Princess Bride. Do I even have to explain this? I couldn't if I tried, but I will just add: this film brought Beloved and I together. True. Who could wish for a more romantic beginning?**

4) Delicatessen. I love everything about this film. It's stylish and dark and whimsical, all in perfect balance. I wanted to love Amelie, but in the end it was just a little bit too fluffy; it needed darkness. The City of Lost Children was stylish and dark, but more bizarre than whimsical; good in principle, but again, I couldn't quite clasp it to my bosom. Delicatessen, however, is just perfect.

5) Being John Malkovich. John Cusack is always a favourite and this film is tailormade to please me, being chock full of things that are deliciously nonsensical. I mean, half a floor. Genius. (Okay, that's two clever films. Sorry.)

6) Lest you think this list is getting a bit too artsy, I give you: Bring It On. Oh come now, you can't seriously fail to love this, can you? They're so darn cute, and peppy, and bitchy! And the choreographer! And the boy, well, he brings out the cradlesnatcher in me. Oh yes.

7) Can I cheat and stick in the entire oeuvre of Tim Burton? Because I really can't decide. Sorry. If you really want me to narrow it down, we'll make it "the entire oeuvre of Tim Burton with Johnny Depp, but not including Corpse Bride, which hardly featured Johnny at all, what a waste". I also think Lisa Marie made a better muse for him than Helena, but I guess that's his choice.

8) Not that I've got anything against Helena. She was fantastic in Fight Club.

9) And in Room with a View. That kiss... I think I'm allowed one shamelessly soppy film in the list, and this is it.

Oh goodness. Only one slot left to fill. Oh, the pressure. Memento? O Brother where art Thou? Lord of the Rings?

10) Animal House. I'm sorry, I can't help it. It's the dead horse that gets me. The guy measuring the dead horse, then the doorframe, then back to the horse... Absolutely no one I know will watch this with me. But I totally love it.

Edit: Nonono! How could I forget Grease? Sorry, AH, you have to go. Grease is just special. Laugh all you like, but I love that movie.

Postscript: I will watch pretty much anything featuring, by, or in any way associated with: John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, the Coen brothers, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore.

I will have to be forcibly dragged into the cinema to endure: Tom Cruise, Ralph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Now you go.

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* The idea is to post a "fave films ever" list that doesn't overlap AT ALL with your "best films ever" list. Kind of a guilty pleasures thing.
** Ok *teknikly* the romantic beginning was a year later, but without the Princess Bride, we never would have met. Honest.

Caption contest

A challenge in three parts:



The winner gets to dictate the subject of my next post.

(Now watch, nobody's going to even try...)

Spring is in the air...

...and it's snowing blossoms and birds are twittering and the sun is warm and the sky is glorious blue.

At least for five minutes at a time. Then it's bucketing down. Then it's grey and windy. Then the sun is out again. Rinse, repeat. They say Cape Town goes through four seasons in a single day, but that ain't got nothing on London, folks; here we go through all four in a single hour, every hour.

Still, it is spring, and it's not as cold, which is something of a mixed blessing since the cats are much more demanding of being let out at night now. I'm trying to train them out of this, but so far the only difference is that I have to get up to yell at them six times a night, rather than get up to open the door. Still getting up though. Not sure this is progress.

And then there's this rash of romance. First Rachael* got married, now Strawbs is engaged**. All very seasonal. Congratulations all round.

Spring is also, I believe, the time for growing things. In my own little world this seems to apply mostly to Purlescence, which has attracted a little flurry of media attention — only in knitting-type press, and only because of the press releases I sent out, nothing more exciting than that, but a flurry none the less and unexpectedly concentrated in timing. And that combined with the changing weather*** and so on has brought on a serious sales spurt. Yeeha! As they say somewhere I've never been that possibly doesn't exist.

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* Whom I know only from her blog.
** Whom I know rather better.
*** Baskets. Nobody was looking at the baskets. Suddenly they're almost sold out. I can only ascribe this to summer picnic/beach plans.