Stockholm syndrome

Who wants to hear a thrilling tale of desire, loss, betrayal and despair?

Excellent. Let me tell you about my recent experiences in Ikea.

Expedition the first.

We set out boldly, full of hope. We had a Detailed List, and a not so detailed list, combining things like "Leksvik bookcase, 192cm high, 2x" with "lounge stuff" and "bedroom stuff". But I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted. And we had schematics of our home, with measurements and everything.

The big challenge, really, was just going to be finding a shelving solution for my second stockroom. Lots of options. Lots of separate parts required. But I had some ideas, and did I mention schematics? And we had all night. We could do this.

Having had some prior experience of Ikea,* we decided to fortify ourselves with a quick meal first. We got food, we sat down, we mildly enjoyed ourselves, indulging Beloved's inexplicable fondness for muzak, and my very explicable fondness for those delicious little chocolatey-spicey-cakey things. Then we headed in.

"Would-you-like-an-Ikea-card, get-five-percent-off-your-purchases-today?" said a rather forceful woman at the entrance. Ooh, we thought, 5% off our entire house full of goodies - sofa, bed, shelving system - yeah, that's worthwhile. Sign us up!

So Beloved got a card, and we worked our way through the store. We sat on sofas. We debated the merits of the fabulous red corduroy (cat hair attracting) versus the dull beige canvas (non-cat hair attracting), and the even more fabulous textured turquoise cotton thing (cat hair attracting and non-removable). We considered the corner unit, the 3-seater, the footstool, the sofa bed, the corner sofa bed and the chaise longue. We looked at coffee tables and sideboards. We mused over chests of drawers and bedside tables. We checked our schematics. We mused some more. We compared wood and wood-like finishes. We investigated shelving solutions. We admired mirrors. We picked up this and that. Eventually, we left the market hall** with a trolley full of The Small Stuff and a packing list for The Big Stuff. Most of it, anyway.

It was well after 11pm. We were Quite Tired. Since we were clearly not going to be able to fit everything (sofa, anyone?) into the car anyway, we decided to make a break for it and come back. We really wanted to collect a dining table and chairs, but the one we wanted was sold out. "We're getting more tomorrow," we were told. We really wanted a catalogue, so that we could make further decisions from the comfort of our own internet-less home, but they were out of that too. "We're getting more tomorrow." Clearly tomorrow was going to be a big day. Who knew what joys would be delivered tomorrow!

Well, our next visit would, clearly, be a piece of piss, since we now had all these great notes. So we exited, claiming our 5% off vouchers... which of course came to a princely £10, since we'd left all the big stuff for next time. Naturally, this only occurred to me later.

Two days later: Expedition the second.
[NB: This took place after a separate trip to Warren Evans, during which we resolved our bedroom situation. This meant a whole room less to furnish at Ikea. Really, what was left? Nothing! This would be FINE!]

We ventured back, notes at the ready. We had a pretty specific plan for what we needed to buy, although some decisions still had to be made, some pick-up locations still needed to be identified. Clearly, we'd be out of there in an hour and a half at the outside, right?

Well.

We made it out... eventually. Having made some shrewd calculations as to what would need to be ordered online later. Our dining table set was still unavailable. "Come back tomorrow." Well, bugger all that. Is it online? Great. How about the sofa? Excellent. Bookcases? No problem. The shelving solution - well, no, that I needed to buy in person. So that was what we'd get. That and a few other small things. Let's go. Having now applied for my own Ikea card, specifically in order to get more damn vouchers - AHAHAHAAAA! - this time I was able to claim a princely... £30. Oh well. Time to pack the car.

Now, picture the scene.
EXT CAR PARK, NIGHT.

CAR PARK ATTENDANT: You want some help loading the car?
BELOVED: No thanks, we're fine here.

[Commence packing. It is hard. The car is small. The boxes are many, and large.]

PASSING VAN MAN: [unintelligible, but probably something like "you need a delivery service?"
BELOVED: No thanks, we're fine here.

[Recommence packing. The car is still small. The boxes are still large.]

BELOVED: This is like one of those religious stories, where God keeps sending you help and you turn it down...
ME: Then it's a good thing you don't believe in God.
BELOVED: Right.

[Recommence packing.]

CAR PARK ATTENDANT: You know, if I were doing this, we'd be done already.
BELOVED: Well okay then.

[They pack. They are indeed done very quickly. The boxes are still large, but so is the car park attendant.]

BELOVED: That's great. Thank you. Really, thanks a lot. Okay then.
ME: [sotto voce] You don't think we should tip him?
BELOVED: [equally sotto voce] I don't have any money.
ME: *sigh* Here, something for your trouble. Thanks a lot. Good night.

[We climb into the car. In my case, this involves quite startling contortions, as my seat is largely occupied by boxes.]

BELOVED: You all right there?
ME: Sure, as long as I don't have to navigate, since I can't lift my head.
BELOVED: But you do have to navigate.
ME: Um... okay. Sure. Whatever.

[Beloved starts the car.]

BELOVED: I can't drive.
ME: ...???...
BELOVED: I shouldn't drive. This isn't safe. I can't see.
ME: ...Okay.

So we unloaded those big damn boxes (the car park attendant could see us, but had clearly decided we were crazy and to be avoided) and went back in to find the delivery service. At which point we realised that, since the delivery charges were banded according to total order value, we could go back and do *more shopping* to get the most value out of our damn delivery charge. Hooray for sofas! And gi-huge mirrors that we could never have gotten in our car! And stuff! Apart from a few things that were out of stock and would so need to be sorted out online, we now had everything! Yay us! No more Ikea!

Interlude.

Beloved made use of his work internet to place an online order. We will apparently have a dining table set delivered on April Fool's Day. I am trying not to see this as an omen.

The delivery arrived. It included four really, really, really heavy boxes that needed to be taken to the top floor and assembled there. We lugged the boxes up the stairs. Beloved was at pains to point out to me that when we leave this house, he will Not Be Helping with taking these shelves down again. I opened the boxes to start assembling shelves.

They were the wrong damn colour.

Also, Beloved took fright at the enormous size and weight of the mirror and decided he Will Not Hang It, for fear of making the entire house collapse.

Just like in Lost, season four... We have to go back.

Expedition the third.

We decided, this time, to go to the Croydon store, instead of Wembley. It is really bloody far away, and I had no idea how to drive to Croydon, but it's a much nicer store - and more to the point, it had various items In Stock.

We still had to figure out how to get the boxes into the car. The boxes and mirror that, last time around, were simply too damn big. No problem, said Beloved, I Can Has Rope!

We loaded the car. In the rain. And the hail. And the snow. And, freakishly, the sun. (I'd like to say that all this weather was happening at the exact same time, but that would be a lie. Almost two whole minutes separated the sun-and-hail from the snow-and-rain.) Eventually, an exciting cat's-cradle affair was constructed to hold the boxes in the open boot, while we drove to Croydon. In subzero temperatures. With an open boot.

We got to Croydon in quite a chilly state, but hey, we made it, and had no trouble returning the goods. We went in. We are really rather sick of Ikea by now. The traditional fortifying supper failed to quite ameliorate the misery. But hey - we didn't have much to get, right? And we knew exactly what it all was. We'd be done quickly.

Inexplicably, Beloved decided to dawdle in the lighting department. And everywhere else. "But I'm tiiiiiiired!" I whined. "But we need to get this right!" he insisted. Still, I did finally succeed in dragging him out of the market hall, and we found the locations for the shelves we needed (right colours and everything).

They were not there.

The blasted shelves, that cannot be bought online and cannot be found at Wembley, were not there. I opened my mouth and drew breath.

In a split-second act of pure desperation, Beloved moved to avoid my tantrum by asking a passing minion if there weren't maybe some more of these shelves hiding somewhere PLEASE GOD LET THERE BE SHELVES.

There were shelves!

Unbelievable.

We got the shelves (after only half an hour or so of standing around waiting). We bought the shelves (even remembering, only just, to pay for them using our assorted discount and refund vouchers). We packed the car, again, with more cat's cradles, still in the freezing cold, and drove all the way back from Croydon without having them fall out of the car. We got them home, and up the damn stairs. We were hit with a £50 fine for late return of the streetcar, making those thrice-cursed shelves rather more expensive than they should have been, but that's another story. I opened the box. They were the right colour! Hurrah! I built some shelves, noting as I did so that one piece was quite significantly (if only cosmetically) damaged and really shouldn't be accepted, but at this stage there's no way in hell we're going back to Ikea, so I'll just deal with it. I covered a wall of the spare room/second stockroom in shelving.

And you know what?

Those are some damn ugly shelves.

_____
* Note for South Africans and Martians: Ikea is a huge, warehouse-style repository of cheap flat-pack (i.e. to be assembled by you, at home) furniture. It is theoretically possible to entirely furnish a small flat for less than £1,000 with Ikea's entry-level stuff. (Whether or not such a flat would be worth living in, I leave to the reader as a philosophical exercise.) It is also theoretically possible to find some rather nicer, but still very cheap, solid wood furniture, not to mention a vast array of Storage Options.

Ikea is Swedish, and there is a cafeteria-style restaurant attached, as well as a hot dog stand and a little shop full of Swedish foodstuffs. This seemed utterly bizarre to me until the end of my first Ikea trip, when I realised that I had been there for three or four rather stressful hours, and it was no longer ludicrous to consider sitting down and eating something in that pit of despair.

All you really need to know about Ikea is that the words "I've just been to Ikea," or indeed "I have to go to Ikea," are likely to elicit a heartfelt response of "Oh you poor thing!", in tones usually reserved for condolences on a great personal loss.

And yet, we go back. In some cases, we go back... and back... and back.

**The three circles of hell: the showroom, where you can consider furniture styles, bedroom layouts etc, and make notes of where to collect the actual furniture; the market hall, where you can pick up smaller items; and the "self-service area", where you can are meant to find the boxes that will eventually become furniture.

When the internet's away...

...this is some of what Scroobious has been doing (in no particular order):

1. Unpacking
2. Going to Ikea
3. Unpacking
4. Going to Ikea
5. Going to Warren Evans
6. Unpacking
7. Going to John Lewis
8. Unpacking
9. Taking deliveries
10. Taking more deliveries
11. Playing with her robot*
12. Still unpacking, DEAR LORD WILL IT NEVER END.
13. Trying to figure out the heating.
14. Battling The Devil.**
15. Feeling astonishingly grown up at having bought a bed and a sofa, both for pretty much the first time in my life.***
16. Loving my new space.
17. Wishing the furnishings for the new space were coming together just a leeeetle bit faster.
18. Tripping over boxes, both full and empty.
19. Assembling furniture. I built my own desk! And some other stuff. Yay furniture assembly! It is FUN.
20. Really, really, really missing the internet.
21. Constantly thinking "Oh, I must blog that when our broadband is up."
22. Completely forgetting what it was I meant to blog.
23. Buying ART! How grown-up is that!
24. Being chided for leaving "that hedge stuff" up on the blog for so long without new content, asifihadanychoice. Didn't anybody like the hedges? I liked the hedges. Oh well. No accounting for tastes.
25. Rediscovering Helene Hanff, who floated to the top of the to-be-unpacked boxes and trapped me on the couch for a few delicious hours.
26. Um... some other stuff. Probably. I forget.

__________
* Yes it's safe for work. *rolls eyes* ...Oh god I just looked at that site a bit more than I usually do. My robot is cousin to military robots. Suddenly I don't like it as much. But, okay. It doesn't deliver bombs, it disarms them. All right. That's better. Um. Hm.
** As regular readers will know, that would be Parcelforce.
*** I am not counting the random acquisition of furniture being offloaded by other people and adopted by me on an "all right then, have a few pennies for it" basis. This is real purchasing, of the proper choosing from a range of options variety.

I LOVE YOU, INTERNET!

*sniff*
Don't ever leave me again.

Who else would give me things like this?

Hedges: without them, we'd be no better than the damn French (and plus they'd beat us up)

[More from Estates Gazette, 1884]

The British hedgerow is a national institution. Without it, or its equivalent in stonewall countries, an English landscape might, for any difference striking enough to catch the passing eye, be a Belgian or a French one. The peculiar golden green of flax crops, the snowy expanses of beck wheat, and the red broad veins of the tobacco leaf may occur, it is true, less often, or not at all, in English acres to diversify the agricultural outlook from a railway car. But these are details. Whereas the presence of hedgerows trailing one after another past the carriage windows is full, to the Englishman returning from his travels, of wakening reminiscences of home-life in England, nowhere else. The national idea of comfort and secluded cosiness as the equivalent for happiness has been traced from time to time to many things, but a philosophic mind should see no difficulty in digging up the roots of the national sentiment from the bottom of the quick-set hedges that shelter each homestead from blasting winds and peering strangers.

Take an English cottage, with its little garden surrounded by an hedge, a cornfield on one side surrounded by a hedge, a pasture on the other surrounded by a hedge, an orchard at the back surrounded by a hedge, and a highway in front hedged in on both sides, and we have ample ground for supposing that cosiness, homeliness, and all the domestic virtues could not fail to take root and flourish in such a pot. Take away the hedges, and we have only a solitary cottage standing prominently out to the public gaze in a wide plain by the side of a public road. At once we can understand how the inhabitants of such a homestead, feeling that their every action is more or less performed in public, that their houses can be criticised from roof to basement by each curious passerby, and here at once we have the ground-work of the Continental weakness for out-of-door display and showy publicity. When, further, it is remembered that the two classes of dwelling have been for ages characteristic of whole countries, we can imagine how the instincts thus engendered have developed into national features more marked than any other, though only a few miles of sea may separate the owners…

Another argument, too, should not be forgotten. Patriotism, it is true, is getting out of date, but a famous English general has said, and it was greatly to his credit, that no invading army, battles of Dorking and Guildford notwithstanding, could ever reach London in the face of our volunteers and our hedges. Each highway, each orchard, each potato field would have to be sown thick with corpses and ploughed deep with cannon shot before the enemy could pass. Now, just when the Channel Tunnel scheme, scotched, but not killed, is recovering strength in secret to rear its head again in public, is a bad time to speak of abolishing what, next to the seas around these islands, is the main protection of our island home.

Speaking out against the bridge and tunnel crowd

[From Estates Gazette, 1883]

We rejoice that the Channel Tunnel scheme has been rejected. The people in England would indeed be idiots to in any way injure or destroy our insular position.

Without doubt we should have been overwhelmed by the continental armies if we had not that natural fortification of that "little silver belt" round us. We should thank God for such a safeguard and let well alone.

Some highly gifted man has proposed a bridge over the channel! What next?

Things that are Wrong with this week

1) Beloved is on night shift. That's just always Wrong. (And messes with my own sleep patterns.)

2) I had to get up at 6.30am yesterday to pack orders. Again, Wrong. I'm not complaining about the orders themselves, obv - they are coming in thick and fast and if they weren't I'd be in trouble - but still... that is a Wrong time of day.

3) On Monday, I undertook my first ever business trip. Now, I've always wanted to have a job that required me to travel. I know that it frequently sucks, involving Wrong times of day and so on, but it also takes you to see cool places for free, right? Well. My first business trip. And it was (a) to Birmingham, (b) paid for by me, and (c) did I mention to *Birmingham*? Actually, not even that. It was to the NEC. Which is basically An Airport (even though I got there by train) and could have been anywhere in the whole world as long as that somewhere is depressing.

I did make a point of travelling into town proper, though, because I'm sad enough to want to see the snakeskin spaceship, as absolutely nobody calls it. (Selfridges, I mean.)

Anyway. Spending £60 of my own money and hours of my own time - with a cold - to go to Birmingham. Wrong.

4. It's past midnight and I'm not in bed yet. Because I haven't quite got around to going to bed. Because then I'll just go to sleep and wake up and have to do far too much work again, just like every other day. Wrong. Of me. Very, very, very stupid. Well.

5. Having completed the entire back and side front of a jacket I'm knitting, I decided I'd got the size completely wrong and must start again. Because I just have sooo much time to knit, it's fun to waste it doing everything Wrong.

6. On telling Beloved the above, he said: "That's why you never get anywhere. You keep on doing everything wrong and starting again." He was on the other end of a phone line so I couldn't hit him. WRONG.

On the other hand. Have a little comic relief.

Would you take driving lessons...

...from the Impact Group?

How about booking a trip with Impact Coach Hire?

Perhaps appropriately, I can't link to this very real company because Google is warning me that "this site may harm your computer".

*sigh*

We can haz house!

It is Not Right that lolcats has infiltrated my speech patterns. Just Not Right.

Be that as it may, we appear to have successfully bamboozled one of London's All-Powerful Networks of Evil* into giving us a house. (Well, not so much giving, more extorting spare kidneys for, but whatev.) If you believe the marketing guff, it is in fact a "luxury villa" in "fine surroundings", but then if you believe the marketing guff...

Natheless. Four bedrooms, people. I shall be selling SO MUCH WOOL. (I'll have to, to pay for the damn thing.) Also, that leaves room for guests. This Means You! (Probably.) Also, and more importantly, there will be a housewarming. Yay!

Carry on having a fine weekend, then. I know I will.

_____
* Lettings agencies

I'm not alcoholic, just well informed

88%DRUNKARD

Mmmmm booze.

Oh dear.

No good will come of this.

The darling buds of January

I seem have a habit of accumulating pictures on my phone for weeks at a stretch, before I finally take the time to download them, and then it may be even longer before I actually get around to using them in some way.

So it is that by the time I post this - which I took on a very cold morning, amazed at the optimism of this hedge - fresh buds and leaves are seriously old news. Ah well. It's still pretty.

Conquering the Jakobshorn (by Scroobious Mountain Tamer)*

Day One. We arrive at our destination in fine weather. The Jakobshorn looms proudly over Davos: Fear Me, she seems to warn. I Will Not Bow to You. I remember my last encounter with her; an arduous climb in the heat of summer. I succeeded that time. Will she remember? Will she respect me?

Having stowed our provisions, my Gurkha and I venture onto the foothills in an exploratory excursion. I am pleased to discover that my practice a year ago has not been entirely forgotten. I retire basking in the confidence that I am well placed to launch this fresh onslaught.


Day Two. We wake to a veritable blizzard. There will be no attack on the Witch of Davos today. Instead we go in search of equipment (I am lucky enough to find a local merchant willing to part with some old and some new goods at a most advantageous price) and devise a battle plan. At twilight, we stroll up the Schatzalp, opposite our target, and gaze upon her. She disdains to acknowledge our regard. Ha! You will regret your vanity, Witch!

Day Three. The day starts well; the first phase, down in the foothills, passes off very successfully. The Gurkha is impressed with my progress, unpractised as I am, and patiently teaches me new skill. My new equipment is performing well. Emboldened, we ascend to the higher slopes.


The problems start almost immediately. The new boots are suddenly crippling. The skis are too long. The slopes are too high, too long, too steep. I can feel how the Jakobshorn is bending her dark powers to destroy me - how, till now, she has merely been mocking us, allowing us foolishly to imagine her unprepared for battle - and I am not strong enough to withstand her. I weep.


At midnight, our final companion arrives. Pippa Snow Glider is sobered to hear of our inglorious misadventures of the day, but still hopeful. "Did you not kick back?" she asks, when I relate how the Witch kicked me that day. I am speechless. Has she not observed that the mountain is bigger than me?

But ultimately, I confess, I am cheered by her encouragement, and by the addition to our numbers.

Day Four. We spend the day in the foothills again, honing our skills. I have realised at last the dangers of hubris. Pip and I practise with our minds jointly focused on one task: we must build our strength. We must perfect our skill. We must defeat the Jakobshorn.


The Snow Glider's greater experience is most helpful. I take comfort in her courage and optimism - and in the continuing patience and encouragement of our most noble Gurkha. Intimately familiar as he is with the ways of the mountain, I know we can trust him. Even if we do not succeed this time in conquering the Jakobshorn, I am sure that she will not finally defeat us.


Day Five. We have progressed well, and decide the time has come to broach the upper slopes. No attack today - we will merely aim to better acquaint ourselves with the territory. Our respectful approach seems to calm the Jakobshorn, and she refrains from wreaking dark havoc on us this day. This is an excellent outcome. We retire at last greatly cheered, and prepare for the final day's challenges.

Day Six. Today is our last opportunity to defeat the Witch of Davos, but it is vital not to overreach ourselves. We spend the first part of the day in the same way as before: in careful practice and mastery of our skill. At last, when the day is almost done, the time has come.

The Snow Glider chooses not to stand beside me for the final onslaught; she recognises that this fight is mine alone. My faithful Gurkha, of course, is with me. We drink a ceremonial rumpunsch, and as the slopes empty in the early sunset light, we join battle.


Our strength is truly much greater now, and the initial phases go well. I take a few blows, but am not slowed. As the light slowly fades, I revel in my power and mastery over the mountain. Further we strike - and further. The battle is almost won, I am certain, when the Witch launches one last attack: the blackest of slopes is suddenly before me. And in perfectly witchy manner, it is reached just as the last gondola is preparing to descend from the halfway station of Ischalp. Pistenkontrolle, the Witch's familiar, stands beside me. Will you continue in this foolishness? he asks. Or will you accept defeat gracefully?

No! I will succeed or perish!

And so we descend - painfully, taking blow after blow from this treacherous slope, as the Witch throws her all at us. But this week has hardened my resolve to tempered steel, and I will not be turned from my purpose.

At last we make it through this final barrier - and victory is in sight. Yet I cannot rest. The Witch is bloodied and beaten; she knows she is defeated, but I have to finish it. The last stage of the battle is agonising; no more blows descend on me, but my body is screaming with the pain of those that came before, and most of all with exhaustion. I hear behind me the ominous hiss of Pistenkontrolle, his resentment of his mistress's humbling. It is unnerving, but he can do nothing to me now.


And so at last we reach the bottom. I gaze upon the once-proud visage of the Jakobshorn. Once I climbed all the way from the very bottom to the very top; today, I skied right from the peak to the valley. No more can she be called the Witch of Davos...

...from now on, the Jakobshorn is my bitch.

_____
* It's possible that none of this will make sense to anyone who wasn't actually with me last week. I hope that it will at least ring a bell or two with anyone who's ever been a beginner skier.

Things I am grumpy about

1. The heating's broken again. This is very inconvenient, and also boring. Having to sleep in three layers of clothing, plus two of socks and one of handwarmers, reminds me entirely too much of my boarding school days. Seriously, universe, cut it out. Make Boiler Go. (Make Plumber Work.)

2. I don't seem to be getting much done. This is a problem, and also depressing, as I have absolutely no excuse other than being useless. And, maybe, too cold to work properly. (You think temperature shouldn't affect productivity? Fine, you just carry on thinking that.)

3. We are completely and utterly failing to find a nice big house to live in. Househunting is tiresome, and yet another thing interfering with my productivity. It seems that, for our budget, we should be able to get what we want in the area we want. There just isn't much on the market. (Note to landladies: please don't tell your tenants the place is "beautiful" while you show it to them. Allow them to decide that for themselves. Otherwise you will end up feeling insulted when they are forced to explain that they'd rather pluck out their own eyeballs than live with your choice of furnishings and decor, and nobody wants that.)

Net nog 'n kwaa-ai Maandag

One for the South Africans, this. Eighties pop translated into Afrikaans is funny. It just is.

"Pomp op konfyt, pomp dit op, laat jou voete stomp... kyk daar voor, die mense spring!"

"En nog een byt die stof. En nog een byt die stof. Nog een's weg, en nog een's weg... Nog een byt die stof. Hei - ek gaan jou ook kry! Nog een byt die stof!"

See?

But it gets even better if you allow yourself a little latitude.

"Ek's net a naaimasjien" is so much funnier than "Ek's net a liefde masjien", for obvious reasons.

Or how about "Hy's nie swaar nie, hy's my swaer."

Now you go.

(Oh go on, do. Here I am, piles of work, the heating's broken again and there's no chocolate in the house... I could really use the entertainment.)

Channel Tunnel: the steampunk version

[Originally published in Builder magazine; republished in Estates Gazette on 2 May 1870]

Mr Thomas Page, EC, has read a paper to the Society of Arts on his plan for a submarine tunnel across the British Channel.

He proposes to sink, between Dover or the South Foreland and Cape Gris-enz (17 3/4 nautical miles), eight conical wrought iron shafts, the longest about the height of Westminster Abbey towers; these shafts to be two miles apart, and consisting of an inner and an outer casing, the space between to be filled in with concrete after they are sunk and fixed or imbedded, and embanked also round with concrete to a height of 30 ft. on a base of 45 ft. all round. A network of moored chain cables would also help to secure them. Lighthouses would be placed on the tops of these shafts, at a height of 180 ft. above low-water mark.

"The shafts being in place, the bed of the sea would be brought to a fair surface by the operation of divers, who would be enabled to work without pressure on their lungs or their bodies; but into the particulars of this system (said Mr Page), I do not wish to enter, as it is a special arrangement for such purposes of operating in deep water.

"The next operation is that of sinking and bedding on the bed of the Channel, the tubes or construction for the railway. These may be for a single line or a double line. I will refer to the double line at present, and then describe a tube, the joint of which is patented by Mr. Williams, of Liverpool, by means of which the tube, moving on circular joints, can take an elastic position, and all the junctions can be made above the surface of the water, while the remainder of the tube is bedded in the sea.

"The space between the shafts being divided into lengths, say of a quarter of a mile each, and heavy iron frames fixed in the bed of the Channel by the divers, the lengths of tubular sections which I would proposeto submerge at one time are 1/4 mile, 1,320 ft, a little more than the length of Waterloo Bridge. Eight of these lengths being sunk, and covered, complete the distance of two miles, and if a sufficient power and a sufficient number of operators were provided to commence from each shaft, the whole between two shafts would be done in half the time; and it is equally certain also that nine times the power and operators would complete the whole distance between Dover and Cape Gris-nez in the same time as would be required for joining two shafts.

"The gigantic nature of the work and the magnitude of its details require corresponding means of execution, both in the steamships and other vessels, for placing the shafts in position, and for embedding the lengths of tube in their proper places in the bed of the Channel, as well as for all the operations for filling the spaces between the outer and inner rings of the shafts with concrete, in forming the banks of concrete round the shafts, and in covering with concrete the submerged tubes immediately they are placed in position. It is by an excess of power and means, in steamships and other vessels, in operators, and in materials for forming concrete, that the progress and completion of the work can be accomplished with rapidity and economy. Thus to cover a length of tubular section a quarter of mile long, in two hours of the tide, would require 1,500 men; to fill the space between the rings of each conical shaft would require 500 men for two hours' work; and to form the bank of concrete round each shaft would require 350 men for the same time."

The cost seems to have been estimated at £8,000,000; or rather Mr Page's plan was devised on an understanding with Mr Newman, of the firm of Freshfield and Newman, that if he could stake his professional reputation on a plan that could be completed for £8,000,000, there would be no difficulty in providing the funds for its execution.

In the discussion which followed the reading of the paper, opinions were expressed pro and con as to the practicability of the scheme. Mr Brassey was among the speakers. He said that so far as he had been able to understand the project, it was one of such a gigantic and exceptional character as he had never before heard propounded. No engineer had ever attempted anything of the kind, and he very much doubted whether it would succeed; his impression was that it would not. He did not think it was possible to sink the tube, as was proposed, to the depth of some 200ft by any means yet known; and to attempt to do a thing so gigantic without greater experience would be a very hazardous experiment, to say the least of it. He agreed with Mr Bateman (who had previously spoken) that it was impossible for divers to work at a depth of 200ft. Therefore, with no experience to guide them, he thought it was a bold matter to attempt to execute such a project, and no wise man would attempt it.

Mr Page said Mr Brassey's objection as to divers working 200ft below the sea without undue pressure upon their lungs and bodies, was very easily answered. Supposing the room in which they then were was at the bottom of the sea, and the walls were carried up above high water, would any one dispute that they could send out a diver from that room into the sea, passing through a sort of valve-cupboard into the sea, and give him only the atmospheric pressure, with perhaps a pound or so more. He had devised a dress for this purpose, by which all pressure was removed from the body. That being explained, all the difficulty about divers operating in deep water was removed. As to want of experience, all great engineering feats had been carried out without previous experience.

Technojinx humour

Tonight we launch our very so special, widely anticipated, enormously exciting and potentialistic* Yarn Department.

Tonight our server appears to be down.

Hm.


_____
* Now is NOT the time to wonder aloud whether I know that's not a real word, mmmkay?

Miss manners

I do, that is. Miss people simply being nice to each other. It's not just a London thing, and it's not just a modern life thing (said the crone), but natheless I fondly hark back to times when I'm sure I didn't see quite so many scowls around me all the time, and I definitely didn't see people literally kicking or hitting out at each other over who got in whose way on the street/pavement, as I do, from time to unfortunately frequent time.

Anyway. I try to be just a little bit nice to everyone I encounter every day, as much as possible, on the principle that little things really do make a difference, and if I can make someone smile then maybe they can go on to make someone else smile and so on... well at any rate, it feels good, and it doesn't hurt.

So I love this. That's a manifesto I can sign up to.

First hurdle. To fall or not to fall?

So of all my manymany Resolutions, the one I'm most excited about is this: Take Sundays Off.

No, really. That's a proper challenge, that is. Of course it goes hand in hand with other, more boring plans involving Proper Time Management and Discipline and all, so that I can take one day off once a week, without The Business going completely and utterly to pot. I also believe that if I know I'm going to have a whole day to myself once a week, it might be easier to knuckle down the rest of the time. And also, I do want to use that time - some of it, anyway - to do things that are Useful but not directly Work. Some of them might, arguably, become a sort of work. But never mind that right now. A whole day for knitting! Every week!

So tomorrow is the first Sunday of the new year. And while I did promise myself that I would not make this "day off" thing conditional on being up to date on my task list - because, well, who am I kidding - I none the less find myself in a bit of a bind.

This Friday, I launch The Yarn.*
On Monday, Beloved finishes photographing The Yarn.
By the time he has finished photographing The Yarn, he needs me to have done the boring technical task we call "Creating The Products". I was supposed to do this today. I'm only about 60% done.

So.

Do I:

a) spend tomorrow morning Creating The Products in a frenzy of productivity, before switching off my pc and knitting the afternoon away?**

b) take tomorrow off as per Resolution (win!), but then spend Monday morning failing to Create The Products with any kind of speed on account of constant interruptions by posties, yarn styling duties etc, so that Beloved is unable to Upload The Pictures according to schedule, thus placing the entire Yarn Launch in peril, and also preventing me from achieving the other very important tasks on Monday's list?

c) Ooh! Oddly, this one only just occurred to me - work into the wee hours tonight so that neither of the above has to happen. Thus breaking another fine Resolution ("get to bed before midnight unless I'm out having proper fun somewhere, or at least getting paid for my time"), but what the hell.

I think we have a winner.

Edit: 2am. Done. I hope. Oh, nope, gotta do that price list... 5-minute job. Then bed. Tomorrow, knittin'. Yay!

_____
* Over at The Shop, obviously. Not my own yarn. Other people's yarn, wot I am selling. Purty.
** For which, read: "spend tomorrow morning faffing around fretfully until I finally settle down to work just before lunchtime, stopping after half an hour for an extended lunch break, then returning to my desk to Create The Products, interrupting myself every 20 minutes or so to check blogs and Ravelry, and eventually finishing Creating The Products shortly before I have to go out to a knitting group in the evening, probably forgetting the price list for the samples I promised to bring?" Not that this is necessarily a representative description of a normal working day. Necessarily.

The joy of self-deception

Hurrah! It's New Year! My favourite time of year. I get to drink champagne and kid myself that I can do better. Cheers!

So in recent years I have experimented with Non-Resolution Resolutions. I have been all about "goal setting" and such. Last year, you may recollect, I decided that it could all be wrapped up in the simple mission statement: Get My Shit Together. Well, there's really only one word for my progress on that front.

But I'm a lady and I don't use words like that.

Taking kadekraan's advice, therefore, for 2008 I am subdividing my main goal ("Get My Shit Together") into smaller goals. ("Get My Shit Together Just a Little Bit", "Get My Shit Together a Bit More", "Get My Shit Together I Really Mean It This Time" and so on. Thanks for that, k. Very helpful.) As it happens, the result looks surprisingly like traditional resolutions: Get Healthy. Manage Stress. Do More Stuff.

Manage Stress and Get Healthy are quite closely interlinked; really I'd be hard pressed to say where one ends and the other begins, especially as I have vowed to never again make any stupid commitments like "get skinny". Instead, I have a selection of Noble Principles I shall be experimenting with, which I believe have the potential to Make Me Well, and also Happy. For instance:

Breakfast. It might not be the enemy after all.
Consider the possibility of actually consuming all the produce that arrives in your weekly organic box, rather than simply photographing it for supposedly humorous blogging purposes.*
Toast with humus: not actually bad for you, but not recommended for every meal.

I have my doubts about all of the above, but we'll give this whole Breakfast and Vitamins thing a fair chance.

Happy new arbitrary calendar demarcation! Huzzah!

_____
* We had the world's longest parsnip this week. Glad you were spared?

Organisation, lack thereof

This is my desk at the start of a standard week. It don't look like much, but you can at least see the surface.
This is my desk at the end of the week.


The theory goes that by spending more time working at home, and less going to an office, I'll be able to keep things closer to picture A, with all the implicit productivity that entails. (Since every piece of crud on the table in picture B represents Something Not Yet Done.)

What are the chances?

Christmas lights are rubbish

Seen behind the Royal Festival Hall, a couple of weeks ago. Around the corner:


It's not terribly easy to see, but those are all coloured plastic bottles. Clever!

And then there is this:


This space is normally used for public sculpture of some sort - recently, a collection of fountains, all of which were human forms spewing water from somewhere unpleasantly anatomical. So presumably these bits and pieces are being used in the making of a new exhibit, but then again they could actually be the latest exhibit. I honestly have no idea.

Anybody remember the story, a few years ago, of some German janitors working in an art museum, who had to be sent on an "art appreciation" course after accidentally throwing away one of the installations (a pile of rubbish on the floor)? The best bit of that story was the comment I heard from, er, I forget: "If a pile of rubbish is a valid piece of art, then clearing it away is a valid piece of art criticism."

The Giant Swede of Doom

Not celeriac this time, but an actual swede. An actual mutant giant swede of doom.


I posed it with a lemon, for scale, and a rather oddly shaped pear, for humour. But the pear's weird potato shape doesn't come across at all, and it sort of detracts from the giantness of the swede. So just mentally erase that pear, okay? It is a GIANT SWEDE. It is as big as my head. Well, my head's quite big, but probably as big as Beloved's head. It is, in any case, HUGE.

And yet still counts as only one vegetable. We're getting good value from our organic box. Oh yes.

Hello world! I love everybody!

Happy Christmas! Happy Boxing Day! Happy almost New Year! Ummm... happy! Happy happy! Woo yay!

Apparently spending two days at home, with the computer switched off and just one's Beloved for company, with a large quantity of fattening food and assorted alcohol* and a large pile of DVDs (Lord of the Rings for preference), can do wonders for the stress levels.

Yay Christmas! Can I have another one just like it?

_____
* Meet the Brother William: equal parts pear liqueur, Frangelico and Southern Comfort, served in a martini glass with a cherry and topped up with Peartiser. Don't say I never give you anything.

I think I accidentally swallowed a manatee*

The Scrivener reports: Yes, it is possible to eat three Christmas dinners within 40 hours.

Some survival tips:

1. Breakfast is not your friend.
2. Coke is.
3. You will only be able to face Christmas pudding once, and better make that time the first dinner. At later events, you will be starting to see the point of trifle.
4. If one or more of the events takes place in a restaurant, and if you dawdle enough over your food, the waiters might offer to clear your plate (or even your drinks) before you've quite finished. This is possibly the only occasion when you'll be really happy for them to do so.
5. If you've drunk (more than) enough, you may find yourself happily indulging in seconds, the alcohol having blunted your senses sufficiently that you are not aware of just how uncomfortable your gut is becoming. Beware! The booze will wear off long before the stuffed feeling.
6. The above notwithstanding, there is never anything wrong with another glass of gluhwein. Possibly the spices aid digestion. Or something.
7. You may find sleepiness overwhelming you at some point, as your body attempts to digest the large sea mammal in your gut. It helps to take out your knitting (though possibly not in a restaurant). Hand movement keeps you at least partly awake. Yet another reason to take up knitting.

_____
* In an incident entirely unrelated to sexual favours of the aquatic sort.

Feelin' festive

So it would appear to be Christmas, complete with magical, mythical mist and frost. I've been to see Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker!, I've been ice skating at Kew, and I've kicked off the Christmas dinners (three in two days) with a very enjoyable affair indeed at Pippa's tonight.* I've been given perfume and a polar bear, I've wrapped the few presents I'm giving,** I have posted almost the last of the knitterly rush orders (with two more tomorrow).


We don't have a tree (sacrilege!), but we do have spangly red tulips, which is surely at least as good?


We have stocked up on festive food... possibly more than we are capable of eating this year. I'll get back to you on that. We have also decided on our plan of action for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (it involves Lord of the Rings, all of it,*** and pyjamas, and resolutely unplugged computers).

Everything is looking pretty good.

It's just a shame that the heating's broken again.

_____
* Parties with fun people are even more fun with more fun people. It's so great having Vivaldifan in London.
** Or possibly, I have inveigled Beloved into wrapping them for me.
*** Apart from the extras. That's just crazy.

Tis the season

2007 in first lines; or, the Mundane Meme.

January:
Anna Little Red Boat, investigative journalist extraordinaire, started quite the conversation while I was away.

February:
Alive, yes, Anything interesting to tell you, no.

March:
I have led such a protected, not to say wilfully deluded, life.

April:
Everybody knows Italy already — even if you've never been anywhere further than your neighbourhood pizzeria.

May:
But clearly a mismatch.

June:
The problem with lolcats is that, well, they're generally not so much lol.

July:
Two and a half weeks of visit later, matricide has been averted.

August:
Blah blahblah blahblah.

September:
Vivaldifan has just arrived from SA to start his new life here in Londonville.

October:
Holiday disasters (little ones):
Forgetting my work permit and changing my ticket.

November:
He did it again.

December:
Which of the following statements about my past week is/are untrue?

Conclusion:
Today I ate a cheese sandwich.

And should give you something at least as seasonal, and far more entertaining.

Overheard

Unusually, I really enjoy hearing people talk loudly in public places. You know, when someone's having a high-volume run-down of last night's escapades on a mobile on the bus, and everyone rolls their eyes and looks huffy... well, I just sit there and grin. It's the joy of eavesdropping, without the guilt. (Come on. You can't help hearing!) It's like that Guardian Weekend column, the tiny plays about Britain. (Which, if the letters column is anything to go by, isn't liked by anyone but me either... but I love it. So much story crammed into so few words.)

Anyway, eavesdropping on public transport isn't, I have to admit, terribly rewarding. Most of the conversations are very like each other. But then there are the others.

[EXT. A station platform, mid-afternoon. A small group is hailed by a passing man who recognises them. Small talk ensues; it becomes apparent that they are all train company staff, who haven't worked together for a while. The usual catch-up: who's retired, who's moved away... personal news of any kind is pretty much lacking. Eventually the newcomer gets tired of generalities and makes an abrupt bid for attention.]

A: So my wife died two years ago.
B: ...I'm, er, sorry to hear that.
A: But I married again this February.
C: Ah... congratulations?
A: Oh, you know, you think you're going to be alone for the rest of your life, but... She was my daughter-in-law.
All: ...
A: Yes, my son was beating her up. She came to me for support.
All: ...
A: Yes in-deed.
B: Uh... gosh. Well.
A: Ho yes.
D: Well... um... how old is she?
A: [chortles] A fair bit younger than me, I tell you that much!
D: Thirty-something?
A: That's right. [pause] And French!
C: Gosh... And, er, I guess you don't see much of your son now?
A: Oh no, he comes round, we're all right.
C: Oh.
A: The rest of the family won't speak to me though.
B: Ah... that's your stepkids, is it?
A: Yup. They're not going to get the house any more. So they're fed up.
C: Ah...
B: Well, there's our train I think...

On greed

When I left SA, I offloaded most of my worldly goods. This included a large number of books, many of which I'd never quite gotten round to reading, and some yarn, and even a bunch of fabric and sewing supplies. Which is sort of funny, since I hate sewing. So I came to the UK fairly unburdened with possessions, and while I did (and do) suffer the occasional twinge of regret for something I once had and loved (or, um, thought I might love if I ever got round to reading it), by and large I liked this state of affairs.

This state of affairs has changed.

By now, I have acquired Some Books. I have in fact acquired enough books that I keep having to buy new bookcases. I have two shelves packed quite tight with books that I have not yet gotten round to reading. Some of these books were picked up almost at random for free, from work, which is sort of better (hey, no one else wanted them...) and sort of worse (I didn't need them, I wouldn't have bought them, yet I felt the need to take them home?). I have run out of space on my CD shelf quite a while ago. I have acquired enough yarn to keep me knitting for five to six years, I estimate, and that's after having offloaded a large quantity of it a couple of years ago. (I'm resisting the fabric, though, you'll be delighted to hear.)

I've written elsewhere about my ambivalence on the whole yarn stash issue, and let me just say very clearly that I do NOT feel bad about acquiring beautiful things that inspire me to make beautiful things. My yarn brings me joy, as do my books. Most of my stash at the moment is hand-dyed, so each purchase is a little connection between me and someone who is making a living by working with fibre, and I love that, I love that I am helping someone to support themselves with their hobby. I don't feel that anything I buy is redirecting needed resources away from people in need; resources don't really work like that. (Do I think, "hey, shall I give to charity or buy this yarn? Mmmm... yarn wins!" No. I do both.) I don't believe that acquiring "frivolous" things is a bad idea, necessarily, and for that matter I don't see my knitting habit as remotely frivolous. It's a creative pursuit, it fulfils me in ways I'm frankly embarrassed to talk about, it's really important to me. (Stop laughing, you at the back.) And I'm glad to have a stash of gorgeous materials at hand to inspire me. And I'm glad to have a collection of books that I love. And so on.

But it must be admitted... I do have enough. More than enough. And as much as I keep seeing more wonderful things out there that trigger my base acquisitive instincts... I don't need them. It's debatable how much I want them, given my fondness for decluttering.

So I'm posting this for two reasons. (Well, three; one of them is that it's 5am and I can't sleep. Possibly at 5pm this wouldn't seem such a hot topic.)

One, to remind myself in detail that I Have Enough. It's a good thing to remember.

And two, to add my voice to the growing multitude of gift-opter-outers. I love you all. I love giving gifts. But right now... I'm in a slightly financially tenuous position. I don't have time to go shopping. And I'm seriously lacking in the general sense of wanting to circulate more Stuff. I don't need or want anything; I can't think of anything that you need or want (that I'm in a position to give, anyway). I'd really like to celebrate the festive season with great company, a filthy amount of food, and as little Stuff as possible. And then when your birthday comes around, or when I see something that tells me it should be yours, I shall take great delight in giving you - or even making you - something special.

But the random gift exchange right now? I'm not feeling it. Let's not.

...

It occurs to me that all of this could sound pretty damn insulting to my friends. Like: "hey, I don't want anything, so clearly you don't either. And anyway I just can't be bothered to make the time to choose you a gift, because I'm, like, sooo busy and important." I hope you know that it's not like that. Right?

Oh dear ... I wonder if I'm going to come back and delete this in the morning. Or wish I had.

...

Edit: Well, extemp commented before I had a chance to delete, so that was that decision taken care of. But in light of, um, umbrage taken (quite reasonably and nicely) elsewhere, I'd like to clarify/amend as follows:

I love getting gifts. And if you have something you'd really like to give me, I will be sincerely delighted to receive it. It's also entirely possible that I'll give one or two gifts myself, out of sheer spontaneous wossname. (The likelihood of this happening to you is directly proportional to your interest in knitting.) But I am not planning to give gifts, nor expecting to receive any. I really don't want to come over all Scrooge, because I love the whole gifting tradition. It's just all a bit complicated right now, and I was hoping to simplify. Not sure I achieved that.

In fact now I think I just sound a bit greedy. (Oh, I'll take all right...)

Gosh. This whole clarification/amendment thing could go on for some time.

Edit 2: I take it back (partly): I really do want a Kissmoose present. I want for someone to crack my dvd player for me. So that I can get the later Gilmore Girls seasons on DVD and FINALLY know what happens after Rory drops out of Yale.

True or false?

Which of the following statements about my past week is/are untrue? Now with added answers!!

A. Met my long lost cousin, given up for adoption at birth, who is now working on the next Bond movie. Answer: true. He made contact with the family a few years ago, but this was the first time I'd met him. He's cool. And looks like his mom.
B. Acquired knitting yarn made entirely from milk. Answer: true. It's rather nice. Soft. I'll be selling it soon.
C. Went to view a house for rent which turned out to be at least twice as big as we were expecting.
Answer: astonishingly, true. Right number of rooms, but they're enormous rooms. And an enormous garden.
D. Graced review of The Golden Compass with the sparklingly apposite headline "Narnia's polar opposite". Answer: false. Because the reviewer completely failed to see the striking differences between CS Lewis and Philip Pullman. To be fair, I believe the film has rather played down the atheist angle...
E. Rediscovered the ability of alcohol, when taken in excess, to mimic the effects of caffeine, prompting random wee-hours blogging. Answer: true, obviously.

Yes, it's a bit of a cheat making the one false answer the thing that you'd think was too boring to lie about.

Soooo.... cold...

When the cats' water bowl is threatening to freeze over, and the butter is rock solid, and the cats themselves are desisting from their usual hostilities in favour of shared bodily warmth


and your fingers are so cold you can't even type properly (this post brought to you by the power of my mind!), and ain't no saying when the central heating will be fixed...

Do you:
a) brew up a giant pot of gluhwein/hot whisky toddies, time of day be damned, because regular tea/coffee just isn't doing it;
b) move in with starmadeshadow, who has espresso, heating AND SEA SILK - but who may be on the defensive after an exploratory 5-hour incursion yesterday;
c) go out for a half-hour run every hour, risking pneumonia and frostbitten fingers for the sake of the raised internal body temperature;
d) give up on the idea of getting any work done at all, and go back to bed with yarn to knit yourself handwarmers? And, for that matter, entire bodywarmers?

Vegthulhu

Being a trendy London meedja couple* and all, we do of course get a box full of organic goodness delivered on a weekly basis. And try really hard not to end up throwing it all out a week later, but never mind. Now, I've test driven a few of these schemes, and I'm rather pleased with the one we're using now. For one thing, the produce is really good stuff, and a good mix of it, and they have a very tempting catalogue full of extras like organic free range booze. Yeah! For another, the website is well designed and easy to use. They offer nifty services like being able to blacklist certain foods - either temporarily or forever - as in: I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato. Or maybe just not till next month. And for another, each box comes with a friendly newsletter that (a) identifies what's in your box choice that week, (b) provides little info-nuggets on some of the more exotic items, and (c) provides suitable seasonal recipes.

However, on occasion, these great little services sort of cancel each other out. As, for instance, this week. It's all very well being told that this week's small mixed box includes gala potatoes and white onions, but when we've said ix-nay to the spuds and onions for a while, and they substitute those with some rather more... esoteric... veg, then we don't have much clue as to what they are.

My finely honed deductive processes lead me to believe that these are probably Jerusalem artichokes. (Neither from Israel, nor anything like an artichoke; the guinea pig of the vegetable world, if you will.)



But then, what on earth is... this?


It's... it's like... an Elder Swede.

I'm sort of afraid to put it in a stoo.

_____
* rotfl etc

On to the next chapter, then, and not before time.

Having processed my initial feelings of rejection, considered my options, and inexplicably omitted to drown my sorrows in gin, it has become clear to me that that last bit might be because (a) there weren't that many sorrows, and (b) I was far too busy with business-related stuff to take time out for drinking. Conclusion: having more time to do the business stuff, and maybe even have a little fun now and then, would make me happy.

So I am turning my back on offers of replacement jobs and striding forth, once more, into Glorious Freelancedom. And entrepreneurship. Exciting! I won't be buying many new shoes any time soon, but that's okay. I'll knit myself some warm socks (from my copious yarn stash) instead.

However, I would like you all to know that I am deeply disappointed in The Blog's supportive wossname. Here's how it went in my head:

Me: Woe! I have misplaced my job!
Blog: Oh you poor thing, how awful for you. We feel just terrible.
Me: Actually you know, it's not all bad. In fact it's quite good. In fact I'm really looking forward to this much-needed change.
Blog: Goodness, you are well adjusted. We admire you so much. None the less, it must have been quite a shock. Have a cookie.
Me: Well yes, it was rather. Thanks. Don't mind if I do.

Here's how it went in reality:

Me: Woe! I have misplaced my job!
...
Blog: I'm sorry, were you talking to me?

So. It's a good thing I have real friends. This internet community thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.


[Note to self: Possibly look into more regular posting before complaining of uncaring readers. Just a thought.]

Edit: Asparagus has been cast, by well-meaning and supportive types, on my employer. No need. Despite oddities of timing and such, which possibly added a bit to the shock factor, I really haven't been ill treated, and am happy to give them the thumbs up as Good 'Uns who do genuinely try to care for their staff in a way fully in keeping with their much vaunted pro-social values. Also, the restructuring is a thing of perfect sense and a Good Move all round; also, my boss was rather more distressed than I was at the news. Awww bless.

Restructuring disappeared my job

Hm.

Dark (adj): devoid of light; causing dejection

The clocks going back always takes me by surprise. Or at least, the effect of it does. What?! Dark already? But it can't be, it's only 5 o'clock! That's so... so... depressing.

I seem to suffer from random attacks of seasonal affective disorder. This year is worse than most. Which quite possibly means that it's not SAD at all, but stress, or hormones, or some other unrelated thing. Whatever. It is dark and gloomy, and I am dark and gloomy.

Thing is, I sort of love this time of year. Dark and gloomy? Yay! Let us cuddle under duvets and drink hot chocolate and eat cookies and knit! I was born for this! But here's the fatal flaw: I don't have time for any of that. (Well, maybe the hot chocolate.) And maybe that's what's causing the gloom to be really gloomy, rather than fun gloomy. Conditions are perfect for doing what I most love to do, and I can't do it. So I feel all sulky about the things I do have to do, and I procrastinate, and then I have even more stress and more stuff to worry about, and less time to knit, and so it goes.

Anyway, here I am, having put off going to Tesco all day and now it's dark and gloomy, and going for a walk is so much less appealing than it would have been earlier, when it was bright and crisp and rather lovely out there. Let that be a lesson to me.

Maybe I can get some cookies while I'm there.

On divergence of register

Like everyone else, I have been striving valiantly to free the rice, and enjoying the wonderfully rococo words it throws up. (Flagitious! Rodomontade! Hebetude! Wimble?!) But what is particularly delightful is the deadpan way in which it brings up words from such vastly different contexts. I mean, there's caudate, and erythrocyte, and...

Grok.

I got grok.

Like a circus directed by Tim Burton, or possibly Terry Gilliam

Clair wants to know how the James Thierree show was. It was, as expected, marvellous. Acrobatics and mime and music, all together, sad and sinister and surreal and very funny... quite simply, if you ever get a chance to see the man (he's Charlie Chaplin's grandson by the way), do. And be prepared to walk out wondering if it's too late to run away and join the circus yourself.

In other news, today has seen acquisition of a long-desired bookcase with filing drawer (yes!), a weird contraption that will be very useful approximately once a year (or maybe just once, full stop) and the rest of the time will just get in the way, sundry small storage type devices, two desk chairs, and some interesting Swedish cake things. It has also raised one of Life's Great Unanswered Questions: why is it that after carefully testing every chair in the store, the one that is hands-down the best - and is therefore paid for and brought home - suddenly becomes an awful lot less comfortable than the chair chosen by one's partner?

Corollary to this question: does this syndrome apply only to stores with a fairly cruel refund policy?

The god of small spaces

He did it again. This time with the kitchen and bathroom cupboards. I can't tell you how exciting this is... or rather, I could try, but this would only serve as evidence for the "I am boring" hypothesis, which I really am not that keen to prove.* So we'll just take a moment to meditate on the glory of well ordered closets, and move on.

Folks, I've had a sucky week. Blame the weather, blame my hormones, blame the alignment of the planets, but it started out sucky and got worse. The most (but by no means only) suck came from the semi unexpected discovery that I had to re-interview for my own job. Because of perfectly reasonable rules and such, *not* because I'm not performing well, but naturally it does feel... not great. Officially, right now, I'm unemployed. But I'm going in on Wednesday to carry on doing my job, and presumably, I'll be told at that point that I get to stay.

It's all very odd.

However. Until then I have 5 days to mope do useful and fun things at home, and prepare for the really rather cool upcoming Stitch n Bitch Day, and I have a goodly supply of hot chocolate, and tonight I'm going to see an amazing show that I've been looking forward to for months, so frankly I have no choice but to cheer up. Am I right?

_____
* Thanks to those of you who say otherwise. I would like to emphasise however that I do *not* believe my feelings of boringness to be the result of finding my friends boring; I find them as interesting and cool as ever. Although possibly part of the problem is simply that I find clubbing boring, for the nonce, which gives us less to do together.

So tell me...

...where does one buy a (preferably not too spendy) top hat?

And a bowler?

Things I didn't say

"In the absence of blogging I have no idea of what's happening in your life."

Well, see, you do. What was happening last time I saw you? I was working a lot. What has my blog been - boringly, repeatedly - complaining about? Working a lot. What is my usual excuse for not blogging? I'm working a lot.

I say this without intended sarcasm or rancour. That's how it is. I'm working. And not on anything that gives me fodder for sparkling conversation or, indeed, blogging. Sorry.

"I feel like we're back at university - I mean, you're still wearing teal! You look just the same!"

I really hate being told I look just the same as I did 10 years ago. It's true, of course (at least if you ignore the inevitable wrinkling, sagging, expanding). I have occasionally cut my hair a bit shorter or coloured it a bit darker or redder, but I always default to the same basic, vaguely oldfashioned look. My clothes are a bit less exotic than they used to be, and a bit less battered and holey, but tend to follow the same silhouette and colours. So I can't complain about being told I look just the same - hey, if I want an image update, that's easy enough to do; but I don't actually want it.

Still, I hate the idea that I haven't progressed. It's been 10 years. That should be enough time to have completely reinvented myself. Yet I'm still just the same, only with less free time, and less conversation.

I feel boring. Really, really, really boring. I like to say I'm in touch with my inner granny, and it's true; I did after all spend most of high school knitting. (I'd like to point out that these days there are plenty of teenagers who knit *and* have a social life, but that wasn't really an option for me, for reasons I won't bore you with.) But I'm not always happy about my basic old-lady-hood. Increasingly I have nothing to say to my friends. All these lovely people, whom I've known for years, who are smart and funny and lively... and with whom I suddenly don't seem to have much in common.

Socialising has become hard work. The London factor (distance and public transport) doesn't help. I hardly ever see most of my friends; but there is another group of people I see a lot more regularly. Some of whom are clearly becoming my new friends. The knitters. There's a huge number of knitting groups around town, and I occasionally manage to make the effort to join some of them. At first I told myself that I was more motivated to join the knitters because I could chalk it up as almost work - it's a networking opportunity, it's market research. Which is true. Then I realised that there's more than that; knitting restores my energy, whereas socialising per se often depletes it. And just this week I realised there's another reason too: among these people, I don't feel boring. I can share the knitting stuff that's taking up so much of my headspace; I don't need anything else. It's enough. It's okay.

The same sort of thing is happening with blogging. I'm struggling to find time for the knitting blog too, but it's a bit more active than this one. Maybe not that much more, but some. Sorry, folks. But look on the bright side. At least I'm not boring you...

PS. It's extremely likely that this feeling explains my unnatural excitement when anyone I know expresses an interest in learning The Knit. Be warned: if you so much as hint at "maybe I'd not hate trying to make a scarf", I go into full pusher mode.

PPS. I am distressed to find out how many tags I already have to suit this post. Sulks, whines and boring! And I haven't even been using tags that long! See? I really have gotten dull.

It might just be because I'm cross-eyed with tired...

...but this had me giggling like Crazy. Crazy Overload. Forget Cute. Just Nuts.




(Our regular programming will recommence, um, sometime. Probably. Just need... sleep...)

Booksbooksbooks

(I got some more free ones, by the way. Oh yes. In fact just today I picked up free audiobooks of Johnny and the Bomb and a few others (Beloved will like those)... and much more excitingly, last week I got the shiny new edition of the Dark is Rising. Yay free books! But I was forced to turnik down the chance to go to not one, but two Leicester Square premieres this week. One of which was Stardust. Gnnnnah.)

Right, em, so what I meant to say was: this is apparently a Librarything list of the most common unread books. Which is a distinctly iffy premise; I'm sure there are squillyuns of unreadable books that remain, thankfully, obscure. But I can't resist posting it because unlike the other such memes I've seen - 100 best scifi novels and the like; you will note that you've never seen such a list on this blog, and now you know why - in this list, I think there'll be a fair bit of bold type.

Bold = read, italics = started but not finished, strikethrough = couldn't stand.

# Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
# Anna Karenina
# Crime and punishment
# Catch-22
# One hundred years of solitude
# Wuthering Heights
# Life of Pi : a novel
# The name of the rose
# Don Quixote
# Moby Dick
# Ulysses
# Madame Bovary
# The Odyssey
# Pride and prejudice
# Jane Eyre
# A tale of two cities [currently sort of halfheartedly reading]
# The brothers Karamazov
# Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
# War and peace
# Vanity fair [unless you mean the magazine...?]
# The time traveler’s wife
# The Iliad
# Emma
# The Blind Assassin
# The kite runner
# Mrs. Dalloway
# Great expectations
# American gods : a novel
# A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
# Atlas shrugged
# Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
# Memoirs of a Geisha
# Middlesex
# Quicksilver
# Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West …
# The Canterbury tales [bits of, English class]
# The historian : a novel
# A portrait of the artist as a young man
# Love in the time of cholera
# Brave new world
# The Fountainhead
# Foucault’s pendulum
# Middlemarch
# Frankenstein
# The Count of Monte Cristo
# Dracula
# A clockwork orange
# Anansi boys : a novel
# The once and future king [don't ask me why I didn't finish it, I really don't know]
# The grapes of wrath
# The poisonwood Bible : a novel
# 1984
# Angels & demons [and PROUD]
# The inferno
# The satanic verses
# Sense and sensibility
# The picture of Dorian Gray
# Mansfield Park
# One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
# To the lighthouse
# Tess of the D’Urbervilles
# Oliver Twist
# Gulliver’s travels
# Les misérables
# The corrections
# The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel
# The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
# Dune
# The prince
# The sound and the fury
# Angela’s ashes : a memoir
# The god of small things
# A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
# Cryptonomicon [but it's on my shelf, awaiting its turn]
# Neverwhere
# A confederacy of dunces
# A short history of nearly everything
# Dubliners
# The unbearable lightness of being
# Beloved : a novel
# Slaughterhouse-five
# The scarlet letter
# Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
# The mists of Avalon
# Oryx and Crake : a novel
# Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
# Cloud atlas : a novel
# The confusion
# Lolita
# Persuasion
# Northanger abbey
# The catcher in the rye
# On the road
# The hunchback of Notre Dame
# Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of…
# Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into …
# The Aeneid
# Watership Down
# Gravity’s rainbow
# In cold blood [but I don't remember it At All]
# White teeth
# Treasure Island
# David Copperfield
# The three musketeers
# Cold mountain
# Robinson Crusoe
# The bell jar
# The secret life of bees
# Beowulf : a new verse translation
# The plague
# The Master and Margarita
# Atonement
# The handmaid’s tale
# Lady Chatterley’s lover
# Underworld
# Little Women
# A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes
# Stardust
# Jude the obscure
# The chronicles of Narnia
# Possession : a romance
# Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal
# Never let me go
# The trial
# Kafka on the shore
# Bleak House
# Sons and lovers
# Alias Grace
# The Arabian nights [um, the kids version or the Victorian translation or, like, which one?]
# Baudolino
# Confessions
# The great Gatsby
# To kill a mockingbird
# Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass [I think we all knew that one...]
# The alchemist
# Candide, or, Optimism
# Snow falling on cedars
# Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story
# Midnight’s children
# White Oleander
# A passage to India
# The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and …
# The house of the seven gables
# The lovely bones : a novel
# Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
# The amber spyglass
# The histories
# Swann’s way
# The shadow of the wind
# Fahrenheit 451
# Good omens
# Running with scissors : a memoir
# Everything is illuminated : a novel
# The divine comedy
# Paradise lost
# The English patient
# Uncle Tom’s cabin
# The Origin of Species

Cape Town in lists

Holiday disasters (little ones):
Forgetting my work permit and changing my ticket.
Realising (much, much later) that I could have travelled anyway and gotten the World's Best Housesitter to courier that damn work permit to me in Cape Town.
Attempted car theft, and subsequent locksmithery.
Completely unnecessary little prang a mere 100m from our destination, as we were ferrying the bride and groom to their hotel after the ceremony.

Random dull airport observations:
In London they make you take off your shoes, put all your liquids into a ziplock, and get patted down rather intimately. (Since their metal detectors are sensitive enough to get set off by oh, say, the button of your jeans, this is pretty much a given.)
In Madrid they do the same, but they give you little plastic foot baggies to walk in. It's rather mystifying why they bother since you've just been ferried directly from the plane from London. Where are you supposed to have picked up contraband, exactly?
In Joburg and in Cape Town, they really don't care.
Joburg international terminal is waaaaay less nice than domestic.
South African airports generally are severely lacking in food options.
Madrid airport loos are rather nice.

Wildlife spotted:
Dassies, elephantlike (not really)
Zebra, stripey
Quagga, zebralike
Squirrels, tame, handfed
Egyptian goose, tame, handfed
Tortoiseseses, crunchy (apparently)
Southern right whales, lots and lots
Some other whale, I dunno, it was grey
Dolphin, don't ask me what kind
Eland, big
Kudu, tasty
Wildebeest, also big
Springbok, bouncy
Some more bokkies
Some other bokkies
Some bigger bokkies
Some smaller bokkies
Ostriches, with babies
Guineafowl, fast
Seagulls, noisy
Bunch more birds, I dunno, the flying kind.

People spotted:
The dreaded jo&stv duo (excellent blomme-spotting, torty-crunching and picnic-eating (and, er providing) companions, btw)
Extemporanea
Phleep and Firstfallen
Wolverine Nun
Mother
Other mother
Uncle
Erich
Sister&swaer&nephew&niece
Konni&Dylan
Assorted aunts, uncles and cousins
Assorted other cousins
Oh, some more cousins
Cousin A's boyfriend
Cousin B's girlfriend
Cousin C's boyfriend
Grandparents, two
Lauren & her mother
Juleen&Chris&Jeffrey
Cara&Barry, aka THE NEWLYWEDS
Tanya&Jem&Sophia, aka THE BREEDERS
Andre&Erna&Chloe, aka THE OTHER BREEDERS
Anna Maria&lovely new man, yay, about bloody time etc (sorry, is that rude?)
Mike
Janita&Russell
Martha&Herr Dokter
A bunch of other wedding guests, lovely folk all but dear lord I'd be here all day.

People not spotted:
A surprisingly large number. Possibly you. I'm really sorry.

People in the above list who do not have animals:
Cara&Barry, who are allergic
Tanya&Jem&Sophia
Konni&Dylan (Dylan is four)
Sister&family
Possibly Wolverine Nun, I dunno, I didn't ask.

Conclusions:
a) SA is a much nicer place because there are more animals.
b) Small children are an impediment to keeping animals.
c) Don't breed.

Food for thought that may or may not lead to future blog posts:
SA newspapers. Small, but full of funny names. And stories that sound bizarrely familiar... from 15 or 20 years ago. And political parties that sound like the plot ingredients of a farce set in an obscure South American republic.
Cape Town may fairly be compared to a stop on Ulysses' journey: true or false?
Families: can't be trusted to stay put. You turn around for one minute, next thing you know you've lost a busty blonde surfer chick and gained a punky vegan lesbian. Honestly.
Exile, as a concept, is intrinsic to the Cape Town experience.
As a matter of some national urgency, all decaffeinated coffee in the Cape Peninsula needs to be replaced with full-caff.
Biological clock on yellow alert: babies are starting to look cute to me. Or at least, marginally less freakish. Also, everyone is doing it, and hence starting to make breeding look normal. This is wrong and shouldn't be allowed.

Finally
I admit it's cherry, and sweet, and not as good as the Kriek bier you get in Belgo's, but really, I think "sudden death" is a bit much. There is nothing Xtreme about this beer. It's not even extreme. I fail to understand.


For actual holiday pictures, go here. Or wait till Beloved's are up. They'll be a lot better. A lot.

...

There are two schools of thought on something really bad - or worse, a series of very bad things - happening at the very start of a holiday. One is that it counts as a sort of insurance; you're predisastered, after that everything will work out great. The other is that the trip is clearly ill omened.

Beloved nearly had his car stolen on his first day in Cape Town (he went ahead of me), and did have the ignition buggered up. I, meanwhile, screwed up far more impressively. I forgot that I needed to carry my old passport (with work permit in it) as well as my new one. So I'll now be arriving on Sunday, instead of tomorrow. Hm.

We like the predisastered theory better, yes?

(I couldn't think of a title that didn't have very bad language in it. I know you're not under any illusions that I'm a lady, but even so.)

Tripartite exultation

1. Vivaldifan has just arrived from SA to start his new life here in Londonville. Yay Vivaldifan!

2. I leave for home on Thursday - almost three weeks of seeing lovely people, eating and drinking splendiferously and generally enjoying my wonderful country to the fullest.

3. DAYS OF OUR LIVES HAS COME TO BRITAIN!

*expires from happiness*