Where Next? Or Not.

SO is between jobs at the moment. Has been for a year and a bit now, actually. Everything is fine, he has picked up enough consultancy work to keep the wolf at a very respectable distance from the door, thank you very much, but he does hanker for something rather more reliable. (And when he hankers, I hanker. 'Where thou hankerest, I will hanker' Book of Ruth? Dunno. Sumpn like that.) And it's not just that, it's what this is now doing to his CV, and how rusty his skill set is getting, and the contacts he just can't maintain in quite the same way, usw.


The trouble is, jobs in his area (he is in the oil business) can be found all over the place, and he is quite keen on the idea of a job abroad, while I, since a comparatively peripatetic childhood, have been very content to find a home and stay there.

So, after much internal debate and wrestling, I finally came round to the idea that living in foreign parts is not in and of itself A Bad Thing. In fact, who knows, we may quite like it. I've insisted that it has to be somewhere I want to go. I draw the line at Libya, for instance. Saudi Arabia. Algeria, nuh-huh. But Jakarta? Possibly. Singapore? For all its peculiarities, yeah, why not? SO has mentioned Vienna and Madrid too. (I'd adore Hong Kong, but SO says that is one place there are actually no oily jobs. Boo hoo.)

This was last night, and by now my feet are getting noticeably itchy.

But then, it's never going to happen anyway.

Space nappies

We visited the Science Museum this weekend, basically because it's there. Stayed mostly down in the new (to us, anyway) Space Flight stuff, which is seriously cool, and answered some, though by no means all, questions I have had for a long time.

Peeing was, of course easily managed. The 'product' was summarily jettisoned. The 'hard stuff' involved a little more thought. It required a loo with a metal bar for swinging across your thighs, or falling foul of Newton's Third Law (For every action, there is an equal and opposite . . . you get the picture.) The results were bagged and taken back to earth for analysis.

And for EVA, there were nappies. I kid you not, Astronaut Nappies. They looked vaguely re-usable, but my guess was that they needed to be substantial enough to be wrapped securely in the event that they had *ahem* been pressed into service.

What the guys in the Apollo 10 module, practically immobile for ten days, did, I never discovered. Pretty cool to see the module, though.

In other news, SO and I watched Trading Places yesterday. (I could put in a link, but honestly, who the hell doesn't know about Trading Places?) and discovered something SO and I have in common - a Thing for Lady Haden-Guest. Every time she appeared on screen identical and barely supressed moans escaped our numb lips.

Yowza.

UPDATE: Hi Dave. Also, thanks to Karen in the comments, I missed a fabulous trick by not saying that it was Newton's Third Law of MOTION. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Zippity-doo-dah!

My ticket to South Africa is booked! Let joy be unconfined! I am so excited, I can't begin to tell you. Of course, it is six months away, this trip, so I have plenty of time to get jaded and blasé.

Back in the day, they used to have segregated park benches. Chiseled across the back rest would be 'Whites Only' or 'Nie Blankes'. I wonder what they've done with them? A first guess would be that they dug 'em all up and burned them. But what if they didn't have the money to replace them? If they were left in place, oh joy, we would have legions of black bums sitting on 'Whites Only' seats.

But what about future generations? The ones who, if they don't learn from history, are condemned to repeat it? Maybe they will have kept one bench, and cordoned it off, or maybe built a plexiglass protective enclosure and pumped it full of inert preservative gases, where The People can come and be reminded of the idiocies of yesteryear.


ps What exactly is an 'historical imperative'? Fabulous phrase, but I have no idea what it means.

Ha ha ha ha I win!

Look at my lovely beanpoles! You could argue that's they are the happy resolution to a series of purchasing disasters, but I prefer to think of them as the culmination of a series of horticultural experiment.

Having missed the window of opportunity for planting seeds, I caved and bought baby plants of sugarsnap peas and french beans. (And got very annoyed at having to dispose of the expanded polystyrene containers. Bah.) Knowing that these legumes climb, I also bought very fancy one metre high poles for them to do so.

Well. My mother informed me, luckily before I had done any planting, that the beans would grow to six foot, and the peas would only reach 18 inches. She recommended bamboo poles, which she has, and very charming and rustic they look too. So off I went, back to the garden centre (AGAIN) and found these completely wonderful spirally jobs. Six quid for a pack of three, but just how beautiful are they! (And a pack of six very fancy 50 cm metre high poles for the peas.)

When my mother heard how much I had paid for these things of beauty and joys forever, she was aghast. Aghast, I tell you. 'WHAT!' she wailed. 'But that's what my bamboo poles cost!'

Stuff I don't know

This could, of course, be the longest post in history, so I will confine myself to things I have found out in the last couple of days.

1. The first David Tennant Dr Who series is WONDERFUL. Really fab. (Well, the first three episodes anyway, but I can't imagine the others aren't going to be great.) Cassandra body-hopping and being given such a good send-off, the Victorian were-wolf and the plots within plots within plots, and the lovely Sarah-Jane Smith provoking some rich emotional layering, and Anthony Head getting quite versatile in his old age.
2. Back, Crack and Sac. I was considering this as post title, but the whole idea makes me squirm. Apparently this is a standard waxing package offered to men. Eeuw. Really, eeeeuw.

Does everyone know about this stuff except me?

Bridezilla

Filing systems and I have always remained on cordial, if distant, terms. Not that I have anything against them per se, but I know that as soon as I file something, it's as good as gone. I'll never find it again. So if it's something I need to remember, I sticky-tape it somewhere. Sometimes outside cupboards, sometimes in. All of this is post-new kitchen. Pre-new kitchen was heaven - if I needed to write something dowm, I wrote straight onto the wall. (Of course it ended in disaster - was I organised enough to copy the data off the wall before the decorators arrived? Was I Hell.) (This cupboard is representative.)

And then look what arrives! Not a weddng invitation, but a reminder that a wedding invitation is on the way. And I don't have to tape it anywhere, because it has - wait for it - A MAGNETIC BACKING. So I can put it straight onto my fridge* as a reminder that, in the fullness of time, I will be receiving a wedding invitation. Not only that, when it reaches the end of its useful life, and I throw it away, it won't recycle! It will sit in landfill for ever!

By profession, the bride is an Event Organizer. So here we have the magnetic You-Have-Been-Warned, apparently there is also A Swatch. And not a wristwatch either, but a fistful of scraps of material, with which our outfits have to tone. I can't wait for the next thing.

On the upside, the wedding is in Johannesburg. It's looking extremely likely that I will be allowed to go.

* My fridge is one of those built-in numbers, so it has a wooden front. Never mind, I can always sticky-tape the Advance Warning up.

Re-creationism

That's not the word I want, but I mean those folk who pretend they live elsewhen - yomp about in genu-wine handstitched footrolls of authentically uncured sheepskin, wear vast layers of extremely draughty clothing held together by the latest in tablet-weaving technology, and get to fire off REAL cannons and muskets and mangonels, even if they ammunition-of-choice for todays go-getting recreationist (or whatever) is a grapefruit.

We had them at the Open Air Museum - Normans, this lot were. Dressed in yards of what looked like fat, dirty bandages, and wielding bloody great not-very-sharp swords. Dunno which frightens me more - a very sharp sword, or a not-so-sharp one. I read that when Henry VIII had some bishop's head off (Cranmer? Cromwell?) he gave the job to a 15-year old boy who had practised the night before on a dead pig, and whose axe was not very sharp. Maybe there are occasions when sharp is good.

Anyway, they also had this thing called a perrier, which is yer basic person-powered mangonel (I know! Yeah! Exciting, eh?) with which they slung grapefruit a goodly distance. Said grapefruit exploded upon impact very satisfactorily.

So they had the maiming and killing pretty much covered. But the stuff they didn't have, and which is my favourite, is the medical stuff. Infinitely more maiming and killing to be had in a doctor's bag then, I'll tell you. True, they had some winners like maggots and sphagnum moss, but mercury as a treatment for constipation? Oh yes. The foot-long screw-operated tweezers used to take the bullet out of Henry V's brain when, at 16, he was shot in the face? I guess he had to be held down. U-uurgh.

But just what are these lovely play-actors called?

Sleeping on the couch

My SO and I don't fight. More accurately, can't fight. No, no, that's not right either. What we will not do is spend a night apart. Out of our own bed.

Aaw! Doesn't that make us sound cute! Nope. What that makes us is the the owners of one - count'em, one - Tempur mattress. (If you followed the link, that's SO and me in the picture. And our bedroom. Uh-huh.) Neither of us is prepared even remotely to spend the night on anything else. Spare bedroom? Couch? NO WA-AA-A-AY!

That said, even with the lure of that wonderful mattress, to which the lovely warm sleeping bod of SO comes an not-very-close second, for the last eighteen months I have been sleeping like crap. I don't get into bed until sometimes four o'clock, I'm awake by eight, and survive on the occasional cat-nap when I can. It's no fun, I tell you.

So how come, last night about 10-ish, I caught up with CSI (Keppler died. Grissom's back. You gotta love that beard.), curled up on the sofa (two seater. and I'm 5'6".) under a blanket and fell fast asleep. Didn't budge until seven and woke perfectly refreshed.

Some days I really have no idea.

Greed

Actually, thinking about it, I don't know whether this is greed at all.

Last Friday, my usual shopping day, Sainsburys was heaving. (In Beaconsfield. Not an unaffluent part of the Home Counties.) Unusually so. Really, really full. I wondered if there had been some emergency notification that I hadn't heard, and maybe people were stocking up. Flood warning? Hurricanes, Tatars massing at the gates, a flock of giant flesh-eating zombie ants? A Bank Holiday that had passed me by?

But no.


Free plastic bags.

I kid you not.

The usual flimsy orange numbers were absent, and the checkouts were offering the sturdier version zippily titled 'a Bag for Life'. (See what they did there? Not only will the bag last for your entire lifetime, it also affirms the general goodness of Life Itself. Wow. These marketing people are clever.) (Oh, and as soon as your Bag for Life wears out, you swap it for an absolutely free replacement.) The thing is, these Bags for Life normally Cost. Yesseree Bob, they cost money. You don't get to display your Committment to a Better Life for All, for Cleaner Water for Disadvantaged Children, Universal Franchise and Making Poverty History, without paying.

10p.

Once again, no kidding. Ten. Pee. People were queueing round the block for bags that normally go for TEN P A POP. How many bags would you need for one shop? Seven? Nine, ten maximum? Let's say ten bags, it makes the maths easier. Ten bags, ten pence - yup. People were rescheduling their days, clogging up the roads, don't even think about the extra petrol, buying stuff they didn't need (ooh! that tin of larks' tongues, maybe 100g of that newt eyes / frog toes combo from the deli might just push me over into another bag! Yess!) to get ONE POUND'S WORTH OF FREE STUFF.

Tulip Time

I live near Chenies Manor which is famous for its tulip beds - see?

It also has a wall, facing London, with no windows. This was designed to stop the plague. And chimney stacks. Oh come on, you know what I mean.

Editorial Policy

This was the big thing a few months ago. The thing I remember (and right this instant I don't remember too much, for reasons which will become clear) is that Patroclus (I am not worthy, I am not worthy, I am not worthy) started off this discussiona about editorial policy. I remember hers. Not blogging about blogging, and no blogging about sex. (Huh! she hasd this thing abot Marimekko! Chenck out her blog if you don't believe me.) I used to have no editorial policy. Any post is a good post, I thought. Especially when it gets something down for the day.

Well here's a thought. How abnout NOT WHEN YOU ARE DRUNK? Ont he other handm, how else is one supposed to enjy a movie like OUTBREAK? Preposterous. Preposterous. Preposterous. Preposterous. Preposterous. . (See? I can still ctrl-c with the best of 'em.,)

Really really reallly., Is this supposed to be a metaphor for the Cold War? that's supposed to be over but clearly isn't? Unknown virus affects small N. american town, and the powers that be (Donald Sutherlang *groan* *no in a how-does-he-stay-so-HOT kinda way) have to bomb the town into OBLIVION or else their SECRET BIOLOGICAL WEAPON is compromised util Dustin Hoffman (tres small, tres cute) find s the anti-whotsit and saves EVERYONE including Morgan Freeman who discovers hois own humnanity JUST IN TIME) and the only reason this movie makes any sense is if you get progressivly MORE SPANNERED on your own margaritas (did Imention I make the BNEST MARGARITAS in the western hemisphere?) and then TWO CHHERS FOR DEMOCRACY o hell now I'm channelling G. Orwell. Buigger.

Tulips tomorrow. Especially for Dinahmow.

More T-shirts

My sister is back from ten days in Las Vegas. She came round for our bi-weekly House-fest, bearing tall stories and T-shirts. She said that there is absolutely no natural light in Vegas, none at all. That you never, ever leave your hotel. Because everything you could possibly want is there, in the hotel. Cocktails, chemists, clothes, 'coffee' shops. That, drinking their 'coffee' and eating their muffins on touching down from the helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon, and having been SERIOUSLY warned by the pilot NOT to feed the wildlife, they were surrounded by a ring of chipmunks three deep. Clearly bent on saying Hello, and harbouring no expectations of muffin crumbs from the grockles, none at all. And of course no decent coffee to be found, not even for ready money.

Not quite . . .

. . . the post I had in mind. Got most of it written, and looked for the picture to accompany it, and -

I have no idea where it is. I guess it got deleted in some sort of flurry. Bugger, eh? I think I may have a little lie-down. With - I dunno - maybe a book? It's been so long I've forgotten how.

Oh, the pressure

My friend Lin is of Singaporean extraction. That is, her parents are both Singaporean, she was born and brought up there, but studied medicine here, practises here (STDs. Ugh.), married an Englishman (ok, Lithuanian Jew. But seriously English.) and raises their son Matthew. They live in a lovely bit of Chiswick. Some four years ago hubby was offered a prestigious post in Singapore - Lin's theory was that she herself was a major factor, on the grounds that she would so love being 'home' again she would persuade hubby to stay longer than the two years he had agreed. Ha - fat chance.

ANYWAY. She found what she thought was a lovely nursery for Matthew, where he seemed happy enough, until she eventually got round to buying the required uniform T-shirt, and promptly removed him from the school.

Isn't it FANTASTIC? I reckoned that if I had made up a batch and hawked them around W4 I'd have made a killing.

HA! I knew it!

I quote from the Observer, April 1st 2007* -

'. . .(Donald Rumsfeld) was appointed to run an ailing pharmaceutical company in Chicago (in 1976). The company's one ray of hope was that it had the patent for aspartame, the artificial sweetener; the problem was that the Food and Drugs Administration suspected the company of falsifying its trials and feared that aspartame could cause brain cancer.

Rumsfeld duly brought in various cronies with whom he had worked in government and who knew nothing about drugs but everything about the inner workings of the corridors of power in Washington. Before long, the FDA magically approved the use of aspartame and the fortunes of both the company and Rumsfeld were sealed.'

You remember that stunt that John Selwyn Gummer pulled, with the hamburger and a small child (HIS OWN)? I have visions of Rumsfeld spooning the stuff into his face in front of the FDA chiefs, who bestow approval just to get him to STOP.

* I know. I really don't think it's relevant.

Rob

Rob was in church today. He's the bloke getting the church website up and running, and he helps out at the youth club. He's about 32, slightly built and quietly spoken. He turned up this morning sporting a new beard and two new kidneys.

His own failed him in his early teens, since when he has had dialysis twice a week. He's been catheterised for all this time. He has lived with almost constant pain, and been strenuously advised against taking painkillers, as they would mask symptoms of other, serious conditions. Death has, on a number of occasions, been uncomfortably close to claiming him.

My understanding is, that for each kidney a hospital acquires, they elect two potential recipients. Of course the closest match gets first dibs, but in the event of, say, even a slight cold, then there's a backup recipient. On the day of the operation, all three others disqualified themselves, and Rob was given both kidneys. Apparently he's set some sort of record for shortest stay in hospital. Five days does seem pretty short.

And now, his biggest concern is that, often and often through the day, he has to stop what he's doing and pee.

I don't know the gender or how the donor died, but spare a thought for the parents of that two-year-old, who cared enough to make the death of their child mean life for someone else's.

The best laid plans

Oh, sod going green by managing my life better. How about just going into the garden and watching God do it for me.

Last year I had this fantastic scheme for a tulip bed, based upon the beautiful Princess Irene. Isn't she lovely? This picture doesn't do her justice - the orange is good, but the streaks are a much deeper purple. So I put together a bed of solid purples, orange Ballerinas and these Irenes. I would so love to show you what it looks like, but whaddaya know? The purples, which are significantly shorter than the oranges, ha ha, are seriously past their best just as the oranges are looking beautiful. Princess Irene, on the other hand, is still abed, a tightly wound green bud whose intended playmates will all have packed up and gone home by the time she decides to show.

Current state of play:

Still OK if you don't look too closely. But if you do look closely, you notice that one of the Ballerinas has flared. You win some, you lose some, eh?

It makes sense if

. . . a) I tell you that that humming noise you heard in the background was the dusted-off breadmaker, and b) you look at how late it was. I was really very tired. Oh look - I still am.

Waste Not Want Not

It gave me quite a turn to hear, the other day, that we in the UK throw away about 30% of the food we buy. I had recently noticed in my own household that an awful lot of food gets chucked, so to hear this horribleness made official made me look at what exactly happens chez Mangonel.

Adopting the Pareto Principle, I figure if I can control Bread and Vegetables that will be 80% of the problem solved. Bread is such a big deal, partly because it's so damn cheap. (I'm not talking about anything which has its price quadrupled just because it has sunflower seeds in it.) I buy big because, ooh, once or twice we've had guests, or actually that week we've just happened to eat a lot of bread. The result of this statistically unsound buying method is an embarrasse du mouldy riches by the end of the week.

Vegetables are, of course, an Outward and Visible Sign of my pious approach to Good Eating. But the end result is the same - a binful of unidentifiable green spongy bits.

Irritatingly, there are fixes for these symptoms. My compost bins for one, and the Green Bin for the other. Here in Bucks we have a separate collection for anything food related. Separate bin, separate garbage truck, separate destination, to wit a high-temperature composting facility near High Wycombe. Apparently landfill use has dropped by something astounding like 35%.

But that's not a cure, is it. There's a man called Mel Bartholemew, whose Big Idea is Square Foot Gardening. Basically, vegetable growing by the Square Foot rather than the Long Line. Not only is he extremely sound on veg. patches, he also gives recipe suggestions which, if you cook them in the right order, and a little more than you need so you freeze the leftovers (all in one great tub), by the end of the week you get a delicious and perfectly balanced meal for two ready for defrosting. And he's got a beard.

(And now I've started thinking about the ethics of bread so cheap, and wondering if there's a case to be made for the harm it does society. And why the hell I don't par-boil and freeze vegetables before they rot. I'll never get to sleep now.)

Chocolate

That's Easter over and done with for another year, then And what have I learned this Paschal tide? That while it might say 85% on the wrapper, it may very well not do.

Those bloody eggs. Having lovingly put the patterns in different coloured chocolate, and filled the moulds with careful layers of the plain stuff, ON MY OWN, it was time to put the eggs together. The little ones popped out of their moulds very easily, and it was the work of moments to paste the halves together. Well, it would have been moments if I hadn't had to keep washing my hands.

I'd used blimmin' cooking chocolate, hadn't I. All organically grown and fairly traded and all, but the stuff, as indeed it's supposed to, melts at a breath, never mind body temperature. The little eggs are all smeared messes, and the two big ones, destined for my mother and my sister, JUST WILL NOT COME OUT OF THEIR MOULDS. Without breaking into tiny little pieces, obviously.

Though a big upside to all this has been my discovery that as a method of taking and storing clearly defined fingerprints, cooking chocolate is second to none. I'm going to write to Gil Grissom. Maybe he'll want to discuss it over a bottle of wine . . .

Craft(y) Fair

I do enjoy a good Craft Fair, me. From the beautifully made walnut console tables to the garishly-blotched 'Your name painted FREE!' childrens' coat pegs, the artisanal bread to the production line stuffed olives, the mouth-blown glass lamps to the wine-glasses decorated with that dreadful glass paint. Negotiating that tricky line between needing to have a look at some fresh horror involving hand-twizzled clay fairies and tea-lights, while avoiding the eye of the maker sitting behind the stall. The shocking needlessness of the be-ribboned plastic egg cups, the shocking prices being asked for some very average cuff links, and the total gorgeousness of a child-sized wooden motorbike on rubber wheels.

And the story I heard of some people setting up a stall with jars, with hand-written labels and gingham-covered lids, and priced outrageously, filled with jam bought for £2 a ton at CostCo.

Book List

What I am Reading Now is The Fortune of War, by Patrick O'Brian. Within the first 50 pages, our heroes have one ship sink under them, another shot out from under them, and are now held prisoner by the fledgling US of A. Phew. This is the sixth book in the series, and I'm already getting anxious that there are only 13 to go.

What Made Me Cry? Most recently, the pair of deaths at the end of The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman. I'm talking wailing aloud, rocking back and forth, tear-sodden face here. Really, really crying. Closely followed by the death of Jo the Crossing Sweeper in Bleak House.

The Book That Made Me Laugh most recently is the O'Brian - there's a dry chortle every couple of pages. The most laughing out loud has to be Tennyson's Gift by Lynne Truss. Funniest. Book. Ever. Closely followed by The Diary of a Provincial Lady. A blog by any other name . . .

I Raged at The Bookseller of Kabul, by Asne Seierstad. She lived with an Afghani family for a few months, and her account of the treatment of everyone not the male head of a household made me weep for the sheer bloody waste of human potential.

What Book Made Me Crap My Pants (I'm so sorry, I think that unfortunate phrase is mine . . .) has to be The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. For months I couldn't walk up any stairs for fear I would see Peter Quint looking down at me. Still makes me shudder. Miles was well out of it, I reckon.

The Most Impact On My Life would be The Road Less Travelled, by M. Scott Peck. It's the only self-help book I have ever read, and I only read it because the most astonishingly diverse range of people recommended it. The only thing I can remember from it, is his injunction not to lie. Never, ever. It's a betrayal of the soul. That's not to say I have never lied since, of course, I'm just very conscious of it when I do. And sometimes I turn not lying into a game (a not very honourable game) by saying something which will be taken to mean something else. Occasions for this might be how to phrase a response to a particularly hideous new baby, or a meal badly cooked by the Mother in Law.

What Book Ought I To Have Read, But Haven't? Boringly, I'd have to go with Ulysses, by James Joyce. For a graduate in English Literature, that's actually quite an admission. Here's something even more shocking - I don't feel even the slightest urge to make good the omission.

If Realdoc, Dave or Wyndham pass this way, I'd love to hear what they have to say.

Yesterday

It was Palm Sunday, which meant that we got to Process. The congregation congregated in the Surgery car park, was handed palm fronds and hymn sheets, and off we went, Choir Mistress, Band, Choir, He-priest and She-priest, and Uncle Tom Cobbley and All. Up the hill, down the dale, over the road, past the duckpond, across the green and into the church, all singing like mad things. Because no-one could hear anything, the back of the procession was anywhere between three bars and an entire verse behind the front. But hey ho, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam and all that. Then the children turned their palm crosses around, holding them like swords, and started a fight in the church. Argh. No wonder there's a very vocal faction within the church community which doesn't want the little beggars in church at all.

UPDATE I forgot to say, Yvonne (a grandmother deeply loved by the entire flock) read the first Lesson, telling us it was from Paul's Letter to the Filipines. I had no idea the early church was so far-reaching.

Back in the saddle

I usually do SO the courtesy of waiting until he is out of the country before watching a horror flick, but having lost my nerve so badly earlier this month, and he needing to work in the kitchen all evening, I figured two stout walls between us would do the trick.

This time it was Ghost Ship. Salvage crew finding a luxury liner derelict these forty years, no apparent reason why, gradually being picked off one by one by . . .

And I was fine. Time to admire the inventiveness of the opening scenes (eeuw! very bluggy!), to enjoy the splendid art direction, to envy some of the stunts that Julianna Margulies got to do, to jump at doors inexplicably slamming shut, to gasp when, instead of seeing his own reflection in the mirror, he sees something else, to shudder at the . . . you get the idea.

I'm so happy I have my nerve back! Just look at the time, I'm the only one downstairs in the single pool of light cast by the monitor, and I don't even feel the need to, just in case, check over my shoulde . . .

Ya gotta love the underpants

Of course I enjoyed it. Frank Miller graphics, a risible telling, and a complete misrepresentation of the facts. Yum.

No kidding though, the thing was wonderful to look at. The slo-mo, the fast-mo - obviously a quote, if not a direct steal, from the Green Wing technique. Some images of violence glossed over, some, especially a couple of head shots (!), lingered over. The dialogue of the 300 themselves very snappy (as per the original comic), the dialogue of events back home jingoistic and semantically null. Queen Gorgo (GORGO! No wonder no-one actually spoke her name in the nearly two hours of movie!) did a splendid job of looking like Lucilla in Gladiator. And Xerxes was divinely decadent.

Imagine my irritation when, as is my custom, staying in my seat until the last credit has rolled, I spot credits for 'Transsexual 1', 'Transsexual 2' and 'Transsexual 3' WHAT! I missed them! Now there's nothing for it but to buy the DVD the minute it comes out and go through the thing in slo-mo. This could take a while - maybe I'll get a take-away. Oh - and the much-vaunted girl-on-girl action? Half hearted, half baked, half arsed. Nothing to fax home about.

Go see it.

TNG

It is my . . .how shall I put this (there's this line, see? Between not causing offence and downright dishonesty) fortune? Lot, Fate, Doom? to be peripherally involved in the raising of some children. Three of them, BBG, 8, 4, 3. (Between you and me, I suspect the G might very well have been a tad unforeseen, but hey, she's cute.) Every so often their mother feels its all a little much, and I get to take a turn.

But oh my, how rubbish am I at children. You'd think I have a lot of interests and skills that might usefully be passed on to the next generation, and I do. Gardening, music, basic carpentry, not to mention Reading, Riting and 'Rithmetic. Today, Easter Egg making.

I had moulds, three colours of chocolate, icing syringes, and pastry brushes. Oh, and an overwhelming lack of patience. The little blighters just wouldn't do it right. Honestly, I didn't mind not getting to the pan of boiling water because some pre-school pate was in the way, or spitty little fingers poked into the melting chocolate (I did quite enjoy the yells of pain though - honestly, if I've told them once, I've told them a hundred times . . .) or even a certain randomness in the thickness of the layers of chocolate. But somewhere in the vicinity of the mould would have been nice!

I kept tellin' 'em, Not like that, like this! I kept tellin' 'em, watch how I do it! Then I told them to bugger off. In a nice way. The younger generation? There's just no telling them. Ptcha.

I did buy quite a lot of Geomag (it was on half-price sale) on the grounds that a) it is fun to play with, b) if they swallow a ball it will come out the other end no problem, and c) if they swallow a bar it will show up nicely on the X-ray. But guess what? They don't even know how to play properly with that.

300

Some movies just have to be seen NOW. Not next week, NOT on DVD (though you know you will pay full whack for the DVD the minute it comes out) and most certainly not on telly. Ugh. And this is regardless of the reviews they have had.

I've been a fan of Frank Miller for a while now - All the Dark Knight stuff, Ronin I thought was great, and I was grabbed by Sin City until I started wondering whether he had gone just a tad overboard. Does this happen to all comic greats? They stay anchored in their early days while writing for existing characters, but as soon as they cut loose they go all weird? Alan Moore for example? Watchmen and V for Vendetta scaled fresh heights, but Lost Girls sounds a bit dubious to me.

Though it has to be said that my acquaintance with the world of comics is madly out of date. I used to be fed choice tidbits, given the cream of the crop, without having to wade through all the garbage, until I discovered that my old friend and supplier had been cheating on my even older friend, his wife. This all came out about ten years ago, and I still can't look him in the eye. So my knowledge of comicdom is stuck around the mid-nineties.

But I digress.

Joe Queenan wrote a cracking review of 300 which makes me want to see the picture all the more. It seems the movie makers have wandered from Herodotus even further than Miller did in the comic, so I don't know whether to rejoice that the events at Thermopylae will have a whole new audience, or cry that the original story has been so thoroughly hi-jacked for dubious political ends. I don't know what they did to the text, but I sure hope they bought it dinner first.


ps Yay! Threshers are doing it again! The coupon is only good until 1st April though, so hurry along here for your copy.

Just a Quickie

Can't chat long, I only have half a mouth. Dentist. Ptcha. Was it in 10 that Dudley Moore did the thing with the two wine glasses, one to drink from, and the other to catch the dribble? Maybe Arthur. Oh, and just how did I lose that filling? Flossing, that's how. So, when the dentist, temporarararily filling the Gaping Void, said 'Don't floss', oh how I laughed.

ps I borrowed the bloody book and finished it in the early hours of Monday morning. Phew. So yesterday it was back to Chasms for me. Anybody got something for cultural indigestion?

pps Google, it say 10.

Desperation

I have been waiting and working towards this climax for six weeks. SIX WEEKS! I kid you not. It's been hard going - I've had to concentrate on this to the exclusion of all else, and to be quite honest, I can't remember any other book taking me quite so long to finish. Tomalin's biography of Sam Pepys, it was. Actually, and the reason why I am gnashing my teeth with desperation, still is. Having got to within striking distance of the end (and the good thing about a well-researched piece of non-fiction, is that the end comes a good deal sooner than you expect, because of the references! Took up a good half-inch at the back of this book, they did), I carried it with me wherever I went, just on the off-chance of reading a sentence or two.

ANYWAY. Pepys's health fails, he moves out to the country (Clapham!), he snuffs it! (Ahhh). He's autopsied (ugh) and the provisions of his will are explained, and . . . .

Dunno. Lost the bloody book, haven't I.

Severance

So, SO was in Bucharest at the beginning of this week. (All that way for a two-hour meeting, but he gets to charge them for two days of his time. I know - madness.) My pleasure, when he is out of the house, is a good horror movie. I bought myself Severance, and settled down, late in the evening, alone in the house, for a rare treat. I lasted twenty minutes.

Twenty. Minutes.

I bottled. Totally funked it. Twenty minutes! The screeching violins had barely got up to speed! A few moments of handheld camera (cue creepy music) from inside the bunker, and I hit the off button so fast I still have the bruise. I may never play guitar again. (Well, that's actually true, but mostly because of not practising because of idleness, not my over-dexterous use of the remote control.)

I clearly needed broad daylight for this, and preferably an inappropriate hour. So, yesterday, by 9:30 I was sitting on the sofa in front of the TV and d'ye know, I really enjoyed it. Oh yes, it was indeed drenched in gore, and I had to watch half of it from behind the sofa, but the funny bits were very funny indeed. Tim Macinnerny did his usual hapless tosser, but this tosser was far more than usually hapless - splendid performance. Laura Harris I've only seen twice before, once in 24/2, where she metamorphosed from Demure Essence of Femininity to steely-eyed ruthless terrorist from the Middle East, and The Faculty, where she metamorphosed from Demure Essence of Femininity to gigantic drippy-toothed alien from the planet Hell. This time around, DE of F to machete-wielding balls-for-breakfast go-to gal from the office next door. She does it so well.

The only reason for my state of utter funkhood I can think of is that this movie was populated by people I recognised. Movies like Wrong Turn, (which I saw a couple of weeks ago, on my own, late at night, no problem) where shiny American teenagers wander into the wrong house / forest / country and get sliced and diced, subscribe to the natural order of things. We've seen it a million times before. But not Him from the office down the hall with his leg in a mantrap. Or Her from the fourth floor tied to a tree and . . . Nah. Go watch it.

I hadn't banked on SO actually being in the house at that point, watching me watch telly at 9:30 in the morning, and I've been trying to persuade him ever since that this is not how I usually spend my mornings..

I ♥ Essex

No, I really do. Not urban Essex, but out towards the coast. The roads are pretty poor, but that means that not many people go there. The countryside is not remotely pretty (we have Surrey for that. Personally I've always found Surrey unbearably smug) but it's - I dunno, purposeful. It does a job of work. It's not kindly. And of course it's fuller of history than an egg is full of meat. Romans at Colchester, Saxons at Triplow and Vikings at Maldon. Oh, and Beth Chatto gardens there.

It was Maldon this weekend. The docks are so interesting, and if you aren't in time for an actual trip on a Thames sailing barge you can usually blag a scramble over the deck. If you don't fancy the coastal path (which does need stout shoes) the promenade is a gentle stroll. At at the end of the promenade, at last, hurrah hurrah, is the John Doubleday statue of Brythnoth.

Golly, don't the English love a loser. This idiot had an invading horde of Vikings penned on an island off the coast, reachable only by tidal causeway. All the Anglo-saxons had to do was sit there. But oh no, the vikings ask please to be let off the island, because otherwise it isn't really a fair fight now, is it? And this twit says, OK then.

WHAT!

How the subsequent slaughter and total bloody DEFEAT of the Saxons gets turned into literary gold is a trick only an Englishman can pull off.

Oh and? Nowhere on the statue can you find who it is, or indeed who made it. Go figure.

ps talking about losers, last night, as SO is in Bucharest, I thought to treat myself to Severance - not SO's sort of movie at all. It was 20 minutes before I bottled. Couldn't do it. Maybe I'll finish watching it tomorrow morning, about 9:30ish. Or maybe not.

Blasphemy, Blasphemy, they've all got it . . .

Bugger, no, that's Infamy, isn't it. Never mind. I thought I'd wrap up last post's anguish by recycling the comments. (Neat trick, huh? Bet no-one's ever thought of it before.)

It seems to me that blasphemy is only possible under a limited set of conditions. For a start, you can't blaspheme if you believe. Contradiction in terms. (Could you do it if your relationship with God was so bad all you wanted to do was diss the Deity? That might work.) And neither can you blaspheme if you don't believe. Belief systems become just more stories, as likely to be satirized as any other. (Well, more so, natch, because the reaction is likely to be more pronounced.) I think you could do it if you once had a faith and then lost it. Which would be me, not that anyone in RL knows this. And I suppose you could do it by accident - y'know, one man's enquiry into the nature of faith is another man's blasphemy.

Tim said talked about irreverence, irony, sarcasm and self-deprecation as defining characteristics of British culture. He's right, of course, and the thing about all these is that, in order for them to be understood and appreciated, the audience has to have an understanding of what is being poked fun at. F'rinstance, rhe more you keep up with current events, the funnier the News Quiz is. I used to get a bit fascist about The Sopranos, and wanted every potential viewer to take some sort of test, to make sure they got it, and didn't take it at face value. Therein lies a danger - anybody without a grounding RE hearing a blasphemy will take it at face value, and their understanding / potential faith will be skewed or destroyed. Children would be particularly at risk.

I've only seen a bit of the site in question, but there was one illustration, ironically the one the rector's wife sent back as one which made her laugh immoderately, which struck me as hilarious, but also made me slightly uncomfortable. It's this one. I don't want to blaspheme, I really don't, so I guess if I'm guilty it's because I peddle the stuff rather than cook it up myself.

Yup, still going to Hell.

PS - Dave, where did Jesus use humour, exactly? Absolutely nothing springs to mind.

I'm going to Hell

The subject of Lego cropped up chez Patroclus. (Again. If Sitemeter counted the number of times a subject gets raised, the counter wouldn't be big enough.) One commenter mentioned the Brick Testament, so I high-tailed it over there, and found myself chuckling like a good'un.

I thought it might amuse some church-type friends, so emailed the link around. (I do this regularly - the Church of Aeth and Augustine are recent enjoyments.) One friend who is routinely on the distribution list is our rector's wife, an intelligent, beautiful woman, who bears a couple of crosses with humanity, and always has something interesting to say. However, our senses of humour don't often intersect. And this offering went hideously awry.

Initially, to judge by her email reply, she found the site very amusing, but in a subsequent phone conversation she had come to the view that it seemed to her blasphemous.

I spent half an hour googling 'Blasphemy for Dummies', looking for something with which either to fight my corner, or to understand her point of view, and came up with Irreverence. Ohh yesssiree Bob, that site sure is Irreverent. But do we still go to Hell for that? I know we used to, and if that's still the case, the rector's wife is going to have a lonely time of it in Heaven.

So there you have it. In my corner, half an hour's research on the Interweb, in hers, an adult lifetime's studying the Bible and a strong faith sorely tested. Is it possible to have a moral compass so compromised I don't even recognise that it is damaged?

Has this ever happened before? Not to me . . .

Here's a turn-up for the books - blogging as displacement activity. Usually it's sheets. I have the tidiest linen cupboard in the western hemisphere. Everything folded so that external folds are to hand, everything in its place, shelving all labelled, Single sheets, Double sheets, Big towels, Medium towels, Little towels and Comedy towels, Big duvets and Little duvets, all with their pillow cases tucked inside.

Occasionally SO takes something from a shelf, decides its the wrong thing and just shoves it back.

This makes me unnecessarily upset.

But then I realise that I really ought to post something, and am instantly drawn to the linen cupboard, soothing brows, righting wrongs, drawing order out of Chaos. (Should I pun on posting and 'writing' wrongs? Nah. Can't be arsed.)

This time, however, Chaos remains unresolved under my ministrations. This time, Noteworthy is defeating me, and of all the things I HATE, I hate the most feeling this stupid. Oh, and being STABBED IN THE BACK by a piece of software I loved and trusted.

I wanted the chords for 'Wide, wide as the ocean', and found them at The Cyber Hymnal. To my joy, not only did the site provide the chorded score, it was all done in Noteworthy, which I happen to have and love. Used to love. Used to think was a fabulous little piece of software, and cheap! Still cheap, mind.

So when I decided that the key was wrong for us, transposing the score from C to G was its usual doddle. Another easy set of chords, as well.

But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to change the chord letters on the score. They've not used a lyric line, but entered the letters as text expressions, I think. Short of recreating the whole thing, note for note, in a new file, and adding new chord letters, I decided to blog about it. That'll get the job done.

Whosis's Axe is still up there

I know, I know, the Tyrant of Syracuse, but buggered if I can remember his name. Damon? Pythias? It'll come to me.

ANYWAY. No mention of SO or leakage or other damaging info in the trades at the end of last week, so SO, who doesn't borrow trouble so much as has a permanent lend-lease arrangement on the stuff, now wonders if the next thing is to be a solicitor's letter on our doormat, and the reason it's not here yet is half term, and everyone is away.

Great. At least with the publication thing, we had a potential full stop to this sorry episode. Now we have to dread the postman. Every darn day.


A SWORD! Of Damocles! Yay! Honestly, call myself a fan of the Rocky Horror Show . . .

Valentine's Day for real

I know, I know, I'm clearly not snuggled up in the arms of my beloved this Valentine's Day night. Truth is, SO had a really crap day. Started with an early phone call from a client asking how come rumours about the sale of client's company, with SO's name attached, were doing the rounds. Seems SO had what turns out to be an extremely ill-judged conversation over a pub lunch with ex-colleagues, who took what SO said, spun it around a bit, and called a trade paper. Ugh. Especially as SO had signed a confidentiality agreement. I suggested a visit to a lawyer, and wondered how much our house would sell for.

Poor SO returned slightly heartened (better than shaky and heaving, I can tell you) and with just enough oomph to pour me a vodka and tonic (delicious!), open a very decent Pomerol and cook me the promised steak au poivre, which we savoured over L4yer Cake, neither of us having the heart for original conversation. I offered to wash up so SO could go straight to bed - poor thing is exhausted.

The trade paper is published on Friday.

NO CHOCOLATE

Please, please, there was supposed to be No Chocolate in the house. None. Nada. Zip. Every so often I get desperate, and truffle wild-eyed through the house, looking for some, anything that looks like it, anything at all I'M DESPERATE.


And I found the most unexpected stash. In the pantry there's a box, about a foot square, that you can tell doesn't see the light of day too often. It's full of cake making stuff - little bottles of coloured ink, a couple of syringy things, some little vials of vanilla essence (probably the real thing, as I sniffed and swooned) and this.



Four compartments, each filled with tiny bits of a different chocolatey treat. Snap the appropriate lid open, upend it into your waiting (and sweatily shaking, it has to be admitted) palm, and thence into your mouth. No, MY mouth. Get your mouth away, I found it, it's MINE.

*groan* I'm in bad shape.




Y'know, the fact that the sell-by date is Feb 2005 only adds to its savour.

Two compartments down, one to go. (The fourth one, for those of an unnecessarily pedantic turn of mind, is filled with something milk chocolatey. Ugh. I recently tried to persuade Jill Twiss of the virtues of a good plain chocolate, even going so far as to offer to send her some examples if she gave me an address, and she thought I was stalking her. Puh-lease. As if.)



UPDATE - My blogging skills are vestigial at best. Only on reading ILTVs comment did I realise that when I say 'chocolate', I mean top-end, 70% minimum cocoa solids, made with properly roasted beans. It's an definition so central to the way I live my life, that I utterly fail to appreciate that not everyone else does.

So when I say 'Weetos. Now I'm eating fucking WEETOS' you know how far I have fallen.

Sorted

Well, it was always going to be Connery, wasn't it? Scotland forever, and all that.

And here's the thing that decided me. I noticed that the Connery collection offered by Amazon lacked Never Say Never Again, so when I saw said movie on sale in Woolies for £4 (Four! Pounds!) I took it as a Sign.

*sigh* what is it about cheap DVDs? I can't stop myself. Unless what's on offer really is crap. And it's not even as if I watch the stuff, as I would rather spend the time surfing. It's no good for lending, as by the time it's got that cheap everyone has already seen it.

I found myself on the verge of buying another copy of Donnie Darko because is was on sale at £2, and the one I already had cost £6. For a brief moment it actually made sense. (And no, I haven't seen it yet.)

I did buy a duplicate once. I have two copies of that splendid movie Serial Mom. Luckily I had the presence of mind to leave one in its cellophane, in the event that I need an emergency present. Dunno for whom tho', as I'm the only person I know who rates John Waters.

Valentine's Day

Hoo-bloody-ray, more presents. Christmas, my birthday, Valentine's Day, SO's birthday early March and then we are DONE. Phew.

Thank goodness for Amazon wish-lists, eh? SO pretty much cleaned mine out for my birthday, bless, (though I remarked the absence of the 10 DVD+RWs - SO has no sense of priorities. Serves me right for not having categorised 'em myself) so I thought I might reciprocate.

Valentine's Day proved easy (Bringing Up Baby, a couple of Gervaise Phinns) but birthday is going to be a little trickier, not to say more expensive. Because SO has also not categorised either, I have to work out which James Bond SO fancies most. Oh, the pressure . . .

I thought I might slide a Firewire cable into the order for li'l ole me. What larks, eh Pip?

Bloggers from the Dawn of Time

Last night I finally got around to watching my recording of Victoria Wood's Housewife, 49. The play was moving, uplifting, informative, Threlfall excellent etc etc, and Nella Last was a very early blogger.

The Mass Observation project, started in 1937, wanted to record the daily lives of British citizens, largely in the form of diaries kept by volunteers and sent in to the central office. Nella Last started her blog - sorry, diary - in 1939, in response to an advert. I gather this was far less in response to the outbreak of war than to her own impending (at least second) breakdown. In a very closeted home life, dominated by husband and sons, she had no-one with which to share the details of her life, and so put them all into this diary, which she sent off to Mass Ob.

And blimey o'riley if it didn't turn her life right round. She found the courage to stand up to her husband, practically take over the WVS and bridge the class divide between those who had telephones and those who *gasp* didn't.

First Nations has talked eloquently about the difference between a diary and a blog, and how blogging has changed her life. Nella didn't have a 'comments' button, but just knowing she was going to be listened to made all the difference.

It's. oh. so quiet.

Bloody Nicodemus, tip-toeing around like that.

*sigh* Sunday School tomorrow later today. Being as how I 'teach' the three to four year olds (translate that as 'try to keep the lid on'), whatever the subject, the teaching involves a lot of running around and shrieking. It is, after all, their preferred mode of expression, and they are going to do it anyway. So - Solomon building a temple, 'And how did the people worship? YES! By dancing around wildly and yelling loudly! PRAISE THE LORD!' Elijah was a good couple of lessons - 'King Ahab was so angry with Elijah that Elijah had to run away really fast yelling! HELP ME GOD!' And the priests of Baal were a gift - 'How did they pray to their god? By dancing wildly around the altar and yelling! 'BAAL LIGHT THE FIRE!' Give 'em back to their parents good and knackered, say I.

But not this time, oh no. Yours and my favourite member of the Sanhedrin, more than his job's worth to be seen with flavour-of-the-month rabble-rouser JESUS, yes let's hear it for NICODEMUS! has to go visiting in the middle of the night, as quietly as poss., whisper a conversation with The Man, and then sneak back home to have a Good Think.

I'm doomed.

You can call the search off.

I haven't had a vodka and tonic for - ooh, about 12 years. Or a gin and tonic. Or anything and tonic. Ever since 'they' thought it was a good idea (why!) to put aspartame and saccharin into even regular tonic. I am one of those unfortunates for whom these additives don't taste sweet, they just taste chemical, and vilely so. Oh, feel my pain.

Over the years, the search for a drinkable tonic moved from diligent to desultory to dead. I never lost the habit of scanning ingredients lists of bottles which just happened to be there but habit it was, and at best provided me with an opportunity to go off on one. Again. Nothing I like better* than a bit of tssking. I might occasionally have treated myself to a slow, sad head-shake.

Until late last year, there dawned a day. Did you notice it? The one with the eclipse? And the comets, and the rains of blood, and every time you cut open a pigeon its entrails spilled out to form the word 'Ouch'? Not just once or twice, but every time? That was the day I discovered Waitrose Own Tonic, which is Free From Artificial Sweeteners. Look, it says so on the label. O frabjous day, callooh, callay!

So another hunt was on. Which vodka! It's been so long since I bought any, all I knew was not to buy anything that was advertised because it was crap. That still leaves a whole supermarket shelf's worth of labels I had never seen before.

Until my eye fell on this. Organic Vodka. See? Every so often, this sorry race of ours does something just because it's right.

*Soo-oooo-oo not true, but on reflection now is neither the time nor the place.

Beta

Ooooo-ooo--oo-kay - still here, so far, not having checked any comments on previous posts which by all accounts should have gone Anon, so, whoever you were, I Heart You, and it all looks the same, and hell is that the time? Gotta go . . .

Update - about 20 seconds later - posted, went to view and say hi to commenters, and got that bX-vjhbsj error that's been everywhere today. On My Own Blog. I hate Beta.

Unclean, unclean . . .

Even I couldn't fail to notice that, last week, the supermarket was rather fuller than usual of unnecessarily intrusive examples of the unfortunate side-effects of - y'know, rumpy pumpy.

Sorry, too many 'of's.

Lots more small children than usual in Sainsbury's last week. (Much better.) The way I notice school holidays are happening is that the roads are noticeably emptier, which hadn't been the case. So something was up. I enquired of a harrassed-looking individual (she had at least three of the little blighters in tow) what the blazes was afoot, and she told me that the local Infant School had closed because of DISEASE. Something so virulant that had drastic measures not been taken the entire population of under sevens would have vomitted themselves into oblivion, and the disease would have jumped species and started infecting grown-ups. Obviously not a desirable outcome.

So closing down the infant school meant sending these little plague-rats, these Typhoid Maries, these pox-ridden harbingers of DOOM out into the middle of the population.

Cracking idea, Grommit.

She was asking for it!

Michael Howard's wife, Sandra, wrote a novel last year. Quite well received by the press, not quite so well by the punters. (I had thought to make some remark about her possibly having better luck if she had written a vampire novel, but couldn't think of a way to make it even faintly amusing.)

Seems she is intending to do it again - lucky us. At a recent charity ball, attended by lots of the rich and famous, one of the prizes in the auction was a name-check in her next opus. No guarantee as to what sort of character would sport the winning moniker though.

The bidding was opened, one imagines at a suitably charitable level, by Armando Iannucci.

The auctioneer, Rory Bremner, took a long pause, and decided to stop the bidding right then.

Y'know, I might even buy the book when it comes out. Well, at least the very minute it hits the charity shop shelves.

The Green Mile

Makes a change from Green Wing, dunnit?

It has been an awfully long time since I last cried so hard in a movie. I just thanked heaven that SO was not watching this with me - with both of us bawling our eyes out the sofa would have been awash.

Frank Darabont has carved out a peculiar niche for himself. All-male casts, prison-uniformery, unexpected bonding, and really good endings. (OK, Shawshank was clumsily handled, but the ending itself was still good.) This one has the advantage of an absolutely crackingly nasty little turd of a prison guard, and one of Tom Hanks' better performances.

The story signposts itself well, with very lean storytelling. Moments of both high humour and high horror are subtly handled. Nothing is wasted, not dialogue nor scene. The movie is three hours long, and I didn't notice the time once.

And be aware of a particular character's initials - it's an interesting take on blessings balanced by curses, and which wins and why.

Did Everyone Know about This except ME?

Birthday Card

I got the most beautiful card from I, like the view, and lots of singing from her mates who haven't even met me.

Thank you so much.

Its a worrying world

On Monday afternoon, our village and its environs suffered a power failure of about two hours. The day left enough light to locate the candles and matches, make a quick trip to the hardware shop for paraffin, light a fire and get in enough logs to last for a bit.

And time enough to start thinking about considering contemplating getting a tiny bit anxious. Hilarious imagining re-connection at 4:00am, and being woken by a houseful of bright lights, but how long, after all, would it last? It's blimmin' cold out there - how soon would it be cold inside too? And between the bangings-on of the Economist, Al Gore and SO, who works in the oil industry, it wasn't too hard to imagine a time when the power just wouldn't be on again.

In countries where this happens frequently, is it better, because one is used to it, or worse, because each power cut might by the one that doesn't end?

And where would things start to unravel?

With the passing of the years, am I getting more realistic, or just older?




P.S it occurs to me that these worries have completely overshadowed that fact that I have been computerless for the last 48 hours. Had to find the installation disks before I could get past a blue screen error. I've already tried 'the dog ate my homework' on Tim, and I think he believed me - will I be so lucky this time?

And . . .

A Rosenthal vase
Amo, amas, amat
A donation to Unicef, and lunch in the bosom of my family. Perfect.

. . . and a new one just begun

'Samuel Pepys' by Claire Tomalin
'The Mezzanine' by Nicholson Baker (thank you Corey Redekop)
'Power of Art' by Simon Schama
'Die Zauberflöte' cond. Otto Klemperer (about time)
'transparente' by Mariza (no idea why!)
A scarf, champagne, and a box of chocolate-covered cherries.

And 12 of us dining out at the local fabulous Thai and seriously overstaying our welcome.

Happy Birthday to me.

Well who would have guessed.

The woman who runs our church Sunday School is leaving. Actually, she and her family are leaving the area altogether, and I'm the obvoius choice to take over. Liar-to-children* IN CHIEF. How is that going to play in Peoria?

Waah! I don' wanna!



*Sunday 14 Jan. Tried to make a link and wandered out of the realms of possibility.

Aaaaaaaaah

SO and I had our inaugural veg-out in our new library last night. I suppose to avoid confusion with our new Community Library we should call it 'the study' or 'the den' or some-such, but no, actually, it is a library. Floor to ceiling shelves full of (mostly) books, two leather armchairs, (pretend) fireplace, Turkish rugs, brocaded curtains, small-but-perfectly-formed telly, it's a lovely room.

So last night we wallowed in coffee, chocolate cake, armagnac and West Wing 7.

I revell in that show. The characters are compelling, the insight into government processes illuminating, and the dialogue crackles like static electricity. Getting back into that world was like slipping into a hot bath with a good book. I know who the leak is, I know who wins the election, but I don't care - it's a rare treat to see a good story well told.

I used to think that is epitomised a certain schizophrenia of the US of A's, but latterly I'm not so sure. As an extended ad for the Democratic Party I'm surprised it doesn't have the Republicans howling for blood. And of course it teaches more about the American system of government that any number of civics lessons. I do wonder, though, if there are young men finding themselves drawn into politics because of the statisticallly improbable number of young, fit,long-blonde-haired women staffing the White House.


ps In total contrast I also finally watched the last-ever episodes of Dibley. Apart from the crashing disappointment at how shoddy the writing was, why has no-one mentioned the startling similarity of Geraldine Grainger's and Caroline Todd's reaction to being finally married? Is James Henry sleeping with Richard Curtis? I think we should be told.

Pullman's pulling my leg

The man's not anti-God! What he is, is confused between God and the god built in man's image (of course I use the male signifier deliberately! Duh!) and that's the one he doesn't like. Why should he? I sure as heck (this is a Sunday post after all) don't.

I know the subject has been done to death, (what an ingenious way of getting out of providing any sort of analysis myself!) but things started going wrong (Oh very well! IN MY OPINION! Happy now?) around about St Paul. In the face of strong opposition from within the very early, and entirely Judaic church, he took the Word to the gentiles. The man achieved monumental amounts. Christianity had no chance without him, none. No doubting that. BUT. Crucially, the man was writing in the sure and certain knowledge of Christ's return, expecting it in his own lifetime, and that dangerously skewed our patterns of belief. He concentrated entirely on the life to come, and specifically counsels against tampering with existing social structures on the grounds that there just wasn't the time. So instead of newly Christian communities getting to grips with the fundamentals of a life based on the precepts of the Messiah, and the difficult task of actually changing the way they lived their lives, there was an easy option - change absolutely nothing, and profess all. I know, I know, persecutions, terrible martyrdoms in the early days, and then oh goodness gracious me, these very same things meted out to others as soon as the church gained power. In the name of God, but God remade in Man's image. We did, and continue to do, what we want to do. Instead of concentrating on finding out what GOD wants us to do. After all, 'God so loved the world . . ' Loved. The World. This one.

SO. That, I reckon, is the toothless, dribbling entity in Pullman's Clouded Mountain. The God humans made, and in its name made the General Oblation Board, the Consistorial Court and all those other lovely institutions. And I'd like to see it dead too.

While I'm on the subject: Dust. The chain of thought falls apart in Spyglass, when Dust, gushing out of the universe through the human wielding of the Subtle Knife, is demonstrably at the mercy of human action, but that apart, what a great way of thinking about GOD. Not the apex of a hierarchy, which is an inescapable part of the language which confines our thoughts, but a truly all-pervasive presence, which will talk with us so easily if we avail ourselves of it.

And a couple of things I just didn't get. Mary Malone is told she is to play the serpent to Lyra's Eve. But I cannot for the life of me see where. She talks about abandoning her vocation for human love - is that the temptation? But Will and Lyra already love each other, so it can't be that. Also, Eve didn't harrow Hell, Jesus did. So how come it was Lyra released those poor ghosts?

Ah - Jesus. Appears very briefly in the Malone speech just mentioned, and that's it, in the whole trilogy. Pullman doesn't address Redemption at all. His quarrel, flawed as I think it is, is with a God. He doesn't - can't? - take on the real biggie. I'll grant him his atheism when he does that.

What a trudge through this post. Probably because I'm abandoning a Sunday slant, and this will be my last one. It's a bit of a bugger, but I've moved away from envying believers their certainty, to envying non-believers their total lack of angst. Here's a wry chuckle - I'm heavily time-tabled in Sunday School, and we are strapped for teachers, so none of this inner crap can afford to see RL daylight. Still and all, I read somewhere that the Chinese term for 'teacher' can equally well be translated as 'liar-to-children'. So I'm OK.

Lists

It has gradually been dawning on me that there is quite an art to making lists. I'm thinking here of yer basic to-do, rather than - ooh, I dunno, resolutions? party guests? shopping? laundry? I'm sure that there is an art for each of those (except laundry, because I have no idea why people would do one. Or possibly did one, it has a pleasantly antique ring to the name). Nope, the one that has been tripping me up is the to-do.

F'rinstance, a frequent entry on mine is 'Call so-n-so'. Easy-peasy. Find a blank two minutes, pick up the phone, right buttons in the right order, and I'm away. Except, of course, often enough I'm not. The line is engaged, or the answering machine kicks in. By then my two minutes is up, and I've moved on to the next thing, and where it all goes to hell in a handbasket is that that to-do entry has now been crossed off the list. Done it. Next. And whatever it was that I called about remains undone, but it's no longer my concern, because I've done my bit. See? It's the entry that's wrong. If it had said ''Arrange for the doo-dad to be shifted", then no amount of phoning, messages, crossing-off and hand-dusting would do, until the doo-dad was actually shifted.

So when the entry says "Write Blog", no amount of reading other blogs, commenting, research, reading the next chapter, or Saving as Draft will do. The entry needs to say PUBLISH POST.

ps Re-watched The Wonder Boys last night. Even had SO laughing out loud. Possibly the greatest movie EVER about not writing.

Finally

The Community Library was officially opened. From the inside.

Imagine the scene - a crisp late winter day, village green, duckpond, small children frolicking, village elders gossiping, 'Oyez Oyez Oyez' from village cod Town Crier, village eldest cutting red ribbon and being delighted to declare the new Community Library OPEN! Local press cameras flashing, or not because the sunshine is quite pure and clear enough, happy villagers thronging entrance, jostling good-humouredly to be first.

Yeah right.

Well it was chucking it down, wannit? Got there with five minutes to spare, to discover small children, village elders, cod Town Crier and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all crammed tight into the building, gently steaming and wishing like hell it was all over NOW. Village Eldest propped up in a corner, wishing it hardest, local press thinking I've Seen Worse.

So the red ribbon was strung across the inside of the door, speeches at only three sentences already overlong, Village Eldest, with crutches removed so as not to spoil the picture, lurches ribbon-ward with an unnecessarily vast pair of scissors, local press finds only possible angle by holding camera above head and shooting almost straight down, and the ribbon is parted. You bet the cheer was one of relief.

It was worth it for the looks on the faces of the little children when they discovered that, because of the prohibitive pricing structure of discs acquired for rental, the brand new, much fought for and heartily welcomed Community Library would no longer be renting DVDs.

The Guy Secretan Show

Well it was, wasn't it? Ok, maybe the Alan Statham Show. Oh, those shorts! Best line?

STATHAM I converted it to run on bio-fuel!

JOANNA What? You shat in my vodka?

Or possibly

MAC You're completely gorgeous, he's a complete twat, of course it'll work!

Or possibly

MARTIN *sobs* but you won't live to see me qualify!

MAC Well nobody will live that long will they?

I'm going to watch it all again now.

Green Wing Final Episode

So how does this work? Do we all hit our computers at five to midnight and post like billy-ho, or do we wait until tomorrow morning for a more reasoned response and a chance to comment on everyone else?

This doesn't apply to those CHEATS who downloaded it. You know who you are.

ps I know who's in the coffin, I know who's in the coffin!

157 years ago

The Community Library opens on Saturday.

Eighteen months ago our County Council published the results of a study into Buckinghamshire library provision, and decided that some libraries, by a host of criteria, were not performing well enough to justify their continued existence. Ours was one of these. Oh, the anguish, the handwringing, the re-jigging of the numbers to prove that no, actually, we were performing pretty well, actually, the emergency meetings and frenzied letter-writing - what a circus.

Looking back on this, it irks the crap out of me that the Council spent all that money on coming up with reasonable-sounding reasons for closing our lovely little library, instead of having the courage to say, sorry, there just isn't the money. THAT we would have understood straight away. Instead, all their effort and money wasted because they needed to patronise us, and all our time and energy wasted by attempting to reverse what we didn't know was a done deal.

So a group of feisty locals floated the idea of a community library, to be funded by anyone other than the council. Lots more work, involving legal, financial and property management types, then organising and training volunteers, and managing the book collection mean that by this coming Saturday, all systems will be go.

At tonight's committee meeting, we were shown an advance copy of the new county library flyer - locations, opening times, related services type of thing, and noticed a paragraph about the new community libraries. What is the betting that some councillor (she knows who she is!) will stand up at some high level meeting and say, look, we have five self-financing libraries - aren't we doing well!

Bastards.

Another Year Over,

And A New One Just Begun . . .

The many guests have been kissed and hugged on their way, SO, who did most of the work for tonight, has gone to a well-deserved bed, the first tranche of washing up is done and the fire is burning down to embers. The promised tornado hasn't hit our sleepy corner of England (damn! a budding career in verité journalism nipped in the - well, bud) and I'm contemplating my very first bowl of cereal in the new year. I know, I know, but party food is so - I dunno, bitty. No, not that bitty. You know what I mean.

So here's to 2007, Gawd bless her and all who sail in her. For my rapidly-nearing birthday, I would like

• an end to the western occupation of Iraq
• a happy resolution to Chris Langham's ghastly predicament
• smaller class sizes.

Not necessarily in that order.

ps I thought about a list of resolutions, and then I thought, naaah. Every day is a good day for a resolution. If you can't do it now, you never will.