How to drive in London

It is of course easy enough to convert your foreign licence to a UK licence, and if you're coming from South Africa, where we also drive on the left, you might think you're all set. However, besides the rules of the road, every country and every region has its own driving etiquette. Driving in London requires understanding and adoption of its own particular set of habits. Thus:

1. London is a busy and overwhelming city. Drivers here are vulnerable to informational overload and a multitude of environmental stress factors. Be careful not to exacerbate this situation. Flashing lights will only distract other drivers, so avoid using your indicators. If you absolutely must, be sure to turn them on only as you are actually turning the corner - any earlier would be grossly inconsiderate.

2. Space in London is at a premium, on the streets as much as in the property market. Therefore, you should avail yourself of all possible parking opportunities. Leaving corners empty to improve visibility for approaching traffic is all very well in less bustling metropolises, but here it simply won't do. Don't just park up right to the end of the street - park on the corner itself. That's what it's there for.

3. This is a fast-paced city. Combine that with the aforementioned lack of parking space, and you know what you have to do: grab spots where you see them, when you see them. Should a bay be available on the opposite side of the road, don't waste time turning around - you'll lose your spot, and more embarrassingly, reveal yourself as an outsider. Just cross the road and park immediately. Don't worry about the fact that you'll have to pull out into oncoming traffic; this will simply add a much-needed fillip to an otherwise boring journey for the other drivers on the road.

A proposal

In the interests of honesty, transparency and the reduction of homicidal tendencies in the wider population, I propose that 90% of organisational websites should re-name their "contact us" section to "don't contact us, we're not listening". This should be a statutory requirement unless said organisation can demonstrate that the relevant page displays at least one and preferably both of the following:

1. An email address (preferably one which will reach actual human people, who have been trained in actually reading email and replying to the questions asked therein, not copy-pasting chunks of documents based on certain keywords that may be mentioned in the email, regardless of context)

2. A phone number for a line that includes, within the first menu level, an option for "speak to a human being". Emphatically NOT a number that takes you through approximately 7 layers of menu before spewing you back to level 1 if you haven't managed to fit your personal, unique (probably that unique, but not actually accommodated in The System) problem into one of the categories for which recorded responses can be given.

Any organisation found, say, to be using links like "email us" to generate a choice of automatic forms that do not in fact include an option for a general email should immediately lose its licence to operate menu-based phone systems and the like. Yes, a licence should be required.

Shiny!

New iMacs are fun. (Take THAT, technojinx.)

New iMacs from Santa are especially fun.

New iMacs that Santa not only delivered, but also set up in all the boring ways (installing software etc) are the best fun of all.

Mommy might be kissing Santa Claus quite a lot to properly express her appreciation.

(Oh, happy new year and that, everybody. I'm a little distracted right now. You know how it is.)

Things can only get better

I just realised it's the solstice today. To all down south, happy longest day! To the rest of us, yay! the worst is over! There shall be light!

Oh yes. Of course they do.

For no particular reason, yesterday morning I was thinking about talking to strangers, and how (it seemed to me) these conversations can be divided into roughly two camps.

On one hand, there is the bonding conversation, in which you focus on what you have in common. ("You like chocolate? ME TOO!") These chats may be shallow (of course they aren't always) but they serve a valuable purpose in establishing a warm fuzzy feeling towards each other, and allowing a potential friendship to develop.

On the other hand, there is the mind-broadening conversation, in which you explore how different you are. ("You don't like chocolate? How fascinating, I didn't know that was possible. Please, explain.") This can be a bit harder than the bonding conversation, because you need to exercise more imagination and empathy to keep things moving forward, rather than just shutting down with "I don't understand you At All." But it can also be more rewarding, as it gives you new ways to think about things.

What had not occurred to me, though, in my idle ponderings, was what happens when an apparent bonding conversation goes suddenly a bit off the rails. I suppose there's really no reason it can't, properly managed, become a successful mind-broadening conversation; but the dislocation is jarring. This happened last night, at a Christmas party. I was exchanging desultory small talk with a chap, and we touched on the perennial favourite of how hard it is to maintain your social life in London, because seeing people requires hours and hours of travel.

"I mean it was all right when I was younger," he said. "At around 20, 21, I could just walk over to most of my friends, because everybody lives in Kensington & Chelsea."

I just nodded.

A SAD state of affairs

Y'know, I thought I was basically done with getting worn down by the miserable English winters, but apparently not. It's just so dark. And gloomy. And cold. And really there's nothing to be done in weather like this but hide under the duvet, right? Right. So it's not so much that I'm depressed, as just moochy, and struggling to get anything done. It does seem to be worse this year than usual... I blame hormones. Am so very jealous of everyone heading south for the winter. (Although when that results in Milo slabs for me, well, it's not so bad.)

Well I swear

Gentle reader, it has been brought to my attention of late that I am perhaps... well... a bit of a pottymouth.

Last night Beloved and I had a fight. It wasn't any big deal, only with the pregnancy hormones and all, it did get entertainingly noisy. (Very entertaining, apparently, as around the time I was yelling and sobbing, he was laughing helplessly. Apparently my tantrums are "adorable" and I look "like a little girl who's lost her lollipop". Now, it's probably a good thing that he finds all this endearing rather than, y'know, horrible and unlovable, and the laughter was accompanied by hugs, but still, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Anyway.) So afterwards, he mentioned hesitantly: "...you do swear quite a lot when you're angry."

Well really. Isn't that the whole point of swearing? Shouldn't I be entitled to access the full range of human expression in moments of extremity?

But then I started thinking about my good friend Vivaldifan, whose employer has enlisted a rather stern spam-blocking service that puts all emails containing certain questionable vocabulary in quarantine. Apparently the profanitybot has taken a particularly strong dislike to me. I casually asked t'other day which of his friends got caught in spammy limbo most often. His answer: "Totally you, sailor."

Fancy that! I always thought that the reason people sometimes looked, well, a bit startled at my more colourful imprecations was that they didn't expect anything remotely earthy from someone looking quite so pre-Raphaelite. ("Sweetness and light and daisies" is apparently the impression I give, as long as I don't open that delicate mouth.) But maybe it's not just the exciting contrast that gives pause. Maybe I should actually try to be a little bit more ladylike in my discourse.

What do you think? Should I swear off the swearing? I mean, not entirely, that would never work. But as a creative challenge. I dunno. Do I really cuss that much?

Huh.

Briefly interrupting pregnancy-free blogging to say

...lady, I realise that your intentions are honourable, but sending a slew of diet-and-exercise-for-pregnant-ladies and plus-sized-and-pregnant links - after commenting on how I am getting rather "round about the hips" - is really not the way to keep me away from the cookie jar, okay?

Grrr.

Sorry about that. The problem with limiting all sprog blogging to the sprog blog is that, well, the sprog blog is open to the public. Meaning, the in-laws. Meaning, the offending party.

Who just spent 2 weeks as our houseguest, doing most of the cooking, and doing it with vast - VAST - amounts of bacon and double cream, just by the way. Not that I'm complaining. Well, not about the cooking.

Goodbye Harvey.

My handsome boy got sick.



Then he seemed to be getting better. Then he got sicker again.



Turns out, he was only faking. He's been doing a pretty good impression of a healthy cat, but it was only an impression. Eventually, time came for his kidneys to pack it in entirely. So we took him off to the vet yesterday and sent him to that happy mouse hunting ground in the sky... or maybe, this being Harvey, to that giant cushy lap, where he is forever being hand-fed delicious terrine of free-range Patagonian mouse livers. Or something.



My lap will be a much colder place now.

Smelly cat, sicky cat...

Harvey is Not Well.

He recently stopped eating his regular k/d (kidney diet) crunchies. Stopped. Completely. Starved himself for a few days (we did our best to tempt him with tuna etc until we could get him to the vet; naturally he chose the worst possible time) and lost a truly shocking amount of weight.

Now, those of you who've met Harvey are probably finding this hard to imagine. "What was there left to lose?" you are thinking. Well. Trust me on this. He got even skinnier. Also, he started hobbling around on wobbly old-man legs the way he did when we first adopted him - before getting him on the miracle k/d food and turning him into a real live cat, doing a good job of pretending to be healthy.

So the vet (who turned out to be a long-lost schoolfriend of Beloved's, as it happens) said he'd gotten hisself hopelessly dehydrated and needed to go on drip. He went into hospital. He stayed on drip for two days. (Jemima, meanwhile, wandered around the house looking a bit freaked out. She always knew there was a danger of not coming home from That Place.) Vet told me he was then doing sooo much better, totally ready to come home, he was eating tons (dry and wet food), enzymes were down (up? whichever is the good one when you're testing for kidney failure), all great. Harvey came home.

Harvey continued to refuse to eat dry food. Okay... we give him wet food. He's lapping that up, more or less (less, really, but doing pretty well for Harvey). But he's still limping around like a very old, sick man. His legs are all wobbly. He doesn't purr. And he's got diarrhoea. And the vet keeps saying ominous things like "it's a bit touch and go" and "there's not much point in giving him his shots now".

[Insert sad face here.]

Some random notes on expo prep.

1. Price guns are fun.

2. Nothing else about expo prep is fun.

3. No, it's not a good idea to have any other commitments immediately before or after a show, even if you think it'll be fine because after all there's the weekend, etc, etc, etc.

4. I appear to be constitutionally incapable of getting ready in time. By "in time" we mean anything not involving (a) significant loss of sleep, (b) leaving home within 2 hours of the time we planned to leave home, or (c) total panic and chaos up to at least half an hour after the show's official opening time.

5. Unexpected Good Thing about having a bebeh: very good excuse not to do this again next year. Or, possibly, ever.

Arg.

My PC seems to be on a mission to convince me to buy a Mac. Yes yes, I'm sure there will be lots of enthusiastic support for that idea, but really I wasn't planning on buying a new computer less than three years after this one. Especially not in my present position as a pregnant freelancer. Is annoying. I could probably sort out most of the problems, with a lot of research and effort and purging and reinstalling and such, but man, I don't have time for this crap. The screen is slowly but surely flaking out. Excel is flaking out. (Sharing violations. Anyone know anything about these? Google delivers lots of results, none of which are terribly helpful.) iTunes has totally flaked out. (Thank gods for last.fm, because I can NOT work without Choons.) It's all just very annoying.

Also, it's cold and dark and miserable and my head hurts.

Also, I have to do the big Ally Pally show this week, which is a frankly terrifying prospect.

Mind you, I did get to go to Andrew&Iza's very good housewarming last night, and they had laid on ginger ale *and* Appletiser for me, which I thought was extremely cool. Thanks chaps! The desserts were also particularly fine. Mmmm lemon meringue...

Because I haven't bragged enough

It's barely possible that some of you might not have yet heard my excited squealing from whatever farflung corners of the earth you inhabit, so just for you:

I'm a cover girl. And a designer. Twofer!

"That's right, the dog ate the weapon"

I can't work out whether he was trying to make some kind of homophobic statement, or was overcome with repressed longing, or was just batshit crazy.

No, wait. I'm pretty sure it's the batshit crazy answer.

Burglar rubs victims with spices, sausage, runs away in underwear without his wallet.

Eyes open. Semi-upright position accomplished. Now how to stand up...

Yesterday was iKnit Day - a lovely fest of knitting type fun, organised by London's coolest yarn shop, and featuring such exciting stallholders as Purlescence (natch) and such attractions as a talk and book signing by the fabled Yarn Harlot.

Good things about the day:
1. Bunches of fun. A chance to meet other yarny shop owners, dyers etc, and many of my customers. A great vibe. Lots happening. Yeah, fun.
2. Yarn Harlot!
3. Making lots of money. Based on last year's show, which was smaller (and I wasn't yet selling any yarn), I knew it would be a good day. It was an outstandingly good day. Woo yay capitalist joy!

Bad things about the day:
1. Being too busy (see 3. above) to actually take part in the day's pleasures. Or to go round and talk to other stallholders. Or to take part in the fashion show (yeah, I was asked! Such glamour!).
2. Missing the Harlot's speech, because, well, that busy thing. Armin was working with me, but you think he was going to man the fort for an hour and a half while I sloped off to enjoy myself? Not a chance. (Seriously, wouldn't have worked. Nope.) But I did get to queue-jump for a signed book, and she claimed to have heard great things about Purlescence (though I suspect she was thinking of the Californian shop of the same name), so, I guess that's something.
3. Being pregnant. Working a show is exhausting at the best of times. This is not the best of times. Not. At. All.

So today is not great. I am so unbelievably knackered. And I have so, so, so much work to do. And I have had a headache since halfway through yesterday. (This is a very bad thing for a pregnant woman to have, as most painkillers are off limits.) And I feel awful all round. And did I mention the huge pile of work?

*sigh*

How many blogs can one person reasonably run, anyway

FYI: Beloved and I have started a joint blog to murble about Teh Bebeh and that. Hopefully this will keep the preggers stuff to a minimum over here, but still allow me to indulge my hopeless fascination with the state of my waistline and digestion, plus feed the curiosity of those who really want to know, gods help them.

This will also be the place to look for pictures (occasionally), baby gift requests, etc.

As you were.

So wrong in so many ways

You have GOT to be kidding.

I wish I were a panda

Because this just looks soooo much easier than what I have to look forward to.
(Although, clearly even momma pandas get annoyed by their squalling babies. You'll note she tries to put it back at the end there.)

Also, I bet pandas don't get morning sickness. And if they get fat, who can tell? Who'd even care?

Spam o' the day

"Britney Spears Vagina Uninjured in Car Crash"
"Paris Hilton in Crack-in-Arse Scandal"

Am I just easily amused, or are those really funny?

The update, updated

For tedious and tiresome and sadly unfightable reasons, the 9 days I thought I had to make permit happen turn out to be only 4 days. Which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made to resemble 5-10 days, even with begging letter. So I give. I surrender. The universe does not wish for me to be in Cape Town this year. Fine. I won't be.

If anyone out there knows any good curses, please direct them at whatever idiots thought it would be a good idea to outsource all visa functions to the private sector. I thank you.