are the stars out tonight?

paranoia

2008-02-23T10:29:00.004Z

getting around this city is getting harder and harder, particularly at the weekend - this morning I took a bus, another bus, a tube (with a change) and then two more buses, for a journey that I could do with one overground and one tube on a weekday (in about half the time).

serves me right for attempting to get to work on a saturday morning, i suppose, but with all the station and line closures around town, it seems almost like a concerted effort to stop people travelling about.

i doubt there's a quango in whitehall scheming up ways to annoy londoners (and tourists), but occasionally it's not that difficult to imagine a bureaucrat, with an office in city hall dedicated to making my life harder.

"yes," he would say, "definitely close shepherd's bush central line station for eight months. excellent. the next matter on the agenda is what to do about the victoria line, she's been taking that a lot recently."

his cowering subordinate offers a suggestion: "what about if we shut it at 10 in the evenings and completely at the weekends?"

"brilliant!" he shrieks with a note of glee in his voice, "let's go to her favourite pub. gather up 30 of your closest colleagues, we're making sure she won't get a drink tonight!"

what a strange question

2007-08-17T10:29:00.000+01:00

so last night, someone asked me, "are you on email?". i mean how very 1997.

isn't asking somene if they have an email address a bit like asking them if they have fingernails? at this point, don't we just assume everyone has at least one email address?

i've actually lost track of the number of email addresses i have/have had, but i'm pretty sure it's in double digits.

closet-tastic

2007-08-02T15:28:00.001+01:00

just in time for his court date, here's a re-cap and a preview for r kelly's work of genius trapped in the closet. made. of. awesome. in the loosest possible sense. strong language etc, probably not really safe for work.

5 years gone

2007-08-01T22:50:00.000+01:00

so ATSOT is now 5 years old, happy birthday blog. i feel like a neglectful parent, my offspring - unable to take care of itself - left to languish in a corner while i live the high life, throwing it scraps occasionally.

it's not that i don't think about blogging anymore, just that i don't actually, y'know, get down to doing it. there's something instantly stultifying about the blogger interface these days that somehow depresses me, or at least supresses my urge to communicate.

and i've become more secretive in my old age. sometimes i want to write something, but the urge to obfuscate it leaves me frustrated and my writing seems to be more abstract than the average horoscope.

but i will not abandon you, blog, you're still a weird part of me, and much beloved.

the amazing adventures of

2007-06-08T10:28:00.000+01:00

I may have mentioned my incredible love for the author michael chabon once, twice, or three times. since I first read the mysteries of pittsburgh, aged 14, i've wanted to see him speak - there are a few videos, and podcasts around, but it's never quite the same as actually seeing the author in the flesh.

it seemed incredible that he hadn't come over to this country in all that time - true, his books have a kind of classic americana feel to them, but that didn't have to mean that he was a pariah in this country. so when i spotted that he was going to appear at foyles, i was pretty fucking excited.

and last night stu and i went to see him read from his newest novel the yiddish policemen's union. and it turned out i was exactly right that he hadn't been over to the uk in 12 years. he very kindly signed my copies of the new novel, kavalier and clay and his debut the mysteries of pittsburgh (mine has the original, much less attractive cover), and posed with me for a photo (in which i look like i'm about to burst with joy). he is such a nice man.

i am slightly disappointed to see that the mysteries of pittsburgh has been made into a film with sienna miller. what the heck is it with that woman, turning up in films i would like to enjoy. also i think mena suvari is too old to be playing phlox. and they've cut out arthur.... i think i feel an an aneurysm coming on...

all shall be well

2007-05-25T10:12:00.000+01:00

frankly, i'm pretty surprised that in nearly five years of blogging, i have never mentioned julian of norwich, whose revelation of divine love was the only book i actually vaguely enjoying on my middle english course.

julian (not her real name) was an anchorite at the church of st julian in norwich, she was born in around 1342. during a bad illness, she had visions of God, and wrote them down in her 'revelation'.

actually, that's not what i remember, i've got all of that from wikipedia just now. what i remember is one line: "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well".

regardless of whether you believe what julian did (that she had received this revelation from god), a fantastic optimism just radiates from the statement.

and it makes such a fantastic motto that i have been using it in stressful situations ever since. although julian, perhaps, might have had a different revelation had she too been on a fixed term contract.

twitterpated

2007-05-20T12:23:00.000+01:00

like every blogger in the world (or so it seems), i've been thinking about twitter lately.

twitter was founded by evan williams, who was a co-founder of blogger. it is "a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging [and] the Twitter website" (from the wikipedia entry. Those updates can also be sent to 'friends' (in that great web 2.0 sense) as text messages, and you can recieve the updates of the people you 'friend'.

i've had a twitter stream (log? page?) since january, but i'm yet to really see a point to it. honestly, it mostly seems like a pretty good way to stalk someone. and with stuff like twittervision (which is strangely mesmerising), it feels like just another way to see into the minutiae of strangers' lives (much like Blogger).

nonetheless, i suspect that if more of my (real-life) friends were using twitter, i might be more interested in it. certainly, one of the most appealing features of facebook is seeing people's updated statuses. if facebook made it possible to update your status by text - that would be great, and a twitter/facebook mashup (where your status updates were archived on a particular page) would be pretty fantastic.

metametameta

2007-05-18T17:45:00.000+01:00

the worst thing about not posting, is that the longer it goes on, the harder it gets to post. i can't imagine any of you thought that i was in some way 'striking' in honour of alan johnston (who still hasn't been released/found), but i definitely wasn't, that would have required an ego the size of a large country.

so i read a quote from this article on banksy from the new yorker, on kottke.org of all places:
"The graffitist's impulse is akin to a blogger's: write some stuff, quickly, which people may or may not read." and it really hit home that my blogger's impulse has been definitely mis-aligned recently - i'm so concerned about writing something amazing or somehow insightful that people will enjoy that actually i'm not posting at all.

actually blogs are (and should be) by their nature ephemeral - nothing i write here will every be worthy of elevation to the pantheon of literature, and i should be celebrating that by posting about anything that comes into my head, rather than worrying about how what i write will be perceived.

in future: shorter, more frequent postage, less angsting.

awfulness

2007-04-18T11:45:00.000+01:00

the bbc's gaza correspondent alan johnston has been missing presumed abducted for 37 days, on sunday, a previously unheard of group claimed responsiblity for his murder, on monday, the director general claimed that this was unverified, but that the bbc was highly concerned for johnston's safety.

this followed last week's day of action - marking a month since his disappearance - which included mark thompson meeting with the palestinian president. palestian journalists have been striking on and off to mark their respect for him, and there have been regular vigils at television centre and at bbc locations around the globe.

on monday, the author hanif kureishi accused the bbc of "censorship" for postponing the planned airing of his short story 'weddings and beheadings' on radio 4 tomorrow. kureishi stated that "There are journalists and newspapers in peril all the time around the world. We support them by supporting freedom of speech rather than by censoring ourselves."

he appeared on the bbc's today programme this morning, and appeared to argue that the feelings of johnston's friends and family were irrelevant when it came to kureishi's work being broadcast.

to me, this seems like the work of an idiot. his story is probably excellent - it takes the perspective of a would-be filmmaker who is coerced into filming the executions performed by a jihad group - the buddha of suburbia is a terrific book - in fact, i blogged when i first read it. but kureishi has done himself no favours here.

this really doesn't feel like an argument for free speech. it feels like the argument of a self-obsessive who finds it hard to consider the emotions of others - hardly an asset in a novelist.

timewatching

2007-03-29T10:16:00.000+01:00

the trouble with not having a commute to work is that i barely get any reading time anymore. sure i miss out on delayed trains and buses stuck in traffic, but conversely i never get to just sit and read and listen to my ipod (my poor ipod has had very little use since i started this job).

i just updated my media addict del.icio.us account, after seeing the last king of scotland last night. and i realised that i have been reading the same book since the beginning of the year (philip roth's american pastoral). there was a time when i could have finished that book in a day, and it's left me wondering where the time's gone.

of course, working 8/9 hours a day is a big part of it, especially when i'm also occasionally working in the evenings and on a saturday and i've been having 4 hours of driving lessons a week for the last few months. that's still only around 50 hours of a possible 168, though. allowing another 9 hours a day for sleeping (and daily ablutions - washing etc) leaves 55 hours a week of free time - about 7 hours and 50 minutes a day.

wtf? how on earth am i wasting nearly 8 hours of free time a day? my guess is that it's watching television and pissing about on the intarwebs. perhaps, as i haven't given anything up for lent this year (my plan was fizzy drinks but i failed miserably the first time i had a hangover) i should do a week without my laptop in the run up to easter... i'll let you know how that goes.

shilling

2007-03-16T10:26:00.000Z

yes it has been rather quiet round here, i know.
i wanted to draw your attention to the rather excellent looking shaggy blog stories, which has been put together by mike troubled-diva in aid of comic relief. it features pieces from some of my all-time favourite bloggers, including anna little red boat, petite anglaise and richard herring.

this book has been put together from submissions in just a week, which is indicative of just how much effort mike and his team have put in. i've been watching from afar (i'm just not funny enough for this sort of thing), and i've been very impressed.

it's all for a good cause. of course. and it definitely beats the old bath of baked beans as a means of raising cash.

i've just purchased my copy from shaggyblogstories.co.uk, and i highly recommend you do too.

coughs and sneezes...

2007-02-05T16:41:00.000Z

it seems like everyone around me is getting colds at the moment - i haven't been properly poorly since august, which is actually quite unusual. i was expecting to get sick over christmas, when i had three weeks off - i treated every sneeze as a sign of impending mucus overdrive - but it never came. i didn't even have a flu jab this year (which i'm totally entitled to have).

i'm vaguely putting it down to growing up in london - because you're exposed to more germs in cities - viruses come in from foreign climes and you just get over them. the only time i've had the flu - to the best of my knowlege - was october aught three when i caught york fresher's flu just as i was starting at lcp. (incidentally, re-reading that month's posts, i'm struck by the legwarmers on her arms comment, strangely i knitted myself a pair of arm warmers just after christmas (although i'm calling them gauntlets). fashion really has come a long way in two and half years. or maybe i was just sheltered from it, being up in york.

work is, um, winding down in a way that is not terribly encouraging. i have a bad feeling that if i don't put my arse into serious gear i could end up getting dropped like a hot potato from the integrated multimedia content house. not that i don't have plans up my sleeve, but i like it here. le sigh.

six from '06

2007-01-08T19:41:00.000Z

part the fourth: books

yet again, i utterly failed to complete the 52 book challenge. i didn't even manage to document my readings in the del.icio.us account i set up entirely for that purpose. i'm placing the blame squarely on david mitchell, whose cloud atlas pretty much left me cold - or at least what little of it i did manage to read left me cold. but on the plus side, i read an awful lot of really good fiction last year.

american gods by neil gaiman - was astonishingly (considering his status among sf/fantasy geeks and bloggers) the first solo work by Gaiman that i'd read. and it is awesome. mixing ancient and modern myths with a modern but nostalgic view of America, it's simply a fantastic novel. i really didn't want it to end.

freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is probably the only book on economics most people will read, and certainly the only one they will enjoy. it really is fascinating, and full of fantastic tit-bits (which are often expanded on in their terrific blog), such that as on an hourly rate, selling crack pays less well than flipping burgers.

blankets by craig thompson was recommended to me by tom and also, less directly, by seth cohen. ooh, it's good. just beautiful. you should read it.

the lost art of keeping secrets by eva rice (who is website-less), is a lovely bit of fifties-style froth, in the manner of nancy mitford. it's a nice easy read, and fun for all the family (i have literally passed it round every female relative i have).

frost in may by antonia white is a really astonishingly good novel about a little girl who is sent to a convent boarding school. of course, it is in fact a barely fictionalised account of the author's own experiences, and is all the more brilliant for it.

the big over easy and the fourth bear by jasper fforde are the first two books in his nursery crimes series, and they are great. fforde's sense of humour matches mine perfectly, and i'm quite often laughing over his puns several pages later. he's also an hilarious public speaker, so if you get the chance to see him at a book signing, i highly recommend it.

and then there's lemony snicket's the end and the beatrice letters, which i enjoyed, but i'm so sad to see the end of the series that i can't bear to include them in my list; wrong about japan which was interesting but ultimately a bit weird; bee season which i flat out loved and which should have been in this list if i hadn't already filled all the slots; er, the da vinci code, which is really terrible; and labyrinth which is like the da vinci code with a degree (and better than i just made it sound).

six from '06

2007-01-04T14:12:00.000Z

part the third: telly

i doubt that i have ever watched as much television as i did last year. and not just for work, either, there was an awful lot of irrelevant american drama in there. but when i'm after escapism, i fear strictly come dancing just doesn't cut it.

heroes is really the ultimate in escapist television - a group of surprisingly attractive people who suddenly discover they have superpowers. including a pair of brothers so hot and touchy-feely that it's impossible to believe that they're not somehow actually lovers (no really, look at these pics for proof. sexy, sexy proof). The fact that one of the brothers is the freakishly gorgeous milo ventimiglia of whom i've been a fan since his days on gilmore girls certainly helps my enjoyment of the show, but the show is also awesomely fun and incredibly suspenseful - it knocks lost into a cocked hat!

the oc's third season was a huge disappointment to me. but the tragically truncated season four has been just perfect so far, and has honestly made up for anything that went before. they've just announced that the last episode will air in the States on February 22nd, which really does break my heart. but at least we got to see the, uh, cage fighting , which was worth everything if you ask me!

doctor who and its spin-off series torchwood were both excellent, i was slightly worried about david tennant as the new doctor, but from the moment he put on his specs i was totally sold. and as for captain jack... i'm just completely head over heels for him, and, of course, he was also in...

how do you solve a problem like maria might not be the coolest show i watched last year, but it's certainly among the ones i enjoyed the most. the best reality tv has that capacity to involve you emotionally, and maria completely absorbed me. i was completely thrilled that connie won. she totally deserved it.

veronica mars veronica mars had a really solid second season finale last year, and the first half of the third season looked good too, i'm optimistic about the rest of the season, although i have to admit that the thought of weekly mysteries as opposed to an over-arching storyline is a bit of a turn-off, but it works well enough for house, so maybe i'll be wrong!

life on mars, meanwhile, proved that a show doesn't have to have 22 episodes to have an impact. in just eight episodes, they told the fantastic story of sam tyler, who appears to have travelled back to 1973 after a car accident. in fact, i liked it so much, i blogged about it last year. i'm so very excited about the second series, which is due to go out at some point this year, but sad that there won't be another one after that (the creators have decided they need some closure).

(and six shows i've enjoyed on dvd: house, gilmore girls, smallville (oh, so much), supernatural, curb your enthusiasm, eerie indiana.)

six from '06

2007-01-01T13:25:00.000Z

part the second: gigs

about half-way through the year i had a strange and unpleasant feeling that i had gone off gig-going. this, i thought, was the beginning of my decline. pretty soon i'd stop buying records and start thinking about dull things. but fortunately it was a blip, and it didn't take long to realise that i'd actually just been to a couple of duff shows (death cab at the astoria and the wireless festival). that said, i didn't make it to a lot of great gigs this year, here are the ones i enjoyed the most. and weirdly, several of these were at venues i'd never been to before, and venues that were slightly unusual. i suppose that's what keeps it fresh.

death cab for cutie at brixton academy, 28-6-06 - having not massively enjoyed the astoria show in february, a few of us decided to book for brixton anyway, and i'm so glad we did. it was a much better gig, and completely re-kindled my interest in live music.

the hidden cameras at the union chapel, 29-10-06 - hidden cameras are one of the best live bands i've seen, and they were supported by my latest novel, and it was in a church. fantastic stuff.

jarvis at koko, 15-11-06 - even though a really tall bloke stood in front of me about half-way through (damn the tall, they should be forced to wait until all the shortarses have got to the front before they're allowed in the venue), this was still a great set. and included, rather spectacularly, a cover of space oddity, prefaced with this: jarvis: "do you want to hear an old song?", crowd: "yessss", jarvis: "alright. i didn't say it would be one of mine though." great.

all tomorrow's parties at pontins camber sands, 19 to 21-5-06 - just brilliant. the shins day was the one i was particularly looking forward to and it really didn't disappoint. for me the highlight of the three days was definitely the decemberists, who are amazing, but it was great to see the gossip, joanna newsom (a bit anyway), the shins themselves and sleater-kinney (who were on the verge of breaking up).

fort rox at newhaven fort, 12-8-06 - not the greatest gig i've ever been to, but one of the best venues - a former napoleonic fort in sussex that i used to go to as a kid, it hosted its own mini-festival curated by locals british sea power. the duke spirit were great, but as ever, my latest novel were let down by the sound. and it was a bit cold and rainy!

tilly and the wall at the buffalo bar, 25-8-06 - i had somehow avoided t&tw, which meant that the tapdancing was a complete surprise. and bloody brilliant too. i mean how awesome is it to have a tapdancer as percussion! and the support act the grave architects were great fun too.

(and some shows i enjoyed at bh: euros childs 11-3, the boy least likely to 28-2, my latest novel 28-3, yo la tengo 5-9, isobel campbell 21-2, and for emo reasons be your own pet 1-2 and panic! at the disco 23-8)

six from '06

2007-01-01T12:28:00.000Z

Part the first: records

weirdly, considering that a couple of my all-time favourite bands released albums this year, neither of them make my top six. this is also an unusally female-vocalist heavy list, last year it was all blokes.

begin to hope - regina spektor is a record that i honestly didn't think i would enjoy, because i've always found her voice just a tiny bit too strange. but i kept hearing 'on the radio', um, on the radio, and i fell in love with it. and, oh god, it's an amazing record. it's very quickly become a total desert island disk.

let's get out of this country - camera obscura. if, last year, you'd said that b&s and camera obscura were both releasing albums in the same year and that i'd prefer camera obscura's, i would have been pretty damn surprised, but you'd have been right. because bloody hell let's get out of this country is terrific. i mean i've been sort of a fan of theirs for a while (in fact this blog was named for one of their lyrics), but i never thought they'd actually release a song better than eighties fan. and they did.

rabbit fur coat - jenny lewis and the watson twins. jenny lewis' voice is gorgeous - low and sweet, which just enough of a country twang. gospel-tinged country-blues plus a fantastic cover of the travelling wilburys' 'handle with care', featuring conor, ben and m ward

jarvis - jarvis cocker, was really a no-brainer for this list - i mean it's jarvis, who has been my hero for the last ten or so years. he could have put out a record of him reading the phone book and i'd have loved it (actually he has been putting out podcasts on his myspace page of him reading short stories, and they're fantastic, i do so love his voice). fortunately jarvis is also a great album, it's nice to see that time and settling haven't mellowed him at all.

wolves - my latest novel. this album absolutely soundtracked the beginning of the year for me. they're one of those bands for whom the live sound can never quite capture how great they are on record, but i did find the glockenspiel playing quite inspiring! i'm listening to 'the job mr kurtz done', and it's just reminded me of pulp's 'david's last summer', so definitely a good thing!

omnibus - tarkio, was really a compilation of old stuff by colin "the decemberists" meloy, but it had some great tracks on it, and i do love colin's voice.

(and the also rans - belle and sebastian's life pursuit just didn't grab me though there were some good tunes on it, the decemberists' crane wife hasn't really been listened to enough for me to pass judgement on it - i feel like i need to put some time into it, and the same goes for joanna newsom's ys, the pipettes record didn't really capture how much fun they are live and sounded strangely thin to me, i did enjoy the tragic treasury, but it's not a 'classic' album, and sufjan stevens' the avalanche which is fantastic but i think sufjan gets enough adulation from bloggers without us also praising his cast-offs!)

edited 20:55 to fix links because amazon is annoying

just say no

2006-12-01T10:19:00.000Z

this has not been my best week ever, in classic fashion, i have bitten off way more than i can chew and am suffering the consequences. this is mainly due to my ongoing issues with the word no. which i seem completely incapable of pronouncing at key moments.

thus, since last saturday in addition to my regular 9.30-6 type job, i've had three driving lessons, taken (and passed woo) my theory test, worked two late-ish bar shifts, and filmed late on tuesday, and i'm working tomorrow as well.

what this means is that i'm utterly, utterly shattered, and i've had to put all kinds of things on hold - including nanowrimo, which i had such high hopes for at the beginning of the month.

so that's why things have maybe been a little quiet around here.

up the wall

2006-11-09T08:11:00.000Z

i am learning to drive, which is really something i never thought would happen. years of terrifying 'clunk click every trip' and 'kill your speed not a child' ads scared me to a point where i didn't even want to be a passenger in a car for several years. and for a long time, my nightmares revolved around crashing or stalling cars.

fortunately, my desire to continue to be employed massively outweighs my fear of driving. and it has become very necessary for me to learn. it does feel pretty ridiculous to have got to 25 and not to be able to drive. it is one of those skills that i suspect everyone ought to have.

so here i am, two lessons in, and quite enjoying it. it still freaks me out a bit every time i think about it, but when i'm actually behind the wheel, i feel ok. remarkably ok.

and my instructor asked me if i'd just turned 17. which was nice.

nostalgiafest '06

2006-11-05T11:46:00.000Z

in a weirdly retro style, i am blogging (hungover) from langwith computer room. the very room in which i used to regularly post (hungover/drunk/whatever), when i was at uni. i'm in york for a flying visit, and i couldn't resist the urge to re-create my misspent youth.

coming back to york is terrific, actually. it's funny because coming in on the train i felt exactly the way i used to when i got into king's cross when i was living up here. it does feel like coming home in a wonderful sort of way, and i'm sorry i've not been up for so long, and that it was really only chance that brought me back here in the first place.

i was in sheffield for the sheffield doc fest, which was, um, thought provoking. i managed to see seven documentaries in total, over a day and a half. they ranged from the sublime, to the ridiculous, but i don't feel like i saw a dud. perhaps the most disappointing film was black gold, which i wanted to be more of a polemic, than a rather straight depiction of the coffee industry.

more when i get back to london, i should think...

crafty minx

2006-10-20T12:23:00.000+01:00

lately, at work, we've been looking at craft. since i got into knitting a couple of years ago (and cross-stitch just at the end of uni), this has been sheer bliss. i like hanging around the craftster forums, and looking for inspiration from the craftzine blog. i've found plenty, though none of it's really for my, y'know, actual job.

i sent off for put together book one from wee wonderfuls - just because i've never actually made a toy doesn't mean i can't try it! and i bought the yarn yesterday for this cute invisible stripe scarf. i can't, of course, start either of those, before i've finished my ravenclaw scarf - which i've slightly changed from this pattern, because 27 rounds of the same colour was just too boring - it's looking pretty awesome, if i do say so myself.

and last week, we went on a works outing to origin, which was amazing. it's really striking how crafting can transcend its women's institute/granny associations and become something really exciting.

we met a very nice girl from fred bare in york, and it reminded me of how great york was for that sort of thing - especially lovely duttons for buttons. i miss the frozen north. just as well i'll be up there soon!

hiatus? what hiatus?

2006-09-28T14:10:00.000+01:00

so k, and i and a couple of others are looking for somwehere to move to. we've looked at some houses, and the thing that has struck me, really, is how incredibly weird other people's houses are.

i mean it's something that you don't really notice visit people, but when you're actually looking at their house, and imagining it to be your own, that's the point at which you start thinking, mmm, this is a bit strange.

the house yesterday was particularly odd - the downstairs bedroom had a sort of bunk bed and then two single beds pushed together underneath. there were three full-length sofas in a room that would have been much more comfortable with only one. one of the bedrooms looked like a wedding cake. is it just something to do with rented houses? are the sort of people who rent cheapish places generally weird with the decorating?

of course, i lived in a pretty strange house myself in my second year at uni. there was a sort of concrete 'shower block' that could only be reached by going through the kitchen and the living room. there was a plastic hanging basket on the landing by my bedroom, with fake plastic plants in it. i slept on a mattress on a sort of futon on the floor. this was the house where the 'handyman' had nailed. the curtains. to. the. walls.

but even more wierd is the fact that i really loved that house, or my room anyway. it was strange but it definitely had character.

autumn almanack

2006-08-31T20:00:00.000+01:00

autumn's already upon us the weather is definitely cooler than it has been, and i've now had a cold for a week and a half.

both my birthday and the beginning of the academic year are in september, so i've always felt like september marks the new year - in a way that january doesn't really. the demarcation between december and january isn't particularly strong, whereas august to september usually feels like a leap.

even this year - which should feel different because of the weather and because it's my first year of working full-time - it still seems like the beginning of a new stage of my life.

i started this blog to document the transitions in my life, and this feels like another to add to the list - turning 21, leaving university, starting my first job and my second job. i'm going to turn 25 tomorrow, and i'm excited about it. there are a lot of things i want to accomplish this year, and i'm glad the blog's going to be here to help me make sense of it all.

this is my last post before i reach my quarter century, which is a bit scary if you look at it like that. still, there are worse ages than 25 (15 for one).

paeon

2006-08-21T20:41:00.000+01:00

i'm sick - like cough-cough sick, it's horrible. i hate being ill, it makes me grumpy and grrr. but what makes up for it slightly is listening to the new regina spektor album, which i picked up the weekend before last. i was never sure if i actually liked her - she's got an amazing voice, and she writes great songs, but i think the last album was just a little bit too weird for me. begin to hope, though, is fantastic, easily my favourite album of the year, though i think the camera obscura record comes not far off.

ink polaroid

2006-08-16T11:31:00.000+01:00

i actually just wrote another post, but it didn't feel quite timely, so i'm going to save it for a couple of weeks. i'd intended to post photos this week, but i've been a bit lax about taking my camera out, and i always feel a bit weird taking pictures on my phone.

so here, instead, is an ink polaroid:

this is a picture of four passport photos i saw last night on the ground on my way home from work. it had been raining in the day and the asphalt was wet, there were already orange leaves on the ground. the man in the photos (they're the new-style passport photos, all the same on a white background and arranged in a square) looks weirdly familiar. but he's shaven-headed and tough-seeming. i bet he's pissed off to have dropped the photos, but in the pictures, he looks strangely serene, lying there surrounded by wet leaves.

vinyl fantasy IV

2006-08-10T21:48:00.000+01:00

listening to late night radio in my teens, i picked up all kinds of weird taste in music. this is a song that i first heard on the mark and lard show, when they were still on the graveyard shift (which co-incidentally is the first place i heard b&s too).

the sweet were a glam rock band from the seventies, and that's, er, pretty much all i know about them.

but this is an absolute stormer of a track. and the opening makes me want to laugh like an insane person - there's just something resolutely un-glam about the names steve, andy and mick.

it mightn't seem like it really fits with my taste in music, but this is good fun. evidently, i liked it enough to buy it for £1 from the record and tape exchange (hmm bit of a theme there).

the sweet - the ballroom blitz [windows users - right click the link and "save as"; mac users ctrl-click and choose "download linked file as"]

and also i posted to mefi this morning. the thread has gone, ahem, completely batshitinsane in the interim. should have prolly thought out the consequences of that one.

vinyl fantasy III

2006-08-09T21:58:00.000+01:00

anyone who's known me for any length of time will know that i am a huge pulp fan. when i exorcised my teenage poster collection, the only star whose face stayed put was jarvis'. and his autograph still takes pride of place in my room (with struan's and graham's).

i was extremely thrilled to find him on myspace, and he's now firmly in my 'top 8'. incidentally, the song on his profile is brilliant, but completely nsfw. just knowing that he's still out there making terrific music gives me a warm fuzzy.

because i was a bit of a late bloomer - musically - the first pulp song i really heard was miss-shapes, as it was the first song on different class, which i listened to obsessively on my walkman - at night, first thing in the morning, on the way to school, at lunch break... even now, i could probably recite the lyrics to that record from the first "miss-shapes, mistakes, misfits" to the last "let's go" (although i did just have to check wat the last lyric was).

after that i collected every record pulp had released - including it, the innumerable compilations of early tracks, and a few of the singles. but this song actually comes from the b-side to miss-shapes/sorted for e's and wizz, the double a-side single from different class.

it's classic pulp of the period - almost glam sounding, and jarvis' lyrics on top form, though i'm not massively surprised this didn't make the album!

pulp - p.t.a. (parent teacher association)

Vinyl Fantasy II

2006-08-08T23:45:00.000+01:00

of all my mother's records, the one that really captured my imagination was original cast recording of hair. without really knowing exactly what the story was, the music really grabbed me.

hair is basically about young people rebelling against their parents a government they don't believe in, and against a war they don't want to participate in. so it still resonates today. which is why it's still being produced.

that's not to say that it hasn't dated appallingly badly. free love doesn't really cut the mustard in the post-aids era, and that hippie mumbo-jumbo (*cough* age of aquarius *cough*) is really old news.

what it does have is some really brilliant songs. there were so many i wanted to choose, but this is my favourite.

the sleve notes say of this song, that it "might be called a teeny-bopper's plaint. it doesn't rhyme at all. it is really the great american novel." it's sung here by shelley plimpton (the mother of actress martha plimpton), who played crissy in the original show.

shelley plimpton - frank mills

vinyl fantasy I

2006-08-07T21:59:00.000+01:00

for quite a while now, i've had a passion for records that are older than i am. by which i mean actual physical vinyl lps. i put this down to dancing around to my mother's copy of please please me in my formative years.

in order to make my rather quiet podcast i bought a little bit of kit called an imic. what's good about the imic is that it can also be used to record from a turntable. and that means i can now bring you some rather strange highlights of my record collection.

because the albums are old and i am lazy, i fear the sound quality is not always going to be perfect, but it's pretty good on this first track.

this recording comes from a 1980 compilation album i picked up from the record and tape exchange on berwick street. the album's called band'its at ten o'clock, and it's a series of recordings by bands who played at the 101 club in clapham. there are a few well known names on there - the thompson twins and holly and the italians stand out - but this was always my favourite track from the album.

~~the scene were a seventies mod band from bradford, sort of a proto jam. the singer, phill harding, now has his own very interesting blog. and it looks like the band might be getting back together.~~ i think you'll like this.

the scene - all people go mad [windows users - right click the link and "save as"; mac users ctrl-click and choose "download linked file as"]

edited 9.48am 8-08-06, because i had an email from the singer of the bradford the scene and this isn't them. there's absolutely no record on the interwebs of another band called the scene from the seventies/eighties, so who this band is is a total mystery.

atsot radio!

2006-08-06T14:39:00.000+01:00

powered by ODEO

you can also download it, and comment here. and - oh heck, let's be optimistic here - subscribe with your podcatcher of choice, with the rss feed: http://odeo.com/channel/42334/rss.

and here's the embarrassing ask.metafilter post. that did make me feel a bit, er, dumb.

this is something i've been intending to do for quite some time now, and i hope you enjoy it. i'd love to get your feedback on it - it's the first audio i've really recorded, and i think the sound came out alright. sorry if it's a bit quiet - i promise it'll be louder next time.

awkward!

2006-08-06T09:52:00.000+01:00

for the last couple of years, i've been having my hair cut by a very nice man on gloucester road (jon). at the beginning of the year, he was away and i badly needed a cut, so i went to a colleague of his. and got a better haircut.

so on friday, i called and asked for an appointment with either. and got the second one. of course jon was there and we had a slightly stilted conversation about how incredibly busy we both were.

it was like running into your boyfriend when you're on a date with another man.

burnt out

2006-08-04T14:06:00.000+01:00

this week, i've not exactly been burning the candle at both ends, it feels more like i've cut the candle in half and it's now burning all four ends.

i enjoy what i'm doing, but i do feel drained by the end of the day, at which point i often have to go to my other job (because i'm mad apparently). i pretty much feel like i want to crawl under a stone by friday.

weekends are too short at the moment. this is the first summer i've consistently been at work in the day. i could use a holiday.

silver surfer

2006-08-03T10:09:00.000+01:00

i found my first grey hair when i was nineteen, and since then i've spent quite a lot of time pretending that i wasn't going grey.

i've declined to colour my hair, because i'm pretty aware that it will just lead to a forty year cycle of dying my roots before i am finally actually old enough to let myself go.

so i have to accept that rather than raven locks, my hair is distinctly salt and pepper these days. i like it though - there's something shocking about being a young person with grey hair, like shaking up stereotypes.

justifiable paranoia

2006-08-02T15:34:00.000+01:00

every morning, i have a fifteen minute walk to work. i quite enjoy it - it's a bit of a rough area, but the streets are fairly quiet and i get to listen to my ipod on my huge headphones.

or i did. last week someone in my office said to me:
"you know, i saw you on my way to work, and i thought i with those big headphones you're a crime waiting to happen."

now i don't dare listen to my music. and the most galling thing is that he's absolutely right. i can't believe i've lasted this long!

Bloggiversary IV: Return of the Blogger

2006-08-01T08:12:00.000+01:00

dear blog, this has been a funny year for us both. things have changed, and i've neglected you cruelly. i initiated the worst theme week. ever. and a couple of series that just never quite cut it.

i've learnt my lesson. no more blogging about what i plan to do, as it inevitably falls down. so i'm leaving it to you to work out what the festivities i've got in mind for this month. suffice it to say that there will definitely be more posting. i promise!

happy birthday atsot, i hope this year treats you better than the last.

bored/boring?

2006-07-26T14:04:00.000+01:00

i'm not bored of blogging... i love blogging, i love blogs. maybe i'm bored of the sound of my own internal monologue. which is what this is, after all. maybe it's that a month goes past at the speed of a week these days (i could have sworn it had been less than a month since i last posted). i never used to have anything to do with my time, and now i have too much.

it's a vicious circle, of course, the less i post, the less i want to visit atsot, because it looks so forlorn, and the less i visit it, the less i'm reminded to post. i hate seeing four-month-old posts on the front page, but i never feel inspired enough to actually write something to move them off it.

things are going to have to change round here. not drastically or anything, but i need to shake things up a bit. atsot turns four next tuesday (!) and i turn 25 a month later. i think we both need revitalising.

if you've got anything you'd like to see me post, or write about, or do, let me know in the comments box or by email. i'm going to try out a whole bunch of things over the next month, and your input would be triffic.

quiet, loud, quiet

2006-06-27T10:51:00.000+01:00

so while things may have been a little quiet here, i having been leading an exciting life... i got snapped at the ever-wonderful how does it feel, which i hadn't been to in ages. it remains my absolute all-time favourite clubnight. just thinking about it makes me feel warm inside. i went with stu (who also got caught on camera, and louise, and there were a few lovely sinisterines there too.

i made my first (suitably geeky) front page post on metafilter. i joined at the beginning of the year, and i'm pretty keen on it. i've yet to make it to a meet-up, but i fear it's only a matter of time.

the same day, a gang of us went to the wireless festival, which was ok. b&s played a set that was very heavy on the new album, which seemed a shame at a festival. they did play stars of track and field though. so i suppose i can't complain too much. the strokes, who headlined, seemed to be struggling to fill an hour and half, but they did play all 'the hits', so i was reasonably happy, if cold. wireless is a strange festival because it's so heavily corporate, and yet it has all the same sort of stalls as the average glastonbury/guilfest. so herbal highs and workers beer rub shoulders with the moto meadow and the superdrug bus. the bonus was that there was quite a lot of free stuff - including wine!

and the best thing (er, maybe) is that i got a nintendo ds lite on friday morning (yes, i got up early to get to the shop before work!). it's very beautiful, and i've become slightly addicted to brain training (my current brain age is 34, it started at 61, so i must be getting cleverer). i'm also enjoying animal crossing, so if anyone reading this is also playing it, drop me an email and we can swap friend codes.

and one final piece of good news - i've got argentina in the office sweepstake. it's looking promising!

meme me

2006-06-09T16:56:00.001+01:00

courtesy of the baddidodo, who claims that i don't update often enough, and is absolutely right, a meme.

six weird facts or habits about me (that seems strangely ungrammatical)

1) two of my three favourite tv programmes have never been broadcast on terrestrial television in this country (that would be gilmore girls and veronica mars)
2) the noise my mobile makes when i get a text message is jarvis cocker singing "uh-oh-oh" from razzmatazz.
3) when i was little i hated birthday cake, and would only eat it on my own birthday, and then under duress. this cakephobia did not last, sadly.
4) i read the new york times online every day. i got hooked when i went on holiday last year, and now i feel incomplete if i don't know obscure ny gossip.
5) i have seven of the old glass lucozade bottles in a cupboard in my bedroom. at some point i am going to get the tops cut off and turn them into vases, but i've not got round to it in the last, er, ten years.
6) a couple of my colleagues asked me earlier today if i ever write about them on my blog. i never have before, but i think i just did.

usual rules apply, if you want to do this survey, please do! and if you do, let me know and i'll link it here.

i'm going to the seaside. more family lexicon when i get back. i promise. if you're lucky it'll be sea themed. though i may have already used that one.

family lexicon 3 plus

2006-05-29T12:44:00.000+01:00

what is this 'blogging' thing of which you speak, it sounds dirty. i have no idea what one of these 'weblogs' might possibly be... is it something to do with spiders? i would never allow myself to be called a 'blogger', nice young ladies shouldn't have to hear such language.

i seem to have accidentally had a blog-holiday. totally avoidable, especially since i have just had a week-long work-holiday, but those are the breaks. still, the old place looks much as it used to, a little dusty from disuse, maybe, but still basically the same.

so... i went to atp last weekend, which was quite very awesome. you can see some pictures i took here, there are a lot of pictures of jess on there, but several of them were taken by her as she forgot to bring her camera - this is the curse of the myspace generation - self-portraits are compulsory at all times.

i had almost escaped the curse, but then about halfway through the week, i had a mental storm, and joined an online dating agency. so i'm trying to make the best of my temporary insanity, and i spent most of yesterday trying to take a picture of myself that didn't make me want to stab my eyes out with a fork. this is what i came up with, i hope you approve.

and now for family lexicon part 3 - you thought i'd forgotten, didn't you?

"chilly willy and the red hots" - is another of my mother's sayings, and is particularly appropriate for today (which is bright but not warm). it's said when it's cold outside, a bit like brass monkeys. it's provenance again is mired in the past, but i can't find any mention of the originaly chilly willy and the red hots, who she claims were a band of some kind. it's entirely plausible that she made it up!

family lexicon 2

2006-05-03T11:30:00.000+01:00

as requested by ms sarah l, the second family saying is this:

"not cheap like a big cigar", deliberately presented there without any punctuation. this is one of my mother's favourite sayings, and i love it because it's totally ambiguous.

the best way to parse it, i think, is "[not cheap] like a big cigar", with the implication being that big cigars are expensive. but you can tcompletely screw with it, if you say it it "not [cheap like a big cigar]", creating the illusion that money means nothing to you, and big cigars are ten a penny.

i'm sure there's a conclusion that i could draw from this, but i can't work out what it would be.

and for added measure: a phrase i believe have borrowed from sarah l: "that sucks goats"

family lexicon

2006-04-21T13:07:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about family, and, uh, the role of family in my life. I'm what americans would probably call a homebody. I like hanging out with my parents and my brother, I'll even put up with the occasional lunatic cousin. We're quite a close knit family, and this has given rise to a few idiosyncrasies. Most of which I didn?t notice until I went away to uni.

The one I really want to discuss (and I'm going to do this for a handful of posts, I think) is the family lexicon. This is a phrase I have unashamedly pinched from natalia ginzburg's lessico famigliare, which I read as part of my italian literature course all those years ago (I handed my essay about it in almost exactly three years ago. My tutor who translated the book, called it the things we used to say, which almost explains it.

What I'm talking about is the little collection of phrases and sayings that our family has accrued over the years. A lot of them are unique to our nuclear family, and I have never heard anyone else say (except those that my friends have picked up from me). I've heard a few from my extended family, and a few are in fairly common usage. I suppose all families do this, it's obviously not unique to ours. But I've obviously not been exposed to many other families in that way. These are mainly the sort of idiom you have to grow up with to really use.

Our family sayings have a wide provenance too: literature, film, really bad puns and things my brother and I said as children have all been subsumed into our family dialect. A lot of them, I have no idea where they came from, and I'm keen to find out.

I know this has been a bit pseudo-intellectual, but I promise the rest of the posts in the series will be less worthy. I think it should be quite good fun. The phrases are colourful and honestly a bit weird. I think you will enjoy them. And here's one to begin with:

"twist(ed) my arm and call(ed) me sailor." - I have literally no idea where this comes from, and google offers me nothing, the only thing I can think is that it might be something my nana would say, and could therefore be something from one of the wars. It's used when someone offers you something that you want, but you decline it first time, and then acquiesce. Ie:

"do you want another glass of wine?"
"ah, no I shouldn't,"
"go on,"
"oh alright, you've twisted my arm and called me sailor."

weird.

oh, and

2006-04-13T15:53:00.000+01:00

i completely forgot that there's a new addition to my famous people i have served series, which has been on hiatus since last august.

#7 - joanna lumley. her granddaughter had a birthday in the cafe, which i duty managed. she had a latte. she has a very distinctive voice, i realised she had come in before i saw her because i could hear her speaking. she was very nice, and her granddaughters were adorable.

(previously in this series mark owen, martin freeman and mos def, adam cornish and toby young, and kelly osbourne)

blah blah blog

2006-04-09T14:30:00.000+01:00

just because things have gone a bit quiet round here doesn't mean i've given up on blogging... i have big plans, it's just that none have them have come to fruition yet. i could really use some time off to, er, work on them... hmm, i wonder if i've got my priorities straight here.

anyway, i'm still thinking about blogging, even when i'm not actually doing it. on tuesday, i went to the londonist's blogging demystified event. it's pretty obvious that i don't need blogging to be demystified for my benefit, but i was curious nonetheless. and in fact, it seemed pretty obvious to me that no one at the event was in any way mystified by blogging. which was lucky because the event didn't shed a huge amount of light on this not hugely clandestine activity.

annie mole talked about reasons you might want to start a blog - money and fame being two of the answers she gave. of course, she allowed that most bloggers achieve neither from their blogs, and that actually one of the main benefits bloggers will get is that their writing style may improve.

tom reynolds gave an interesting talk about blogging as a way of forging an identity for yourself online. particularly interesting to me was the fact that both he and annie use assumed names on their weblogs (as do i, of course), but were happy to appear in public as bloggers, unlike the infamous belle de jour. it did make me reflect on why, exactly, after three and half years(!), i still blog.

lastly, the girls who run inky circus spoke about blogging collaboratively, and the pitfalls of blogging when writing is your job.

it was a really interesting event, and i will keep an eye out for similar things, as i did enjoy it (even if it wasn't really news to me).

afterwards, i went to see the duloks, and they were ace.

edited 13-4-06, because i hadn't actually posted this, so here's some extra info
you can see some photos here, tom reynolds' account here, the londonist's here, and a very short bit from annie mole here - now you can pretend you were there too!

moronism

2006-03-30T15:58:00.000+01:00

so here's a thing, i am pretty sure i am not stupid. i have a degree and a masters and a whole host of other impressive qualifications. and yet sometimes i open my mouth and sheer inanity spills forth.

it's not that long ago that i presented my co-workers with what i proclaimed to be "the rolls-royce of staplers". let's just examine that sentence. it is pure bathos. a stapler is never going to be an expensive, luxury car. it's not going to improve your chances with the opposite sex, it's not going to make you look wealthy, a stapler is pretty much only going to be good for securing papers together.

let's face it, you've never seen julia roberts with a stapler (no matter how high-end it may be) at the oscars. in fact the only thing those staplers had in common with a rolls-royce seems to be that everybody wanted one. certainly they all went awol in less than a week.

and then today a co-worker made me a cup of tea, while another one brought around a packet of mini eggs. how did i react to this unexpected bounty? well first of all, i got flustered "oh, wow, it's all happening at once," as though cups of tea and mini eggs were uncanny and exotic largesse, rather than nice but fairly normal treats. and then i said what truly must be the most moronic words i have ever uttered (discounting my famous misspelling of my own, four letter name): "tea and chocolate eggs, it's like a holiday."

"it's like a holiday."

how? how on earth are tea and mini eggs anything like a holiday? they were very nice. but there was no sand, or sunshine, or bathing costumes, or sightseeing. in short, it was nothing like a holiday.

and my co-workers now think i have a head full of candyfloss.

a thought

2006-03-22T23:45:00.000Z

if, as conservative leader david cameron claimed today, labour chancellor gordon brown is an "analogue politician in a digital age". then surely the tories are still in private alpha, and seriously buggy.

or is that too geeky? my brother suggested brown should have replied in binary.

before the streets are aired

2006-03-13T10:07:00.000Z

i was just violently attacked by a fire door. it hit me in the face. my glasses are bent and i look like i've been in a ryan atwood style fight. this is why i should never have to leave the house before ten o'clock.

i need tea, but i've given up caffeine for lent. damn my passion for self-denial.

clogging

2006-03-05T20:52:00.000Z

i was so tired last week that i thought i was going to fall asleep standing up on more than one occasion. i wake up stiff and sore in the mornings because i'm so exhausted that i've slept eight hours in the same position. having two jobs and a social life has begun to wear my down somewhat. it's nice to be employed. i think i might need a holiday at this point though.

not that i'm trying to find excuses for not posting. oh... no...wait... i am.

i've got some serious blogger's block going on here, i'm tempted to do the haitus thing, but actually i think that would be counter-productive. if i ever do get a holiday, then i'll definitely do a theme week though, if that's any consolation.

i just don't feel like i've got much to write about at the moment. i feel nostalgic, but i'm not sure what for - my muse maybe.

turning japanese

2006-02-22T16:50:00.000Z

a period of distraction precipitated by my purchasing the truly awesome we ♥ katamari has resulted in my not quite managing to find time to post. this is mostly due to the fact that i now regard time not spent playing katamari as completely wasted. and yes that includes work.

it's actually the sequel to another game, katamari damacy, which was never released in this country (grrr etc). and the basic premise is this, you play prince (not that prince), and you have to push around a big sticky ball called a katamari, picking up the things you roll over. you can only pick up things that are smaller than your katamari. so to begin with, you pick up stamps and matches, as you pick thigs up, your katamari gets bigger and bigger and you can start collecting bigger items like chopsticks, biscuits, and eventually dogs, geckos and people. and then buildings. and so on.

i have played it to such an extent recently that i'm having to take a break, because my thumbs are starting to hurt, and i occasionally look at a table, or my desk and begin wondering how i would go about picking everything up with my katamari.it's exactly the sort of game i enjoy. brightly coloured, non-linear, cute, no fighting or violence, or scaryness, and the music is engagingly weird. above all, it's very japanese.

this, of course, means it's been a cult hit among geeks, and the gamerati. there are katamari cakes, costumes, paper models, hats, and more hats, crocheted katamari, felt prince dolls... people have even tried to do it in real life

there's a cute little 2d katamari game on the official japanese site, if you feel like having a taste. it's not quite as good as the real deal, but even if you think you're pathelogically averse to gaming, give it a go. it's fun!

oh-em-gee

2006-02-02T09:50:00.000Z

yes, i do speak solely in three letter acronyms these days, i'm a busy girl, it saves me a good .25 seconds not saying the entire phrase. maybe.

i'm very excited today, because one of my favourite webcomics, questionable content has a belle and sebastian reference. and even better, it's about fighting belle and sebastian. though i think poor marten would struggle to beat ex-boxer struan, and dora might be a bit optimistic in thinking that she can take the rest of the band... sarah in particular looks pretty tough to me. so yeah, that's my idea of fun now, imagining comic characters fighting indiepop stars.

i don't get out much.

of course, b&s themselves are making a comic, or rather a comic has been made featuring their songs. i would love to link to the post on sinister, by a guy who partially organised it, but the archive is down. of course, you heard it here first. maybe.

edited 03-02-06 9.51 - because acb linked to a post on 'the other place'in the comments, which quoted the two sinister posts in full: here, and here. i think both posts are interesting about the reasons behind the comic, and about the actual content.

wtf

2006-01-27T09:44:00.000Z

er, is it just me, or is something up with blogspot today? this page usually looks a lot nicer than this, and i'm pretty sure i haven't changed anything.

well this is both ugly and annoying. and seems to have affected some other blogspot blogs rather less badly than mine. curse my need for customisation.

update - oops, they seem to have fixed it even as i was typing. move along, nothing to see here, except - of course - nearly three and a half years of blogging.

rebel rebel

2006-01-23T22:05:00.000Z

i've been enjoying the beeb's latest cop show life on mars, the basic premise of which it is that a modern day policeman gets hit by a car and goes back in time to 1973, where he is astonished by un-pc attitudes, lack of forensics and primitive technology.

it's a terrific watch - funny, weird, exciting and it's got a good soundtrack. and it does make you think about life back then. without mobiles and ipods and, heck, computers that fit into a space smaller than a room. we're talking pre-internet too. i suppose the target demographic (yeah, this is how i talk, now i work in tv) is people who never saw the 1970s, or at least don't remember it too clearly, but my parents are quite keen on it too, though in a different way. they worked in pre-computer offices, when you had to write everything by hand and then get it typed up. which is, really, a world away from 2006. *

but then today i got the chance to experience life in the seventies, when we had a spectacular power cut at work. the lights went off at 1.15, and didn't come back on... well, they did come back on, but not before they'd evacuated the building as it was getting too dark. so there was a whole afternoon (ok, more like a couple of hours, cos i had my lunch and we did get to go home early) where we worked like it was 1973. pens on paper. no wikipedia for fact checking purposes (not that i use it... honest). seriously, life without backspace sux0rs.

*incidentally, i am pronoucing this year twenty-oh-six, like charlotte green, (don't click that link if you want all your preconceptions ruined forever). it sounds so much more like the future.

So this is the new year

2006-01-15T23:29:00.000Z

death cab fans can fill in the rest.

yesterday i duty managed a seven year old's birthday party.

'wow, fb, that's, like, totally the most interesting thing you could possibly tell us,' i hear you say sarcastically, (because obviously you all talk like californian teenagers and address me as fb, even though you know my real name). and you're right, it's not terrifically interesting, except for the fact that i duty managed his sixth birthday party too. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

because my life has changed dramatically in the last twelve months. heck it's changed dramatically in the last six months. i'm doing my best to embrace change, cos, y'know, that's what you're supposed to do. but it's scary. of course. there is a whole new era ahead. and i'm sorely tempted to bury my head under the blankets. unfortunately that never seems to work.

at uni, i could pretty much tell you exactly where i would be in a year's time. everything was well mapped out, and predictable. i feel like i'm moving into uncharted territory now.

five from '05

2006-01-02T01:16:00.000Z

part 5: websites

if i wasn't already a bit addicted to the internet, this was the year that i became a complete slave to the web. selling my soul for a wikipedia fix. or something. so here are five sites that i've particularly loved this year.

del.icio.us/popular... the most popular links on del.icio.us at any given time. from serious coding to silly quicktime movies. once you start, it's really hard to stop.

last.fm... i've become obsesed with my last.fm charts, it completely fascinates me. how, for instance, have i listened to more libertines than pulp? it's curious. the radio function is worth the sign up fee - although it doesn't actually work in my office. sigh.

flickr... it's not just about being able to post my own pictures, though that's obviously good, it's also about looking at other people's versions of the same ideas. look at the pictures tagged belle and sebastian for instance, it's mesmerising.

elbo.ws... is a mp3 blog search engine, so if you want to hear somthing by a band you can put them into elbo.ws and hear a couple of sample tracks that have been chosen by bloggers. i bought quite a few albums last year after downloading songs i'd found through this site.

no rock and roll fun... is the first site i check in the morning. simon puts in so much work and no rock is an amazing blog. it's not just that he always has the news, but also that his comments are often really funny, and his opinion is usually spot on.

five from '05

2006-01-02T00:43:00.000Z

part 4: films

this was a year of weepies... i seem to have spent a lot of time in tears at the cinema this year, with screenwriters killing off characters at the drop of a hat. but catharsis is always, y'know, a good thing. special mention here to march of the penguins, because i cried so much i thought i was going to melt into a puddle - who knew there were so many ways baby penguins could die.

serenity... so. damn. good. funny and fighty and just grate! i want more.

the life aquatic with steve zissou... wes anderson is prolly my favourite director at the moment, but the life aquatic wasn't his best film. it was, however, a lot of fun. and the soundtrack was fantastic

les choristes... a really sweet film, it had an amelie-esque charm, and was a pretty easy watch. it makes the list because i'm still thinking about it six months after seeing it, which doesn't always happen.

harry potter and the goblet of fire... the best potter yet... and jarvis was in it, which makes it essentially perfect, if you ask me. i didn't even realise they'd cut out a rather important subplot until a week after i first saw it!

d!g/drive well sleep carefully - two films about bands, but such different bands - where death cab are utterly disciplined and dedicated, brian jonestown massacre are all over the place. both enjoyable films, for different reasons.

(and five dvds i rented from lovefilm and enjoyed: heathers, the big lebowski, final destination, the life of david gale, bullets over broadway.)

(*special bonus* five tv shows i watched a lot last year: the oc, veronica mars, gilmore girls, dr who, lost.)

five from '05

2006-01-02T00:18:00.000Z

part 3: books

yes, i failed miserably in the 52 book challenge, partially due to indolence, and partially to business (i am that oxymoron, a lazy person who's always working). but here are five new books i enjoyed last year (well, one's a re-release):

the line of beauty - alan hollinghurst... lovely, a really meaty book that made 48 hours of african drumming totally bearable.

true grit - charles portis... a fantastic adventure story, told with a strange lack of emotion, but far from colourless.

harry potter and the half blood prince - jk rowling... potter. needs no description because you've surely all read it. i did enjoy it though.

we need to talk about kevin - lionel shriver... chilling, but a really, really great book. one of those books that you can't stop thinking about when you put it down.

the time traveler's wife - audrey niffenegger... a strangely guilty pleasure - this was an easy read, but was also really well written and well paced.

(and five books i wasn't massively impressed by: jonathan strange and mr norell - susanna clarke, coma - alex garland, the final solution - michael chabon (it was good, but so short! i want more), eleanor rigby - douglas coupland, live bait - pj tracy)

five from '05

2006-01-01T23:39:00.000Z

part 2: gigs

working at a music venue, i saw a lot of gigs last year that just don't really count because i had other things on my mind, and i wasn't really been paying attention, or i'd not seen the support acts. but i also saw some great shows. five favourites:

belle and sebastian play if you're feeling sinister at the barbican, 25-09-05... was great - my favourite album of all time played by my favourite band of all time. plus some surprises, including electronic renaissance. the itunes download of the gig is good, but not as good as actually being there was!

rufus wainwright at shepherd's bush empire 15-04-05... was probably the most fun i have had at a gig - pure showmanship and some really great songs.

kimya dawson at the pullens centre 25-09-05... (yep the same day as b&s), the first breakfast gig i have ever been to, it was totally worth getting up early to go.

manic street preachers at hammersmith apollo 19-04-05... a total fans set with almost nothing from the latest album, i was down the front shrieking like a teenager. i can't help it. it's like a pavlovian response!

bright eyes at somerset house 11-07-05... actually it was a bit of a disappointment, but the venue is so lovely, i can't believe i hadn't been before. conor restricted himself to songs from digital ash, which i've not heard. i was not best pleased. there was a lovely sunset though.

(and five bands i really enjoyed at work in 2005: mountain goats 23-11, scissor sisters 14-08, jeffrey lewis & dufus 16-05, the pipettes 04-03, ed harcourt & tom mccrae 22-07.)

five from '05

2006-01-01T23:13:00.000Z

part 1: records

2005 was meant to be the year i bought more new music, and actually, i did. for a long time, i've been worried that my music taste has been stagnating, but this year has introduced me to a fair few bands that i think are great. so here are five albums released in the last year i think are awesome (in no particular order):

come on feel the illinoise - sufjan stevens... a record that really comes to life when you listen to it through headphones. it's amazing anyway, though.

i'm wide awake it's morning - bright eyes... just a fantastic album, there isn't a dud song on it, and when conor's good he's genius.

picaresque - the decemberists... i love this album, if it were a person i would marry it tomorrow - it's witty, it's clever and it's gorgeous.

i am a bird now - anthony and the johnsons... it's all about his voice, which is like nothing i have ever heard before, androgynous in the truest sense of the word - eerie and enchanting.

funeral - arcade fire... so exciting, this album feels like listening to the future.

(and five also-rans: guero - beck, plans - death cab for cutie, cuts across the land - the duke spirit, too tall to hide - halloween, alaska, the great destroyer - low)

christmas time is here

2005-12-21T15:48:00.000Z

it may only be wednesday, but there's a distinct end-of-term feeling in the office today. in fact, i'm the only person left as the rest of the team have either started their holiday or are at christmas parties. i'm also feeling a bit guilty, because i've been given presents by two people, and given out none. which is a bit shocking. i meant to bake, but then i was too busy.

i gave stu and louise prints by andrew kendall for christmas (they've already opened them, so i'm not spoiling the surprise!) - he had a load of his equipment nicked earlier this year and his insurance company refused to cough up, so he hoping to get some money back through selling prints from his site. they are really good photos too.

so i'm sitting at my desk, listening to christmas music on pandora, and feeling a bit like a character in a tragedy-tinged sitcom.

this sporting life

2005-12-13T14:03:00.000Z

i am a truly awful sportswoman. the reason for this is twofold: firstly, i am somewhat competitive; and secondly, i am terrible at any sport (even pseudo-sports like table football) you could name, with the possible exception of crazy golf.

poor eyesight, asthma, and general malcoordination put paid to any ambitions my parents may have had of my becoming a new mary decker or christine truman-janes. while my impressive idleness never failed to depress my games teachers, who were forever telling me to take my hands out of my pockets - perhaps to at least give the slight impression that i was vaguely interested in whatever athletic endeavour was taking place around me.

like many indie kids, when we were finally asked which sport we would like to play during the mandatory pe lesson, i played badminton. a game so indie that a weak wrist is a positive advantage!

and now the point...

on saturday, alice, kate, iain from the seven inches and i went bowling. this is not the sort of thing i would usually do, but the truly awsome pipettes were playing, and it seemed churlish not to.

i had envisioned it being like the opening scenes of josie and the pussycats, where the pussycats play to a near-empty bowling alley. it was actually quite a lot busier than that. we had to wait a couple of hours for a lane to become free, and during that time a certain amount of alcohol was cosumed. the more i drink, the better i get at scrabble. the same is not true of bowling (at least i hope it isn't). my score over ten frames was, er, 28. even iain, who had never bowled before, beat me.

to soothe my spirit, alice claimed i was too indie to be good at bowling. kate has put some pics up on her flickr page, including this one, which i think proves what alice said, and has given me a whole new excuse for my inability to succeed at anything that remotely resembles a sport - i'm just too indie.

growing up too fast

2005-11-30T12:38:00.000Z

when i was a kid, my brother and i were desperate for some kind of gaming system. we really wanted a snes or a megadrive, but we weren't choosy. mum, being generally quite sensible, if a little conservative, decreed that we could have a gameboy instead. i suspect this was due to pricing rather than any desire to protect young minds from sonic the hedghog.

then, the gameboy was stolen and we were so heartbroken that she gave in and we got our snes. the snes which still occasionally gets dragged out when we're in brighton for a quick mario kart tournament. since the snes we've owned a pretty large number of consoles between us: a game gear, a nes, a playstation (which i took to university with me), and a ps2. i've also got a gameboy advance and a gba sp, which i mainly use for scrabble on the go. oh, and we've gamed on pcs and on my mac (mostly the sims).

we've grown up into (in my case) an occasional, but well-informed gamer, and (in my brother's case) a dedicated, passionate gamer. we both read penny arcade and the guardian gamesblog. we're both more than averagely technologically literate. and despite our enjoyment of the gta games, neither of us has evolved into a crazed murderer (in your face jack thompson!)

but here's the rub... if i had children, at what age would i allow them access to the technology i take forgranted? this thought is down to my reading about a mobile phone for four year olds. i didn't get my first mobile until i was 17. and only then because i was going to glastonbury and my parents were worried i'd be eaten by a crusty. my gut says that under 10 is probably too young for a phone. but according to this article, the average age for a first mobile is now eight. eight! i mean, who are you going to call? there's something very weird going on here.

a pretty girl...

2005-11-27T22:24:00.000Z

i don't think i ever mentioned it, but a couple of years ago i switched on my tv, and there was the most beautiful girl in the world on it.

the show was the first series of america's next top model, and the girl was the impossibly hotttt (two ts just aren't enough) elyse sewell.

i've never been interested in the model type, but she was a class apart. an indie girl with impeccable credentials (her boyfriend is the keyboard player with the shins), she insulted evangelical christians by telling them she didn't believe in god, and she came extremely close to actually winning the thing.

now thanks to the wonder of the modern age (i mean the weblog, not the abstract concept), i've discovered that she has a livejournal. with pictures. my brain doesn't have space to think about anything else right now. sigh.

mmm, you did wait a week for this. i'm marginally more coherent in my last.fm gig journal, though as those usually get posted at half-past eleven the night of the gig, it's a fine, fine line.

birdhouse in my soul

2005-11-18T10:48:00.000Z

i've become lightly obsessed with a song, birdhouse in your soul, bu they might be giants. lightly obsessed in the sense that i've listened to it about twenty times since i bought it on itunes last week.

there are several music-related reasons that i like the song, but i'm particularly a fan of the lyrics, which are all about a nightlight in a child's bedroom.

once upon a time, i was very afraid of the dark. so afraid that my parents installed a dimmer switch in my bedroom so the room would never be pitch black. even in the not-dark, i used to imagine monsters sneaking in and taking me off with them. the monsters resembled the the wild things from maurice sendak's book, but were much more terrifying.

gradually, of course, i grew out of it, and now i actually prefer to be in a very dark room. but birdhouse in your soul reminds me of that nice feeling when you're little and you wake up in the middle of the night and there's a little glow somewhere in the room.

the socialite

2005-11-15T10:22:00.000Z

i think i might finally *get* this whole social web thing, it was sort of passing me by before, but now... i think i actually understand it. it's all about what happens when, say, someone sees your profile on myspace , then follows a link to your last.fm profile and discovers you like the same music, so they message you and you find their blog and their photos on flickr and their bookmarks on del.icio.us... and it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship. possibly.

it's actually quite exciting. weird, but exciting. weird that you can find out a lot about a person - what pictures they've taken, what music they're listening to, what sites they're visiting, who their friends are - without ever actually meeting them. it makes the idea of an entirely online relationship more plausible than ever.

mmm, blogger in amazing potential of web shocka! later... my current obsession with a particular song written from the point of view of a nightlight.

old school

2005-11-08T10:23:00.000Z

i was worried enough about going to my school reunion to post to sinister about it. but in the end it was quite a success. rather than remembering all the negative things about being at school, i actually remembered a lot of the positive ones. and it was fascinating to see what everyone (or the fifty or so who turned up) was doing these days. most people were terrifically grown up (almost to the point of seeming middle-aged), though there was a small contingent who actually hadn't changed since they were thirteen and weren't any better for it.

i spent the evening answering "not much" to the inevitable "so what are you doing now". though the truth is that i've been quite busy of late. somewhat working two jobs (although only one has been paying me). of course, two days after my five year school reunion, my life suddenly gets infinitely better, when the employers who weren't paying me say they'd like to start. huzzah! perfect timing for christmas.

also, for everyone who's ever wondered what my school looked like, i took no pictures of my friends at the reunion, just of the school. i've created a set on flickr - take a look if you're interested. it's pretty weird, but if you spend enough time there, you get used to it!

inheritances

2005-10-26T10:01:00.000+01:00

i refuse to admit that i am devoid of inspiration...

i was thinking about inheritances because mike is serialising his mother's early memories.

when my grandmother died, my mother inherited a lot of jewelry. for various reasons involving both insurance companies and my mother's sadness, the jewelry is kept in a bank near king's cross. it has been there since the 70s.

growing up, my mother would occasionally refer to the jewelry in the bank - golden swizzle sticks for champagne (for removing the bubbles - popular in the 30s); inexpensive costume jewelry; my grandmother's pearls. even now, she'll sometimes look at an outfit and say oh i used to have a pair of earrings that would go really well with that, but they're in the bank.

i used to love hearing about the jewelry, imagining a room similar to harry potter's vault at gringott's, filled with gold and jewels. she would always say that we would go and 'visit the jewelry'. we still haven't.

of course the reality is much more prosaic, and it seems to me that the stories of the jewelry are actually a better inheritance than the jewelry itself - really who needs a golden swizzle stick? and pearls (tragically) tend to crack if not worn regularly.... the jewelry of my imagination is almost certainly more exciting than what i'd find in a bank near king's cross.

on the other hand, what's the point of having jewelry if you never wear it?

aaarrr such laziness

2005-10-18T00:04:00.000+01:00

What kind of pirate am I? You decide!
You can also view a breakdown of results or put one of these on your own page!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

proper postage soon, maybe even tomorrow. aren't you lucky?

the game of eyes

2005-10-11T12:47:00.000+01:00

i had a very filmic weekend, by which i mean that i saw a lot of films. three, to be exact. it was a diverse selection, seen in three very different cinemas. there was a documentary about an indie rock band, seen in a fifty-seat art-house; an italian classic of the 1950s seen in a large cinema (which was half-full), with steeply banked rows of seats; and a hollywood popcorn blockbuster, seen at the local multiplex.

drive well, sleep carefully follows death cab as they tour america with transatlanticism. it's not your standard band film, in that it features performances from a number of different gigs, rather than just the one, and the performances are interspersed with interviews with the band. it's obviously not a substitute for seeing the band live, and the live performances sound curiously sterile, presumably due to post-production. the band members come across as hard-working, and passionate, if a little bit too clean living for a rock and roll band - something like an american coldplay.
i saw it at the ica, as part of a plexi film music-film season that's going on at the moment.

i first saw la strada (the road) as part of the italian film course i took at york. to see it in a proper cinema was great. giulietta masina, who plays the lead, gelsomina, has such an incredibly expressive face that a television doesn't really do it justice. it's a heartwrenching film, though, which i had remembered, but certain moments took me by surprise.
i saw it at the barbican, where it was showing in a double bill with roma, città aperta, which i missed because i was taking my ibook to be fixed.

i've been looking forward to serenity for ages - since i watched the firefly dvds last summer. i wasn't disappointed with what i eventually saw, if anything, it left me wanting more because certain mysteries from the show weren't cleared up at all. mmmm, big damn trilogy (that's the technical term). i saw it at my local multiplex, which doesn't deserve a plug. serenity, however, definitely does.

also, downloading tv is the new rock and roll. i finally got my gilmore girls fix. rory needs to grow the heck up.

chipper to a fault

2005-10-04T22:11:00.000+01:00

mmmm atp looking really good next year. maybe i'll make it to a festival next year. anyone want to share a chalet?

i'm still being a lazy get - at the moment that is - i've got something exciting coming up later in the month. so television has been my close companion. i'm particularly loving veronica mars on living (recommended by alice), it's really helping with the post-gilmore girls cravings. i'm really considering doing the whole file-sharing thing, just so i can keep up with rory and lorelei. and maybe the first few episodes of season 3 of the oc. i know it's mostly mental chewing-gum, but if i'm giving up alcohol, i should be allowed to retain my other addictions.

the not-drinking is going surprisingly well, actually. it's easier than i thought it would be. though i've not been out in the evening yet, which may be the testing point of my sobriety. i did go to the rota afternoon on saturday in notting hill with alice, and stuck to tomato juice. i felt very virtuous.

in other news, i chipped a tooth on friday morning, and i have no idea how. in fact i didn't even realise until friday evening. it's not very noticable, but annoying nonetheless. oh yes, my thrilling life. also on friday, i had a good conversation with a three year old about how good monsters inc is.

also but i'm a cheerleader: the musical. i may have just died from excitement. really.

prohibition

2005-09-28T20:33:00.000+01:00

we've gone dry at home in an attempt to lower the ps' cholesterol. this is gererally a good idea, since, y'know, anything that causes them to live longer is prolly for the best.

i'd been considering abstinence for a while - since reading a double header of books about alcoholism (augusten burroughs' dry and koren zailckas' smashed). and now seemed like a good time to start, since there's quite a long gap without any major drink-based celebrations. i'm hoping to make it to christmas. we'll see.

what's struck me already is how much longer the evenings seem to be and the number of things i can actually get done. at this rate, i might actually finish one of my (off-line) writing projects! indolence has been fun for the last few months, but it palls pretty quickly.

out in the streets

2005-09-22T17:35:00.000+01:00

last night, walking east up the main road to the tube, two flocks of geese flew overhead, migrating for the winter. it's the autumn equinox today, so i don't know why i'm surprised, but i was.

time passes strangely. every year seems to go faster and faster. when i was a child, an eight week summer holiday seemed like a lifetime, now it's gone in an afternoon. a year ago feels like both yesterday and a hundred years ago.

i've changed, but i also still feel like everyone i've ever been. i feel like a tralfamadorian from slaughterhouse five, that i exist at all times simultanously.

went to see dig last night with stu and louise. we saw it at the prince charles cinema - 90% of the audience was either in a band, or had been in a band at some point - including the three of us, of course. it was an interesting film - someone really should sit pete down and make him watch it. seeing how drugs and sheer solipsism can wreck a band is pretty enlightening.

that said, anton from the bjm issued a statement distancing himself from the movie,

"Several years of our hard work was reduced at best to a series of punch-ups and mishaps taken out of context,"

judging from this statement, anton seems pretty coherent, and while i'd dispute that everything that went on in the film was out of context, i think it would have been worth giving him an opportunity to respond to the film, onscreen.

for circularity, i'd like to point out that it must have been pretty weird for him to watch himself in the film - he strikes me as one of those people who think they'll be 21 forever. i'm not sure i'm not one of them myself.

recordings

2005-09-14T17:04:00.000+01:00

hooray! i'm totally back in the smoke, there's a new version of itunes, and all's right with the world.

i did a little shopping over in americky, somehow restricting myself to just two cds (death cab's plans and halloween, alaska's first record. i've not managed to listen to the death cab yet, but i'm listening to halloween, alaska at the moment, and liking it muchly.

i first heard of the band when the song "all the arms around you" appeared on the first episode of the second series of the oc. i liked it so much that i googled the lyrics, but discovered you couldn't really get the record in the uk. i managed to get a copy in nyc, but luckily for you it's being released at the end of october, along with their new album. oh and the strangely quiet 50 quid bloke was enthusing about them back in june. you can hear some of their new stuff on their myspace page.

i'm not going to do a full on holiday rundown, because that would be boring for everyone. suffice to say that i had a brilliant time (favourite moments: cycling round central park on sunday, and drinking an old fashioned at the algonquin. yes it should have been a martini, but i prefer whisky. i also met the hotel cat.)

you can see a small selection of my photographs here, not including the cat unfortunately.

time capsule

2005-09-01T23:03:00.000+01:00

there is just under an hour left of my 24th birthday. i shall use this time to explain my five most favouritest tracks at the moment, in the hopes of creating a record of my listening habits on this day.

(actually, today i have mostly been listening to the signal a serenity/firefly podcast. and if you don't know what that means, then shame on you. take a look at these explanations from my new addiction wikipedia: podcasting and firefly/serenity. both concepts are well worth investigating.)

but he wanted to know what 5 songs i was listening to at the moment. ummm.

our rather selective survey says:

pretty things - rufus wainwright. a lot of people have said they find his music too arch, too mannered. but that's precisely what i like about him. that and the compulsive w.
long division - the aislers set. i fell in love with amy linton last december. she held my hands and thanked me for being there for her. i'd only got her a beer. why we aren't married yet is beyond me.
rebellion (lies) - the arcade fire. why didn't i get into this band sooner? i totally heart them.
jason lee - all girl summer fun band. it's really a song about jason lee the actor/skateboarder whose son is called Pilot Inspektor Reisgard Lee. which beats those britpop baby names into a cocked hat.
a movie script ending - death cab for cutie/ clark gable - postal service. i've been listening to a lot of ben gibbard stuff of late (in particular his hilarious cover of la lavigne's complicated). these are prolly my two favourites and i refuse to chose between them.

yes nothing british, despite the fact that i've been indulging my nostalgia with lots of britpop. it's a bit like saying "oooh yes i eat 5 pieces of fruit and veg every day" and neglecting to mention that all you eat the rest of the time is chips. but that's the kind of girl i am.

i'm not really going to pass this on... if a school friend, or a university friend or anyone else would like to carry the thing on, please go ahead...

i had greek food for supper, with lots of retsina. it tastes like disinfectant, but it's the only thing to drink in many cases. our kid gave me the oc box set. i heart seth cohen. i have broken several of my self-imposed blogging rules. but normal service will be resumed eventually.

also, what's the feeling on live journals. am i missing out?

creepy crawling

2005-08-26T01:35:00.000+01:00

there is a large spider in my room. i really, really, really hate spiders. it keeps appearing just in my peripheral vision, and then when i go to whack it with the nearest large object, a shoe say, or harry potter and the half-blood prince, it vanishes.

i am slightly reasurred by this site debunking the story that the average person eats several spiders a year in their sleep. but just the thought of it possibly running over my face in the night is enough to make me never want to sleep again.

did i mention that i hate spiders? i really hate them.

update at 01:49 - i just saw it run out of the door. with any luck the cat, a notorious spider-murderer, will polish it off!

caution. to prevent electric shock...

2005-08-24T18:53:00.000+01:00

i've done a bit of, er, autumn cleaning around here - spruced up the old side links and added a few bits and bobs, including new and (though i do say so myself) rather lovely little bullet points, which you can see along the side there. del.icio.us is now doing it's own javascript to put on your site, so i have. it's down there on the left, under "reading/linklog". if you hover on the links you can see what i had to say about them.

one link that i was going to post over there, but didn't because i thought it was worth saying a little bit more, is the really brilliant copy, right. it's an mp3 blog, and the author posts only cover versions. she's got good taste in music, and her choices are often brilliant. for instance, at the moment, she's got some magnetic fields covers, including kings of convenience doing luckiest guy on the lower east side. get over there as soon as you can before she takes them down, but the site's always worth a look.

which reminds me... mentioning the lower east side that is... i'm going to new york a week on monday. that would be the 5th. our kid and i are going for a week, all by ourselves. it's sad but true that at (nearly) 24 and 21 we've never actually been on holiday by ourselves before. miss modernage and dorothy from cat and girl were kind enough to give me some great tips and hints, but if you've got any, they'd be most appreciated.

i would particularly like to know about plug sockets and voltage - will i explode things if i just plug my ipod charger into a socket changer into the wall? i don't understand these things and i don't want to melt my pod.

in the meantime i've been gorging myself on gawker and overheard in new york and making lists obsessively.

if anyone wants a postcard or something bringing back, email me.

i will totally post before i go though. how rubbish would i be if i didn't... don't answer that.

a la recherche

2005-08-16T20:43:00.000+01:00

i just had a totally proustian moment seeing robbie and mark introducing girls and boys on top of the pops. i'm watching the britpop story.

i can't believe how long it's been. louise wener is really pregnant. also graham just said about damon going to see blair "if damon had suddenly been a lizard in a mod suit i wouldn't have been too surprised". ooh and jarvis announcing that blur were "top of the pops" ten years ago. my god! time to revisit some of those old records i think.

picture this

2005-08-15T23:02:00.000+01:00

my content producing skillz have been employed elsewhere this week, mostly because i have just got a digital camera, and i've been attempting to make the most of it. ooh yes, this means you don't have to put up with my dodgy camphone pics anymore. it's exciting. so i've set up an account at flickr, and i've put up a few of the pictures i've taken so far.

elsewhere, last.fm/audioscrobbler has had an attractive makeover and now offers a whole journal thing, so you can see my review of the scissor sisters show at work last night. and you should also read popjustice's report of the night.

and here's an addition to my stars in bars series (which has been so erratic recently because i've not been on the bar much recently, and i don't count the box office)

#6 - kelly osbourne came to the upstairs bar last night with two female friends (actually i have a feeling one of them was her sister). she ordered a cider and black, but we were out of blackcurrant, so she had it with cranberry juice instead. which struck me as an, er, unusual combination. she was very nicely turned out - her hair was particularly sleek and shiny - though i think she was wearing shorts. she's surprisingly small in real life.

(previously in this series mark owen, martin freeman and mos def, adam cornish and toby young)

having just said that i don't count the box office, i will make an exception for the unbelievably hott gael garcia bernal, who came in for ed harcourt/tom mccrae last month. every head turned to look at him, straight men were turning gay and gay girls were turning straight, he is an adonis. and i don't think i'm overstating my case.

affinity (part 2)

2005-08-10T17:42:00.000+01:00

worst. theme week. ever. i'm succumbing to inertia - virtually the only thing i'm capable of doing at the moment is buying stuff off amazon! so here's the thing - we'll make it a theme month! two posts a week on a different animal. so here's the second part of the rabbit week, and then we'll move onto another animal. kay?

i've touched on this topic once or twice, but actually i've never really elucidated, though a lot of you prolly know this anyway.

i spent three summers between the ages of fifteen and eighteen performing in the kids' plays at the open air theatre in regent's park. my first year there we put on a musical version of watership down (not featuring 'bright eyes') as you can see from the pic there.

then in my last year there, the show was fattybottypuss, in which i played a rabbit again in the first act. by this point they'd realised that the kids' shows could bring in a good audience, and we had proper costumes (i even had a fatsuit for the second act). I had a little tail and everything.

for all three shows i did at the open air theatre (the other was jungle book), we were encouraged to go to london zoo and observe the animals we were playing. they do have rabbits at the zoo. in the childrens' zoo. they're prolly special rabbits, but essentially they're bunnies.

i know this sounds like pretentious actor-wank, but it is good to watch the animals to get their little mannerisms, so i went down a few times to watch the bunnies. you could watch them for hours, or at least thirty minutes. you watch an animal for long enough and then recreate some of its movements, it's hard not to start to empathise with them.

even now, i occasionally get the urge to wiggle my nose, or stamp my er... hind leg.

affinity (part 1)

2005-08-02T17:00:00.000+01:00

i'm not sure i can think of 7 reasons i have an affinity with rabbits. so i'm going to post as many as i can think of before moving on to other animals, prolly cats and if i get really stuck: monkeys. i don't have a great affinity with monkeys, so that one could be a struggle. you might want to keep your fingers crossed, or perhaps suggest other animals i might have an affinity with.

this is rabbit. that's her name. i was not an especially imaginative child, but i can at least take some comfort in the fact that jk rowling's first writing was about a rabbit called rabbit.

rabbit was my childhood toy - you know the toy everyone has, that gets trailed round in the dirt and is there to comfort them when they've got the mumps and occasionally gets left behind somewhere and has to be retrieved by mum or dad while a wailing child stands behind them.

this did happen to rabbit, who got left behind in an ice cream parlour in tuscany when i was 7. not knowing the word for rabbit (it's coniglio apparently), my mother was forced to do her finest impression of a cotton-tailed nose-twitcher. fortunately rabbit was found and returned to me, and went on to visit several other countries.

yes she was a pretty well travelled bunny: she went to france a number of times with my school, including skiing with me in avoriaz. i bought her straw hat in cornwall - ooh she looked elegant! she even came to see father christmas with me once - she wanted something to keep her head on.

because she was so well loved that her seams started to give, and today, she's held together with all sorts of strange stitches in weird threads that i've done over the last ten, fifteen years.

but there comes a time when a cowgirl bunny just won't cut it in bed anymore. and as i grew up and started to put my toys away (both metaphorically and literally - a lot of them are in the loft, waiting for the day i have the urge to play my little pony again), rabbit was sidelined. still, she enjoys a privilaged position on my sofa, and i've even knitted her a scarf to stop her head falling off.

so that's the first reason i have an affinity with rabbits - i spent a lot of my childhood with one.

old enough for nursery school

2005-08-01T16:38:00.000+01:00

happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear atsot (even though i usually pronounce that as initials rather than an acronym), happy birthday to you!

so it's really been three years since i started posting here. i have accumulated readers like, oh, a skoda attracts admiring glances - which is to say not very many, but i'm very grateful for those i do get.

i know things have been a bit quiet around here recently. and i'm going to make a concerted effort to do more posting dammit, especially now i've got the wonder of broadband.

might kick the whole shebang off with a theme week, if anyone wants to make a suggestion, the comments box is below. otherwise it could well end up being 7 reasons i have an affinity with rabbits, and i'm not sure anyone wants that.

oh, and the picture's me, aged 3. i really did look like that once upon a time.

living teh dream

2005-07-27T09:46:00.000+01:00

yesterday, my brother and i finally did the broadband shuffle. and we're rocking the wireless connection. with the incredible result that i am totally sitting in bed and on the internet!

it's like a whole new world of wonder. or, ok it's the same world of wonder but i'm seeing it with different eyes. i mean, i downloaded the whole of the audiobook of the bad beginning from audible in 10 minutes. 10 minutes! (incidentally you can also download it for free from the times here).

the sheer wonder of the thing dazzles me.

hello copters

2005-07-21T13:47:00.000+01:00

this was going to be my legendary post about my affinity with rabbits. which i have been planning to write for quite some time now.

but with bush tube station closed due to an "incident", and helicopters circling above, this prolly isn't the best time.

i should be ok though, the shop's just next to the mosque.

update at 14.12, they're evacuating the whole of bush green. there's a line of police tape about 10 metres from the shop door. i wanted to take some pics for you but a nice police lady told me i had to either walk away or stay in the shop, people are streaming past. very strange.

update at 14.19 the kids from the local primary school are going past now in a crocodile (with their teachers).

update at 14.35 the road is now eerily quiet - no cars, very few people - just the helicopters. according to the bbc a "man... threatened to blow himself up and then ran off" at the station (hammersmith and city). general consensus here is that it was a local loony, but maybe we're just cynical.

woke up this morning

2005-07-14T13:19:00.000+01:00

when i first started reading blogs in early 2002, the majority i read were american. every time i found a new blog, i'd read the archives, starting with the entry for/about september 11th. i did this because it was a enormous international event that i could remember and i could contrast and compare my experiences of that day with those of the blogger.

i read some amazing posts on the subject, but there were also a lot of blogs where the author hadn't written anything, or had just briefly mentioned the events. at the time, i thought it was a cop-out. but at the moment i'm feeling as though words are inadequate. so i want you to know that i'm not just glossing over what happened last week. rather that i don't think i can properly express myself on the subject at the moment.

suffice to say that i'm far from "burning in fear"; i might be burning in fury, but i'm definitely not afraid. and i think that continuing to travel on the tubes and the buses is as good a message as anything i could post here.

you can donate here to the british red cross london bombings relief.

jury service haiku (#1)

2005-07-05T22:27:00.000+01:00

because 17 syllables shouldn't be enough to find me in contempt. I hope.

Waiting in a room,
You listen as big ben tolls.
You've finished your book.

Preparing for trial,
A man asks for a Torah.
"The Old Testament?"

More to follow, i should think.

Doodleblog

2005-06-22T21:12:00.000+01:00

As i almost never doodle anything other than little boxes (on a hillside not so much) I thought this might be worth posting.

It does sum up my recent ennui, because what except boredom would inspire me to such feats of creativity?

I think it looks a little like jarvis doing rolf harris on stars in their eyes. Wearing a fez.

Wish i was there

2005-06-12T12:42:00.000+01:00

because of the vagaries of my work timetable, i had 3 days off in the middle of last week. So i went down to lovely brighton and got sunburnt.

Unfortunately my recompense for this is the weekend from hell. Including the nightmare of a fifteen hour day yesterday, ending at half past midnight, then starting again at 9.30 this morning.

And due to wedding commitments (not her own) on the part of the very fabulous Shazz, there will be no indie socage for me next weekend. Le sigh.

Mmm self pity. Everyone's favourite blogger trait!

Usual service will resume shortly.

total bliss

2005-05-26T14:19:00.000+01:00

is there anything nicer than finding out that it's going to be 82 (28) degrees tomorrow? yep - realising i've got the day off!

i'm making all sorts of provisional plans, which will doubtless go out the window when i decide that what i really need to do is spend all day in front of the tv/the computer. and moping that they won't be showing series four and five of gilmore girls in the foreseeable future. grrr.

also, i really need to curb my addiction to potter slash. at least seth/ryan seems slightly plausible. potter/malfoy is just wrong.

still, at least the weather's cheered up.

totally superfluous

2005-05-25T17:45:00.000+01:00

look, i did actually write a post here originally, but it seems to have disappeared. i don't know where it's gone or anything, but i shall endeavour to reproduce it here now.

what it was mostly about was how happy i am that boring sienna miller will not be playing the truly fabulous edie sedgwick, with whom i am obsessed. instead, katie holmes will be taking the role, and i think she'll do a much better job. though my choice would have been kirsten dunst... it usually is...

i'm currently knitting myself an edie sedgwick handbag. i'm so rock n roll, it's almost painful.... well actually, my middle finger on my right hand has gone kind of numb (like when you play the guitar too much), but it doesn't actually hurt....

also, this is the cutest. thing. evah, via andrew.

edited at 12:03am 26/5/05 because for some reason the first post didn't appear.

A rather nice banksy

2005-05-21T18:29:00.000+01:00

Banksy is a (graffiti) artist whose work appears all over london. This fine specimen is in soho.

nice weather for ducks

2005-05-20T10:07:00.000+01:00

just for the record i am totally fed up with this weather. the constant drip of rain and having to mop up kids' muddy footprints at work. frankly, it brings me down; so i'm trying to fix my thoughts on how i'd like the weather to be.

i would like this summer to be one of those ridiculously hot ones, a summer of hosepipe bans and droughts and people collapsing on the tube. i want a summer so uncomfortably hot that you can't sleep unless you're next to an open window and you have a wet flannel pressed to your forehead. when the weather's so fine that all you actually want to do is to go to a park and lie in the sunshine (even though if you do, you'll be lobster-pink within minutes). i want to sport some unsuitable footwear, and maybe even a skirt or two. i definitely don't want to have to carry an umbrella the whole time.

i want tarmac-melting temperatures, dammit, and i want them now.

and i promise not to complain if my dream comes true.

[sqiggle squiggle] jury

2005-05-11T18:51:00.000+01:00

Or, why i would make a dreadful juror.
i've been summonsed for jury service. weirdly enough i'd been meaning to post for a while about why i would make a really bad juror, so here is the perfect opportunity to explain it. see diagram 1 below (click it to make it bigger):

this (ironically enough) is a page from my notes taken in the law class i took at college last year. it reads:
"innocent~~[sqiggle squiggle]~~ proven guilty.
jury trial, majority verdict or hung trial
case proven beyond reasonable doubt
crown prosecution sercive not police ~~[squiggle]~~
there to ~~[sqiggle squiggle]~~
magistrates - ~~[squiggle]~~iciters
H[squiggle] court - ba~~[squiggle]~~ters
justice must ~~[sqiggle squiggle]~~ being ~~[sqiggle squiggle]~~
dis[squiggle]ed not ~~[squiggle]~~contempt of ~~[squiggle]~~."

what was going on there, i hear you ask. my handwriting really isn't that bad. i promise.

i was falling asleep at the end of sentences. and also in the middle of sentences. i was bored.

those of you who know me and have seen me in lectures, and indeed lessons, and once in the gallery at the old bailey, will know that i fall asleep really, really easily,

so whatever case i get, it had better be something quick and brutal. i'm not sure there's enough pro plus in the world to keep me awake during something jarndycian.

A twee still life

2005-05-11T12:41:00.000+01:00

Sometimes i'm just too cliched for my own good.

meme me

2005-05-01T22:12:00.000+01:00

via the mysteron, a literary meme, which i'm using to kick start my new month's resolution of posting more often, as well as to remind you of the imminent relaunch of the fifty two book challenge.... coming soon to a blog near you...

incidentally, to avoid confusion, i'm answering all the questions that appeared variously in this meme all at once, amazingly enough!

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
oh yes. several. this obviously makes me a bit of a sad-case, but in my defence... no i don't really have a defence, except maybe to say that i was young and hormonal at the time (luckily i've avoided literary crushes in recent years)... let me see..., not rochester or darcy at least... there was definitely simon in lord of the flies, which may be a little obscure (and may have also had more to do with seeing it performed by a load of boys about my age in stratford one summer, than actually reading the book)... that's the only one that's coming to me at the moment. perhaps more will occur to me later.

The last book you bought is?
high rise by jg ballard, for the book group (incidentally, if any of you london based lot want to join, our next meeting's tuesday 10th, email me for details) i promptly poured coke all over it, so it has that attractive sticky vintage look to it... mmmm.

The last book you finished is
er, it was harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. a re-read. because i love potter. dammit. as long as i also read grown-up books for grown-up people, i'm allowed to love potter. also, i'm allowed to reasonably like harry and the potters, because i listen to proper grown-up music like anthony and the johnsons (d'you see what i did there).

What are you currently reading?
if you assumed that i was too lazy to update the currently reading section on the left hand side of the screen, which has read strange and norrell for about two months, you would be wrong. i have really been reading it that long. i'm currently about half-way through it. i have but one response so far: "this woman needs a fucking editor." i can't even tell if it's any good, because it's so fucking long. ahem.

You're inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book would you burn?
erm... it would probably be 'far from the maddening crowd', which i was supposed to read for gcse english, and which is number one on the 'books that were too awful to read' list i keep. number two is ralph's party by lisa jewell, chicklit of the lowest order, which tom paulin inexplicably loved. just another reason i'm glad i didn't go to oxford.

Five books you would take to a desert island?

um... the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay. regular readers will know this is my favourite book of all time. so that was a pretty obvious choice.

edie - american girl, because i suppose you'd get a bit lonely on a desert island, but because it's a sort of oral biography, you might feel they were all there.

complete works of oscar wilde, because wilde is a perfect pick-me-up for mean red days.

perhaps i should take a leaf out of jarvis' book here (he picked the theme from robinson crusoe as his first desert island disc), i think i might take the swiss family robinson - it was one of my favourite books when i was a child, and i'm pretty sure it's chock full of good advice for desert island survival. though they have the advantage of being shipwrecked, so they can save things like the goat.

and finally, i choose the book i refer to most often, the fabulous girl's guide to decorum, to make sure i kept my behaviour decorous, in case a ship did come to rescue me.

Which book would you memorise if you were on a desert island?
i'm not convinced this would be a particularly fruitful exercise, but i suppose it would pass the time. so what i would memorise would be the complete works of shakespeare. then i could act it out on my island. with only the goat to see my world-beating performance of king lear. really.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (three people) and why?
this is the bit i don't like about memes, because it feels a bit presumptuous to tell people what to write about on their own blogs. but i'll risk it anyway, and so the baton goes to:
archel, because she pretty well eats, sleeps and breathes books. that may not be true actually... but she reads a lot of books... and also works in a library.
laura, whose new look is extremely fab. for much the same reason. except replace library with librarie (that's bookshop in french... i hope).

...oh heck, i've managed to only find two people i think might be interested... if you want to take the stick, leave a comment...

the one i love

2005-04-16T12:41:00.000+01:00

last night i went to see the supremely fabulous rufus wainwright at bush empire. it was prolly one of the best gigs i've ever been to. if i complained about the ticket price, before, i apoogise, it was worth every penny: he played for at least 2 hours, there were 3 costume changes, he stopped a song halfway through to ask where the duchess of devonshire (aka debo mitford) lives (it's chatsworth) - he dedicated the same song to her, having said that he was going for an elvis look because he was her favourite popstar. and finally admited that all he wanted was to be a mitford girl.

the incredible thing was how funny he was... maybe i was spoilt by british bands in my teens who would just about acknowlege the audience with a "cheers" at the end of every song. rufus was a proper showman. he told us all about how he feels london is his real home, and he made a slightly ludicrous joke about how the gay messiah would be at popstarz that night, when it got little or no response he said "wow it's a really straight audience in tonight", followed with a somewhat pained sounding cry of "i wish i was straight".

his live sound is astonishingly close to what appears on the records, admittedly he has a largeish band (bigger than magnetic fields, but smaller than belle and sebastian), and plays the guitar and piano himself. but - i suppose because he has a fair amount of credibility already, and doesn't feel that indie-band thing of needing to 'prove himself as a serious artist' - he was able to have a lot of fun with things: half way through little sister, as he played a repetitive break on the piano he turned to the audience and said "easy and beautiful", before laughing at himself for saying it (he'd compared himself to mozart in the preamble to the song). his song dedicated to jeff buckley segued into halleluljah, and then into across the universe. he played a section of songs he'd written about his family ("this is the family section, it's very popular"). he stripped to a spangly thong, worn with a ripped vest, knee high socks, red heels and fairy wings for god's sake.

last week (ish), there was a post on no rock and roll fun which talked of a time "before rufus and conor were the boys who made the boys wish they were boys who did boys". it's true, but he forgot to mention that they also make the girls wish they were boys who did boys. i'm not convinced that the manics on tuesday will compare.

do you remember?

2005-04-07T22:29:00.000+01:00

i'm currently reading koren zailckas smashed, which is a book about a girl my age who became an alcohol abuser (she draws a distinction between alcoholism and alcohol abuse). there will eventually be a review in the new exciting relaunced rebranded 52 book challenge (coming soon), but this has to do with a brief theme in the first chapter, in which the author writes that she remembers very few "firsts" clearly - her first day of school, her first kiss, first driving lesson, first period - but remembers her first 'drink' with a cinematic clarity.

as i read this, i was thinking, no i'm exactly the opposite: i remember all of those things almost painfully clearly (well, not the driving lesson - although i do remember sitting in my cousin's mini in his garage and getting to put my foot on the accelerator... hmm that sounds slightly dangerous actually...) i could give you the exact date and time of my first period (30-1-94 at 6.45, halfway through the simpsons); i remember my first kiss (and my second and my third), but wild horses wouldn't drag the story out of me (though i've been known to tell it after a few glasses of wine); i remember the first boy i wanted to kiss, and i'm still secretly in love with the first girl i wanted to kiss; i remember details from the night i lost my virginity with the same cinematic clarity koren zailckas reserves for alcohol - david bowie on the stereo, the ice storm on the telly, fried chicken and the electricity running out at some point in the night, so that when we woke up it was dark (we were in a basement), in fact i'm reserving that scene for my first novel!

i do not, however, remember the first time i had a drink. at easter, my aunt pointed out that as a baby i liked to suck on champagne corks... visiting my other aunt in italy in - oh - 1989, i had my first taste of gin and tonic (and liked it)... i was slipping sips of my parents' spirits from the trolley in our living room when i was still in primary school...

one of the points of this weblog was to supplement my slightly dodgy memory. it occurs to me that there may be more to this memory thing than just writing things down.

hair like monkey teeth like dog

2005-03-29T22:18:00.000+01:00

so, i'm a rubbish blogger, this is not just because i don't post often enough (especially at the moment), but also because i don't really blog enough to allow my posts to have any continuity, even when i've had a good idea for a post.

imagine that a couple of weeks ago, i'd been to visit a surprisingly attractive dentist (young, tall, dark, irish), and that i had posted about going for a check up. there would have been some dentist cliche in there - i mean really, have you ever actually met a good looking dentist (i don't include dental nurses in this)? and it would have ended with the revelation that i was seeing the surprisingly attractive dentist in a couple of days' time for a replacement filling.

i would have followed this post up with something about the weird local anaesthetic used when you have a fairly large filling put in. i'd not had local anaesthetic in my mouth for ages (since i was about 14), so i was fairly unprepared for the strange feeling of numbness in half my face. there would probably have been something about how i went into the toilets at peter jones to make faces at myself in the mirror, just to make sure i could still do it. there might also have been a quick reference to how the dentist is the last person you should find remotely attractive, since no one probably ever sees you look worse than the dentist, and it tends to make you feel a little self-conscious.

then last week, i might have mentioned (in a brief aside at the end of another post), that my filling didn't seem to be settling in too well and i was going to have to go back to the surprisingly attractive dentist to get it fixed some more.

and then finally you would have had a rather boring post today about how i'd been given a 'temporary dressing', and a previously undiscovered horror of dentists.

i've never really had a problem with dentists (which i put down to having a brace at an impressional age), my ex dentist was a rather expensive private practice (but it was free for under 18s), and when you had a filling you wore a pair of goggles which screened an episode of friends for you while he worked on your teeth. at the new place the only thing to watch is the suprisingly attractive dentist and the similarly good-looking dental assistant as they peer in a sinister fashion into your gob. add the fact that they listen to capital fm (rubbishy pop all the time, except for the rubbishy ad breaks), and it's enough to put anyone on edge.

at least i managed to avoid biting the surprisingly attractive dentist. i might not be so well behaved next time.

on triangular squirrels etc.

2005-03-13T23:18:00.000Z

as the weather warms up, i'm feeling feverish. it starts with a cold, badly contained with pills on thursday and friday, then strangely asymptomatic on saturday and sunday. characterised only by a strange floatiness somewhere in the top of my head and a tendency to babble and feel too warm.

the first two nights i sleep for twelve hours, and it would be longer if i didn't have to go out and, y'know, work. on friday i come home from work and go straight to bed, but am forced to stagger out when the cat points out somewhat forcefully that he doesn't have any food. i step out of the house without my glasses and am strangely disorientated in the local shop.

saturday night i have long periods of being awake and feeling uncertain. i attempt to find excuses for it: caffeine or alcohol being the two main culprits. a third - the poisonwood bible - with its malarial tendencies and apocalyptic imagery may also be fueling my hypochondria.

i remember snatches of other dreams - dreamed months or even years ago in similar situations: the one where we were at my aunt's house, but with a pond and small tribes of children roaming around; the one about the vegetable patch; the one with the triangular squirrels... no really.

glamorous indie rock & roll

2005-03-11T22:08:00.000Z

i realised at the book group on tuesday, my life now is a strange reversal of my life two years ago.

then, my idea of work was having to read a couple of books a week, and going along to a seminar to talk about them. in my spare time (and let's face it, there was a lot of that), i was heavily involved with music - there was indie soc (where i did box office from time to time, and did things like take down tables and then put them back again later) and bandsoc. and i did a lot of stewarding for goodricke events.

so now, i spend my work time at a music venue, a job which i initially got because of my indie soc experience (famous people who have been through my box office this week: gideon coe & paul morley)... on friday, i was duty manager for the first time (which is equivalent to "responsible personing" at an indie soc event)... 190 people in (including a large plan b contingent) and i was in charge! while sunday was flashback-tastic as i found myself setting up and then taking down a series of tables for a children's birthday party.

and in my spare time, i like to read books and then meet up and discuss them with my friends. if i was also playing scrabble professionally, my life would be truly reversed. but i can't see that one happening. unfortunately.

we! are! a bit skint, actually

2005-03-10T23:17:00.000Z

so here's a thing, you may not realise it, but i live very close to one of london's most tragic teams, the mighty queen's park rangers. and they, having - in the space of ten years - gone from top london club to near bankruptcy, are in desperate need of some help.

the fact that my brother and i have seen the chairman eating at a local caff (as opposed to, say, the ivy) prolly suggests how desperate they are.

coca cola are running a promotion here, whereby if enough people vote for them, the rs (as they're affectionately known in our household, where my brother and my dad are season ticket holders) get 1/4 of a million pounds towards a new player. and you can win some money too.

at the moment, qpr are winning this vote thingy, but as the competition runs till may, they need all the support they can get. i mean, if we could get b&s to win a brit, then qpr should be a doddle.

i know some of you have teams that could use some cash, but for those of you who don't, rangers are a lovely side, and really deserve your help. so please visit the coke page and vote queen's park rangers.

pete doherty will thank you. though prolly not in person.

a sorry tale?

2005-03-08T12:08:00.000Z

52 book challenge #8 - the apologist by jay rayner

i remember when this novel was first released, there was something of a furore, because it came so close to the death of chef bernard loiseau, who killed himself, at least partially, because his michelin star rating had been reduced. you can read rayner's interesting response to the death of loiseau here.

let me explain, in the opening chapters of the apologist (called 'eating crow' in america apparently), marc basset, a restaurant critic known for being particularly harsh, drives a chef to suicide. being a fairly decent chap, the first thing he wants to do is to apologise to the widow and the daughter left behind. when they take his apology well, he goes on a remorse-spree, apologising to everyone he's ever hurt.

this leads him to being offered the post of chief apologist by the united nations, creating a cult of apology, and eventually - inevitably - to his own downfall.

there are some very amusing moments in this novel - basset appears on stage with u2, saying only "i'm so sorry" into the mic and getting a raptuous response. the food descriptions - rayner is the observer's food critic in real life - are excellent (and a lot of the dishes mentioned are real).

towards the end, however, where the pacing should be tighter, it feels too loose, like a badly knitted sweater (something on my mind at the moment). slightly as though rayner was just desperate to finish the damn thing after a certain point. still, it's definitely worth a read. if you don't like it, i apologise.

i'm a comedy genius.

hello kitty

2005-03-08T11:42:00.000Z

52 book challenge #7 - the final confession of mabel stark by robert hough

if you've read carter beats the devil - or in fact, if you're at all familiar with the conceit of 'carter', which is that it's a ficitionalised biography of a true-life character - you should be fairly at home reading 'mabel stark'.

like carter, this novel's star is a star in the pre-television, pre-world war II era. mabel stark was a tiger trainer in various circuses including the famous ringling brothers circus, where she was at one time one of the headline acts.

she ended her days, however, looking after the tigers at a two-bit zoo called jungleland. the novel imagines mabel stark narrating her career in the final days of her life. beginning with her first marriage, which led to her being hospitalised as hysterical and going on to describe how she ran away with the circus and became a tiger tamer.

the novel deals with her various marriages and romantic liasons, the most important of which is with her tiger rajah (no really), whom she raises from, er, kittenhood.

hough manages to capture the tone of a seventy(?)-year-old tiger tamer, hardened and bitter, pretty well. although there's a slightly odd thing going on where she omits 'it' at the beginning of sentences, so "was a fine animal, rajah" might be a typical line.

but by comparison with carter or (recently re-read) kavalier and clay, both of which deal with similar time periods and include historical figures as characters, mabel stark's tiger wrestling act just doesn't seem that impressive.

are you experienced?

2005-03-04T13:52:00.000Z

we've had a workie in this week. she's 15, and wants to work in performing arts, so i'm not entirely sure why she's with us. strange to think that this time last year, i was that work experience girl, so i did my best to think of interesting tasks for her. there weren't many. a lot of the envelope-stuffing i used to do for free, i now get paid for. which is a bonus at least.

my life is pretty dull. excitement of the day was talking to a nice man from the tax office to sort out my self-employedness.

although on monday i had a somewhat drunken night with an old school friend who'd got in touch via the blog. we ended up at trash. hadn't been there for ages. the kills played, but i don't remember if they were any good or not. that bodes badly for my liver.

and i did go and see the life aquatic with stu on wednesday. i have a tendency to think wes anderson is a genius, and sat there with a huge grin on my face for most of the film. it had elements of seventies marine biology films, and also a good dollop of that scene in bedknobs and broomsticks when jessica fletcher and the children land their beds in the sea and meet all the fish. huzzah.