She always made a new mistake instead.

Mothballs.

2007-01-15T15:00:00.000+01:00

I've not been feeling the blogging recently, and I'm off on holiday for a month, so consider this blog in a state of suspended animation.

It'll probably still be updated more regularly than Decline And Fall, though.

Girl With A One-Track Mind

2007-01-09T15:35:00.000+01:00

Yes, yes, I'm a bad and lazy blogger, but I'm breaking my silence to draw your attention to this. It's a post by Abby Lee, aka Girl With A One Track Mind, about her 'outing' as a sex blogger.

The blogosphere (shame on me for using the word) has certainly got its knickers in a twist over this, as Abby's reprinted the email she got from Sunday Times Deputy News Editor Nick Hellen informing her that her identity was going to be revealed in the paper (after they'd bought up her book, no less) and suggesting that she come in for a photograph because the pap pic they had of her was 'unflattering'.

Frankly, even Hellen himself should recognise that this is a fair cop - why is he more entitled to privacy than she is?

Lonely this Christmas

2006-12-24T03:18:00.000+01:00

This will be my first Christmas in London (well, someone has to bagpipe FACT into NEWS, don't they?) and it's pretty eerie so far.

At the risk of sounding like a right old Scrooge, I dislike Christmas, for the same reason that I dislike Bank Holidays and Saturdays. It gets in the way. And although the British have many admirable qualities, being good at holidays is not one of them. We lapse into endless hand-wringing over the weather and the traffic and the fact there's nothing left in the supermarket. The French, by contrast, just agree that half the country will take July off, and the other half will wait until August.

Anyway, if I have to work this Christmas, I take exception to the fact that everything else stops.

Still, the fact that everyone else has gone home gives me the chance to watch hour upon hour of American drama... and start reading my early Christmas present, the Heston Blumenthal book.

Sleepless in SE16.

2006-12-13T14:41:00.000+01:00

"Talking in bed ought to be easiest," wrote Philip Larkin. "Yet more and more time passes silently..."

Well, I know something else that's supposed to be easiest in bed: sleeping. (Stop sniggering at the back.) But if you don't get home from work until after well after midnight (sometimes 4am) and your bedfellow starts the day at seven in the morning, you've got problems.

As previously discussed, my dear boyfriend moved into a new flat which only an estate agent would describe as having two double bedrooms. In fact it has one, and a cell. Also, since his housemate, The Gripper, bought two kittens it also smells quite strongly of wee and there is quite a high chance of being gored by a Bengal if you move your toe too quickly. To cap it all, his computer's power supply has burned (possibly after coming into contact with cat wee) so he's pretty much moved into my bedroom.

This has its advantages, of course: shoulder massages on tap and regular deposits of Green & Black's chocolate on the bedside table. But the downside is that I now have a bedtime. And so I lie awake at night listening to his gentle snores, and then hours later he inevitably wakes me up getting ready to work and I'm incredibly mean to him because I'm nasty when I'm semi-conscious.

It seems like such a trivial subject, but I think sleep is the natural function that's most been disturbed by modern life. We spend the day dosing ourselves with caffeine, before crawling into bed for six or so hours of interrupted, restless slumber. Then trying to catch up with missed sleep whenever we get a chance and waking up groggy, knowing we've gone too far.

And living in London just makes things worse: my bedroom actually shakes a little when buses go over the speed bumps outside, and it's never fully dark. I'm sure I read somewhere that sleeping with the light on gives you breast cancer.

So, I've become convinced that none of this can be good for me - but what can I do? Give up a job I love so I can sleep at the same time as everyone else? No. Insist on separate bedrooms? No. Start drinking heavily in the evenings? Er, maybe.

All I want is a good night's sleep. It ought to be easy.

Your sausages are so beautiful I want to cry.

2006-12-07T20:03:00.000+01:00

After a couple of false starts, I finally got round to watching Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection on BBC2 the other night. I chanced upon last week's edition, focusing on pizza, on my saved programmes - and then managed to find out how Heston cooks his Sunday roast this week (clue: it doesn't involve a microwave, or Tesco Finest pre-prepared veg).

It's incredibly easy to scoff at Hesty B, especially in this series where he seems intent on taking straightforward dishes and rendering them impossible to cook outside a physics lab or in less than a week.

If I've not bored you before with my perfect recipe for bangers and mash (pork and apple sausages; mashed potatoes made with creme fraiche and Cracker Barrel cheddar in a ricer, NOT a sieve; Oxo 'special gravy' with winter berry and shallots at 67p a throw), then you've been very lucky. But if I had ever, ever thought I was fussy, then I must take it back. Because Heston's sausages need back fat smoked on a barbecue, not to mention my favourite ingredient - toast-flavoured water. First, catch your toast. Then let it soak in water for, I don't know, a few days. Simply strain, et voila - eau de toast. Oh, and he likes the sensation of unmelted butter on top of the sausages, so goes into his laboratory to create heat-resistant gelled butter. (Did you read that carefully? The man has a laboratory. It's covered in gleaming stainless steel and instruments of unfathomable purpose, and looks generally what people in 1950 thought the future would be like.)

In the second programme I watched, he opines that putting a chicken in the oven at 180 degrees will hopelessly overcook it and instead favours roasting at 50 degrees for several hours. But there's one problem - no crispy skin. So we watch Heston attempt to deep fry his bird, causing a respectably sized fire in the process. He eventually settles on frying it lightly in a pan.

I think it was the deep fryer that converted me, actually. I suddenly realised I wouldn't have been surprised to see him pop up in Lausanne and announce: "To create the perfect crispy skin, I'm going to use this particle accelerator to make this chicken collide with another chicken, thus creating dark chicken." As he inspected his hopelessly cremated poultry with a rueful acceptance, I thought: this man's a maniac. Awesome.

I stopped carping about the total insanity of his methods and the chances of anyone ever recreating them at home, and began to enjoy the programme for what it was: a window on to one man's obsession. Looked at that way, it's all rather fun. What's wrong with the pursuit of perfection, even if most us will happily settle for just above mediocre? I know I'll never wear a couture dress, or own a Magritte, or drive a Bugatti Veyron, but I'm glad they exist, somewhere, out there.

Anyway, I think Heston should be given enough money by the State to spend the rest of his life pottering round his laboratory, trying to create the purest essence of chicken to spray over his Sunday roast. Because he's an artist, and art isn't reasonable or practical, it just is.

(If you aren't reviling me as a total pseud or muttering seditiously about starving indegenous peoples and vowing never to read this blog again, then do check out the BBC website to see the man in action.)

The breezeblock of disappointment shatters the window of contentment.

2006-11-28T12:54:00.000+01:00

I have returned from the mini-break intact and without having a major argument. (Or even a minor one, actually, apart from the strop I threw on realising Boyfriend had not thought to pack smart clothes). We stayed at a small hotel in the Cotswolds, where in return for wallet-weepingly high prices we were pampered to within an inch of our lives.

We had champagne ready in the room when we arrived, which we drank in the jacuzzi (tacky? yes. awesome? YES!) and a four-posted bed hand-carved by some horny-handed artisan in 1657. It was so high off the ground that you had to use a stool to climb into it, which I think is possibly the best thing ever.

The only slight disappointment was our dinner at Cotswold House. The dining room looks beautiful, but (and sorry to come over all Michael Winner) the maitre d' sat us at a table right in the entrance, and next to the waiter's station. It was also clearly a table for four rather than two, so we had to shout at each other across a foot and a half divide, while waiters and people on their way to the loo bodged us. (It's the table at the front of the picture here.) So, feeling like a bit of diva, I asked to move to the corner.

We had some gorgeous starters (scallops for him, ham hock and foie gras terrine for me), mine served with a brioche that looked uncannily like a loofah. You'll be pleased to know there was no guinea fowl to provoke an argument, so he had beef.... which admittedly was what I wanted, but no matter. I had some venison with endives and... well... this aerated grey foamy squidgy thing that looked like a breeze block and tasted a bit like black truffle. It bemused me. I couldn't remember it being on the list of accompaniments, and it looked positively unearthly. When the waiter arrived back, I made (for me) the courageous move of asking him what it was.

"It's a shittake foam," he said. I must have looked nonplussed, because he continued. "Did you like it? A lot of people say they don't." Well, that knocked me back. I bit back the response, "so why is it on the menu, then?" and made a mental note to be more wary of foam-reliant restaurants in future. You can tell how dispirited I was by the mushroom breezeblock if I tell you we didn't have pudding - or even a cheese course.

Oh dear, look at that. I start off talking about my lovely weekend break and end up waffling on about cheese. Still, you didn't want to hear about the boring romantic stuff, did you?

Don't go mini-breaking my heart....

2006-11-24T18:20:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow, Boyfriend and I are going on a mini-break, a word which gives Leon no end of amusement, but strikes fear into my heart. I'm just certain that Boyfriend and I are going to have a massive row provoked by something absurdly small, like towel usage or who gets to order the guinea fowl if we both want it.

I can't help thinking that doing any self-consciously romantic activity is likely to lead to the opposite of romance - like those party organiser who tries too hard to jolly everyone along, not realising that regimentation is the enemy of fun.

Talking of romance, Boyfriend bought me the complete box set of Sex and The City (the gift that says - you're a drippy hormone-addled girl, but I love you) which I have been tearing through at a rate of knots. I've heard lots of criticism of it recently - Indy sex columnist Catherine Townsend got really shirty on Screen Burn about the fact they keep their bras on in bed, then Lucy Mangan in The Guardian opined that the girls were rubbish role models, based on the scene where Carrie is more upset about her Manolos being stolen than her wallet.

Well, yah boo sucks to them. Before Sex and The City, the idea of a female-led comedy or drama was, er, laughable. There was Cybill, but that was extremely ropey in places, and there was.... see, I'm already thinking about Babes In The Wood. And that's a bad place to be.

Besides, I've being trying to understand the following question for ages; maybe you can help me. What is intrinsically more shallow about appreciating, studying and collecting shoes than, say, modern art? It sounds horrifically pseud-y to put it that way, but really - why is fashion less interesting or worthwhile than theatre?

Maybe that argument could be the one we have on the mini-break.

No use crying over spilled Liebfraumilch

2006-11-16T21:06:00.000+01:00

DISCLAIMER: If at any point during this point I sound like a braying arse, I apologise. It's the subject matter - honest.

I went to a wine tasting last night. The residual student in me was squealing internally "Free booze! Free booze!" while the young urban professional part of my brain was desperately trying to contort my features into an interrogative, judicious frown. I'm just here to pick up a few bottles for the cellar, my face was supposed to say: I taste £93 bottles of Krug all the time!

As it was, I insisted that Boyfriend (who had acquired the tickets free through work) and I try all the champagne and as much of the dessert wine as humanly possible, as these are my two vinous vices.

Taste in wine is an odd thing - I can't get on with dry whites and most reds, as my cripplingly strong sweet tooth revolts. (Without the cruelly judgemental eye of society, I would probably drink alcopops and shandy down the pub, as they rarely provide a good selection of Gewurtztraminers and Rieslings). I've learned to appreciate a decent Beaujolais thanks to my parents' affection for holidaying there, given the slightest chance... but my true love is the dessert wine.

And there were some beauties on offer last night - their stall cunningly positioned next to the foie gras supplier. Sadly, I can't find the best one on the Majestic wine website, depriving this whole entry of its utility, really. The Peter Lehmann Botrytis Semillon was pretty good too, despite the other wines from the range tasting of precisely nothing. I'm still not sure I'd want to drink it with smoked salmon as the website recommends. Pass me the Stilton instead.

We also tried some ridiculously expensive Johnnie Walker Blue, which I can't abide. To me it tastes the way all alcohol you snuck from your parents' cupboard did - raw and yet strangely sickly. As for the £93 Krug - yes, it was good, but I can't get over the fact that Jeffrey Archer has Krug and shepherd's pie parties at Christmas. It's the kind of branding you'd pay millions to avoid.

Nostalgia: Not What It Used To Be.

2006-11-12T20:41:00.000+01:00

Last week, I did two very sad things indeed. I joined Facebook, and fell off the YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates wagon.

Facebook first: I've been resisting for ages, ostensibly on moral grounds (I'm far too cool to care whether people I was at university with are more successful than me!) but really because I had forgotten the password to my Oxford alumna email address.

Sadly, they've now opened Facebook up to the hoi polloi, me included, and the number of invitations pinging into my inbox was becoming untenable (not just from Facebook, but also the jauntily named 'hi5', Bebo and 'WAYN', short for 'Where are you now?', mais oui). Anyway, I joined, and was immediately confirmed in my suspicions that I shouldn't do things like this because I. must. be. cynical. I just can't seem to write about my life and achievements, such as they are, without affecting an arsey sort of jocularity, as if to underline the point that I'm not really taking this seriously and please listen I'm not a complete twat and you'd like me if you got to know me, honest.

It all leaves me feeling vaguely sullied, an impression now added to by the fact that people who I had lost touch with seem intent on reminiscencing fondly about twattish things I said at university. Oh, and I'm being chatted up by a physicist from the year above, who claims that I spent an hour during a Freshers Week pub crawl asking him if he was celibate. What can you say to that? It sounds eminently I like something I might do, but I haven't the foggiest as to whether I did. Conversation on that kind of basis is necessarily somewhat strained.

Anyway, it's better news on YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates, which obsessed me for about two weeks after finals while I waited for friends taking other subjects to finish their exams (English being freakishly early in the exam calendar).

The one play on it I had turned out not to be a gateway drug to another fifteen plays on it, as I had feared, but instead served to remind me of precisely how dull a game it is. In fact, it's probably the least fun that has ever masqueraded under the banner of a game in history, apart from a Gladiatoral combat.

The premise is this: you, and your fellow players, are pirates. You sail round a variety of amusingly named islands pillaging, trading, and buying absurd hats. Unfortunately, the creators have obviously thought that other games are too, well, playable. YoHoHo is a bit like some kind of online totalitarian regime.

What you want to do, of course, is build yourself your own boat, pimp it really hard with some custom drapes and a gold rudder, and call yourself a Rear-Admiral. But the game won't allow this. Instead, you have to join a crew as a cabin-person (thank you for the equal opportunity to be a grunt) and play the puzzles of the title which bilge, sail and repair the ship under the aegis of your Captain (who will, no doubt, have been playing the game 14 hours a day for the last six months). Let it be very clear: there are no shortcuts to glory here, no cheat codes or secret tricks. Just hard graft for hours, at puzzles which quickly become old. Even worse, you're expected to make conversation with 14-year-olds from Idaho as you do this.

Anyway, I quickly realised that the rest of my life offered ample opportunities for staring at a screen, performing repetitive tasks and talking to people I have nothing in common with. So back to Guitar Hero and the dance mat it is.

Nudity and Nazis

2006-11-01T18:09:00.000+01:00

On Monday I went to Cabaret at the Lyric theatre - and jolly good it was too. Try not to be too shocked when I tell you that up until then, I had no experience of Cabaret at all, apart from through Bowleserised - hadn't seen the film, heard the songs, anything. I was quite excited about this. It meant I could go along without the weight of expectation about what the play should be like, how the characters should be, how the songs should be sung, and especially how it ended. When you know the drama takes place in 1930s Berlin you already have a sneaking suspicion it won't end well.

And so I loved it, even if Rich Colleague (who had taken me, Boyfriend and his little sister) was perturbed by comparisons with Jane Horrocks in the Donmar's version in the 90s. The staging was very cool - starting off with a camera aperture which opened to reveal James Dreyfus's MC (looking in his white make-up, sadly, a little too much like The Penguin). Angled slabs of scenery kept whooshing across the stage - on one occasion nearly knocking over Anna Maxwell Martin, who played Sally. Anna was good, I thought, if unfeasibly thin. I can see how she got away with playing Lyra in His Dark Materials at the age of 26.

But most of the time it was the chorus who held my attention. They'd come dressed as an Agent Provocateur catalogue, apparently, all stockings and waspies and leather harnesses for the chaps. Their speciality seemed to be opening their legs while upside down and in very small underwear, and I was convinced at any moment one of them was going to, er, pop out. This kind of thing is much more attention-holding than actual full-on balls out nakedness, of course, and was thus quite distracting. Anyway, by the end of the first act they'd clearly realised this and just went the whole hog, dancing to Fatherland in the buff.

As I said, I'd expected the second half to be dark - but perhaps not as dark as it turned out to be. I can remember watching Cats once and wishing that the whole cast had been gassed at the end, but it was still a shock to see the MC and dancers huddled together, naked, in the snow as the curtain went down.

Parte The Seconde

... anyway, after the theatre Rich Colleague had wangled us a table at The Ivy. Well, I say wangled, but actually he'd just phoned them and book a table for half ten. Presumably, Lady Victoria Hervey or whoever would have eaten her three breadsticks and tottered off into the night by then.

I know, I really do, that being excited about eating at The Ivy marks me out as the worst kind of media wannabe ponce, but I couldn't help myself. I had high hopes there was excellent celeb spotting to be done, particularly as everyone else I know seems to see famous people on a daily basis (e.g. Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Aniston, Roger Moore, acclaimed film director Mike Leigh) whereas I am seemingly celeb-proof.

So who did I get? Hmm? I'll tell you who. Bob Hoskins. Yes, Bob 'It's Good to Talk' Hoskins. Tcha.

Still, I liked the food (very faux-down-to-earth, apart from the white truffle risotto and the caviar) and the service was impeccable.

Identity theft

2006-10-20T22:53:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, ok, that there's no point having a blog and just leaving it for days on end, like leftover pizza in the fridge. My reasons for not blogging are both tedious and manifold, so let's get them over with as quickly as possible. First, I was hurt by the suggestion my blog was boring (I know, diddums, but still - everything I could think to write suddenly seemed deeply mundane) which you will find in the comments below.

There's also the fact that I have ingested so much Charlie Booker (through my eyes, I hasten to add) over the past fortnight that I was concerned that anything I wrote would just turn into a poor Screen Burn pastiche. You know: Lots of descriptions of me shouting "How DARE you? ACTUALLY how DARE you?" at innocent bystanders, references to shitting pine cones and the use of the word 'bumpoo'.

Thankfully, this week I put aside Screen Burn, Screen Wipe, Screen Saver (I made that one up, but it's only a matter of time) and TV Go Home and so have some possiblity of thinking - and writing - like myself again.

But then I got ill with a cold. Properly ill, as well, in a 'is it meningitis?' way (the lesser form of the cold is the 'is it flu?' variety). And decided instead to start reading every Modesty Blaise book in existence. Six down, and I have to take a breather. When I left Willie and Modesty, he'd been pushed out of an aircraft somewhere over Africa without a parachute, in a straitjacket, strapped to a chair, and she'd been imprisoned in a cage with an irate mountain gorilla and a bumbling English doctor called Giles.

Words can't express how much I am enjoying these books (and there's another half dozen left!), so much that I have suspended all cynicism and simply coo over them with a sense of slack-jawed awe. I just can't bring myself to criticise them, even though the scenarios are preposterous and Peter O'Donnell has a distressing need to describe exactly what Modesty's wearing at inappropriate moments. I'm human, ok? I love.

Wait. That was a Charlie Brooker quote, wasn't it? Shit. I need to detox.

L'Atelier means workshop, you know.

2006-10-17T15:53:00.000+01:00

On Friday, the Boyfriend took me out for lunch at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, the kind of place that makes me want to say, "It's so hot right now" Zoolander-style.

On paper, it sounds brilliant. One of the world's best chefs comes to London with a formula that's succeeded in Paris and Tokyo, opens restaurant on the same street as the Ivy, plaudits and Michelin stars follow. Except somewhere along the line, it went wrong and is now getting some distinctly cool reviews.

So what was wrong with it? Well, for a start, it had gone with this new fifteen-bazillion-menus-in-one thing that seems to be all the rage in London's hottest new restaurants. We could have had the tasting menu, or another tasting menu, or an indeterminate number of tapas sized dishes, or a proper starter and main.
The tasting menu was £55, but the only thing I really wanted on it (quail with truffled mash) wasn't available. Or not on the tasting menu. It was still available on the proper mains menu, and perhaps even on the tapas menu. Or not.

By this point, with my searing hangover, I was hopelessly confused and inadvertently ordered the lobster salad to start (£32!) which arrived in a little cake, like one of those prawn cocktail rings. Now I appreciate lobster is expensive, but there was about 25g of - admittedly delicious - crustacean here, and three inches of iceberg lettuce.

It turns out that iceberg lettuce is the Achilles heel of haute cuisine - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can do to it to make it taste any more exciting than it does when you pluck it from your salad tray at midnight and arrange a few disconsolate leaves in a ham and margarine sandwich.

Boyfriend, meanwhile, had had soup with foie gras ravioli in it. Approximately two spoons of soup and four ravioli - and remember, this was the 'big' version. They probably have to give you a magnifying sheet like they sell to old people to read books if you get the tapas-sized one.

Somehow, he had managed to cajole some quail out of the waitress too, leaving me to flounder around for a different main. Eventually I went with roast chicken.

Now, as I was toying with the last hundredweight of iceberg lettuce, I noticed the serving staff were eyeing up our plates. Oh, that allows me to mention the other 'USP' (standing for 'unfortunate seating position'): we were sitting on high stools around the kitchen, which is separated from the ravenous masses by glass boxes about a foot high. This means the waiters have to elaborately lean over bodily with your plate. It's a lapful of foie gras ravioli waiting to happen.

Anyway, I put down my fork on the plate, and the waitress practically rugby tackled the glass box to snatch it away. Odd, I thought: then I realised why, as our mains arrived in a span only measurable with an atomic clock. Clearly, they'd had them racked up under the heat lamp waiting for my lettuce odyssey to finish.

Now I was cross and determined not to like anything. The chicken was nice (if faintly dry, I insist) and there was a little chunk of foie gras with it, and some unfeasibly small potatoes. Veg took the form of a hewn-off bit of cabbage, which I forked aside with disdain. Irritatingly, the guinea fowl was much nicer, and the truffly mash potato everything we were promised, and more.

Anyway, I was so dispirited by the experience I couldn't summon the enthusiasm, or the second overdraft, to have pudding. Gah.

--

In other news, Decline and Fall in site update shock!

The Wicked Hitch of the West

2006-10-11T13:03:00.000+01:00

Like Harry Hutton, I am obsessed with Christopher Hitchens. We just approach him from different sides, as it were - I love the Hitch with an uncritical adoration which borders on the teenage crush. Oh dear. What a shameful thing to do to one of our top public intellectuals, turn him into some kind of adolescent fantasy object. Still, better than fancying Peter Hitchens, I suppose.

Anyway, I fulfilled one of my few remaining ambitions (not that I have fulfilled lots of my ambitions; I just have very few) on Saturday by talking to the Hitch. OK, so there were hundreds of other people there, but still, he was looking at me with those piercing blue eyes, saying things like 'a priori' and quoting Homer. Hot. Oh, and he's shaved off that horrible Trevor Eve beard and was looking, er, sleeker than he has recently.

It was the Intelligence Squared London Paris Festival, and he was there to talk about Thomas Paine (totally coincidentally, he has a book out on Thomas Paine), and his contribution to the American and French revolutions. Dammit, I thought, I must ask a question. Even if it's lame. Question. Question!

Eventually I came up with some fluff about why was Paine underappreciated in Britain, and raised my arm. But some American got about and started yakking about the Norman Yoke. Eventually, the Hitch discarded the yoke. This was it! My moment!

No! Some other American started asking a question. "If you don't mind," cut in the Hitch, "I think we should hear from a female questioner next." The Hitch had noticed I was female! Joy!

Later, I saw him smoking outside the refreshments tent. Boyfriend suggested I picked up his discarded cigarette butt and put it on eBay. I laughed, but also genuinely considered keeping it for myself.

From the recent New Yorker profile of the Hitch:

"Hitchens claims to be unperturbed by his critics... 'People say, "What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet?" It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face.'"

"Hitchens told me, 'When I was younger— this will surprise you, seeing now the bloated carcass of the Hitch— I used to get quite a bit of attention from men. And, um. It was sometimes quite difficult, especially when you hadn't seen it coming. I was considered reasonably pretty, I suppose, between seventeen and twenty-five. I remember noticing when it stopped, and thinking, Oh dear. What? None of these guys want to sleep with me anymore?'"

"Hitchens has the life that a spirited thirteen-year-old boy might hope adulthood to be: he wakes up when he likes, works from home, is married to someone who wears leopard-skin high heels, and conducts heady, serious discussions late into the night."

Party politics

2006-10-08T21:40:00.000+01:00

There are two types of parties - ones that make you feel good about yourself, and ones that make you feel bad.

My birthday party last weekend was of the former type - I was wearing a ridiculously tarty cowboy outfit, I was tipsy, it was dark, I knew most of the people there - oh, and they were mostly men. I felt like a social butterfly, flitting between groups of witty, interesting people, saying witty and interesting things. I was being witty (or so I thought, in retrospect I was probably just shouting as usual).

The housewarming party I went to on Friday was very different. For a start, I had had a hair crisis which involved the front sections twirling into something that resembled candyfloss, and a spot of frankly impressive dimensions erupted on my right cheek earlier that day.

But the real problem was the other people there. They were gorgeous. And so young, with such abundant hair, and so thin! One was wearing a minuscule sweater dress with a print like an Axminster carpet, and she looked amazing. I felt like I had wandered into a Razorlight lookalike convention which had collided with a High Street Honeys after-party.

They stumbled round, drinking vodka and cokes, continually embracing each other and generally larking about. One of them accosted me to tell me about a particularly fine specimen of manhood: "He's gorgeous, isn't he? I'm definitely going to snog him before the end of the evening." I was taken aback. What, she was actually going to try to pull him? At a party?

On the other side of the room, my group of friends stood in the corner, talking about Guitar Hero and cars whilst drinking steadily and unemotionally with our usual Friday night. We had no ambition to snog anyone before the end of the evening; nor were we riotously drunk. Instead, we'd all worked out the precise minute we could leave and still catch the last tube/bus home. We smelled of disappointment and Beck's.

Our host, Laura, had the explanation: the rest of her housemates had only just finished university. At Nottingham.

For the uninitiated, Nottingham is a university attended only by fit people (although the occasional homely type sneaks through every so often). Whilst intelligent enough not to be easily despised, its graduates are nevertheless not so intelligent they become bogged down by the terrifyingly large questions of life (How will I buy a house? Am I rubbish at my job? Where's all my money gone? Is this a cold or meningitis?).

"Oh god," I said to Laura. "I'll be leaving. I'll come back when I'm much more attractive."

Oh well. I console myself in my bitterest moments with the thought that if I ever achieve a position of importance in my forties and fifties, I will employ only people who used to be really attractive. Then I will taunt them about their fading charms, before sending them out to buy my coffee and wear in my shoes for me.

Tired of Life?

2006-10-05T11:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was most easily comparable to a forced death march down memory lane. I'm writing this from my parents' laptop (noting with horror that their wireless broadband, as installed by my dad, works better than mine) because I have returned to the Shire.

It started off well - a brisk yomp through the City centre, where I am accustomed to sneer at the rubbish shops and poor selection of ethnic take-aways. But something has happened - Worcester has become, well, cosmopolitan. Hang on, I need to say that again: it's become cosmopolitan.

No, still doesn't sound any more plausible. What has happened to the grey twilight hinterland I remember from growing up? The land of limited opportunities and stunted dreams? As I walking up the hill to my house, I even started to think, "Hmm, walking distance from the town centre - that must be convenient!" Not for people here the two daily hours I spend on the Circle line, cursing my existence, and more particularly, the man next to me who feels some kind of divine entitlement to ALL the arm-rests.

Perhaps it's Worcester that's changed. But I can't believe the opening of a falafel bar and a branch of H&M can really turn it into European City of Culture. No, it's got to be me. Am I really tired of London?

Truthiness

2006-09-27T16:46:00.000+01:00

Back when I were nobbut knee high to a grasshopper, there was a great TV programme called 'The Daily Show', which broadcast only in America. So we used to go the Comedy Central website, and watch three-minute clips of such correspondents' pieces as 'This Week in God', 'Mess O'Potamia' and awesome interviews with John McCain where he takes the piss out of George Bush for being thick. Later, we discovered the illicit joys of Azureus and eDonkey, and could obtain whole episodes of joy.

Not long ago, though, the Daily Show began to air in Britain, on More4. But something was wrong: it was, to put it bluntly, just a little bit crapper. Perhaps the formula was beginning to look stale, perhaps Jon Stewart's duck-face thing was getting tired... or it had become a victim of its own success and all the good correspondents had left.

Steve Carrell went on to love lamp in Anchorman and get laid in The Forty Year Old Virgin, Rob Corddry has just left to do...er.. something else and the best and most well-loved, Stephen Colbert, now has his own show.

The Colbert Report (wikipedia entry here) follows on from The Daily Show in the States, but sadly doesn't get aired over here. That's a crying shame - it's hilarious. There's the Word of the Day, the progress of Stephen Junior - the pet bald eagle - and a strange segment called Better Know A District. I haven't really worked out what that's about, but I like it.

Anyone who's seen the Daily Show will be familiar with Colbert's blustering wrong-headed Republican persona - and here the context is a parody of a rightwing talk show, as made infamous by Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter.

The best recurring segment so far has been the Hungarian Bridge Campaign - noticing that the Hungary government has foolishly put a poll on the Internet for the naming of a new bridge in the country, Colbert urged viewers to vote for him, hoping he could overtake the current poll leader Chuck Norris.

He duly did, clocking up millions of votes. Eventually, the contest closed and he won. At which point, the Hungarian ambassador came on the show - earning my eternal respect - to present Colbert with a Hungarian passport and to tell him that the only thing that was stopping them naming the bridge after him was the small matter of him being alive. He then said that Hungary would waive that restriction if Colbert came to the opening ceremony. (How cool is Hungary? It's definitelymy favourite East European country now - hear that, Estonia?)

So, insummation: watch, and laugh.

Something other than clothes, for once.

2006-09-26T14:55:00.000+01:00

You may notice that action has been a bit slow on the old blog front. This is due to the double whammy of work getting really busy - someone, somewhere, having apparently noticed I exist - and my new leisure time activity of Having A Boyfriend.

My million emails a day have also been severely affected, and I was unable even to pass on my pithy and apposite remarks on Richard Hammond's car crash to all and sundry last week. (I shall leave that to Jeremy Clarkson here).

It's not that I don't get angry any more - quite the opposite. I was actually fuming as I read an article this week on people having to sell their parents' houses to pay for their care home places. It was full of the middle-aged middle-class saying things like, "Mummy worked hard all her life and she wanted me to have this house. It's not about the money, it's about treating people properly."

It's enough to make you vomit, isn't it? You can practically smell the disappointment, as years of hand-rubbing anticipation of a big fat windfall dissipate before their eyes. It clearly is about the money - it could barely be more about the money.

I've been reading enough NHS BlogDoc to know that most of us dramatically underestimate the true cost of healthcare. If we want top-class, cradle to grave healthcare - including a couple of years in a care home - then we have to pay for it either directly or through a hefty income tax.

I think it's fair that those who can pay, do pay - especially when the alternative is someone getting money for doing nothing, apart from being born. It's the rump of socialism left in me. (I'd also ramp up inheritance tax, but there you go.)

The Grooming Standard

2006-09-20T16:58:00.000+01:00

I had lunch today with an 'acquaintend' - halfway between a friend and an acquaintance - and it made me feel horrible. The woman, who we'll call Honey, is one of those people who is so perfectly turned-out you she instantly makes you feel like all your clothes don't quite fit. You are also acutely aware that your hair, which moments ago felt glossy and lustruous, actually has a halo of frizz at the hairline. Oh, and your roots need doing. And your shoes are cheap and, moreover, past their best.

In fact, a whole outfit which moments ago seemed chic and bang on-trend, now seems curiously shapeless and tawdry.

Honey swanned in (she's very swanny) wearing a mustard-coloured sweater dress and trousers. This should not work. Even skinny people have to wear something under sweater dresses - or have ribs at least - and no-one in real life looks as smooth as an olive-skinned statue in one. Except Honey.

She practically smells of money, too. But the most galling part is that she's not really aware of how perfect she is. For her, flawless skin, non-frizzy hair and discreetly expensive clothes are just part of her day-to-day life.

I am blaming lunch with Honey entirely for the fact I left the restaurant and spent £200 on clothes in the half hour afterwards.

Shame on me.

2006-09-14T13:03:00.001+01:00

For I have bought leggings.

Small noise

2006-09-14T13:03:00.000+01:00

Has Gordon Ramsay spread himself too thinly?

That's what I started to wonder at lunch at La Noisette in Knightsbridge, the latest outpost of the Ramsay empire.

The location is either inauspicious or cursed, having seen off various restaurants (including another Ramsay launch, Pengelley's, headed by Ian Pengelley, who is now at Gilgamesh in Camden) in the last few years. We also managed to walk right past it due to Sloane Street's confusing numbering system and the fact it's on the third floor.

The next problem was that it is very, very brown. You may know I hate brown as the result of sporting an all-brown school uniform for most of my formative years. There was also what appeared to be a mural of a Tuscan hillside. What this had to do with the French-ish cooking is beyond me. The ceilings were brown too.

Mind you, the staff are excellently drilled - attentive without being overbearing. I imagine their professionalism must be stretched to the limit in trying to explain the menu. It's horrifically confusing, but I'll try.

Right, you can either have a starter from the starter selection, or from the 'summer favourites', followed by a main. Or you can create a crazy tapas effect by having all the summer favourites. Or you can have the set lunch. Or you can have a tasting menu, which chef Bjorn Van Horst makes up on the spot from what he finds in the cupboards and got that morning from market.

Confused? I was, and settled for the set lunch (a very reasonable £21 for 3 courses, although there's only one choice of pudding with that). My companion went for the a la carte (the one with a starter and a main), lured by the hangover curative properties of the watermelon carpaccio.

My starter of pate on broiche was very very good, if absolutely fucking minuscule - literally a two square inches of pate one centimetre thick. Had I not been placated by the gorgeousness of the artichoke soup pre-starter, there might have been a riot.

On to the main: rabbit tagliatelle with bacon and onion. Now, I love rabbit, and this was good rabbit - like chicken, only better and meatier and tastier. The pasta was beautifully cooked, and the onions sweated to beautiful sweetness.

But then I tried to fork one of the cubes of bacon. And failed. I tried again, harder. It pinged off across the bowl. I was determined though, and tried a two-handed fork manoeuvre. Victory!

My triumph was, however, short-lived. Because it was without exception the saltiest thing I have ever put in my mouth. I made a face. My companion looked up. By this point, I was panicking. I gulped down some wine, but was making little progress chewing it. If I spat it into my napkin, would Gordon himself ping into existence and shout at me?

Then I began to wonder - was I supposed to have eaten it? Was this the equivalent of sending back the gazpacho because it was cold, or eating the bouquet garni? Maybe the waiting staff were sniggering at me.

I was at a loss. How could such a small thing have clouded my experience like this? I was still dwelling on it when the baked figs arrived (excellent). Perhaps I'll never know...

Squalid options

2006-09-12T12:03:00.000+01:00

At the moment, my house resembles a cross between a refugee camp and a self-storage warehouse.

Yes, it's housemate changeover time, with two in, two out. Or as it has become, one off on holiday, one moved stuff in but not living here, one clinging on to his room for another two weeks, and one deciding wisely to stay out of it. Oh, and several coming to visit.

Possibly my favourite part is that my hummus-eating housemate has got his Lebanese ex-girlfriend staying with him for two weeks (thought about cleaning the house; realised she'd be coming to it from a war zone) and a mysterious French girl called Aude. I only ever see Aude in the kitchen, slicing watermelon. if she does other things, then I've seen no evidence of this.

I have no idea how long these people will be staying here, and in a way I've come to enjoy the commune-like feel of the place. It's also preferable to my boyfriend's new house, which benefits (as estate agents would say) from an awesome living room - complete with Sky Plus, I nearly cried with joy - but has one major drawback. This would be the fact that Boyfriend has what a kindly person might describe as 'the small room'.

A fairer description would be 'the smallest room' as there's no more than a foot of clearance round the bed on two sides, and no clearance at all on the other two. It's actually almost impossible for us both to be standing up in it at the same time, and certainly ill-suited to my style of living, which is to leave a comet-trail of discarded clothes, magazines, cups and shoes in my wake wherever I go.

Barclays Bank is, of course, rhyming slang.

2006-09-08T12:45:00.000+01:00

(I promise you, this is the last time I will mention this.)

Got a delightful letter from Barclays this morning.

"In our previous letter [no, I didn't get one] we promised to provide you with an answer to your complaint as quickly as possible. [Well, no you didn't, but carry on] I am now able to do so. [Sweet joy incorruptible!]

You advise that you called for a new card and found that a marker had been applied to your address which prevented a new card from being despatched [nice use of the word 'advise', as if I had been stroking my chin and puffing on a hookah while dispensing pearls of wisdom, rather than tearing my hair out at the end of a phone].

May I, at the outset, offer you my sincere apologies for the trouble and inconvenience you have experienced in respect of this matter. [What a shocking sentence, sounds like a cross between Tony Blair at his most sanctimonious and one of those nigerian scam e-mails. Still, if his apologies are 'sincere', what horrible person would spurn them?]

I have tried to contact you to discuss this matter, but I have been unsuccessful in reaching you. [Liar. I left my home phone number and e-mail address. I have an answering machine, you know.]

Your address has now been amended correctly to show as above on all our records. [Yes, and I'll bloody well tell you why - because I went into a branch on Friday and did it!!! How dare you take credit for this? Ahem.]

It carries on for a while in similarly touchy-feely bollocks vein. It is then signed 'Ian Tottey', which is surely a joke name.

You know, I am sorely tempted to take my constant infringement on my overdraft limit somewhere else. Bah.

Phone of contention

2006-09-05T17:25:00.000+01:00

I have a phone again! Thank you God, thank you baby Jesus. It's only taken seven calls to 02, one visit to an 02 shop, £10 for a new Sim card and a two week wait - now that's what I call customer service. The man on the phone today sensed my rage was bubbling under the surface to the extent he gave me his email address if anything else should go wrong. It also turned out that when the man yesterday said the previous man had made a mistake, he was ironically unaware that he also had made a mistake. Ho ho! (I suppose he had, at least, made a new mistake instead.) How they must be chuckling about that at 02 Towers.

Anyway, my social leper-dom is over. I do feel slightly like I've been living in a reality TV programme this last fortnight. "We've taken away this girl's mobile phone. Look how hard everyday tasks have now become! Marvel as she actually has to make firm arrangements to meet people at particular places at specific times! Laugh heartily as she can't go to the pub with her friends because she doesn't know where they are!"

2006-09-01T17:21:00.000+01:00

I have a tip for you: don't get your handbag stolen.

Since losing a variety of my personal possessions last Wednesday, I have been gradually putting my life back together. At first, I quite liked not having a mobile phone; enjoying the Luddite bliss of just letting go and acknowledging that people very rarely really need to get hold of me, as I'm just not that important. However, I am terrified that I might one day lose my email address (I haven't considered how, just the vague amorphous threat scares me enough) as I really don't think I could cope with that. Luckily, I have at last count seven (count 'em) working email addresses, so the chances of this happening are reasonably remote.

Sorting out another bank card has been more frustrating. I wondered why it just wasn't appearing, and called customer services. There some adenoidal twelve year old told me that there was no longer an address registered for my account, and therefore the replacement card had been sent to a branch of my bank. In Worcester. Also known as 'a town two hours away on the train, in which I no longer live'. I suspect this is the call centre worker's revenge for me trying to update my address from my parents' place to London, which he informed me I could not do without a password. How do I get a password? We'll send it to your address. Which address? Your old address. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh. Thank God I hadn't moved.

All of this Kafka-esque circularity had left me wanting to stick forks in my eyes, and I suspect I was a little short with Adenoid Boy. Anyway, without telling me he must have removed my parents' address from the account and declined to tell me. So now I have to order another card. Oh, and did I mention I can't do this over the phone? No, I have to go into a branch. Because, apparently, they can't add an address over the phone. New Boy seemed slightly non-plussed when I pointed out they clearly had the capacity to remove addresses over the phone, so why not add them?

I hate call centres. The very thought of them makes me want to shout at someone, but you can't hold the nine-year-old minimum wage slave on the end of the phone responsible, so screaming at him/her just makes you feel a shit. There's just no accountability, no comeback. The only way to register a complaint effectively is to stop using the company, but I just can't face switching my salary, loan repayments and direct debits to another account. And they know that, of course they do. How dare they exploit my inherent laziness?

Anyway, for what it's worth, I did complain. Or rather filled out a 'complaint form' over the phone. "Someone will ring you within 48 hours," promised the boy, after which we had a short but pointed discussion about how my phone had been stolen, along with my card. And I still have to go into a bastard branch on Monday if I ever want a bank card again.

When my arteries go pop at the age of thirty from stress, I want someone to go and force-feed my ashes into the mouth of the Barclays chief executive.

Fashion sucks.

2006-08-29T16:34:00.000+01:00

Having realised that my jaunty collection of frou-frou skirts is not going to see me through the cold winter, I've been doing lots of clothes shopping, or rather browsing, which always puts me in a bad mood. What is wrong with clothes designers? Everything on sale in the selection of reasonably-priced High Street stores I visited was awful, whether it be afflicted with freakishly over-sized buttons (just why?), cut to resemble Count Duckula's cape, or - worst of all - made of gold. Gold! Who wears gold? That dreadful one from Birds of A Feather, and her latter-day emissary Lily Allen, that's who. And don't even get me started on houndstooth...

Then when I did buy two pairs of trousers, I discovered that one pair were pornographically tight across the bottom, and the others were six inches too long. How both of these problems escaped me in the Zara changing rooms is anyone's guess. I think my licence to shop is going to be revoked - I nearly bought another pair of ballet pumps today, despite not having worn in the three previous pairs (lacy, starry and with ankle ribbons respectively) I bought in similar high spirits.

Bah. I have decided the only thing I am going to buy this month is a tartan mini-skirt. And anyone who tells me I look like I'm wearing a school uniform will get a slap - don't you realise it's ever so Anglomania, darling?

While Tony Blair suns himself in Barbados, I'm a victim of crime...

2006-08-26T13:29:00.000+01:00

Yeah, Tony, where were you when I became part of Britain's growing crime epidemic? I demand your return from holiday forthwith. What, you're back? Well, don't just stand there... do something!

Ahem.

Here's what happened: I finished work late on Tuesday, and faced a crucial decision - to pub or not to pub? Sadly, I chose the latter, and installed myself in one of Kensington's cheapest hostelries. I bought some drinks, sat down, made merry. When I looked down again five minutes later, my bag wasn't there anymore. "My... my... bag isn't here anymore," I remarked somewhat redundantly.

Cue running round, checking other bags, the bar, the street, etc. But discovered bag came there none. I found my favourite Uniball pen lying forlornly under the chair at the table behind us, and one of my companions belatedly remembered seeing a shifty-looking man sitting there.

So began the long pain in the arse that is cancelling one's life - bank card, Oyster card, phone. A colleague gave me some money. A cab was called. I snuffled a bit when I realised I was never going to see my pearl necklace again (yes, laugh at the innuendo all you want, you unfeeling bastard). But mostly I was really, really, angry - mostly at the fact that what the thief had come away with was of so little to value to him/her... I had no cash on me, and everything else of value was immediately cancel-able. I knew if I ever met Mr Thief, I would have no compunction in kicking him in the balls, really quite hard. And me a Liberal Democrat!

The next morning, another emotion hit: unholy glee. I remembered that the side zip pocket of the bag was home to my 'unscheduled overnight stay' pants, which had in fact been utilised at just such an overnight stay quite recently. I smiled grimly to myself at the image of the unfortunate thief unzipping the pocket, hopeful it would contain a roll of cash or the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre, only to withdraw his hand and discover he was holding a pair of worn pants. I chuckled, evilly.

Then my sister-in-law rang to say the bag had been found by a 'nice man' who worked nearby, and who had found her number in my diary. I called him, and he delivered the joyous news that my bag - complete with purse - had been lying on the pavement in an alley. We were chatting away, and just as I was envisaging doing a feature on "We met in terrible circumstances - now we're getting married!" I remembered the pants. Surely this man had also seen my pants? Horror.

Anyway, I picked up the bag from the Nice Man - no sign of the 'nice man' - and noted with chagrin the thief's priorities. No interest in my Young Person's railcard, house keys or bank card, I noted, yet he/she had taken all my tampons.

And the pants? No, no, they were gone. They're probably on eBay as I write this, ratcheting up ridiculous bids like all weird items allegedly do.

One well-fed urchin

2006-08-22T21:14:00.000+01:00

Last week, I went to my first Michelin-endorsed restaurant, two-starred Le Gavroche. Darling, it was heavenly. Of course, as I am an impoverished young hack, I didn't pay - my very generous (and very rich) colleague picked up the tab. Just as well, because they gave me a 'woman's menu' - without prices. I didn't think this happened in this day and age, and I would have complained in the strongest terms... were it not for the fact that they were quite right, I wasn't paying, and it was probably just as well I didn't know the cost of all that truffle and foie gras.

So what did I have? Well, some very racy amuse bouches - lobster in mayonnaise on a pastry basket, and something topped with black truffle - followed by yet more truffle in the shape of Artichoke 'Coeur Lucullus'. I never found out who this Lucullus chap was, but I can say he knew what to do with an artichoke, which I had previously regarded as a rather over-hyped vegetable. The heart was filled with foie gras, and the outside was studded with black truffles. God, it was good. I had a bit of Rich Colleague's cheese-laden Souffle Suisesse, and can report that was equally good, in an oh-god-I-used-to-have-arteries-now-I-just-have-arteriosclerosis way.

Mains were lamb for him, and sweetbreads of veal for me (yes, it's the choice of meats known on this blog as the "No Ethics Special"). Words cannot express how much I love sweetbreads, with all their nutty, squishy wonder. They are definitely my favourite gland. Yep, hands down. My pudding was billed as 'praline and bitter chocolate indulgence' and it wasn't kidding. It came on a huuuuge glass plate, accompanied by a sort of miniature glass canoe of extras, such as lychees and mini meringues.

I dread to think what the bill was - I had planned to be 'restrained' and have the £50-a-head set lunch, but that went out of the window. I know we had a £60 bottle of wine because I was craning my head to look at the wine list. Still, I can definitely say we got our money's worth in terms of service - there were positively hordes, phalanxes even, of waiters. They even managed to do that thing of removing the silver warming domes simultaenously, with a flourish - which you hardly see outside Tom & Jerry cartoons. The maitre d' circles the room like an immaculately-suited bird of prey, occasionally deigning to ask you how your meal is going. You simply make squealing noises of appreciation.

There is only one drawback - the restaurant's trademark "Gavroche", or ragamuffin, looks uncannily like Sharon Osbourne. And she's on all the plates. I don't know about you, but I find having a picture which reminds me of someone who's had a stomach stapling on a plate covered in chocolate/foie gras/cheese distinctly off-putting.

The trouble is, it was so good I now have The Hunger, specifically the hunger for more incredibly expensive French food. I am trying to justify it to myself with the thought that I didn't eat another meal for 24 hours.... Cue usual justification for over-spending: But it was an investment...

----

In the style of the Guardian's Comment is Free, some other things I did whilst failing to blog last week: watched half of Superman Returns, before realising that I had absolutely no interest in what happened and that Brendan Routh has the charisma of a glove puppet (also, the local paper had 'Meteor and Rock Exhibition Opens' as a page lead - like, yeah, right); thought up a series of increasingly nauseating pet names for my boyfriend to embarrass him in front of his housemates (here's a tip - take a horrible twee word like 'Snuggle', 'Poopie' or 'Whiffle', then add any of the following suffixes: -wump, -buggle, -arama, -licious, -hugger, -dibble, -baby); started reading a biography of Lord Rochester but was forced to give up because it had too many typos and if they couldn't be bothered to run it through a spellchecker, what else had they not bothered to do?

I've been a bad and lazy blogger...

2006-08-21T13:17:00.000+01:00

... but then, I have been working on other things.

Boom bang a bang

2006-08-14T16:39:00.000+01:00

I haven't had this much fun since the heady days I discovered Yahoo Groups, and later YouTube. Lulu is the 'self-publishing' website, allowing every punter who reckons they're Will Self or Zadie Smith to upload a PDF of their masterwork and have it printed on demand.

This got my very excited - it's so cheap, about a fiver including postage costs and there's no minimum order value. I'm going to start printing political tracts, ooh, ooh, and woodcuts - lots of woodcuts.

But first I wanted to check out the opposition. After reading just a few of the blurbs, I became convinced that I might as well not bother - these people's book ideas are ace.

Take stirring memoir Eight into One by Joe David. Here's the blurb: "In my lifetime, amongst other things, I have been: a gunsmith; a soldier; a Yeoman Warder; a Special Constable; Bodyguard extraordinary to the monarch; a Town Crier; a Toastmaster; a lecturer; and last but by no means least, an after-dinner speaker." How can I trump that? I don't even know what a 'Yeoman Warder' is, dammit!

Or Dreams Do Come True, by Juliet Roberts: "The true life story of the nightmares and dreams of realising that one is different, and not knowing why until late in life. The struggles of growing up in a brutal family life to the struggles of coping with relationships later in life. The final decision to become the person I really was."

I love that "final decision to become the person I really was" as opposed, presumably, to becoming Ronald Reagan or Keith Chegwin or an eighteenth century highwayman and huckster. Well done Juliet!

Making slightly less grandiose claims was "One Life" Among Many by Nick Stott, summarised with Beckettian brutal minimalism thus: "The life story of my father who lives in Scotland but travelled the world."

But Tony Harris is more confident in claiming you will like the immediacy of his epic detective story (now with added Knights Templar), Knight Without Armour: "Topics mentioned are right up to date, including an authoritative discussion on climate change, and the possible consequences of the fast moving events on the international stage. For the reader, another bonus. If you also like travel or sailing, or both, you will find much of interest."

Ooh, ooh! But I like travel and sailing! Will I be able to handle the excitement?

Brenda Courtie is also pretty confident, describing her book as her "first autobiography" in Wayne Rooney-esque fashion, although I can't help feeling she has probably overestimated people's interest in her (apparently shockingly mundane) life story. Maybe that's the point - after reading, say, Bravo Two Zero or the Alan Clark diaries, Courtie's insights into her washing up dilemmas are the literary equivalent of a cup of tea and a sit down.

I also liked the overweening grandiosity of It's My Life by Brenda Guy ("My Autobiography that only points the main life changing events that have occured in my life over the years") so much that I recommend you look at the cover here perhaps before casting your eye over the Arabic translation. You might also like Doing Something Different ("Stories of a woman who decided to literally do something different" - thanks for clearing up the ambiguity in the title there, Brenda) by the same author.

However, there could only ever be one winner, and I'm actually sorely tempted to buy Boyd Braxton Boggess, Gentleman Painter by David Johnson. Apart from the genius naming skills of Boggess Sr, listen to this for a blurb: " A brief history and the collected works of Boyd Braxton Boggess, an artist who didn't begin to paint until he retired from the Goodyear Rubber Company where he had worked for forty years." Oh yes.

When I die, I want to go to the Amazon warehouse...

2006-08-09T19:26:00.000+01:00

Ah, memes, the last refuge of the blogger who's too lazy to tell you about her travails at the pub quiz last night. Reading back over this, I realise I have bent the rules by refusing to stick to one book in every category. Still, who you gonna call? The meme police?

From Candy Minx:

1) One book that changed your life.

Hmm, there have been a few. Top of the list would probably be Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, which I read when I was young and angry and feminist. At times, it froths at the mouth a little, but a lot of what it had to say made sense to me - particularly the section devoted to sado-masochistic imagery in advertising. It's not as funny as The Female Eunuch, though. (Runner-up prize goes to Richard Dawkin's A Devil's Chaplain, the book which cemented my atheism.)

2)One book you have read more than once.

In terms of books that I have read the greatest number of times, I reckon it's a tie between Iain Banks' The Crow Road and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every aspect of Pride and Prejudice has been exhaustively debated in the last year or two, and it is obligatory to start articles on the subject with some turgid reworking of the novel's first line. As I've done the second, I'll spare you the first.

Talking of first lines, the Crow Road, as I will tell you at length should you ever get trapped in a pub with me, has the best opening of any book I have ever read. "It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach."

What I love most about Iain Banks are his ideas and his versatility - in this book the narrator Prentice's father is a children's story writer, and his brother Lewis is a stand-up comedian. Other writers would just tell you this, for fear of cocking up trying to bring these two difficult disclipines to life. Not Banks - he shows you the world Prentice's father creates for them as children, and in doing so reminds you of when you were young, and the boundaries between reality and fiction were thrillingly blurred.

It's also an amazingly funny book - quite a feat when it's about death ("away the crow road" is Prentice's grandmother's expression for dying). I try to read it at least once a year.

3)One book you would want on a desert island.

This. I'm sorry, I can't help being flippant. This question is impossible - I would go mad with boredom if I could only read one book ever again.

4)One book that made you laugh.

I'm so sorry, but the one that springs to mind is The World According to Clarkson. I know, and I'm sorry... Maybe I should put it on my shelf next to the Naomi Wolf - it would be like matter and anti-matter colliding; the subsequent explosion could destroy the universe.

5)One book that made you cry.

I might as well continue to plumb the depths of embarrassment by admitting that the last book that made me cry was Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife. It was when Lee Scoresby, the aeronaut, dies trying to save Will's father from the Church's forces, helped by his daemon (somewhere in cyberspace, paul is screaming silently), a hare called Hester. It was just so... so... beautiful. I'd trade you a dozen Christmas Carols for it.

6)One book you wish had been written.

The rest of See The Old Lady Decently, by B.S. Johnson. BSJ committed suicide after writing the first part of the trilogy; the second and third parts would have been called Buried, Although and Amongst Those Left Are You. Johnson is one of the few modernist authors I'll allow in the house, because he's just such a great writer - he's one of those authors you can really tell has sweated over his writing to get it just so. You have to appreciate that.

7)One book you wish hadn't been written.

Children of The New Forest, by whatever git wrote it - Captain Marryat? It was our class book in Junior 4 (now rebranded as "Year 5") and I hated it. It just dragged on forever, while all the kids were wonderful and blameless and always obeyed their elders. Priggish little shits.

8)One book you are currently reading.

A Short History of Islam, by Karen Armstrong. Really interesting, nicely written, and scares the shit out of people on aeroplanes.

9)One book you have been meaning to read.

Damn, this is just the list of self-flagellation, isn't it? For someone with an English degree, I feel there are a lot of holes in my 'book-learning'. I have never finished anything by James Joyce, for example. I would dearly love to read any Beckett or Proust novel to the end as well, but I sense that also is never going to happen. I'd also like to read: War and Peace, Diary of A Madman by Gogol, Things Fall Apart by Achebe and Morvern Callar by Alan Warner.

The books I have queued up to read at home next are: Wyndham Lewis's Tarr, Joyce's Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man and Hardy's Jude The Obscure. I will not let them defeat me, dammit!

Throwing stones

2006-08-08T15:42:00.000+01:00

A busy week, writing an author profile for Pen Pusher and an article for Joeblade which involves actually research and interviewing people, shockingly. Anyway, I thought I'd pacify you with a restaurant review from when Leon and I went to Glas, just around the corner from London Bridge. (For his sake, I should point out that I have taken liberties with his dialogue. His puns are usually of a much higher standard than mine.)

----

As I walked into Glas, a Swedish restaurant in London Bridge, I was already flexing my punning muscles. Swede smell of success, I thought, and chuckled inwardly.

Well, as it turns out, everyone has got there before me. Glas grew out of a chef Anna Mosesson's Swedish food stall in Borough Market, which was called Scandelicious (tenuous, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt). Then my dreams of coming up with a truly awful Nordic pun were scuppered by a visit to the loos, where I found several reviews pinned up on the walls, one entitled: Hard of Herring. Crap, I thought, I'll never beat that. I'll just have to talk about the food.

Luckily, that's pretty easy, because Swedish food is both distinctive and unusual. Glas aims to help you sample some of Sweden's best hot and cold dishes by recommending each diner orders two and three small dishes. At between £4.45 and £7.75 a plate, we were happy to oblige.

We dived straight in with the herring three ways (with vodka and lime; with sherry and tomato; and spiced, with sour cream and chives). I wasn't mad on the tomato or sour cream versions, where the extreme fishiness of the herring was only too evident, but I was pleasantly surprised by the vodka and lime iteration. The two cool, tangy flavours took the edge off the piscine pungency, leaving you to enjoy the surprising meatiness of the fish.

I suspect the steak tartare is less authentically Nordic, but the meat was beautifully cured and the extras - apple, tomato, horseradish, and the obligatory egg yolk - were perfectly chosen.

After our herring odyssey, the hot dishes arrived. I found the Venison cabbage parcels with cassis coulis disappointing, like the bastard offspring of a loveless marriage between a spring roll and, well, a cabbage. 'Aren't you eating that?" said my companion, whisking the parcel away. "These are delicious!" So I suppose I should put that down as "received a mixed reaction".

We were, however, unanimous in our praise for the Cobblers box, despite its snigger-inducing name. It was outstanding - a beautifully tender piece of steak topped with deliciously fatty bacon on indulgent mash... topped with the nicest gravy I have ever tasted.

We'd washed all this down with a good Austrian white wine - the wine list, like the menu, is small but perfectly formed - and threw caution to the winds to try a 'Swedish liqueur' with our puddings (yummy apple cake for him, refreshing and quirky lime and basil sorbet for me). It was... er... OK, it was vile. It reminded me of the unpleasant oily stuff in my parents' archetypal 80s drinks cabinet.

Dodgy liqueurs aside, I was impressed. But one question niggled. What is Glas for? With its bright lighting and minimalist furniture, It's too bright and un-cosy for a date, too fiddly and formal for a canteen-style bite to eat, too uncomfortable for a boozy lunch with friends, and hardly in the best location for attracting business crowd. And yet it was full - authentically Swedish people were being turned away by the time we finished, as the kitchen shuts at half nine.

"You'd think they would have looked that up before they came," I remarked to my companion.
"Well," he replied, "I suppose there's one Bjorn every minute."

It's as if they don't care about the words

2006-08-02T17:08:00.000+01:00

Zoo "magazine" has perpetrated the worst subbing error I have EVER SEEN on its front cover this week. Under the heading, "GIRLS GETTING WET" it proudly declares, "Zoo flaunts the hosepipe ban!"

Well, as any fule kno, the word they are looking for is "flout", meaning "defy". The only way one could flaunt a hosepipe ban would be, say, to write "There's a hosepipe ban" across some girl's tits and get her to wiggle them in people's faces.

Actually, maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt, as that sounds like something they would do.

P.S. If you look at their website, you'll notice they at least have someone there who can spell.

Update: Unable to let the matter rest, I emailed Zoo in the strongest possible terms:

Dear Zoo,

I realise the majority of Zoo's readers do not buy the magazine for its devotion to the English language, but are you aware what a prize bunch of prats you look for putting "flaunt" instead of "flout" on the front page this week? I suggest you stop thinking up ever more ridiculous synonyms for the word "breasts" for five minutes and go buy a dictionary.

I'll let you know if they reply.

Sexual Harassment... Panda

2006-08-02T11:52:00.000+01:00

I have had obscene remarks whispered at me twice on the Tube this week. I can't say why this is - perhaps I am looking particulary receptive to the sexual advances of madmen at the moment, or perhaps London's perverts are just feeling especially ebullient.

Yesterday, the man standing behind me on the escalator at Westminster felt compelled to tell me I had a "nice ass" and started breathing heavily. And on Monday I was walking out onto the Victoria line platform at King's Cross, when a small crumpled-looking man urgently mumbled something that included the word "pussy". When I realised what he'd said, I wrinkled my nose in distaste. That's rubbish sexual harassment, I thought: Speak up, man! I looked back. He looked at me. He was so small I probably could have had him a fight, so I was really tempted to shout back, "I'm sorry... what? WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT MY PUSSY?"

Instead, because I'm a coward, I just went home and thought about that awesome episode of Sex and The City where Miranda marches up to the builder who's been wolf-whistling at her as she returns her videos. "Come on, big boy, take me now! I want to get laid!" she shouts in his face. "Hey lady," he replies, painfully embarrassed. "Easy, I'm married."

God, I'd love to do that, it would be so satisfying. When I'm found stabbed on the underground, you'll know that I have.

It takes a lot of work to look this mediocre

2006-07-30T21:12:00.000+01:00

For many years, I was a tomboy and proud of it. I was a skinny child, then a plump adolescent, and was always pretty homely-looking, with dodgy teeth and wiry hair which failed to be either straight or curly, and instead hovered in some kind of cowlicked no man's land, all bushy and wiry.

If this was a celebrity interview, I would now be able to tell you that "suddenly, something changed" and as I filled out in all the right places boys began to look at me anew as I blossomed into an attractive young lady.

Yeah, that didn't happen. Instead, I changed from being an ugly duckling into a high-maintenance duckling. At the hairdresser's last week, I began to consider just how much time I spend holding back the inexorable tide of body meltdown. It was quite a shock - as a hangover from the tomboyish days, I'd always considered myself quite low maintenance. But now I think I'm more like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, a high maintenance woman who just thinks she's low maintenance.

This really hit home when I was having my eyebrows threaded and I thought, "Ooh, while I'm here, I should definitely have a pedicure. It would be an investment, really." An investment how, exactly, the rebellious part of me screamed internally. Will it yield some kind of return? Will it keep you solvent in your old age? No, of course not. It's painting about approximately one and a half square inches of toenail, when all's said and done. And they'll be at least five and a half foot away from my eyes most of the time, and with my myopia that means they might as well be on the moon. And no one likes feet anyway - it would be like window-dressing a laundrette, or shaving Noel Edmonds. Better, yes. Attractive? Still no. And proportionate to my lame salary, the cost is huuuuge.

I was getting all Germaine by this time, fulminating against society, man, and how it makes me feel I should have groomed feet and it's all because patriarchy tells us women's bodies are disgusting and must be waxed, tweezed and exercised into submission. (I've never really got over reading The Beauty Myth a few years ago.) At this point, I had to have a cup of tea and a sit down.

Unfortunately, this gave me the chance to calculate just how much time goes into ensuring that I'm not a venomous hirsute harridan - and how much more time I'd have if I were a man, and my 'grooming' involved nothing more than a daily face-shave (optional), half an hour at the barbers every so often (optional, if you're an indy Razorlight type), and a few minutes of rubbing some sort of goo into my hair in the morning (also optional).

Obviously I'll exclude things like washing and teeth-brushing which are functional rather than cosmetic... OK, so - three hours at the hairdressers every month (half a day a year); twenty minutes washing, drying and straightening my hair every day, more if I want it not to look like a shrub (five whole days a year!). Make-up ten minutes (60 hours a year), depilatory maintenance half an hour a week, maybe more (26 hours a year). What have I forgotten? Well, if you chuck in nails and eyebrows, I reckon I spend more than one week a year trying not to frighten small children with my appearance. And I haven't even included clothes shopping...

Blimey. I want to make a deep and insightful feminist point about all this, but I'm in shock. A week! That's more than two per cent of my life! If I live until my fifties, I'll have spent a whole year of my life doing all that rubbish!

What could relax me? Ooh, how about a nice pedicure?

Stuck in the middle (class) with you

2006-07-27T17:25:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week, Fel and I went to "Take A Break Tales", a comedy show based on stories from Take A Break magazine. It was indeed very funny, featuring such stories as a woman's incest with her teenage son, and a widow convinced her son was communicating with her dead husband through the medium (ha) of a horse. But suddenly, I was reminded of the closing words of the first series of Peep Show, which are along the lines of "When this is over, I'm going to feel empty inside."

You see, I spend a good proportion (scientists have estimated it at 9 per cent) of my life snickering at chavs such as these. Oh look - they've had 13 children and want a bigger council house! Ha ha, they're dressed in top to toe Lacoste! How I chuckle, and sip more blue mountain coffee, before leaning back and lighting a Sobranie with a twenty pound note.

The flip side of this, of course, is paralysing middle class guilt. At university, we used to have a cleaner who came in every morning and emptied the bins, cleaned the loo, etc. I could never get used to this. The standard procedure was to leave your bin outside the door if you didn't want to be disturbed, but I hated doing this. Instead, I used to lie in bed, dozing peacefully, until I heard the knock on the door, regular as clockwork, at ten to eight.

Then I'd leap out of bed, pull on my dressing gown and run for the chair, where I could rest my head on my hand and chew a pencil thoughtfully, while poring over some notes I'd spread out the night before for just this eventuality.

Then Ray would come in, empty the bin, give me the update on his prostate problems ("oh yes, blood in the old urine again") and retire, at which point I would go back to bed for three hours.

The reason for this ridiculous daily charade was that I had convinced myself that Ray would despise me as a Brideshead Revisited-style toff if I left my bin outside the door, or (worse) received him in bed like some kind of Eastern potentate. Of course, he never gave any indication this was the case, and probably wondered why I always looked so rough and was reading my notes upside-down.

Of course it was all in my head, all about me. And, if I'd avoided being snobby, I was certainly running the risk of being patronising. I'm not sure he appreciated my grunting attempts at conversation. I just couldn't escape the feeling of condescension, whatever I did. So I kept bolting out of bed at ten to eight.

But tell me, oh my middle class readers, do you not do the same when you go to, say, have your hair cut? The hairdresser has no interest in your life, your holidays - and you have no interest in theirs. Why then do you feel compelled to make conversation?

I've decided this must stop. My hairdresser probably hates hearing my dull anecdotes just as much as I hate telling them. Instead, I'm going to use the time far more productively - by catching up on my Grazia reading.

(In case you are wondering how I can read a magazine while having my nails done, well, I can't. But I use the nail bar at the end of my street. It is staffed entirely by Chinese women who speak no English. A coward's solution, but effective.)

A Bea in my bonnet.

2006-07-26T17:33:00.000+01:00

Had my roots done this morning, dahling, before going shopping. (And had my eyebrows threaded, something which is going on my 'Most Painful Beauty Procedures' list, for definite). Tired out from all that, I had lunch with Emma, but after she left I hung round, drinking mineral water and eating sorbet and trying to look organic. So there I was, on my own, when one of the waitresses came over.

Oh look, I thought, she's got a labret piercing. Smile. So I did, and she came over. "Can I... er... can I ask you something?"
Aw, I thought, she's going to ask me about my ears. I mentally prepared the stock answer: "Yes, they are stretched... ooh, about a centimetre... no, they'd shrink back again - it's only if you go over half an inch you get the dog's arse effect."
She hadn't spoken by this point, and was hopping slightly from foot to foot. "Are you... are you -"
"Yes?"
She looked pained, before continuing. "Are you Princess Fergie's daughter?"

This is just getting ridiculous.

My week; in the style of Taki.

2006-07-23T17:31:00.000+01:00

You may notice that I haven't been blogging this week. That would be because I have been piloting a revolutionary new technique I like to call "holidaying at home". It's the same as a normal holiday, only without the travelling, spending time with one's parents, crowds, foreigners, funny foreign food and enforced swimwear that blight the experience. I wish it had been without the heat of a foreign holiday, but as we all know Britain melted this week to a large puddle and all anyone did was stand around in fountains (girls) or take their shirts off in inappropriate places (boys).

So what did I do? Well, I conquered my fear of cricket by going to the Test match last Friday with NB. (He took it very well when I made us spend three hours in the oyster tent, watching the big screen instead of the actual cricket happening not two hundred yards away.) I had dinner with Matt at the Blue Elephant in Fulham on Monday (is Thai food not the best in the world?) and spent an obscene amount of money on buying him a shot of Johnny Walker blue (or should that be black?) whisky.

I immersed myself in leftiness on Tuesday, and felt a whisper of smug satisfaction wash over me. I spent Wednesday (the hottest day of the year, TM) on trains to and from Oxford, where I had lunch with Paul and once again talked too much about my love of the Game.

Thursday was the Pen Pusher party, where I got the chance to introduce Leon to some of my friends from university. Amazingly, he survived. Then on Friday, I scampered off to Guildford to see Bill and Sharon, and to go to a signing of the Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde. I am now trying to restrain myself from buying a "Sommeworld" or "Toast Marketing Board" t-shirt.

But, I hear you cry: what plans for the week ahead? Well, on Monday Fel and I are going to 'Take a Break tales', a comedy show based on coverlines from Take A Break magazine. How awesome does that sound?

Yeah, that was pretty much just a list of all the exciting things I did this week. Sorry. But humour me: I don't get to do this much; go out and pretend I am a cool young socialite, rather than a grey cardigan-wearing night worker.

Pleasure you, er, can measure

2006-07-18T12:15:00.000+01:00

First off, shamelessly recycled from my inbox, is the news that Channel 4 are to broadcast a 'masturbate-a-thon' involving hundreds of people pleasuring themselves in Clerkenwell. I so much want to make a terrible pun - will they be able to pull it off, etc etc - but I think it more dignified to let this piece of seminal (shit!) and thoughtful television speak for itself.

The best put-down in the world....

2006-07-13T15:45:00.000+01:00

My boss on his boss, last night.

"Oh, he just gets on my nerves so bloody much. The only thing I want to say to him before I die is: 'Two fries and a coke, please'."

Ouch.

No Texts Please... I've got a new phone

2006-07-11T13:03:00.000+01:00

The new mobile is swanky (for me) Nokia N-70. Yeah, it can make videos, and, er, connect to the Internet, and stuff. Or at least it will do when I work out whether I need a new 3G sim card, and get round to buying a charger for it.

Anyway, the demise ofmy previous phone also brings with it the inevitable deletion of all my saved text messages (don't tell me I can just transfer them to my new phone using infrared, or bluetooth, or voodoo - can't you see I'm building up the tension?).

I'm a compulsive hoarder of many things, and so I usually have about 100 saved text messages. I've trawled through for twenty of the best, and presented them here to give you a charming aperçu into my life. Ooh, this makes me like a real newspaper columnist - I'm shamelessly shoehorning other people's humour in under the pretext of making a valid social point.

(Prizes for guessing what any of them refer to. Clue: one is about newspaper spelling, another about mumps, one is a reference to TV show Scrubs, one is about my housemate's sinuses, and one is about Richard Littlejohn.)

---

"Yeah you get the cock exposure as a hors d'oeuvre to the main course."

"Story here with your name written all over it - Andy Roddick attacks manbags."

"God almighty was pissed last night. May have pulled blonde. Several times. Damn these women and their grammatical errors, will I ever find true love? May still be drunk."

"In hospital again disguising the face iv bin going out for a smoke every day since i got here i just crashed into the nurses station in my wheelchair and took out 3 nurses then burst out laughing."

"Excellent. Sex him."

"Right, then. Who do I talk to for a yummy taste of devil's cock?"

"Baby, if I could do it all over again I'd still do it the same. Why? Because I love the steak. Yes.xx"

"My career has peaked: I'm subbing a page three story about Prince Philip farting."

"Johann explains today how he hated PE at school, and used to get sent off so he could read in the changing rooms. 'Today I still can't pick up "crime and punishment" without smellings sweaty socks.' i kid you not."

"Syrup-coated lard? Treacle coated dripping? The possibilities are endless"

"Yes, and I'm sorry but that's really the nail in the coffin for the 'i don't use the toilet paper' argument." Hrumph! x"

"'The problem of unplanned pregnancies among the over-40s' - you've got to love Woman's Hour."

"In an hour or so the joint I had will have dried out. It's on my bedside table."

"They are so annoying! The twots."

"I enjoyed it in bed while scoffing cheap chocolate like a latter day Marie Ant. Am shocked to see Howard is now a bit of a fitty. I who spurned TT at 11 as 'sad'."

"I was right! My left testis! Noooooooooo!"

"Don't wash until I can get to you. He managed to write: 'I like that in a man' the other day."

"Oh, and you would like Prague. It has a museum of sex machines and one of torture weapons. Turns out they're not the same thing!"

"Just met Robbie Coltrane. The man's got bigger!"

"That's quite amusing! Good for you sir. Do you want to join me for a cigar? And then we could pick up some whores. Or something. Suits you!"

Back to work... A-G-A-I-N

2006-07-09T19:35:00.000+01:00

I started my holiday, really, in an Irish theme pub in Stansted airport. I had predictably arrived fourteen million hours too early for my early afternoon flight, and so decided to while away the time waiting for the 'Family of Death' (my brother and his wife, plus their two small and extremely boisterous children) in O'Neills. I had eschewed the other refreshment option, refusing to be associated with the juice bar on account of its name: lovejuice. Yuk.

Eventually, the FoD arrived, trailing car seats and travel cots and all the other paraphenalia of child-rearing. Their two children, Dominic (3) and Oliver (ten months) seem to have developed a finely tuned system of alternating tantrums for maximum effect. At the check-in desk it was Dominic's turn, as his clamouring for a ham sandwich was roundly ignored.

After that episode, it was with no little relief I left the FoD, who were sharing a house with my parents, at the airport to catch a lift with my sister and her fiance to our gite. Ah, tranquillity, I thought. How wonderful it'll be to wave goodbye to the kids if they get on my nerves, and come back to read in peace and quiet. Perhaps I'll take up doing watercolours.

Watercolour plans, like pride, always come before a fall. The next morning I was woken up at nine in the morning by what sounded suspiciously like a hymn. That's annoying, I thought, and rolled over and back to sleep.

Eleven AM came, and I drifted back to consciousness and the unwelcome realisation that I could still hear hymns. Jesus, I thought, I've been conscripted into some kind of cult. I went downstairs, where my sister was not, it's fair to say, in a good mood.

"Can you hear that fucking racket?" she enquired.
"It's been going on since NINE IN THE MORNING," she continued, her voice rising dangerously and nostrils flaring. "Right underneath our room. There was even.... a loudspeaker!"

I looked outside. There were... oh god... there were quite literally hordes of children playing outside. In matching tee shirts. Now, I've been involved in some pretty hairy school trips, but at least I was never made to wear a uniform tee shirt. That bespeaks a dangerous level of determination.

I hailed the nearest adult with more irritation than regard for the French language. "Pourquoi le bruit, monsieur? Nous sommes en vacances, et j'espere d'avoir le paix!" He looked unmoved, and addressed me in English, framing the worst three words the holidaymaker can hear. "I am sorry, but we are a Belgian children's choir."
Not seeing my rictus of horror, he added nonchantly,"We come here every year."

Presently my father (who it's only fair to say is not noted for his tact and diplomacy) arrived and heard our tale of woe. He went off to 'bandy words' with the group leaders, but returned only with the information that the children were giving a concert on Friday, to which we were cordially invited.
"The only way I'm going to that concert is with a shotgun," I muttered bitterly, pondering the sentence I'd receive for multiple Belgicide.

Needless to say, my creaking French was enlisted to lodge a complaint with the proprietor. Funnily enough, modern language A-level doesn't teach you the vocabulary needed for a really good rant about the unacceptability of being forced to stay in a confined space with forty singing Belgians. "Ils chantent toute la journee!" I repeated pleadingly, but there was rien a faire. "Oh well," said my sister resignedly, "at least you'll have something for your blog." I perked up immensely: my family had been actually unusually normally and I had feared the whole holiday was going to be a bit of a blog washout.

So, we put up with the Belgians by the simple expedient of not spending any time at the gite. Although my sister did lose it a bit when we returned from dinner on Thursday night, full of foie gras and a cheeky local red, to find les Belges indulging in some delightful cabaret right underneath the gite. I could just about hack the Pussycat Dolls singalong, but then I heard a brass instrument of some kind start up a recognisable tune. Then I realised: I was listening to a Belgian 11-year-old murder 'The Winner Takes It All' on the trombone. "You suck!" I yelled half-heartedly as the unfortunate child finished. My sister, somewhat the worse for wear, added simply yet deafeningly: "SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"

You couldn't make it up. (And frankly, why would you want to?)

PS. For anyone wondering how the swimming costume went down, the answer it that it was completely overshadowed by some Speedos. Yes, French pools still have a rule which insists that gentleman not wear shorts in the pool, only, er, posing pouches. This went down like un sac de merde with my sister's fiance.

Oh Lately It's So Quiet

2006-06-30T12:27:00.000+01:00

Barring Acts of God, I'll be away on holiday until next Saturday in a place far away, with no internet provision. Take care of yourselves, and each other.

It's Always Darkest Before The Prawns

2006-06-29T17:25:00.000+01:00

Gen and I had lunch in Dans Le Noir today. The idea is pretty simple: after ordering in the bar, you are lead through to eat in the dining room, which is pitch black. Totally dark. The food's received pretty shoddy reviews, but I was (and am) intrigued by the whole idea, especially since as a nice twist all the waiters are blind. Ooh, we pretentious would-be intelligensia sigh, what an ironic reversal. Aha! The blind leading the not-blind!

And it was, literally, leading. We chose our food - Gen had scallops with black pudding followed by lamb; I had the 'surprise menu' for the full 'holy fuck' experience - and were met at the entrance to the 'dark room' by Carl, our waiter, who was actually blind or at least doing a very good impression of it. And we had to be led to our table through two sets of curtains, hands on the shoulder of the person in front. Carl kept up a running commentary which was good, as I must have been millimetres away from walking into a pillar at one point.

We sat at our table - the only other diners were a very rowdy group of 6 - and I felt a moment of pure unbridled panic. Shit, I thought, I can't do this. I'm going to have to cry off. I felt guilty too, because the fact that the waiting staff are blind reminds you that you can stop this anytime you want; but they can't. I found myself opening and closing my eyes, and marvelling that there was no difference between the two. Living in London means that you're never in the pitch black, so you forget what real, enveloping darkness is.

To continue our adventures around London restaurant loos, I can report that the ladies here are not dark (thank god). You're not allowed to wander round on your own in the dark room, though, so you have to ask to go to the loo, which is embarrassing. Also, before you think this would be the ideal environment to dip your toe in the shallows of sex in public, remember that the entire restaurant is monitored by CCTV cameras (the footage from which, I imagine, gives the bar staff endless amusement).

Frankly, the food was unremarkable - my surprise menu turned out to be a seafood salad (ever unexpectedly found a tentacle in your mouth? it's an... interesting experience) followed by beef. No, pork. No, calves' liver! Oooh, cheeky. I had reckoned on my Restaurant Critic Powers (tm) helping me to identify everything pretty easily, but it's far harder than you'd imagine without any visual clues. It's also bloody hard to use a knife and fork when you can't see either, or the plate - and as you eat more and more, your hit rate of successfully forking stuff declines.

"There's not enough sauce," said Gen of the lamb. "But then, I can see why not. Imagine trying to eat soup."
My only minor stumbles were the two times I wiped my fingers (having resorted to them) on my dress instead of the napkin. In some ways it's much easier to chat in the dark - no need to worry about eye contact. I can actually imagine that a second or third date might be fun: the gimmick provides plenty to talk about, and it won't matter if you end up with a bit of spinach stuck between your teeth.

The darkness seems to prompt confidences: I've known Gen for two years, but never knew she worked as a teacher in China and took the Transmongolian railway (my own revelations were far less impressive). I suspect the next table were having fun too, and it seems to work as a party venue. Although at one point we did hear the classic cry, "You've got it in my eye!" (The mind boggles.) I don't think I helped Gen's enjoyment of the meal by remarking, "Gosh, imagine the damage someone with a machete and night-vision goggles could do in here!" and then reminding her of the end bit in Silence of The Lambs.

All the same it was a relief to get back to the bar and the light. "Oh thank god, " I remarked sensitively to our blind waiter, "I can see again!" (I immediately felt the pang of shame more usually associated with saying to a Big Issue vendor, "Oh, it's your last one! You can get home now.."

So: as a restaurant, it's the wrong side of average. (And not cheap: Two courses are £27, or £29 if you have the surprise menu.) But as a gimmick, as a sort of Darkness Theme Park, it's pretty cool.

It's Always Better On Holiday

2006-06-28T18:22:00.000+01:00

... oh, how you lied to me, Franz Ferdinand.

Going on holiday is rubbish. But it's not the done thing to just take a week off work and hang round the house in your underwear, eating biscuits and watching Everybody Loves Raymond. Oh no, you have to go somewhere.

This involves all kinds of general horrors, such as having to find your passport and undergoing a bikini wax. In my case, there are more particular traumas, such as having to travel on a plane with unreserved seating with my brother, his wife and their two children, aged three and 9 months. I just know we'll get to the check in and - bam! - one of them will just ask me to hold Nephew 2 and watch Nephew 1, totally coincidentally while the seats are being allocated.

Next thing you know, I'll be getting death stares from other passengers as the young single mother who's completely failing to control the angry porridge-smeared toddler and nauseous baby she's taking on holiday at the hardworking taxpayer's expense, while my brother and his wife will be tutting with fellow travellers about me as they tuck in to their fourth gin and tonic five rows back.

And the swimwear shopping all went a bit wrong today, too. After trying on a succession of increasingly vile print tankinis, I finally found one that was both stylish and, er, structured, a rather jolly navy halterneck number that made my breasts look surprisingly jouncy.

The trouble started when I took it to the cashier, who refused to sell it to me. "Did you do this?" the cashier said, waving the gusset irately at me.
"Er, do what?" I countered, a chill of panic washing over me.
She gestured at the place where the 'hygiene strip' should have been. Clearly, some other mardy cow had removed it from the gusset (uh, horrible word).

"You cannot have this," she said bluntly.
"But... but.. I tried it on over my underwear," I stammered lamely, keenly aware of the queue of nosy menopausal women accruing behind me.
"I cannot sell this to you. Without the strip, it counts as soiled. Unless -" the women craned to overhear the conversation, sensing something good was coming....
"- unless IT WAS YOU WHO SOILED IT," she concluded in ringing tones.

At this point, I half-expected a TV crew to spring up from behind the till to record my humiliation. I was really bloody annoyed. Did she really think I make it my business to go round shops, wilfully tearing off hygiene strips and giggling insanely to myself? Or maybe she thought that I got some kind of sexual thrill from trying on the same swimwear that hundreds of other women have tried on without the hygiene strip - rather like punters who try to persuade prostitutes to forgo using a condom?

I muttered something that sounded a lot like, "didn't... f...ing ...soil..." and stalked away from the counter with as much dignity as I could muster. Then - THEN - when I went back to the rail, they didn't have any more in my size.

So I went for another one, which is nice in a 'I could swim the channel in this' kind of way. It's a little, er, Victorian in its sensibilites. Actually, I think the word I'm looking for is comprehensive. It tries to be diminish its maiden aunt credentials with jaunty pink and orange straps, but they have as much leavening effect as affixing a bunch of freesias to the top of a Howitzer.

I also tried on a halter neck one with a cut away back and just these triangles of fabric over the breasts but - get this - my breasts were too high for it. They were like two zeppelins, barely tethered in a paisley mooring. Imagine my excitement! I knew there was a reason I went to M&S.

But obviously I bought the boring tank-like one. I've built my entire personality on not feeling good about my body, and it wouldn't do to break the habit of a lifetime.

I might also mention that they refused to exchange fifty pounds into Euros without seeing my passport. Why? Did they think I might be a particularly ineffectual money launderer? Might I embark on some kind of untraceable Europe-wide crime spree with that fifty quid? OH NO WAIT - I couldn't, because that would require a passport.

Needless to say, I'm now in a very bad mood. And the prospect of a week without phone, internet, TV, 24-hour news, Tesco's Finest Ready Meals or a smoke is not improving matters.

Dust off the black armbands...

2006-06-27T19:31:00.000+01:00

Moose, who played Eddie in Frasier, has died. I haven't been this sad since Bob Monkhouse bit the big one.

Moose was discovered by Katrina Waczyowski of the Actors Studio in New York, where he learnt the principles of method acting. After stints as an extra on Baywatch:Hawaii, he shot to fame as the Pharoah in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and The Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway. That led to the job on Frasier, which garnered him worldwide success.

Unfortunately, the pressures of celebrity led to develop a severe drug habit, and he was discovered by police in an intoxicated state in a car with Robert Downey Jr and three prostitutes smeared in Pedigree Chum mixed with crack cocaine. After three months in rehab, he declared his conversion to buddhism and requested in future he was referred to as 'Big Cow-like Thing'. Allegations spread of his bizarre behaviour on set, which included a clause in his contract forbidding Kelsey Grammer from touching him, and the stipulation that he never be required to show his nipples on screen unless it was integral to the plot.

Rumours about his sexuality spread as the later series aired, and he was eventually revealed as having had a long-term secret relationship with Cher, which ended when he left her for Liza Minnelli's ex-husband David Gest. The pair held a glittering civil partnership ceremony in Massachusetts, but most of his Frasier co-stars stayed away, a snub which hurt him deeply.

He is survived by the couple's adopted two children, Bartholin and Prepuce.

The Axeman Cometh

2006-06-24T11:36:00.000+01:00

My friend Bill, it's fair to say, has been the Mephistopheles to my Dr Faustus in gaming terms. It was him that bought an Xbox when we moved into our second year house, which meant that I actually started playing Xbox games and became wedded to the Xbox brand. If it hadn't been for him, I might currently own a PS2, or a Gamecube. Perhaps even a Bandai Crystal Wonderswan. We'll never know.

For two years I've had an Xbox, and in that time I've managed to acquire a grand total of seven games: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Halo, Halo 2, Burnout, Tiger Woods Golf, Dead or Alive and, oh and some other one I can't remember, probably because it's bollocks.

A bit of a rubbish collection, really. The problem is that the box of X is plugged into our living room TV, and the only thing more boring than playing Tiger Woods golf is watching someone play Tiger Woods Golf. The games that get played are the ones where the controllers can be passed around easily between drunk, half-arsed people, and where even people with very short concentration spans and minimal hand-eye co-ordination can have enough of a go to be amused.

That's why Dead or Alive is such a hit, as even a hardened gamer - especially one trying to show off by using a difficult character with poncy special moves - can be hoofed into next Tuesday but a buttonmasher armed with a scantily clad schoolgirl.

But all things must change, and when I heard about Guitar Hero on the PlayStation 2, I knew that it was a game I wanted. All I had to do was acquire it; oh, and acquire a PlayStation 2. The latter was dealt with when my housemate Tom revealed he in fact owned a PS2, but had simply let his sister use it for the last two years. The game was acquired by Matt, a man so susceptible to suggestion that he also bought a PS2 when in Game to pick up GH. He's since bought another copy so we can go 'head to head'.

The game's pretty expensive (£50 retail; but about £40 delivered from Amazon) but that's because you get a free Fisher Price-style guitar as well. This comes with a 'strummer', five coloured keys on the frets, and a wiggly lever thing that has some technical name I've forgotten.

The aim of the game is simple; make the crowd go wild as you strum along to rock and pop songs. Points are gained for hitting the notes, and 'star power' can be accrued to tide you through the tough solos. The control set is pretty straightforward too; a fretboard runs towards you like a treadmill, and you hit the colour-coded notes as they reach the bottom.

I was very nervous at first; Matt picked up the absurdly small guitar and boshed out Crossroads on Medium straight off. "Yeah, but I play the guitar," he offered by way of explanation. (I can't comment, I've only ever heard him play the opening chords of Little Wing until it made me want to cry.) Then Tom, aka Slowhand, stepped up to the plate. I have never seen any part of him move so fast as his hand did during Ace of Spades. "Dude," said Tim, who had wandered in to observe the performance. "You must be able to diddle a girl in, like, fifteen seconds." Tom grinned ruefully.

I knew I was in trouble when I missed the first three notes of Take Me Out.
"It's syncopated rhythm," squealed Matt, gesturing furiously in a vaguely obscene manner.
"What the fuck does that mean?" I shot back, trying gamely to get into the swing of things but missing another set of notes. What was this all about? You'd think with the law of averages I'd hit ONE, wouldn't you? But apparently not.

Anyway, after the basic principles of guitar playing had been explained to me, I started to get a bit better. The boys bashed ahead on Hard, then Expert, while I was mocked for paddling round in the shallows by playing Killer Queen over and over again on Medium (with Matt shouting "She keeps a MO-et CHAN-don in A PRET-ty CAB-inet" at me) But a week later, I am definitely better - I've now got to the stage where I can hit enough notes not to be booed off stage immediately - and what's more, I don't begrudge watching other people play the game.

Luckily, the song selection is reasonable - there's a little Bowie and Hendrix, and even More Than A Feeling, should one be feeling romantic. My only complaint is that there's no real incentive to finish the game... all the bonus tracks are by no-marks from Boston, and who really cares if you can unlock a new guitar, really?

Bring on Guitar Hero 2, which promises more recognisable tracks and more exciting two player stuff. I'm going to have to consider performance enhancing drugs, though - perhaps I'll take ten Pro Plus before attempting Cochise again.

There's just one problem: as I write this, Matt and Tom are sitting with their matching tiny guitars, battling it out over Franz Ferdinand, with expressions of extreme concentration on their faces. I think it's the saddest thing I ever saw.

Journalism: Cat racing and chronic alcoholism?

2006-06-23T12:26:00.000+01:00

To celebrate becoming a proper paid-up filthy journo hack, I went to the theatre last night to see Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, a play about the legendary journalist and boozer (the title comes from the phrase his exasperated editor used to insert when Jeffrey was too drunk or hungover to write his column). The action, such as it is, happens after Jeffrey wakes up after closing time in Soho's The Coach and Horses, having passed out in the loos while the landlord was locking up.

It wasm quite simply, brilliant - Quentin Letts wrote that Tom Conti is too well-scrubbed to play Jeffrey convincingly, but I didn't think that was the case. His pissed aristocratic drawl, his alcoholic shakes, and his chain-smoking all work superbly. It's a very funny play - there's a great bit where a particularly hard winter has seen racing cancelled, and in desperation a friend suggests cat-racing in his flat . There's also Jeffrey's demonstration of Keith Waterhouse's pub trick involving a pint glass, a biscuit tin, a matchbox and an egg - "Lester Piggott tried this once, and the egg.. the egg caused £2,000 worth of damage!"

Jeffrey tells boozy yarns of waking up in racecourse ditches and urinating through letter boxes for two hours, constantly interrupted by figures from his past. Of the women, including four successive Mrs Bernards - the usual refrain is "You make me sick!"

It's also a very sad play. Jeffrey suddenly realises he's in the pub because he's been kicked out by his latest lover, and (like any good drunk in a bar) his stories take a maudlin turn. And suddenly it's all so tragic. The charismatic man, drowning his talent in vodka, is the ultimate figure of comedy and pathos combined. I imagine the contrast was even more apparent back in the days when Jeffrey Bernard himself could be found in the Stalls bar in the interval, slumped in a corner.

Anyway, next time my colleagues ask me to the pub after first edition, I might think twice. I'm quite fond of this liver.

Gissa job

2006-06-21T23:22:00.000+01:00

Dear all: You'll be pleased to know I have secured a job with the Media Organisation That Cannot Be Named.

Look on my headlines, ye mighty, and despair!

I plan to celebrate by filling a bath with champagne and then rolling around in it, barking like a seal.

That is all.

Nice day for a white wedding

2006-06-20T11:23:00.000+01:00

First off, an illustration of why Oxbridge graduates should not attempt drunken trash talk:

Him: "Come on, come inside and throw some shapes, you lazy cow."
Me: "What? How dare you! Mate, my shapes are twice as potent as your shapes."
Him: "Says who? My shapes are... geometry."
Me: "Oh yeah? I am Euclid to your Pythagoras. Uh."

To Wales this weekend for the wedding of a fellow hack I met whilst 'training' to be a journalist. It was a glorious weekend, with perfect weather on the day itself, and I am now ploughing all my energies into resisting the urge to plan my own wedding, a) because that's perhaps being overly optimistic; and b) because as a woman one has to affect nonchalance for all such things in order not to scare away men. (Although bad news, chaps: I have already decided against a cash bar, mainly because I have realised that all my friends are borderline alcoholics and also because my mother has never been drunk and probably doesn't realise that people can actually get as drunk as we were on Saturday and still survive unscathed.)

It's always nice to take the opportunity to dress up, I feel, and so I had raided Accessorise the day before for a 'fascinator' - not a word or concept with which I had previously been familiar - which was basically some white feathers stuck on to a headband. I began to have second thoughts just before we set off from the hotel to the ceremony - nothing makes you feel more like a twat than wandering in to a pub in a tiny Welsh village with what appears to be a dead albatross affixed to your head.

The tiny Welsh village laboured under the name of Usk, crippling all conversation for the weekend as everyone flailed desperately for the best Usk-based pun. "You're taking quite a rusk" and "That would be a mammoth tusk" probably win out for sheer wanton cruelty to the English language. Although undoubtedly the best set-up Usk pun award goes to ex-blogger Guttersniper, who listened politely to my story about Corrievorrie (recognising someone too soon in a long corridor) and the Meaning of Liff, before pronouncing, "Yes, that happened to me once. I was in a a restaurant. Eating oysters. Which... is... a.... mollusc!" He then smirked for fully half an hour.

I won't talk about the wedding, or fear of sounding too much like a maiden aunt (it was just beautiful, sniff), although the happy couple do get my eternal respect for picking She Bangs The Drums as their first song - even if it is, frankly, no Lady In Red.

The reception venue was gorgeous too. "Ah," said the groom, "that was a stroke of luck, we only got this two weeks ago. The couple who had booked it... well, they had a huge row and cancelled the wedding."
"Why did they have a huge row?" I said.
"Er... he had an affair."

Further proving that the seven-strong journo contingent were the guests from hell, two of our number decided to, er, abuse the facilities provided by the hotel, much to the chagrin of the bride's mother ("They must have some sort of fetish, dear!") . Then at midnight, we were put on a bus back to Usk (Cue: "where are we going?" "Don't usk me!" etc) where we "entertained" the lovely middle-aged couple also going back there with quite a lot of Bohemian Rhapsody and also some sort of rugby song that involved shouting "purple helmet" a lot as far as I can recall.

When we got back the hotel bar was still open, provoking squeals of delight from my housemate and her best friend. Foolishly, someone (yeah, me) then took the opportunity to ask Artegall what he thought of Johann Hari. The answer is not even vaguely printable in a family blog.

Ten minutes later, I was chugging back a Smirnoff Ice and trying to trash talk in French, which is the usual signal I've had one too many. "Mais...mais...tu es une putain! Branleur! Ton chatte a la rage!"

It was time for bed.

But minor problems - like the fact we've probably been given an Asbo in absentia by Usk Magistrates Court - aside, it was one of the best weekends I've had in ages. The quality of chat you get from people who use words for a living is always high, and I can't think of a better-suited couple than the newlyweds - or one more deserving of happiness.

Now - must. not. envisage. own. wedding.

Something for the Weekend

2006-06-16T00:05:00.000+01:00

It's the weekend, almost - no time to be downcast! Instead, here is a mini quiz that I made whilst bored at work. All the answers are connected, and can be found in the 'Comment' field.

What was Tom Clancy's first novel?

From what 1962 novel do droogs come?

By what nickname is Senator Roark's son in Frank Miller's Sin City known?

What famous character was created by Lucy Maud Montgomery?

In which play at the Donmar Warehouse did Nicole Kidman appear naked?

Whose new album is called Rarities?

What character did Denise Nickerson play on film in 1971 and AnnaSophia Robb in 2005?

Everything I Have Ever Cocked Up, 1983-2006

2006-06-13T11:40:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the awful title, which I know makes this post sound like some dreadful piece of modern art (unless you like that sort of thing, in which case do feel free to consider this as modern art) or excerpt from a Nick Hornby novel.

I've always been wary of needless self-revelation on this blog; not least because it seems everyone I have ever dated, or ever wanted to date, now reads it.

But last week I managed to sabotage my life so spectacularly (no, I'm not going to tell you how) that I thought that I should probably commemorate that by raking over the coals of my previous cock-ups in as tawdry and self-pitying a way as I can muster - one a day until I feel cheerier, I think. Let the wallowing commence!

The Amsterdam Passport Fiasco

You might not know this, but I have a morbid fear of both long-distance travel and racing against the clock. I cannot physically bear to watch that John Cleese film Clockwise, and I have problems with the Friends episode The One Where... They Can't Be Late for similar reasons. I leave at least an extra half hour to travel from my house to Paddington when I catch the train back to my parents' house, for example, meaning I have to entertain myself at the world's most boring station.

This all dates back to 2003, when Matt and I decided to go to Amsterdam for a few days in the Easter vacation. Luggage packed, we arrived at Stansted with ample time to spare for our morning flight. In a few short hours I would be ogling prostitutes and soaking up the atmosphere of Europe's most liberal city. Everything was right with the world.

Until, that is, we got to the check in desk. I was busy exchanging pleasantries with the woman behind the desk, and desperately trying to pretend we were going for 'cultural reasons' - I distinctly remember talking about the Rijksmuseum as if I gave a shit - when she said, "Oh."

"Oh?" I queried.
"Oh dear," she said. "Your passport has expired."
No words can express the icy chill that gripped my heart. An impoverished student, I had spent the remainder of my overdraft on this trip (the rest had long since been 'invested' in M&S food and pints of Snakebite) and moreover, I didn't think it would be a fantastic idea to let Matt, aka the World's Most Laidback Man, wander the temptation-filled streets of Amsterdam alone. So I took the mature route and burst into tears.

The kindly check-in lady offered to put us on a later flight (for free), presumably so that I would go and cry somewhere else. There followed a day of racing round London - which at the time I had no idea how to navigate - desperately trying to renew my passport in time to catch the later flight. In the end, I had to get Matt to take the free flight they'd offered us, and buy myself another one an hour later.

However, that wasn't the biggest cock-up of the day. That award goes to my decision to get new photos for my passport immediately after my teary scene at the check-in desk. For the next eight years I will be saddled with a passport photo of me looking like a smack addict who's just gone cold turkey - huge swollen eyes, blotchy face, wobbly lower lip. Every time I go abroad customs officials look at it, then me, then look at it again. Then they titter as I walk away.

The Second Worst Thing You Can Ever Say To A Boy

In my first term at university, I developed a raging crush on the rather lovely Bill, who could well be reading this (hello!). Anyway, I spent all eight weeks wondering whether or not he reciprocated my feelings. Every utterance was scrutinised like the entrails of a Roman sacrificial bull. Eventually, with only one day before the Christmas holidays left, I took the nuclear option. Chris (of Erica fame) was enlisted to find out the truth. It wasn't good: to put in bluntly, no. Chris, being the lovely chap he is, tried to break this to me gently - as I recall, by saying, "Yeah, mate - it's a no.".

Everything was going so well until we went to Bar Med and two jugs of Long Island Ice Tea happened to me. I've got a shplendid idea, I thought - I'll jusht tell him that it's all ok. I'm jaunty. I'm cool.

I tottered over. "Bill," I slurred, "I know.... I know... you don't fancy me - but iss....iss OK." Then, the jaunty finish: "I mean, in one sense it's like the stool has been kicked away from my universe... but.. but.. iss OK."

I have never known a phrase with such amazing sobering powers. As soon as it left my lips, I knew that it was a) freaky, and b) not jaunty at all! And quite why I believed the entirety of existence to be resting upon a small footrest is a question for another time.

Anyway, that's only a mid-range cock-up, because Bill and I still get on (in fact, do have a look at his mother's blog here).

The Great Fire of Bedminster

I was, ooh, 16 or 17, and had gone with my best friend Emily to visit these guys in their thirties we had met on holiday (yes, in retrospect that does sound a bit suspicious, but in fairness we had met them at a Christian holiday camp). One of them, Adam, had rather a nice house in Bristol, and we had a lovely barbeque out the back. One of the artful candles onna spike that lit the garden toppled over, setting fire to some dry leaves piled up ready to go to the tip.

Being the helpful soul I am, I snatched the nearest bottle to hand and doused the flames. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bottle of triple-distilled vodka, which started what can only be described as a major conflagration. After some time spent running about, filling saucepans with water from the tap, Adam's garden resembled something out of a war zone.

The next time I was invited I managed to burn his kitchen wall whilst fashioning a flamethrower from a bottle of White Lightning and some lighter fluid. Unsurprisingly, there was no third visit.

The Gay Boyfriend

I'm not sure anyone's first relationship reflects well on them, and most would be willing to admit that they didn't choose as well as they would do now. I, however, made the reasonably grievous error of picking a paid-up homosexual as my first boyfriend.

It lasted for two months - he now refers to it, charmingly, as his "heterosexuality holiday" - before he dumped me in the coat queue of Worcester's most chavvy nightclub. I distinctly remember the cab ride home, my lip a-quivering, listening to "Careless Whisper" and thinking - yes, I'm never going to dance again, guilty feet really ain't got no rhythm (which, come to think of it, is probably the most embarrassing aspect of the whole thing).

Saying 'Fuck' In Front Of My Mother

Didn't happen until the first year of university. Hasn't happened since, and still live in fear that it might happen again (especially considering I now swear like a blind carpenter). Woke up sweating in the night for a week afterwards.

Collarbone surface piercings

Another one to be filed under 'seemed like a good idea at the time'. Considering I've had such a cottonwool-swaddled middle class pantywaister existence, I do have a lot of scars. The majority of these are my own fault, including the rather obvious ones on my chest from two failed attempts at a sternum surface piercings. However, these at least looked good for a little while. My collarbone piercings did not ever, ever look good, not even when they were just done. They also involved comfortably the most pain I have ever volunteered for. All round, they were very bad indeed.

Getting engaged to a someone I met on the Internet

Yeah, the title says it all, doesn't it? What a fucking brilliant idea this one was. In my defence, I was 16 and we had only just discovered the Internet in Worcester. I started a blog (my very first, which has now sadly slipped through the floorboards of cyberspace) in a body modification community - this being back when I was cool and pierced and whatnot. I used to spend hours talking to this guy called Shan in Oklahoma, who was divorced and had two kids called Willow and Bishop.

This lasted for about six months, and I was seriously contemplating going out to visit this chap (look, I was young and naive, OK? All these fuckups are the reason I'm such a bitter old trout now...). Of course, in classic 'bloke I met on the internet' fashion, he turned out to be his wife. Or possibly both of them were in on it. Who knows. I think it probably turned out for the best: I couldn't say 'Oklahoma' without giving it the full musical-style "Ooooooh-klahoma", which I'm imagining doesn't go down that well with people who have to live there.

The Second Engagement

Ah, my love life. What fruitful pastures for recrimination. Fresh from my triumph of picking a gay bloke to date, I moved on to a mental bloke. Several things should have tipped me off that we weren't compatible: the fact his favourite phrase was "fockingcontybollocksinnit" being only the most obvious. It lasted only nine months, during which time he ended up trying to finish a particularly spiteful argument by proposing to me. I should have slapped him quite hard for this piece of flagrant emotional manipulation. I didn't. However, I think it proves I was learning about relationships (even if at a rate marginally slower than a pigeon) that I sort of mumbled an acceptance. (Hey, this means I have been engaged twice, technically. What a femme fatale I am.)

He then proceeded to take me to H Samuel (H fucking Samuel, I ask you!) to pick an engagement ring. Well, that was the final straw and after another three and a half months I showed him where to go, I can tell you!

Every Time Christina Aguilera's Dirrty Has Played In A Nightclub And I Have Truly, Truly, Believed I Can Dance

This sums up my clubbing career for several years, and the smell of shame which pervades throughout my memories is probably why I no longer go clubbing.

right, that's quite enough...

Fuck this, I'm moving to Norway

2006-06-12T17:18:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about summer, and I reckon it's pretty much how my mother described childbirth. It's absolutely horrible every year, and yet by November you've forgotten all that and you sit in your office watching it go dark at half past four, and think: God, I'm miserable. I bet I've got seasonal affective disorder.

And then summer comes again and you realise that you haven't got seasonal affective disorder at all, you really are just a miserable git irrespective of meteorological conditions. But now you are a hot, sweaty miserable git, and you have been forced to wear shorts.

How do I hate thee, summer? Let me count the ways: First, and most obviously at the moment, there's a football tournament every other year. That sucks pretty hard. Weeks on end of drunken shouting and forced jollity, and endless conversations about some potato-faced chav's podiatric health.

There's more, though. There's the hot weather, which makes squishing onto the tube even less pleasant than usual. There's the horror of getting a seat - sweet joy! - only to realise that a fat sweaty person is sitting down beside you, ready to spill their clammy flesh over your seat as well as their own.

Then there's the discovery I made this week, which is that all women are mysteriously much thinner than they appeared mere weeks - days - before. In winter, an apt pupil of Trinny & Susannah can disguise her less appealing bits through the smoke and mirrors of V-neck jumpers and black opaque tights. Not so in summer - the vest top and miniskirt heatwave uniform gives no quarter.

There's also the sun. I've mentioned previously that I am white. No, make that so very white, whiter than a flour fight at a Klu Klux Klan rally. In the past four days I have made the painful sacrifice of sitting out in the sun for quarter of an hour each day. I have also applied two coats of fake tan. By rights, this should have turned me the colour of David Dickinson. Has it? Has it bollocks. I'm not even red!

At this rate I will never tan, and then I will be forced by my family on holiday next month to spend hours outdoors without having built up any resistance whatsoever.

What's French for "I have third degree burns because my mother erroneously believes that it isn't healthy to sit indoors?"

A little something to make me sweeter

2006-06-11T17:45:00.000+01:00

I felt guilty in Waterstone's for two reasons. The first was that I was in the shop at all, having been bombarded of late with dire
warnings about the demise of the independent bookstore and its hideous knock-on effects. The second reason was that I was browsing the "Try Me For 99p" section.

Now, I don't know how these things work, but I can't imagine authors see much return on books promoted in this way. On the other hand, perhaps if I bought something and liked it, I could eventually put more business the author's way and so assuage my guilt. Well, that's what I'm trying to do now, because the book I bought was Percival Everett's Erasure, and it's one of the best books I've read in ages. The TLS agree, calling it "one of the most original and forceful novels to have emerged from America in recent years".

I bought the book on the strength of the blurb on the back, which read: "With sales at an all time low, your family falling apart, and your agent telling you you're not black enough, what's an author to do but write a ghetto novel and call it Fuck?"

The book weaves an impressively coherent story from these elements, despite detouring several times into imagined conversations between dead artists and writers, a game show dream sequence, and of course, the ghetto novel itself, which takes up 80 of the novel's 294 pages. Its protagonist is Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison, professor and author (like Everett himself) of dense, allusive novels.

At the novel's start, he is working on a re-imagination of Barthes' S/Z in novel form (yes, I think you are allowed to think that would be god-awful). But he keeps getting reviews which say things like, "The novel is finely crafted, with fully developed characters, rich language and subtle play with the plot, but one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus' The Persians has to do with the African American experience."

At the same time, a book called We's Lives in Da Ghetto is the hottest property in the literary world. Monk finds himself wondering why, as a black man who has never allowed race to define his identity, he cannot in the least see the attraction of this kind of thing, peppered with violence, drugs and ebonics. So he adopts the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh and writes a novel called My Pafology (later Fuck) which satirises We's Lives in Da Ghetto, as the protagonist aimlessly wanders round eating chicken, making passes at his 'fo' babymothers' and swearing at people.

Around the main plot is woven another strand relating to Monk's family life: death in the family, his brother coming out as gay, his dead father's secret life, and his mother's descent into Alzheimer's.

Oh, and did I mention there's a Derrida joke (surely the only one to have ever existed?)

Wittgenstein: Why did Bach sell his organ?
Derrida: I don't know. Why?
Wittgenstein: Because he was baroque.
Derrida: You mean because he composed music marked by elaborate and even grotesque ornamentation?
Wittgenstein: Well, no that's not exactly what I was getting at. It was a play on words.
Derrida: Oh, I get it.

Everett manages to juggle all these threads without allowing any to become overpowering (although, if I'm being picky, I could have coped with less of the ghetto novel). The only jarring insertions are a series of paragraphs on woodworking and fishing, which are treated as metaphors for life. You get the feeling they've been jammed in to provide an extra metaphorical layer, which frankly isn't needed.

But that's small fry: the book is brilliant: combatively intelligent, allusive without being stodgy, and magnificently funny at the expense of the literary establishment. I liked Everett's prose style - and the originality of his ideas - so much that I immediately bought the two other novels of his available in the UK. First on my reading list will be Glyph, the story of a baby with a ridiculously high IQ who chooses not to speak, but spends his time pondering the worth - "not much" - of influential literary theorists. Well, I'm up for as much slagging off of Derrida as is on offer, really.

I still feel guilty about the 99p thing, mind.

away

2006-06-07T10:39:00.000+01:00

Things are a little chaotic here - deadlines to meet, actual things to do at work, people to catch up with, that sort of thing.

See you at the weekend. In the meantime, should the desire to read something I've written overwhelm you, head over to Joeblade, where you can read all about how enormous trousers ended my youth.

Oh, and one more thing: I fucking hate fucking football.

That is all.

Cigarettes and Alcohol

2006-05-31T18:28:00.000+01:00

There's not a Shakespeare sonnet
Or a Beethoven quartet
That's easier to like than you
Or harder to forget.

You think that sounds extravagant?
I haven't finished yet –
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette.

— Wendy Cope's Giving Up Smoking

Last night, something very exciting happened. I got very, very drunk and - wait for it - didn't smoke a cigarette. This is big news. Cigarettes and me go way back, so far I can't even really remember when I started smoking. What I can remember is that it was a long, hard road to being a proper smoker.

I'd tried some hideous Embassy No.1s courtesy of my friend Tamsin aged about 11, but I think I must have been about 15 or 16 when I first took up the habit properly. My mother once memorably declared that "any child of mine who smokes won't be allowed within 50 miles of my house," so understandably she wasn't that impressed when she caught me smoking on holiday, aged about 16. She believed I was doing it to impress a young gentleman (partially true) and was quite forgiving. She would have been less forgiving had she seen me in my first year of university, trying to say something profound about Derrida or whoever and sucking frantically on a roll-up every week on essay night.

That first year probably represented the zenith of my time as a smoker. There I was, away from home for the first time, keeping my own hours, spending every evening in the pub or in Bill's room, with likeminded smokers. God, it was great.

There was just one problem. I didn't really like smoking. Or rather, I liked everything about smoking except the smoking itself. I loved my mental image of me, cigarette in hand, fingers curled lovingly round it. In my mind, I had an ivory cigarette holder and looked like a flapper (OK, I was probably one letter out.) I loved illustrating a particularly impressive point (I used to think I made a lot of these) with a jab of the cigarette, or looking disdainful by combining a long, slow exhale with raising my eyebrows quizzically. I loved the fact it grouted over any holes in the conversation, and meant you had something to distract you when your companion started talking about epistemology.

But the actual inhaling of the tobacco was always a problem. I didn't like the taste, and every time I'd wake up with a hangover, I would experience the smoker's paradox: I desperately wanted the nicotine, but having a fag made me feel like death warmed up. Not to mention the 'fagover', a special kind of hangover induced by smoking twenty Lucky Strike silvers in a row. Also, if I stopped smoking for more than a few days, it would make me feel profoundly nauseous to start up again. Nevertheless, such was my devotion that I would always smoke through this stage. Feel the burn, I thought - if pain makes you beautiful, nausea makes you cool!

I first seriously tried to give up in the second year, and did a bloody good job too, if you discount every single time I got drunk. My resolve was stiffened by the fact that my housemate (the aforementioned Bill) was also giving up, and therefore we planned to shout and bitch at each other during the painful early stages.

Except it didn't turn out like that. Giving up was easy, really. I didn't feel any withdrawal symptoms - all my cravings were psychological rather than physical. I ate like a horse, though, and my weight soared to a number of stones I'm not going to tell you. (OK, it was about one and a half more than I weigh now, and I do not currently resemble Nicole Richie.) "I'm naturally curvy," I would grunt, stuffing another sherbet lemon into my drooling maw.

But I was determined. I was not going to die because of my innate predisposition to fidget, dammit. I would find something else to do with my hands - take up knitting, perhaps, or throw coins in the air and catch them again like a gangster. My rule was that I was technically a non-smoker as long as I never bought any cigarettes. Poaching the occasional fag from a friend didn't count; I could only rely on so much generosity from my friends, thereby severely curbing my intake.

Of course, there were several problems. Some wise commentator once observed that only twice in your smoking lifetime are you given free cigarettes. The first time is when you are just starting out; the second is when you are trying to quit. The donors' rationale is this: there is only so much lung cancer to go round, so encouraging more people to smoke swings the numbers game in their favour. Of course it's illogical. But then, so is setting something on fire next to your face and then breathing in as deeply as possible. Who came up with that idea?

My resolve also wobbled every time I tried to pull someone who smoked. Because, you see, smoking provides the perfect cover for a seduction attempt, particularly if the rest of your friends don't smoke. The two of you can sneak off together and huddle conspiratorially in a corner, feeling like you're rebels at the gates of dawn, flicking two fingers up at the Nanny State.

There's a great line in Radiohead's Thinking About You that I've always liked because of its fusion of attraction and smoking: "All the things you've got/ All the things you need/ Who bought you cigarettes?/ Who bribed the company to come and see you honey?" (Yeah, it makes sense to me.) Ah, Thom, I'd think. Sometimes I wonder if you are the only one who understands me.

But, like I said, things are different now. I can't claim that if someone had held a Marlboro light in front of me last night, I would have nobly rejected it. But I can say that I didn't miss it.

So perhaps this is it; maybe I really am a non-smoker. Maybe I'll mutate into my zealously anti-smoking mother, feeling the need to cough theatrically in restaurants if anyone within 50 metres lights up, purely to make them feel guilty. I feel sad, in a way - cigarettes have been a big part of my life, and we've had some great times together. Of course, they were always trying to kill me, but what's an agonising early death set against the pure pleasure of feeling like a femme fatale?

Now, if I only kick this damn crack habit...

Shallow? Moi?

2006-05-30T00:07:00.000+01:00

Last week, I was accused by Pia of being a Sloane, a criticism which stung me until I caught sight of myself in the mirror yesterday on the way to work and took in the lace headband, V-neck pearl-buttoned cardigan, knee-length flouncy A line skirt and my brand new grown-up pointy shoes with the grosgrain bows. All that was missing was the pearls - and that was only because I'd left them on the dressing table.

Obviously, my days of grubby student living are psychologically (if alas not fiscally) behind me. I blame my colleagues, who are constantly plying me with Marks & Spencers chocolate buttons ("They're low GI!"), telling me about vintage shoe shops in Notting Hill, and trying to make me drink champagne at lunchtime. My Scottish coal-mining grandfather is probably turning in his grave.

Anyway, I am feeling even less profound than usual this weekend. I'll spare you the story of how I fell out of a changing room in Zara on Friday half-in, half-out of a pair of skinny jeans (which, you'll be pleased to know, I did not buy). Instead, I'm going to embrace the Popbitch-y vibe, and give you a round-up of my Top Ten Best Ever Rubbish Celebrity Encounters.

1. Interviewing the Chuckle brothers with the world's most dangerous student journalist, P. Question: "You've done a lot of work for children - have you ever considered adult entertainment?" He then wrote that they looked like "the missing link between the animal and gypsy kingdoms", and was last seen trying to convince the university authorities to let him dress as a woman for his finals exams by posing as a transsexual.

2. Staring at David Blaine's unshaven neck. Honestly, man, you've come to talk to the cream (rich and thick) of Britain's young bucks at the Oxford Union. Buy a razor.

3. Watching Chris Eubank brandish his cane at a tramp, shouting, "Give you money? The only thing I'll give you is a plane ticket to Nigeria so you can see what real poverty's like!". Mere moments before he had answered my question, "What would you have done if you had not become a boxer?" by touching my thigh and saying, "I know.. I would have married you."

4. Rod Liddle looking down my top at a drinks party. If only I had known at the time that he was up for impregnating an impressionable twentysomething, I could be the proud mother of Liddle Jr and living in Bermondsey with him right now.

5. Playing the Elbow Game with Derren Brown at a performance of the League of Gentlemen pantomime in Hammersmith (more details here).

6. Interviewing Matthew Perry (aka The Day My Adolescence Ended). It is no overstatement to say that I loved Matthew Perry, or rather Chandler, with a passion I have never again experienced for a man. (That's teenage hormones for you.) So imagine my disappointment upon turning up to interview him to find him sitting in the corner, nervously sucking on a Marlboro Light and not being wry or deadpan at all. He compounded the offence by beginning his speech with the phrase, "Could there BE any more people here?" which rates as the cheapest laugh it's possible to get. Anyway, from that day on, I was a wiser and better person, for I knew that celebrities were intrinsically disappointing in person, and also smaller. (P.S. I actually have photographic evidence of this.)

7. Trying not to listen to Patrick Stewart's then-wife going to the loo. Yeah, I know that's a pretty weird celebrity encounter, and I swear it wasn't deliberate. She didn't know where the loo was, I did. I showed her, then realised I would have to stay to show her the way back. What the hell do you do in that situation - make conversation? Hum? Fake a heart attack? In the end I just stood there going slowly redder. When she came out of the cubicle, it was apparent that she was not in the least bit bothered, and I suddenly felt very, very British.

8. Touching Gail Porter's slaphead. (See number five.) She was so nice I wanted to tell her not to talk to journo scum like me.

9. John Rhys Davies' wife being humilated by an uppity 17-year-old. The Lord of the Rings and Sliders star came to the Oxford Union, and brought his wife, who seemed very nice. However, it quickly transpired that she was a Mormon. Cue Uppity 17-year-old, younger brother of a guest: "Is it true that Mormons believe black people have no souls?" She spluttered, and Uppity 17-year-old continued, "Because James Brown - he's the King of Soul!" Cue one very chastised-looking Mormon.

10. Arriving at the Pen Pusher party to find we were sharing the bar with the Grange Hill Cast Reunion.

For bonus points, celebrity encounters at one degree of separation: Weave being late for her hen party because she was in Sierra Leone with Midge Ure; Myleene Klass offering my ex-housemates a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts; A blogger who shall remain nameless making Rory Bremner wait half an hour to use the office loo because he was in the cubicle with his minidisc on, defecating extravagantly.

Dispatches from downtable.

2006-05-25T23:53:00.000+01:00

It's a great life being a reporter - your name's in the paper, you get to touch celebrities on a regular basis, and best of all you're constantly depicted in newspaper-based fiction (usually written by ex-reporters) as hard-working, hard-drinking and hard-assed.

It's different for subs. Ours is a lonelier, less acknowledged furrow. There's no subbing equivalent of All The President's Men. No-one will ever know it was you that came up with "Nice to CBE you, to CBE you nice!" on the story of Brucie's gong. (That said, my mother freakishly did know that I had written the side-splittingly funny "Nesting falcons are birds of pray" on a story about some hawks in a church tower. Am I really that given to bad puns?)

Subs are like goalkeepers - only noticed when we cock up in some extravagant way, such as printing a picture of a schoolteacher instead of a rapist, or printing an interview saying the defendant definitely dunnit just as the jury retires, or not spotting an horrific double entendre in a headline. (My favourite example: the story about a woman with dementia who absconded from a care home in the middle of the night. Cue picture of distraught family reunited with Nan, under the headline, "FAMILY'S HORROR AT GRANNY'S EARLY MORNING DISCHARGE.")

Yes, yes, there's Bill Bryson (an ex-Times subeditor) but he keeps suspiciously quiet about his time downtable, possibly because he worked in Wapping as Murdoch was breaking the print unions, and fears reprisals from hardened comps, armed to the teeth with leading and sharpened colour plates.

But I've now discovered that there is someone out there who also knows the pain of finding "Colleen McCloughlin" referred to in copy. His name is the Grey Cardigan, he writes for the Press Gazette, and he's the most miserable, cynical man in the world. So much so that sometimes I wonder if I'm living some kind of Tyler Durden-esque existence and actually writing the column.

Here he is on budget-vortex Liz Jones: 'I accept that the best advice to columnists is "write what you know", and I recognise the quality of self-revelation that allows the best of the breed to strike a chord with their readers. But since when has any bunnyboiling harridan been so willing to destroy their own marriage just for the amusement of onlookers? It's like being a spectator at Bedlam.'

And just for Artegall: "I would like to say that Professor Roy "Gotcha" Greenslade's weekly missive in The Daily Telegraph will be sadly missed.

Unfortunately, when the tea fund is £2.80 light, one of the NUJ dissidents has flooded the toilets in an attack on corporate greed and they've just banned smoking within 50 yards of the building, a shape-shifting lizard banging on at vast length about how many Chinese journalists are in prison in Beijing doesn't really cut the fucking mustard."

Sigh. What a man.

Back For Good

2006-05-22T18:29:00.000+01:00

I have a question. How do fat neurotic girls in contemporary literature and TV ever manage to eat 'half a tub' of Ben & Jerry's? I have been belabouring a pot of Caramel Chew Chew with a heated scoop for fully ten minutes, and it has yielded but three smears of ice-cream. Gah.

Why the ice cream, you may ask. Well, that would be because I am feeling ultra-girly, having bathed in oestrogen last night at the Take That concert. The Manchester Arena played host to thirteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight screaming women (and two disgruntled boyfriends in the row behind us, looking very glum).

Drawn by the lure of reliving our adolescence and the pure joy of singing the choirboy bit in Never Forget far, far louder than we're allowed to in our living room, my housemate Anna and I had joined forces with Laura to spend all morning at our respective workplaces on the day the tickets went on sale hitting our F5 keys repeatedly. We kept getting more and more desperate and emails pinged around the offices. "London's sold out- Birmingham?". "Birmingham's sold out - Manchester???" (Of course, four hours after we'd justified the time and expense of going to Manchester, the bastards announced more London dates.)

Anyway, after a few personnel changes (Laura's boyfriend dropped out, perhaps because he had seen all the squealing and bailed out while he could) we set off. The Arena is huge, and resembles an indoor football stadium. Except this was like no football game I had ever been to. It was a sea of bunny ears and pink cowboy hats. Everyone was queuing in orderly lines - for WKD! "God," whispered Laura, awefully. "This is like the world's biggest hen night."

Bang on time, support act Beverley Knight tipped up, wearing an orange kaftan, black leggings and white stilettoes. Yeah, she was alright, even if she did scream "MANCHESTER!" for no real reason every five minutes.

She buggered off, they played some adverts. Thousands of women faced a dilemma over whether to nip out to the loos now, and risk missing the start, or hang on until Pray came on. (This, and Sure, were the two big toilet exodus triggers of the night.)

And then - it was time. The lights went down and the screaming reached an uncomfortable level. The back bit of the stage went blue. And, er, well then they sort of ambled on, really. It was only when they started singing that I realised they weren't stage crew. Even worse - I didn't recognise the song. What had happened? Were they (no) trying out new material?

Thankfully not, it was just something off the first album I was too busy falling off my first bike to have heard. What followed was an actual example of some new material (same as the old material, largely) then a romp through the old favourites we knew and loved so well. There was even a tango version of It Only Takes A Minute (hmm) and some Beatles covers (mm hmm).

My favourite bit of the concert was definitely the crowd's treatment of Gary Barlow. As previously discussed, I've got a bit of a soft spot for Gazza. He reminds me of a simpler, happier age when talent gave you a bye into a boyband and I simply will not brook any argument that he is a rubbish songwriter - neither would you had you seen the crowd's reaction to Never Forget, the night's final song.

When the tango-inspired strains of It Only Takes A Minute started up, Mark, Jason and Howard all had a crack at dancing with the Senorita, to polite cheering. However, when Gary sprang up from the piano, the crowd went wild. It's Tiger Tim syndrome, clearly - we love the slightly shonky more than any amount of gilded perfection. The rest of the band look pretty good for men in their mid-thirties, but Gary seems to have morphed into the manager of an office supply chain. In their white shirts and black trousers, the others looked James Bond-ish. Gary was more David Brent.

He knows this, of course, which is part of his charm. After they'd ponced round on a platform in the middle of the auditorium for a bit, they all retreated backstage. Some bloke with mad hair and a white coat came on - the Manager. He proceeded to intone his rules for making a boy band, as the chaps filed back out and did a bit of robot dancing.

As he proclaimed, "Rule 7. The boys should be able to dance," Mark, Jason and Howard spun, twirled and did other dancey stuff while Gary plonked away on a Yamaha. "Stop," came the ghostly voice. "*All* members of the band should be able to dance." Then The Manager man-handled Gary on to the end of the line-up. The noise was phenomenal. Go on Gary, bust that groove!

I don't know whether it was the demographic, or the Fab Four, but this has to be the nicest concert I've ever been to. Nothing more destructive than a teddy bear was hurled at the stage, and even the clamour to touch the band on their meet-and-greet was relatively genteel. The band all looked genuinely grateful (you must know how much I hate ungrateful misery-dick celebrities) . Howard summed it up: "I can't believe how lucky I am, when I think I was a decorator from Ashton-under-Lyne!"

Towards the end, I suddenly realised where I had felt this atmosphere before: the Wimbledon Veterans' Matches, when they wheel out Pat Cash and John McEnroe for a bit of a knock-about and some light banter. That's not to say the show wasn't professional - it was bloody impressive - it's just that they really looked like they were enjoying themselves. (Yes, mutter away, you cynics, about how Jason had spent all the money and was working in a chipshop and Howard had had a near-nervous breakdown. I care not.) The only downside? I'm afraid the quantity of hormones sloshing round will bring on an early menopause.

And God, I can't wait for the Spice Girls reunion. What? What?

a moment of sloane zen

2006-05-19T12:59:00.000+01:00

Last night at 2am I was sitting in a colleague's Kensington flat on an unpronounceably named IKEA rug, sipping Veuve Clicquot, eating bread from Waitrose, listening to Crowded House and admiring his needlessly large plasma screen TV. "Yes," I thought. "This is what I always imagined living in London would be like."

no different whined at than withstood

2006-05-17T23:20:00.000+01:00

Deep consternation at the Media Organisation That Cannot Be Named about the BBC's plans to air an autopsy. Ick, we chorused, that's when they, you know, cut up a dead person. Eww!

Dr Dick Shepherd (which, may I add, is a particularly chilling name) will describe the process, including - horror - "the smell of cadavers". Well, we can't have that, can we?

Several thoughts: one, it's on BBC3, so only people who work in the media and four insomniacs will see it anyway. Two, what is this strange obsession with not showing on TV things that happen - in this case all the time - in real life?

It speaks volumes about our cosseted existence that news programmes are too squeamish on our behalf to show dead bodies from Iraq and other war zones. It's all very well for us to feel we'd rather our comfortable lives weren't intruded upon by seeing the gory evidence of man's inhumanity to man on TV - but what about all the people for whom that is their day to day life? Wouldn't we be more compassionate and concerned if we actually saw what they see?

I know that children need to be protected from explicit sex and violence, and that's fine - but this is a programme that's on after the watershed, and will no doubt be preceded with all kinds of warnings. Dear Gunther von Hagens' efforts on Channel 4 certainly were. So what we're talking about here is "protecting" adults from something that happens all the time, something that will happen to me, to you, to everybody. "Most things may never happen: this one will."

We try very hard to pretend that death doesn't exist, or that if it does it's a sanitary, clinical process. It's not, of course - I remember going to a French pharmacy with some generalised stomach ailment last year, creaking through in my rusty French ("j'ai une probleme digestif" I blurted out, gesturing vaguely). As I was getting nowhere, my sister (a doctor) said, "See if you can ask for Buscopan - that's what we give to dying people to dry them out."

NHS blog doctor is particularly good on this. He writes: "I hate the clap-happy way the hospice "movement" and the media leads us to belief that dying can be a "learning" experience, a "sharing" experience. It is not."

Coupled with this desire to keep death at arm's length is the strange emphasis on the sanctity of dead bodies. One of the most interesting things David Mitchell said on Mock The Week was something like, "Why do people get upset that, ooh, Grandad's organs have been removed without our permission? Oh of course, that's much worse than throwing him in a ditch!"

Of course, it's not healthy to become obsessed with death - although if you're Philip Larkin, you'll get some good poetry out of it. And perhaps I'm just saying all this because I've never seen a dead body, but I hope not. I do feel that if we stopped trying to hide death away, we'd treat the dying better (and I think the same goes for mental illness).

Liquorice Allsorts

2006-05-15T18:57:00.000+01:00

I realise I've been a little lax recently so I thought I'd do four mini posts instead of one big one, in the style of that end bit the Guardian now give their columnists to show off how cultured they are.

This week I have been mostly watching: Prime Suspect.

Huge excitement that I've reached the fourth series, as I love watching Helen Mirren hitting tables and being emotional, whilst all policemen live up to 70s stereotypes around her. Even better, every series has a theme: the first was, broadly, 'it's hard to be a woman in the police force', the second 'it's hard to be black in the police force' and the third 'it's hard to be gay in the police force'.

So I was eagerly awaiting the discovery of which oppressed minority were going to be consoled this time round, but it seems to be a toss-up between 'it's hard to be an abused child in the police force' and 'it's hard to be a foetus in the police force'. God knows who it'll be next series.

Now, excuse me if I have this wrong, but Prime Suspect was on ITV, wasn't it? As was Cracker... Has anything ITV has commissioned since been anywhere near as good? (No, you can't have Touching Evil. A strong premise was ruined by charisma vacuum Robson Green.)

This week I have been mostly listening to: OK Go.

I have extremely narrow musical knowledge, and also 'the worst music taste in the world'. Not a good combination, which is why I almost never write about music. Besides which, as a former journalistic colleague put it, 'All music criticism consists of saying "X band sounds really like Y band with a touch of Z".' But yeah, I've been listening to OK Go, and it's, er, really good. Lovely tunes, nice lyrics, fantastic dance routines. The lead singer looks like a bit of a fittie too, which never hurts.

This week I have been mostly eating: Iranian food.

See that? Those are my horizons, expanding. Just as I reject 'world music', I tend to be a bit boorish about FFF (Funny Foreign Food), loosely defined as any cuisine outside Western Europe. I'm not proud of this, so at the further suggestion of the Man of Taste and Substance, I tackled my prejudice that all North African/Middle Eastern food was gristly (and grisly) meat embalmed in unspeakable slop by going to Patogh, a very bijou Iranian place off the Edgware Road.

I was surprised to discover that it was all very pleasant (apart from the mad Americans intent on getting us to join their cult, or talk to them about Eng-er-land.) The meat was not gristly; nor was there slop. There was even some very nice yoghurty drink, although I still remain to be convinced that raw radish is anyone's idea of a delicacy, even if it does come with free mint.

I think I've cracked my hatred of FFF, anyway: I don't like dry food, and in particular I like my meat to be positively wet. I also love dips, to the extent I used to refuse to eat McNuggets when there was no BBQ sauce available (now I refuse to eat McNuggets because I don't want to die aged 40 of high blood pressure). I get very stroppy with pizza delivery men if my requested Garlic and Herb pot fails to arrive. And obviously, chips are nothing without ketchup, no matter how budget a brand it is. And this doesn't just apply to cheap food: French and Italian restaurant food, being very keen on the whole sauce genre, suits me perfectly.

So, Iranian chicken kebab thing = great. But, frankly, I could have done with some sauce.

This week I have been mostly reading Kenneth Tynan's diaries.

I first encountered Kenneth Tynan in Christopher Logue's memoirs, Prince Charming. All I knew was that he smoked his cigarettes between his third and fourth fingers, and was a theatre critic. Anyway, his name kept cropping up and I eventually resorted to wikipedia, which revealed he was behind the groundbreaking sex revue Oh Calcutta and was the first man to say 'fuck' on TV. Fair enough, I thought.

Then I read Craig Brown's parody of his diaries in This Is Craig Brown. They sounded hilarious, a mix of intentional wit and unintentional pomposity. (Sample Brown-as-Tynan entry: "To see Waiting For Godot at the Royal Court. I doubt I could ever have full anal sex with anyone who didn't love Beckett." Sample entry 2: "Considered suicide. Checked diary - am entertaining Princess Margaret on Friday. Decided to postpone.")

Tynan's story is a tragic one in many ways. I want to write that he shot to fame as an undergraduate theatre critic, but somewhere in my head I can hear the voice of my boss saying, "The only person who shot to fame was the Human Cannonball." Zeitgeist could have been his middle name (although actually it was Peacock) and his early spunky, subjective, coruscating reviews fitted the revolutionary zeal that had infected the theatre in the 50s.

The diaries, however, date from the 70s (specifically 75-77), beginning as he finishes an unfulfilling decade as a dramaturg at the National Theatre, feeling he has discovered only one dramatist of any note - Tom Stoppard. They cover the subsequent decline of his health - through emphysema exacerbated by heaving smoking ("I must smoke to write," he agonises some way through) - and his eventual move to Los Angeles.

The diaries are full of shameless name dropping (Gore Vidal, Princess Margaret, Harold Pinter - it goes on and on, you should see the index!) and increasingly frequent bouts of self-loathing as the ageing Tynan struggles more and more to put pen to paper. There's also the small matter of Tynan's anal fixation and love of spanking, indulged over the years with a submissive named Nicole.

They're an entertaining read; but I am worried by them. Tynan is seduced by the glamour of the theatre and celebrity; but the only way he can become involved is by the essentially parasitic act of criticism. When this palls, he tries to become involved creatively (the stint at the NT) and fails. Thereafter, his relentless socialising is tinged with the realisation that his talent, such as it was, has largely deserted him: he is no longer the firebrand twentysomething who could churn out 6,000 words a week, but a 48-year-old racked with doubt, missing his copy deadlines by months.

For someone like me, also involved in a glamorous but parasitic job, my desire to identify with Tynan was chilling. Is this what will happen to me - conversations mired in anecdotes about semi-famous people, overwhelmed by the feeling my best years are behind me, so impressed with my own witticisms that I record them in some sort of journal which I force people to read....

.....Oh shit.

Bugger.

2006-05-11T15:32:00.000+01:00

One of my favourite comic actors, Chris Langham, has been charged with 15 counts of making indecent images of children today. It'll be fascinating to see how the media treat him - professionally, he's at the peak of his career, with armfuls of awards and plaudits for The Thick of It and Help - and he's certainly no panto villain-esque Gary Glitter figure.

TV: a cruel, but occasionally delightful, mistress

2006-05-07T19:00:00.000+01:00

I don't really watch many shows on actual television - with the hours I work, that would mean a continuous diet of chatshows and home makeover programmes, and I can't bear the feeling of quiet unstoppable hopelessness both engender in me. There was a great golden age when UKTV Gold showed an episode of Top Gear every day at noon, but I've come to the horrible conclusion that I have now seen every episode of this ever made. Twice.

Sometimes the gods of TV are kind, and throw me Scrubs or ER (I haven't got the commitment to watch Columbo in the morning, and the loss of Diagnosis:Murder from our screens is still deeply felt), but more often they don't. So what do I do - go out, enjoy myself, go on long walks and visit museums and appreciate the diversity of experience on offer in this great city? Do I balls. I tuck into something from the saved programmes channel on my cable, C1.

The joy and danger of this method is that I have no need to stick to scheduled times and ration myself to one episode of a particular programme every week. Oh no. I can gulp down entire series in a day.

And that is exactly what I have been doing. The first delicious televisual morsel down my gullet was Blackpool, a BBC mini-series set in, er, Blackpool and following the fortunes of bluff self-aggrandising arcade owner Ripley Holden, played by David Morrissey. (Yes, David Morrissey of Basic Instinct 2 fame. Did anyone else get horribly confused by sentences in the press such as "Morrissey gives a blisteringly sexual performance in the film..", or was that just me?)

The plot, according to the delightfully succinct IMDb entry, is: "Soon after local entrepreneur Ripley Holden (Morrissey) opens his arcade in his beloved home town of Blackpool, a murder investigation makes tears at the fabric of his personal and professional lives. "

Of course, Morrissey wasn't why I chose to watch this, rather than, say, Touching Evil. That accolade goes to The Sexiest Man on Television, David Tennant, who plays DI Peter Carlisle, instructed to solve the murder of a young man found dead in Ripley's arcade.

Now, I'm not going to bore you with explaining the allure of TSMOT, because I can't. Last time I tried, I ended up burbling something about his ability to wear a pinstripe suit and trainers, and not look like a twat. You may scoff, but relationships have been built on less. He also has amazing hair (so glossy and lustrous) and the most beautiful brown eyes. But I'm going to stop there, as I still have just enough self-awareness to realise that I sound like a mental.

Of course, apart from the fact he's Ever So Dreamy (tm), Tennant's a damn fine actor. But it's David Morrissey who really dominates Blackpool, drawing you into caring about his ego-ridden, violent character, and making you realise that there's more to Ripley Holden than an unreconstructed chauvinist pig. It's not an easy task: in one scene, Ripley visits one of the prostitutes who works in the flats he owns. After questioning her about the murder, he begins methodically undressing. "What are you doing that for?" she asks. "Thought I'd collect the rent while I'm here," he counters.

I wasn't that enamoured of Blackpool at first, finding the first episode a bit slow, and the musical interludes - where the characters sing along to pop songs, whilst otherwise going about their daily business - jarred initially. A great deal has been made of the influence of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, but as I've unaccountably missed this seminal piece of television, it all just felt a bit odd.

But by episode two I was hooked - the time taken to introduce the characters paid off, because these are real characters, with pasts and motives and hidden depths, rather than the parade of stock types that so often passes for psychological insight. So there's Ripley's daughter, Shyanne, who falls in love with a man her father's age; son Danny, brimful of sexual confusion and the desire to protect his dad; and his wife Natalie, oblivious to all the fact her husband has slept with "every woman over 40 in Blackpool" and racked with guilt over her burgeoning relationship with Carlisle.

Ripley and Carlisle make a great dramatic pairing, too - at first, you're sure who's the good guy and who's the villain (particularly as Tennant looks like a chirpy, clean-cut Scot, while Morrissey sports a shocking greased semi-mullet and an upsetting assortment of skull-shaped tie clips). But the roles become more ambiguous as Carlisle becomes more deeply involved with Natalie, and seems intent on removing the greatest obstacle in his path to her - her husband.

And suddenly, Ripley became more sympathetic. He was still a greasy showman, but the threat of losing everything he loved - his family, his arcade, his dream of building a Vegas-style 'casino hotel' - gave him a dignity that reminded me of Richard II, had Shakespeare's king expressed his resigned sadness through the medium of the power ballad.

As I said, bloody good writing - as was the scene when Carlisle tries to convince Natalie to leave her husband, and his world, and run away with him. He follows her along the seafront, declaiming: "Here are some of the things we'll never have - we'll never be together so long we forget how it started. We'll never go to bed in the afternoon on the strength of a smile across a room. We'll never go dancing and embarrass everybody but ourselves. We'll never argue. We'll never make up. We'll never have enough memories of our own to make it through the bad times. We'll never share a fish supper."

You can tell I was emotionally involved with the characters by this point, because this actually managed to penetrate the crusty carapace of sneering cynicism with which I usually treat love affairs on the tellybox. (Me watching Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet: "What's he doing looking at her through a fucking fish tank? How is that romantic?" Me watching When Harry Met Sally: "Oh will you just HURRY UP!") I may even have snuffled a little bit. I haven't been this emotional since Dr Green went to the big emergency room in the sky to the accompaniment of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

As for the singing - hmm, it is a problem. I have to admit I didn't really like it until the very end of episode five, when a bloody but unbowed Ripley launches into Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. What a corker of a song, and how well-chosen. Even the supporting cast were excellent. There's Cold Feet's John Thomson as Ripley's best mate, one of the League of Gentleman as his slimy accountant, and David Bradley (aka The Caretaker in Harry Potter) as a Biblebashing gambling protestor.

Anyway, considering how much I whinge about British TV being stale and formulaic, I thought it only fair to tell you that it's not all doom and gloom. And it's very odd that two of the best (and oddest) things I've seen on TV recently – this and BBC Three's noirish Funland – have been set in Blackpool. So, TV execs, here's my recipe for ratings and critical success: more genre-busting David Tennant-starring TV dramas set in Northern seaside resorts, please.

Needless yet appealing photo of David Tennant.

With this Independent photographer, you are really spoiling us

2006-04-28T16:18:00.000+01:00

I don't know what impression of me this blog gives - I fondly imagine that anyone who reads it thinks I am a devil-may-care carouser with a bulging address book and borderline alcohol problem. How this mythical reader would square that with me having enough time to write 1000 words of fatuous commentary on my life about twice a week I do not know. But for one week only, let me tell you, I am living the dream.

Yes, that's right, I've had two meals out this week. Hold on to your hats, for I am a fully-fledged gastronome, the Giles Coren of SE16, only less miserable and not even a tiny bit Jewish. (Neither will I include the phrase "he began to plan a relaxing afternoon wank" in my debut novel.)

Last night's destination was the Ambassador on Exmouth Market, which the Man of Taste & Substance chose, having read a glowing review in the Metro by Marina "Yummy" O'Loughlin (on the web here).

The fact that we were on the gastro cutting edge was reinforced when we turned up, late and slightly pie-eyed (in my case) and were shown to a positively spartan table and chairs, the French wooden curvy-backed ones that numb your buttocks within seconds and usually have one dodgy leg. Despite the fact there was clearly a cloakroom, no one offered to take our coats. Had we done something wrong? Were we not cutting edge enough? I was wearing a pencil skirt and stripes, goddammit. Man of Taste and Substance was wearing a flowery shirt! Did we smell uncool?

The reason for the staff's distraction soon became clear, however. "I hope you don't mind," the waiter said sheepishly, "but there's a photographer from the Independent here tonight." I looked round - ah, of course. There he was, lining up his lens directly at our table, in order to get the best shot of me shovelling reasonably-priced bistro food into my gaping maw. Thank God no-one reads the Independent.

I can only assume the Indy snapper's presence indicated that the culinary bandwagon was drawing up outside. The day before, the Standard's Fay Maschler had given the Ambassador four stars. This was looking hot. And Marina had found herself in thrall to the rabbit ravioli, apparently, and I was looking forward to feeling the same.

As it turned out, it was not to be. You see, this is one of those places with five or six options for each course which change regularly. And rabbit ravioli had been cruelly displaced by squid and pig's cheek casserole. Ho hum.

But the pared-down menu seemed logical, given the surrounds. This is that rare and successful creation, a restaurant that knows what it wants. It's all about good, fresh, seasonal ingredients and nothing else. The cuts of meat on offer - such as pork belly and the aforementioned cheeks - are relatively cheap, but repay long, slow cooking by becoming melt-in-the-mouth delicacies. I like this in a restaurant - as Anthony Bourdain put it, any chimp can fry a steak or boil a lobster. Even I can at home, really. Making something edible out of the offcuts is proper cooking.

"Yes," agreed Man, tucking into the foie gras and chicken terrine (this choice, followed by the veal, meant he had plumped for the No Ethics Special). "It's peasant food, isn't it, for people who are time-rich and cash-poor?"

Hold on, I thought, that's me. Why I am not at home, sweating some scrag end? Because, crucially, I am still frightened of weird meat. We were very much a chicken breast and pork chop kind of household, so as a child my only encounter with the outer fringes of meatiness was Dad's yearly purchase of andouilette and tete de veau on holiday. Well, andouilette smells of poo, and tete de veau is a horrific concept. It has taken me years to recover, and although I enjoyed the bone marrow salad at St John, and even a piece of pigeon so rare blood oozed out of it as I cut it, I still have a problem. Only last year I bottled out of cooking pig's trotters when I realised I would have to shave them first.

Anyway, it's not just lesser known cuts of meat that the Ambassador gives an airing, but vegetables too. "Shit. What's an endive?" I hissed behind the menu.
"It's a root vegetable, um, one of those ones with leaves and a stalk," said Man. "I think it's one of those ones that's, er, thicker at the base."
I sniggered like the fourteen-year-old boy I am inside.

The starters arrived almost freakishly fast. I can understand the speed of the terrine's appearance, as I'm sure they just chop a slice off a big slab in the kitchen, but I would have thought the pig's cheek and squid casserole might have taken a bit more time. But if they did just bung it in the microwave (which I'm sure you can't do to squid) you couldn't tell. I snaffled some of the terrine - outstanding - before returning to my own starter. My major problem with squid is the way it looks, and this looked like a plate of arseholes.

Thankfully, it tasted like squid, all squeaky and fresh, but cooked just right with a little bit of bite, which perfectly complemented the falling-apartness of the cheek meat. And it was just the right size; my bouche was certainly amused, but I was still keen to get involved with my main: Grilled Charolais Rib-eye Steak with Swiss Chard and Bone Marrow Gremolata.

With a certain don't-fuck-with-me stare, I had ordered the steak rare, and by god had they taken me at my word. Thick slices of beef had a brown rim but plenty of red, glistening core, slathered in meaty, snotty breadcrumb and marrow mix.
"What's that, then?" I said, forking a celery-like structure underneath the beef.
"That must be the Swiss Chard," said Man.
"And that would be?"
"Well, it's celery stuff, I suppose," he continued, and looked at me appraisingly. "It's, um, thicker at the..."

But I had already started snickering in a juvenile fashion again, and I swear I even heard a click from the photographer. Shit.

My humiliation was complete, but not the meal. The dessert menu arrived - some sort of chocolate tart, panna cotta ("Bollocks to panna cotta," said Man, fervently) and quince and apple pave. "I'm not having that," I said - thinking, in for a penny, in for a pound. "That sounds too much like quim." So we both had the cheese course.

Bizarrely, they brought the cheese (or rather, three cheeses) out to show us, before whisking it away and returning with three small chunks of it on a plate. I can understand the point of bringing a trolley for you to choose from, but this seemed pointless. "It's like showing you the instruments of torture," mused Man. At any rate, it was good cheese - I would love to tell you what it was, but the young man who had briefly shown us the cheese had mumbled the names too quietly and quickly to discern anything. One of them was clearly Roquefort, the other Brie-ish, and the third some sort of hard cheese which gave off a thrillingly ammonic whiff but turned out to be reasonably mild.

I suppose at this point I should report back on the bogs, seeing as they've become such a hot topic. The ladies' were red. Unpleasantly red, like being trapped inside a strawberry. And all the doors looked the same, so it took me some minutes to get back out. What about the gents? "They've got mirrors on facing walls. You can see yourself reflected an infinite number of times." No agreement on whether this a good or bad thing.

Including service, and a bottle of wine more expensive than was strictly necessary under the circumstances, the meal came to £90. So go quickly if you want to, because I hear the clattering hooves of the culinary bandwagon on the approach, and it might well do a Galvin and be fully booked until the end of time soon. And that would be shame, because buttock numbing and affection for humorous vegetables aside, it was very good.

A humorous vegetable, yesterday.

Juvenile interlude.

2006-04-28T16:15:00.000+01:00

Meme, or rather, Me!Me!

2006-04-26T21:16:00.000+01:00

With apologies for my self-indulgence.

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? Why do my eyes look fat? Is it possible to have fat eyes?
2. How much cash do you have on you? A pound in change. I am all about the debit card.
3. What's a word that rhymes with TEST? Lest.
4. Planet? Neptune. I feel it's the underdog planet.
5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list? My housemate Tom, thrillingly.
6. What is your favorite ring on your phone? It used to be Justin Timberlake's Rock Your Body, rescored for the tinniest phone ringer ever, but then I realised I'm not 15 and so now it's just a chirruping sound.
7. What shirt are you wearing? I'm not wearing a shirt. How d'you like that?
8. What do you label yourself? Alpha female manquée, or filthy journo hack.
9. Name the brand of shoes you've recently worn: Jones The Bootmaker.
10. Bright or Dark Room? Dark. What a crap question.
11. What were you doing at midnight last night? Working. Yeah, at work, in my office, bagpiping FACT into NEWS.
12. What did your last text message you received on your cell say? "I'm actually out doing a vox pop at the moment. Reviewing the circus. What's going on?"
13. Where is your nearest 7-11? With a what now?
14. What's a saying that you say a lot? "But he's the sexiest man on television!" (Can you guess who I was talking about? Pia is not allowed to answer.)
15. Who told you they loved you last? Er, probably best not go into this.
16. Last furry thing you touched? Some clothing in a shop, probably. All I seem to do in clothes shops these days is wander round, idly feeling fabrics.
17. How Many Drugs Have You Done In The Past Three Days? Why is this question capped up - is this a test of some kind? What do you mean, am I paranoid? Are those chocolate biscuits?
18. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed? Er, none. I use my phone.
19. Favorite age you have been so far? Probably 21. That was good. Or 20. I was very excited in the run-up to being 15, but it turned out to be rubbish.
20. Your worst enemy? The Tesco Finest Ready Meal. Destroyer of waistlines, slayer of good intentions.
21. What is your current desktop picture? An amusing picture Grinch sent me of a feminist rally at a golf course. Some joker has snuck in the back with a placard that reads, "Iron my shirt, bitch." I feel vaguely guilty about it, so it might be replaced with "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten."
22. What was the last thing you said to someone? What, now? I'm at work, so probably something like, "Has the new shape come through on the nursing WOB?" Well, you asked.
23. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly, which would you choose? Flying. Come on, if Jade Goody can become a millionaire by being thick on TV, you would clearly earn more than that if you could fly.
24. Do you like someone? I like lots of people. I am a very warm, giving person, according to my psychotherapist. It's just that sometimes, you can hug the rabbits too tight and they don't get up any more. That makes me sad.
25. The last song you listened to? White Town's Your Woman. A zillion years after its original release, I still love it. I harbour dreams of finding out why it's a man singing, "I will never be your woman," but cannot be arsed. (Actually, I can.

Tidings of confit and joy

2006-04-25T21:38:00.000+01:00

I've been trying to eat at Galvin for some time, but it's not easy. The Baker Street 'Bistrot De Luxe' has been going for months now, but thanks to some embarrassingly gushing reviews about its great food and unbelievably reasonable prices by Giles Coren et al, it's always fully booked.

So I decided to approach from another angle: lunch. One of the perks of being a journalist, and therefore having journalist friends, is that plenty of them work bizarre hours and days. So it was perfectly possible to assemble five of us in Baker Street at 1 o'clock: reformed bloggers Damo and Guttersniper, and Indy Man and Woman (look, I'm rubbish at thinking up witty and apposite pseudonyms, but they work for the Indy, so those will have to do.)

Even getting a table for lunch - lunch! on a Tuesday! - had been difficult. We were put on the reserve list, apparently, when IW called on Monday night. But clearly some dreadful businessman had closed the deal or whatever without the need for upmarket French bistro fare, because she got a call at half ten this morning saying a table was now ours.

First off, the restaurant looks good. The front door is suspiciously flush with the surrounding walls, leading me twice to peer into the lobby of the flats next door, until the presence of two security guards at a desk made me twig this wasn't the restaurant.

Inside, it's all dark wood panelling and mirrors. My only complaint is that in the eight-foot wide floor space between the two walls of banquettes, they've shoehorned in some tables for six that are clearly too big. If you sit at one of these (and we did) you are uncomfortably aware of the complicated balletic movements required of the waiters negotiating the dining room.

But this is the price of success - and it's pretty understandable success. The set lunch, at £15.50 for three courses, is about half the price of that at comparable restaurants. (My wet-dream gourmet lunch? Le Gavroche, at £43 including a half-bottle of wine.)

There were only two choices for each course, and either we're all shockingly alike or I must have started a trend, because we all ordered the same: Terrine of duck confit with lentil vinaigrette, followed by veal cheeks, macaroni and Marsala sauce.

Until, that was, the terrine arrived and Guttersniper espied a very prominent nut in it. He's allergic to the little buggers- in fact I was there the last time he had a reaction, and truly it was a sight to behold as his entire face swelled and he went a shade of puce more usually found on a Glaswegian alcoholic's nose.

We called the waiter. "Is this a nut?" he enquired, despite the fact that it was quite clearly a nut. "I will find zis out," parried the waiter (did I mention all the waiters are authentically French? A touch of class.) Of course it was a bloody nut. Impasse. "Well, I can't eat it," remarked Guttersniper. "I'll be sick all over the table."

This seemed to galvanise our waiter into action, and a Jerusalem artichoke soup was swiftly substituted. I'd earlier decided against this option on the grounds I didn't know what a Jerusalem artichoke was. I asked. "Well," said Damo, expansively. "It's not actually an artichoke. It's a tuber." The others nodded sagely. "And it looks like one of those vegetables Esther Rantzen used to show on That's Life."

"Great," I snapped, "all very useful if I get asked about it in a quiz, but what does it taste like?" The table fell silent.

Sadly, by the time the soup arrived I was already face-down in my duck terrine and in no position to appreciate its tuberous goodness. The terrine arrived in a slab, with stripes - oh joy of joys - of foie gras. The duck meat was all earthy and vigorous like it should be, but intercutting it with almost wrongly rich foie gras was a masterstroke. The two complemented each other perfectly, and I fell upon it with disgusting degustatory enthusiasm.

The veal cheeks were less successful. Everyone else snacked theirs back, so I can only conclude that either my portion was unusually salty, or everyone else has a higher tolerance of it than I do. The jus reduction business tasted too much like neat Balsamic vinegar for my liking. However, the cheek itself was done to perfection - practically falling apart. Sorry that you died young, baby cow, but at least it was worth it. The pasta tubes were slightly redundant, but decorative.

Pudding choices were Brie de Meaux with walnut bread or Tiramisu. All of us plumped for Brie, except Nutboy. A big hunk of cheese duly arrived. It wasn't as oozy or as noxious as I'd hoped, and frankly was too much for a lunchtime. We had a minor disagreement about the bread. Damo said the fruit detracted from the cheese. The Indies disagreed. I found it hard to get worked up about the bread question, as I was still whimpering from the terrifying interrogation over my single status between courses.

Other bits: the wine was very good, and very reasonably priced. Our double espressos were exemplary. The service was slightly supercilious, but that's French waiters for you. Oh, oh, the toilets. I must tell you about the toilets. They were lovely - even more wood, funky door bits, ambient lighting. Even if the food were crap, it would be worth going to see the toilets.

Luckily, it's not, and I'd love to go back to eat a la carte. I've got my eye on the Salad of Dorset Crab and Apple, Feuillete of Angus beef, etuvee of leek & Bourguignonne garnish (what's an etuvee?) and then Oeuf a la neige, which would still set you back just under £30 before service.

£30? The owners must be mad. No wonder it was fully booked on a Tuesday lunchtime.

In which I take leave of my fashion senses

2006-04-24T18:13:00.001+01:00

Sometimes, fashion treats you right. This winter, apparently, it was all about Hitchcock Blondes and lots of black and a few stripes if you felt particularly daring. I rose to the challenge admirably, as my entire wardrobe still bespeaks the fact I was once a fat goth, and so is a temple to black.

Stripes? Well, when I was young we were told that horizontal stripes made you look fat and vertical stripes made you look like a cafe awning... but bugger it, I was game. I've always thought that it's probably a good idea to wear these styles of clothes which everyone knows are deeply unflattering, as it levels the playing field. Who's to know that you are a genuine fat person in skinny jeans? *Everyone* is a fat person in skinny jeans.

I went on a rare clothes shopping spree last week (for me, visiting more than two clothes shops in a day counts as a spree; more than four is a rampage) and checked out the finest the High Street had to offer. As I get older, I get more and more set in my ways over a lot of things; but in clothes terms the reverse seems to be true. I now wear things I would have openly scoffed at only two years ago.

Example: I have just bought a pair of satin ballet pumps. With ribbons. Ribbons that you lace up your legs, like Margot Fonteyn or a ten-year-old in a bun. I cannot fathom why I did this: it can't be that I long to be a ballerina. I *was* a ballerina - or at least I did ballet, for several years in fact, in an attempt to correct my disgraceful childhood pigeon-toed gait. I became obsessed with it for a while - all the photos from my First Communion feature me in first position, toolishly.

But the sad fact was, I was rubbish. I could do the arms no problem, but the leg bit totally eluded me, and eventually I was put out to pasture in the class with all the fat kids (I was then a thin kid; it all went wrong aged 12). Anyway, it's not a part of my life which necessarily kindles any strong feelings in me. Neither is my current life likely to lead me into any emergency from which the only escape is the magic of dance.

But this purchase has me worried; am I now going to start uncontrollably buying clothes I find inherently ridiculous? Has my brain become suffused with the misplaced belief that I can accessorize without looking like Coco The Clown? I don't really own any jewellery - four necklaces, maybe, mostly presents. I usually have a ring, but I've lost it and I can't be arsed to buy another one. Earrings? Well, when the holes in your lobes are a centimetre wide, your options are limited and costly.

Then last week, out of the blue, I bought a hairband. And not just any hairband. It's lace. It's - for want of a better word - fancy. It makes me look even more like Princess Beatrice than usual. In fact - god - all my new clothes are making me look more like Princess Beatrice.

Further evidence that I've taken leave of my senses came in the form of The Tea-Dress. I bought it on a whim, hoping it was summery (it's not; it's black and red, and makes me look like I should be serving antipasto with a sneer somewhere with checked tablecloths). And then Matt came over, saw me in it, and said words I had never had addressed to me before: "Oh, that's a pretty dress."

I don't think I've ever owned a "pretty dress". People who own pretty dresses watch Desperate Housewives and have pedicures. They're high-maintenance. I'm a scruffy student trapped in the body of a journalist.

I can only conclude it's my job that's changed me. Working in the smartest office in the world (TM) with immaculately groomed 40something women who work hard to look 30 is rubbing off. The trouble is, I'm also trying to look 30 now - but from the wrong side. And it's not working.

Therefore, I have devised some rules which I am going to stick to when I next go shopping, in the hope that I can restore some calm to my wardrobe. We're not having the jolly sequinned cardigan debacle all over again, I'll tell you that.

1) No more black. I am not a fat goth, and summer is coming.
2) City shorts are the work of the devil. They are merely the culottes which I so despised in the early 90s in another hellish incarnation. Why not just wear a skirt, or trousers? It's not exactly the hardest decision in the world. Pick one or other, not some half-arsed middle-ground, which will make you look like Dawn French as George in Five Go Mad In Dorset.
3) Just because I was not allowed to wear the following things while growing up is no reason to wear them now - ballet shoes, hotpants, tutus (I am serious - I feel a strange affinity with netting in skirts), red lipstick, white foundation, the colour purple.
4) I will give brown another chance. Ever since being forced into a brown school uniform - brown pleated skirt, beige jumper, brown tie, brown blazer with gold piping, brown she-brogues - I have not been able to look at brown clothes without suppressing a shudder of horror. Sadly, brown suits me, and I need to accept this.
5) I will never buy cheap shiny suit trousers because I am poor, as they look awful and sometimes go so shiny across the buttock you start sliding off your chair at work.
6) Tulip skirts - what's the point? My arse is big enough already.
7) In the epic Miltonian battle between the thong and the French short, there could only be one winner. The thong must be cast out into the wilderness and spurned like a rabid dog.
8) That which looks good on SJP does not look good on me. Ditto Sienna Miller.
9) No more ballet pumps. I love them, but I need to branch out.
10) Absolutely no cropped ANYTHING - from jackets to trousers. Just makes you look like you're in denial about your size.

Dear me, that was shallow, wasn't it? Don't worry, W has just sent me Kabbalah and Criticism by Harold Bloom, so the next post could well be about mystical Jewish texts. After a thousand words of that, you'll be begging me to write about my feelings on city shorts again.

Thirty-eight seconds

2006-04-23T19:08:00.000+01:00

I missed Eddie's funeral by thirty-eight seconds, and consequently feel like a total shit.

After working late on Friday, I got to bed at a reasonable hour, and primed my phone alarm to wake me up at 6am, giving me ample time to get up, shower, dress and attack my hair with straighteners, before making an unrushed journey to Paddington to catch the 0748 train to Hereford.

Unfortunately, at about 5am I woke from a dream involving a coffee date with Ben Elton to hear what sounded like a murder happening outside in the street. Several minutes of guilty inactivity followed, until I assured myself it was just foxes.

At this point I must have somehow clobbered my alarm clock, because when I next woke up, wondering how long I had before the alarm went off, the display read 0658. Oh good, I thought, a few more minutes and then it will go off, everything under control.

And then it was as though my sluggish brain popped up a little questionmark, and in a second I knew. Shit. SIX-fifty eight? i should have left the house already!

I'm not one of nature's early risers (a fact I exploit by working evenings) but if there's one thing that sets my teeth on edge, it's the possibility of missing a train, or more generally being late for something important. I find watching Clockwise causes me actual physical pain. Over the years, I've learned to deal with this by rigid organisation and a freakish devotion to being early. Job interviews? I turn up at least an hour early, and kick my heels in a nearby coffee shop. I must have spent hundreds of hours in Paddington since I moved to London, since it's the station I use to go back to my parents, and to Oxford.

So, needless to say, I didn't deal with the possibility of being late terrifically well. I ran (yes, actually ran, at least until my throat started to hurt) to the Tube station. Next train: 3 minutes. Shit.

The worst thing about that kind of situation is not the moment when all is lost, but the time you convince yourself you might, might, just make it.. if only you run. The glimmer of hope is what's painful.

As it turned out, I scattered all those French tourists on the escalator to no avail. I came up the steps from the Tube to Paddington station to see the clock reading 07:48:38. And with every fibre of my being I thought: FUCK.

Of course, it being Saturday there was no other train, nor byzantine permutation of trains, which could get me to Hereford before noon. Perhaps I could get to Worcester and persuade my parents to drive me to Hereford? This really was beginning to feel like Clockwise.

But no, decreed the Gods of British Rail. The earliest I could get there was half-past, just in time to stumble into the Cathedral breathless and dishevelled for the last hymn, only for my mobile to ring, probably. Constructively, I burst into tears. Then got the tube home again.

And so I missed the funeral. NB kindly agreed to come over last night and tell me about it, which made things better - it looked like a nice service, with tasteful hymns and thoughtful readings. I know that it was an honest mistake, and that Eddie's family will have had no idea whether I was there or not, but I can't help feeling bad about it.

---

This week, I went to the launch of Pen Pusher magazine (website here) which was being held in the same pub as a Grange Hill cast reunion. Normally, I would hysterical with excitement about the prospect of so many minor celebrities in one place, but I was left strangely cold as I didn't really recognise any of them. Apparently, John Alford was there, but I didn't see him.

The other notable thing about the evening is that my ex-boyfriend's new love interest was there, but I didn't know that until last night (ie too late to gawk at her and ascertain if she is thinner/prettier/less mad than me). Balls.

V for Vendetta: Rhymes with 'should have been better'

2006-04-16T20:22:00.000+01:00

After months and months without even thinking about watching a film, I'm becoming quite the moviegoer of late. And this week, I pleasingly
managed to watch two very different films which tackled similar themes - terrorism, alienation and acts of random violence - allowing me to
make fatuous and largely baseless comparisons between them.

The first film is Christie Malry's Own Double Entry. Stop sniggering at the back, for the Double Entry of the title refers to a system of accounting invented by some monk in the Middle Ages. Apparently, the double entry book-keeping system is the foundation of modern capitalism, making it a Big Idea. Yet it's been (as far as I know) consistently overlooked by modern writers, probably because they are mostly humanities graduates and are thus scared of numbers.

The film (from the book by BS Johnson, who you'll remember from previous posts if you've been paying attention) focuses on the life of Christie, a disaffected twentysomething accounts clerk for a sweetfactory, who lives in Hammersmith with his dying mother.

Between her death and the utter bastardry of his boss, Christie comes to the conclusion that life is inflcting unjust pain on him and those he loves - debits - and so he must do the same back to credit his account with "them". Escalating acts of terrorism - from keying a car to mass poisoning - ensue.

That's pretty much the plot - the book is only 20,000 words long - the same number as Christie kills in pursuit of balancing the books. The
film's joy comes in the bleak and unsparing depiction of life's injustice, typified by Christie's boss's reaction to his news that he took the afternoon off work to go to his mother's funeral. "I'm on to you, Malry," he shouts, veins throbbing in his forehead. "You can only have one mother!"

Christie's quest for vengeance ends suddenly, in an ending which has been changed from that of the book, where Christie suddenly develops
incurable cancer. There are a few other changes - Christie is given a friend, whereas the Christie of the book is just given a girlfriend, the Shrike. The whole film is updated to the 90s, and topical references to the Gulf War and Princess Diana are shoehorned in, with often less than successful results.

A whole subplot of Fra Pacioli's invention of the double-entry system and his friendship with Leonardo da Vinci adds little to the overall message, but does manage to up the nudity count (although those of a sensitive disposition should note that an early auto-erotic asphyxiation scene is eye-opening, to say the least). But overall, it's an excellent film from an excellent book.

If only the same could be said of V for Vendetta. I can't comment on the comic from which it originates (not through coyness - I've never read it) but the film was good. I know, there's nothing wrong with good, it's better than bad, and workmanlike. And it should certainly be said that I think this film did not deserve the shocking reviews it garnered, as there's a lot to like.

Yes, Natalie Portman's accent roams the world quicker than Michael Palin; yes, having a main character whose masked face displays no emotion is a drawback; yes, Hugo Weaving is still doing that Agent Smith drawling thing ("Miizzter Aaandurrrsun") that was so irritating in the Matrix.

This paragraph was going to be about the film's redeeming features, but actually I haven't finished the list of things that annoyed me yet. How, for example, in a totalitarian police state, did someone conceal the size of factory required to make the zillion Guy Fawkes masks everyone's wearing at the end? I can't see any dictator worth his salt putting up with that. Why does everyone say 'bollocks' so much? Why do Americans believe Benny Hill is the apogee of English humour?

Calm. As you can see, it's pretty easy to pick holes in V, post-viewing. But none of these things particularly spoiled my enjoyment while in the cinema (apart from all the bollocks). As a blockbuster - the cinematic equivalent of the fast food meal - it succeeds. It's not going to teach you anything profound about the nature of the human spirit; at a pinch it might spark a lively pub debate about the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter (answer: freedom fighters are the ones from small, plucky, underdog countries - the resistance equivalent of Tim Henman).

The trouble is, given the millions of pounds they spent on it, it ought to be better. It's a lot like eating in a London restaurant - yes, the welsh rarebit on hand-rolled ciabatta is tasty, but it's basically cheese on toast, so why am I paying six bloody pounds for it?

Christie Malry manages to make the same points as V on a budget of about 12p, and has a better soundtrack and casting to boot. Most of V's money has been spent on special effects, but really - you've seen one exploding seat of Government in Independence Day, you've seen them
all.

Of course, V for Vendetta still pulled them in - when we went on a drizzly Wednesday night, the cinema was packed. Whereas i suspected that making my housemate watch Christie Malry with me has upped its viewing figures by 2 per cent.

The film industry is a mystery to me. Luckily it seems to be a mystery to everyone else, even alleged experts, so I don't feel so bad. I decided to ask W, who's nearly got a freaking *doctorate* in film, and therefore seemed a likely person to be able to explain.

I'm not sure that he did, really, but he ranted in rather an entertaining way, and I must prod him further on the subject.

He wrote: "Why-oh-why does no one watch British films...? I remember that Christie came out right in the swinging middle of my website's heyday - and I rated my top 10 films of that year (whichever year it was) and that an amazing SEVEN of my favourite ten films of the year were British... (Think list included Christie, Lawless Heart, My Little Eye, 24 Hour Party People, Once Upon A Time in the Midlands [only just], and one or two others...)

But NO ONE watches the bastard. Why not? It's good. It's really good. Just b/c V is written by the Wachowski Bros (pron. f-ack-off-ski?), it's huge.

But no ingrate thicko would consider watching a film called Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry - despite the fact that it sounds, you know, dirty... Why? What uninspires people to see British movies (apart from Pride and Prej, Bridget Jones, Bride and Prej, Prejudice in its Prime, Pride of Prejudiced Lions, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Five Weddings and a Funeral, Sex Weddings, 100 Weddings [genuine film title - coming soon], Notting Hill, Bridget Jones in Notting Hill, Bridget Jones at Four Weddings, etc, etc, etc...)?

I scratch my head."

So do I.

April is the cruellest month.

2006-04-10T13:43:00.000+01:00

NB rang on Friday afternoon, just after 2pm. Odd, I thought, why is he ringing in the middle of the day? "Hello," he said, sounding subdued. "Are you at work?" I told him it was my day off.

"Well, I'm sorry to ruin your day off..."

Instantly, all my mind did that canter round all the possible bad things that could have happened – always quite a revealing instant, because it tells you not only what you would feel most guilty about if it were discovered, but whether you really think there's a chance of it coming out.

"...but Eddie has died."

Sudden inrush of breath. This is the second time in two months I've had this kind of phone call, so I suppose I should have been more accepting, less questioning. But obviously not.

"MR told me, " he continued. "His parents are flying over to the Lebanon now, apparently."

I'm no good at dialogue, so let me tell you the facts: Eddie was in his twenties, had just finished a degree in Classics at Oxford - where he had taken a year out to be President of the Union - and had gone to the Lebanon to improve his French, and learn Arabic.

---

From: Edward Tomlinson 28 February 2006 18:43

Just a quick note from Beirut for you. How is life at the mo? Things over here ticking along, with the odd demonstration by millions and millions against Syrian political interference, and the odd bout of Islamic mob violence a-trashing embassies too.

The French and Arabic are making rather slower progress than I would like, but I have lots of charming Francophone types in my classes. They are very nice and we get along perfectly but I fear we are not as one politically. After class today one of them said that he wanted there to be a European head of state ruling the whole continent.

---

Eddie died of an embolism, in his sleep. I'm happy that he felt no pain, had no foreboding over what was to come, but at the same time, selfishly, I almost wish he'd been ill first, had given us time to say goodbye.

Bizarrely, after being acquaintances for three or so years, I had got to know him much better in the last six months. For some unknown reason, he had turned to me and NB for relationship advice, particularly in regard to Sarah, a girl he'd known at Oxford who was living in Paris for a year. She hadn't replied to his Ace in the hole - a postcard onto which he had lovingly translated the lyrics of Take That's Back For Good into Latin.

NB and I had regarded him rather sceptically when he had told us this the last time I saw him - the last time I will ever see him - tucking into artisan sausages in the Stoney Street café opposite Borough Market.

"Erm," I'd ventured, "why Back For Good? Does she particularly like Take That?"

"Um, no, not really," said Eddie, blinking rapidly as he always when he felt he was going to be told off for some piece of fuckwittage. NB and I exchanged glances, but neither of us had the heart to say that quoting decade-old pop songs randomly in an ancient language was a less than watertight way of pulling.

Two weeks later, in the Lebanon, he was concerned by his lack of success with the postcard gambit.

----

From: Edward Tomlinson 28 February 2006 18:43

This doesn't look too good, especially as she said she would be delighted to hear from me anytime, when she sent on through
her Parisian postal address. So, now I need to know whether to persist
with this line of enquiry or just take the hint and bog off.

----
To: Edward Tomlinson 02 March 2006 11:51

Dear Eddie,

Can only conclude that La Poste have eaten your postcard due
to horsemeat shortage, or are on strike, bloody trades unionists that
they are.

---

The Take That wooing scheme was typical Eddie. He was a self-confessed fuckwit when it came to pursuing women, and hardly Machiavelli when it came to arranging other aspects of his life either. "Edd-ieeeeee," we'd chorus at his latest harebrained scheme, "that's a preposterous idea. Don't fuck it uuuup!"

---

From: Edward Tomlinson 03 March 2006 21:50

I have a nice balcony here in Lebanon and on the mountainside is a truly massive statue of the Madonna. I'm living in the Christian bit out here and there are saints' shrines, crucifixes and images of the pope/Maronite patriarch everywhere. Oh yes, and Church bells which play out the tune for "Ave Maria" twice a day, everyday.

Anyway, I was bopping along listening to my portable CD player on my balcony, as one must. When "Back for Good" came on (I HAD to bring it with me) I obviously started getting a bit excited and started singing, because the chap in the next room along popped his head out to see what the fuss was. He's a 50 year-old Syrio-Catholic priest with a long white beard, and he rather naively thought that I was having some sort of religious experience, and so saluted with both his hands the statue of the Madonna on the hillside.

I thought it was only right to do the same, and so as Gary sang out "your lipstick marks still on my coffee cup" I held out both my hands to the Holy Mother of
God. Am I in trouble, do you think?

---

Went for dinner with NB last night, to see how he was coping. He'd spent all day with MR, looking at pictures on Eddie's facebook profile and reminiscing. "How are you feeling?" I ventured.

"I think it's still sinking in." He drank reflectively.
"I think that's the trouble with grief," I said. "You expect it to hit you all at once and leave you totally incapacitated. It'd be easier if it did, I reckon. As it is, you feel so horrible you can carry on with your everyday life. And it just stings like new every time you think, "Oh, I must tell Eddie that," or, "I wonder how Eddie's getting on..."'
'Yes. That's what we were saying today - all we want to do is talk to Eddie and say: Eddie, what the fuck? Why have you gone and died?'

I laughed. I suppose on one level it's horribly disrespectful, but it's so typically Eddie to go to some unstable riot-filled country and die in the night and have his body found by a monk. It's untidy. It's harebrained. It's so irritatingly like him.

---

I knew pretty much as soon as I heard that I would have to write about Eddie's death. I couldn't not - following what BS Johnson said about his need to write – I write to have it there, in a book, not here in my head. I asked NB if it would be disrespectful to write about him on my blog. Would it trivialise the situation?
"No, I don't think so. I think he would have liked it."
So here it is.

---

All I can think about now is how unfair it all is. It’s hit me like a ton of clichés, but the most painful thing about death is that there’s no arguing. It’s done. That’s it – no rematch, no recount, no quibbling, no winning on points in the final minute when all seemed lost. One of the nicest, sweetest, most unassumingly brilliant people I’ve ever met will never have a chance to do all the things he could have done. And the rest of us will go on living, and forgetting.

And I don’t want to do that either – I want to remember his voice, calling me by my surname, which always made me feel like a public schoolboy, and remember him telling me about his grand plan to marry a baronet’s daughter, and him fiddling with his glasses and looking sheepish.

All I can think of is the end of Dr Faustus: “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight.”

---

From: Edward Tomlinson March 13 2006

Really, despite the drama of recent messages, I'm perfectly happy at the moment and it's not as if I have suddenly become a total wreck or anything. As ever I'll just keep life ticking over and I have no doubt it will continue to surprise and delight.

--

Unaware but underlined I figured out this story / It wasn't good /But in the corner of my mind I celebrated glory /But that was not to be...

Honestly, Eddie. Take That?

ten things that have recently made me feel bad:

2006-04-04T15:10:00.000+01:00

1. That I am far too annoyed by people who try to open the doors on
the tube by pressing the door opening buttons. Don't they realise that
the doors open automatically? (Obviously passengers on the DLR, where
the doors do not open automatically, are exempt from this.) I stand
behind them, fuming. Then immediately after I feel that I must be a
horrible person to be so enraged by their innocent and logical
assumptions about the Tube.

2. That on the way to work yesterday, I was so deeply enjoying This Is
Craig Brown (thoroughly recommended), particularly the piece where he
interviews Tony Blackburn, that I failed to notice the tiny little old
lady on the Tube and so left her to the tender mercies of standing up
amid a group of rowdy Eastern European schoolchildren. When I looked
up to check I'd arrived at the right station and noticed her, I felt
compelled to affect a slight limp as I left the train so everyone
wouldn't hate me.

3. That I saw on the story list that an Air Force plane had crashed, I
was excited because it might have been someone important. Then I was
disappointed to find out it was a cargo plane. Ouch. It reminded me of
the bit in the Piers Morgan diaries where they hear Concorde has
crashed and start speculating what celebs were on board. When the TV
broadcasts the news that the plane was carrying a party of German
tourists, the entire news floor groans. Then they realise they are
uncaring bastards.

4. That two close friends have told me things in the last few days,
and I simply haven't believed them. Uh oh, never a good sign.

5. That I sent a joke talking email to a friend which contained, inter
alia, the phrase "I want to feel your warm love juice running down my
thighs." He played it in front of his mother.

6. That the mother concerned does not know it was me that sent her son
an obscene talking email, and when I next meet her, she will think I
am a lovely well-brought up girl and not a borderline sexual deviant.

7. That I am so sad I read the free newspapers which come through our
door and scoff at their poor use of drop caps, and their inability to
use either an em dash or an en dash consistently.

8. That I have watched so much of Buffy Series 6 in the last few days
that I am more worried about whether Spike and Buffy can ever be
together than I am concerned for any of my *real-life* friends.

9. That I spent twenty minutes explaining to my housemate Max, a
history graduate, how strongly I believe that Henry VII killed the
Princes in the Tower, not Richard III.

10. That I am such a loser I can so easily think of ten things I feel
guilty about right now.

things to do in work when it's dead

2006-03-28T22:49:00.000+01:00

My job involves a lot of waiting. This presents a problem: obviously I can't whip out War and Peace and start slogging on through that; neither can I bring myself to read every article in the paper; neither can I play Slime Volleyball. So I have begun a search for internet sites which look informative, but are entertaining.

Top of my list is the dreadfully-designed, yet endlessly amusing, Capalert.com. It's run by nutty American Christians, and claims to provide "objective" reviews of Hollywood films. The trouble is, the folks at Capalert disapprove of practically everything that constitutes a film. Take for example, American Psycho, the first film ever to garner a Zero rating. I can see their point about the sex, cannibalism and chainsaw murdering, but I think objecting to 'two abbreviations of "Christmas" without "Christ"' is probably splitting hairs.

I think my favourite bit is probably the terribly earnest script analysis, with reference to the Bible. For example, on the surely-blameless Calendar Girls, the writer fumes, "There are many "religious" paintings of nudity. With the approval of the church. But God did not put them there. Nor did Jesus. Man did." Quite. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles gets blasted for showing the "nearly naked" bottoms of transvestites and for suggesting homosexuality might be acceptable. Also, there is the matter of the main characters' living arrangements: "Though Paul and Linda are actually married in real life, Mick and Sue are cohabitating [Hebr. 13:4; 1 Cor. 7:1-2] and apparently have been for longer than nine years since they have a nine year old son."

Some other gems:

Bulworth: "As stomach-turning as the first seventy minutes were, I had to leave when the producers had several pre-teens and early teens frothing at the mouth with hateful vulgar trash language."

Crossroads (with Britney Spears): "Many "lesser" examples of sexual nature appear in the movie such as repeated implied intercourse, dressing to maximize the female form and/or skin exposure, camera angle to force the viewer on [clothed] private parts, teens in revealing underwear, dancing in revealing underwear, open mouth kissing, inappropriate touch, sexual innuendo, talk and comments and more." [The detailed analysis also docks it points for "gamming" - could someone please explain what this is, please? Also, "massive tattoos" are an offence to God, apparently...]

Death To Smoochy: scores 26 because of "use of "jiggy" before kid's [sic]" and "asking that a man wear thong underwear by a man".

Dude, Where's My Car scores 50 (did they not notice the stoner theme?) but is reprimanded for "adult urinating on a house plant twice," "dog smoking dope" and "crude uses of a variation of the name of the planet Uranus". [Oh dear, I am sniggering just reading that. One way ticket to Hell, please...]

Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban: "broom riding, repeatedly".

Anyway, if you think that this is just about sniggering at religious fanatics, you'd be wrong. I'm actually making an important point about the ridiculousness of the Government's Religious Hatred Bill.

Yeah, and sniggering at the word "Uranus", too.

No, not that Libertine.

2006-03-24T14:47:00.000+01:00

In case you didn't know, Hollywood is a deeply unfair place. Endless commercial tat and second-rate star vehicles pour out - Basic Instinct 2 seems to have the honour of fulfilling both these criteria - and yet fantastic ideas for films kick around for years. Without Being John Malkovich, it's unlikely Charlie Kaufman's other scripts, such as the fantastic Adaptation and the eye-wateringly excellent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, would ever have seen the light of day - and yet the script for it was knocking about for years.

A similar fate befell The Libertine, the story of legendary 17th century poet, drinker and shagger, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. The Stephen Jeffreys play on which the film is based garnered a sheaf of awards when it premiered in the 1990s, and the support of big weird John Malkovich himself, after he played the lead role on stage. But money troubles, and the conflicting schedules of Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman, the original choice for Elizabeth Barry, delayed the project for nearly a decade.

FInally, after Malkovich handed over the director's chair to first-timer Laurence Dunmore - they met filming a Eurostar commercial - and everything seemed to be going swimmingly, the British government decided to withdraw tax breaks from UK-based productions. It cut the project's budget by a third overnight, with just a month to go before shooting began.

Malkovich is able to put a rueful gloss on that period now the film's safely completed, saying, "you have to keep your eye on the prize". But it must have been a struggle, and also peculiarly painful to hand over the lead role to the much-younger Depp. But thank god he soldiered on, because The Libertine is as great as it is uncommercial.

In some ways, I can understand the mogul's twitchiness at stumping up the cash. Films about poets are usually worthy, but dull - I'm thinking The Hours and Sylvia - all cardigans and teary-eyed scenes in the kitchen. And how many people have even heard of the Earl of Rochester? He didn't produce any major works, preferring instead to drink and shag and dash off the occasional foul-mouthed squib. What he did leave behind is jaw-droppingly obscene, with language that would make Bernard Manning blush, and demonstrates a lively preoccupation with dildos, buggery and sperm. So the film was never going to be a later-period Shakespeare in Love, that was for sure.

On the other hand, I'm almost glad that Malkovich and Dunmore had to fight so hard for this film to be made: it shows. From Depp's magnetic opening soliloquy - "You will not like me" - to his final physical decline, no punches are pulled, no concessions made. The language is, there's no other way of putting it - foul. Within seconds, "cheesy erections" are mentioned, and the c-word appears enough times to make me think that somewhere out there the head of Christian Voice is crying. But it works - all the effing and blinding gives a curiously modern feel to the dialogue, but one that is actually accurate. "The fucking French!" exclaims Malkovich's Charles II, and you think: ha, plus ca change, eh?

The cast list reads like a dream. There's Johnny Vegas, playing it straight in an absurdly large wig; Rosamund Pike, doing much better than in her Bond outing, rising stage star Kelly Reilly as a tart-without-a-heart, and at least two of the blokes from coupling.

But if it's anyone's film, it's Johnny Depp's. By god, he's good. He's already one of my favourite actors, and here is the very definition of charisma. I really admire that the man's so eye-wateringly fit, but it really doesn't seem to affect him at all. He's just as compelling at the end of the film, covered up by a noseguard and covered in weeping sores, as he is in full bewigged fineness at the beginning.

He uses a bit of that drawling English accent I loved in Pirates of the Carribbean, but here makes it aristocratic and weary. John Malkovich even forgets to be John Malkovich for a bit, and gives a solid exasperated Charles II.

As the film's based on a play, the dialogue is all - but being a film has allowed the makers to lard it with close-ups and small gestures, intensifying the feeling of a psychological portrait. Rochester might have started the film by proclaiming that you won't like him, but I defy you not to, even as he drives his friends away and pisses his (considerable) talent against the wall.

The look of the film is fascinating too. Time Out praised its 'fogbound, piss-stained visuals' and that's a pretty good summation. Everyone seems to spend their time getting out of coaches into knee-deep mud, and you really get the sense that everything, and everyone, stinks. There's a particularly repellent bit near the end where Rochester's wife (Pike) embraces him about a minute after you've watched him piss himself. You get the feeling this might have been par for the course in Stuart England, and it certainly explains why the verse is so relentlessly obsessed with bodily functions - they weren't hidden away in a haze of air freshener and Cillit Bang, they were right there on your shoe. Kelly Reilly, as the poet's prostitute lover, is actually smeared in mud.

Criticisms? Perhaps it is a smidge too long, and I'm not that interested in the subplot of the nice young man who falls in with Rochester's motley crew and comes to a sticky end. The English student in me also felt compelled to point out that the play Rochester writes is actually cobbled together from the poem "Signior Dildo" and a closet drama (ie one not intended for performance) which is only attributed to him. I think even the notoriously tolerant Charles II might have drawn the line at having prosthetic phalluses waved around in front of the French ambassador.

But that's the ultimate in small fry. Do see this film when it comes out on DVD in May... it's superb. And you never know, if it does well, we might get a few more Libertines and a few less Aeon Fluxes. And if you tell your friends you've seen a great film called the Libertine, and they ask if it's about Pete Doherty, give them a slap, will you? From me.

why i have not posted:

2006-03-17T16:29:00.000+01:00

1. I am ill.

2. There is a new series of Cracker on my saved programmes channel.

That is all.

bad boys, right-wing style.

2006-03-09T22:16:00.000+01:00

I just do not understand my taste in men. Unlike seven out of ten women (as reported in today's Daily Mail), I do consider myself a feminist. And yet all my journalistic idols are either objectionable misogynists, or philanderers. I'm also pretty lefty - and yet again, they are mostly right-wingers.

I'm thinking particularly of Christopher Hitchens, aka The Hitch, scourge of God-botherers and liberal America, who I was waxing lyrical about a few posts ago (but these categories apply equally to Clarkson and Boris Johnson).

Now, I know Hitch is in some ways impeccably feminist - he's pro-birth control, and opposed to religions (which largely regard women as second-class citizens). But take this exchange at the Hay On Wye literary festival a few years ago (full transcript here.

Female audience member: Excuse me. I'm not usually awkward at all but I'm sitting here and we're asked not to smoke. And I don't like being in a room where smoking is going on.

Hitch: Well you don't have to stay darling, do you? I'm working here and I'm your guest, OK? And this is what I'm like; nobody has to like it.

See what I mean? Grrr. Nannying Guardian reader that the woman no doubt was, I can't bear that derogatory 'darling' - it's tooth-grindingly awful in its 70s 'little woman'-ness.

But I think it's more my attraction to rightwingers that bothers me. After all, misogynists can usually be dealt with by pointing out that you're cleverer and more successful than them. My ex-boyfriend, to whom I apologise for writing about yet again, was Very Tory. Ooh, extremely. Some of my best friends are Tories. And yet we argue incessantly about various subjects - from tax to immigration to the public sector.

I think I've finally figured it out why I like Something of The Right. It's partially because of that hoary old political chestnut that the Left and Right have met in the middle - the Tories are against ID cards, and pretty lukewarm on the war in Iraq, just like me. Labour have presided over a disgraceful expansion of the public sector and several ridiculous laws, such as the outlawing of 'glorification of terrorism', whatever that is, and the absurd Religious Hatred Bill. So ideologically I can't have as much of a problem with Righties as I could have done in the hang 'em and flog 'em look-at-my-red-socks Mrs Thatcher era.

But it's more than that. It's because deep down I know: Right-wingers have more fun. I first realised this at meetings of the Student Union council at uni. All the pale idealistic lefties were being assidously zealous about top-up fees and the Iraq war at the front, and I was at the back with the Tories, sniggering. And there's more: has the Labour party ever produced an equivalent to Alan Clark? Or even Ken Clarke? Nope. I'll give Charles Clarke points for getting the name right, but that's his lot.

And that's the secret of these men's attraction for me - it's some awful middle-class (marginally more) intellectual take on the classic Bad Boy, as depicted in ad nauseam in EastEnders etc. It's all about fancying the bad boy in the leather jacket, puffing a fag under the 'No Smoking' sign. Yes, you know he's a bit of a twat, and that he;s probably going to die of lung cancer - but right here, right now, that's sexy. Later he will fall off his motorbike because he doesn't really know how to ride it - but by then it will be too late.

Clarke and Clark, Clarkson (hold on, I'm beginning to think there is a sinister name-based conspiracy here) and the Hitch all like (or liked) a drink, and all smoke heavily. If Kenneth Clarke weren't so fat, and Alan Clark so dead, I'd probably fancy them.

Oh dear, why must I be so perverse?

putting the fun in funeral.

2006-03-08T22:08:00.000+01:00

I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral
Can't understand what I mean? You soon will

Yesterday it drizzled, upsettingly. Funerals should be held on crisp, clear days - autumn for preference - they always are on police dramas. My family didn't help with the gravitas, as they are constitutionally unable to be serious about anything, and especially so on occasions where solemnity is required. The limo was late, and we stood in the front room of my parents' house nervously awaiting its arrival - the first time the four of us children had been in the same room, without our own children and other halves, since my eldest sister went away to university 18 years ago. We were getting jittery, until Dad (whose brother John we were burying) got irritated. "Look, there's two people they can't start the service without - me, and John." That pretty much set the tone.

The church service was as good as you'd expect, given that the Catholic Church is inherently ridiculous. How I scoffed at last week's A Touch Of Frost, with a Catholic priest who was not either a) mental, b) a repressed homosexual, c) over 80; or the most popular, d) all of the above. Our current Parish priest is David Brent in clerical form. Witness his 'touching' sermon, which made much of the fact my uncle had worked at an overall company, imaginatively called Faithfull Overalls. "It's fitting," he intoned, "that John worked at Faithfull Overalls, because in baptism he wore the overall of the Faithful - the baptismal gown." He smirked at his own pun-tacular ingenuity, like Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward (if marginally less gay) rolled together. "And now, he wears the final 'faithful overall' - the pall." It went on in this vein for another minute and a half, during which time I caught the rolling eyes of all three siblings.

There are so many things I don't like about funerals. I don't like having the body there for a start, which might seem illogical, but really - you're all trying to achieve closure or just remembering the chap as a decent old stick, but it does prey on your mind that his body is mouldering mere yards from you. I'm all about the quiet internment and the public memorial service, frankly - look at Ronnie Barker's memorial service. Plenty of gags, a few rueful, we-won't-see-his-like-agains, and home for cake and tea.

And the modern funeral industry is so tacky. At the crematorium, Mum had chosen some tasteful religious music. This was marred by being played on speakers so loud and bass-filled they can only have been designed to cope with dance music, which I'm sure no-one has played at a memorial service. Surely they don't? I mean, Elvis or whatever is bad enough, but who wants their final fiery progress to be effected to No Good (Start The Dance)? Or some banging drum and bass?

Then there's the mechanical curtain, which squeaks across its rail to hide the coffin and inform you that the alloted 12 minutes are up. And don't even get me started on some of the flower arrangements I saw in the Memorial Garden. My mother has put it on record that if we get her a wreath saying "MOM", she's coming back to haunt us.

I think the problem is really that I, like many other people, don't do emotion on demand very well, and feel like a fraud if I try to pretend something I don't feel. I felt sad for John when I told my sister he died, and also felt ashamed at her (to me) much more genuinely upset reaction. When my mum told me he was dead, I immediately went into journo all-questions-must-be-answered mode, and didn't come out of it for about fifteen minutes.

A few moments did touch me, though: of John's few friends (he never married or had children) who gathered at the crematorium, one of the old duffers tipped his hat at the memorial wreath as he walked away, unseen by anybody but me. It was the appropriate farewell to a well-liked friend - not mawkish or demonstrative, and far better for it.

I held my mother's hand as we drove out of the cemetery, past my brother's grave, and her mother and father's, and I reflected that it could only have been death to tear us all away from life - jobs, and in my elder sister and brother's cases, spouses and young children. And it will probably only be another death that will do so again. Being British, there was only one thing to do - home for tea and cake, and well-worn family stories.

mea culpa

2006-03-02T23:54:00.000+01:00

Sorry I haven't posted - been a weird, sad and busy two weeks, plus I'm trying to appreciate the dying gasps of my social life before starting the Anti-Social Hours of Death in earnest next week.

Also, I can't decide what to blog on at the moment - there are a few things that have mildly piqued my interest, but who can get excited about Tessa Jowell's husband? Possibly, judging by the pictures, not even Tessa Jowell. But I am quite tempted to detail how rubbish I am at flirting for you - really, really rubbish. This week I finally engaged the office fittie in book-based conversation, which was going well until I ended up talking about Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas.

Now, talking about science fiction is bad enough. But it was as the phrase "there's this island, and they have this chieftain, who eats all the food, and everyone else has to eat poo" came out of my mouth that I remembered why I don't flirt. Then yesterday I tried to rectify the poo-talk mistake and ended up talking about... fonts. Bloody fonts! I'm not even all that interested in fonts, and it's part of my job - why in the name of all that's holy would anyone else care?

God, it's shameful. I'm afraid it's time for Make Myself More Attractive Plan B: extensive cosmetic surgery. I'm already on a diet (feeling very smug as I eke out my salad and Diet Coke in the canteen at lunch, glaring balefully at the others' lamb meatballs) but I was going to save talking about that to use the Protestant's pun as the title of the post: I Predict A Diet.

Shame. Deep shame. Right, next week the new world order dawns - no more crap puns, no more flirting, no more half-arsed posts. Only the choicest cuts of tender opinion rump. Actually, add to that list: no more rubbish metaphors, either.

--

If you want something that's worth reading, head over to The Christopher Hitchens Web. Right now, I love The Hitch so much it hurts inside. Then I found this anecdote from The Weekly Standard, when the Hitch was trying to get involved in Iraq as an unembedded reporter, and contacted this guy:

"You can tell how at ease a man is in the world from the scarcity of possessions he lugs around with him. When I came here, it was with large backpacks and overstuffed duffels, extraneous tote bags, pouches, and carry-ons. But Hitchens showed up at my door with nothing more than a firm handshake and a half-smoked pack of Rothman's. As he stood there, rumpled and slightly jetlagged in blue jeans and a black leather jacket, he looked sort of like the Fonz -if the Fonz had been a British former socialist who could pinch large swaths of Auden from memory.

We plopped down in the living room, and I asked him why he hadn't brought his gas mask, chem suit, and Kevlar. "I wore Kevlar in the Balkans once," he said, "but it made me feel like a counterfeit, so I ditched it." Despite this cavalier disregard for safety, I was so grateful for the company that I offered him a Welcome-To-Kuwait shot of "Listerine" (as it is known by Kuwaiti customs officials). "I don't usually start this early," said Hitchens with feigned reluctance, "but holding yourself to a drinking schedule is always the first sign of alcoholism."

(Yes, he's knocked Jeremy Clarkson off the top spot on my 'I Wish He Were My Wife' list.)

sunday sunday.

2006-02-19T20:03:00.000+01:00

I really shouldn't be posting, you know. I should be lying on my bed with a moist towelette covering my bloodshot eyes and whimpering softly. I've just come back from a weekend in Oxford, where I was sucked into that peculiarly Oxbridge phenomenon: the bop.

For those of you not lucky enough to have spent three years musing about the meaning of life amidst the dreaming spires while never, ever getting laid, let me enlighten you. A bop is like a house party, only it's in a bar. It's like going to a club, only everyone is wearing school uniform, or in drag. I think the closest approximation in terms of price of drinks, quality of music and ridiculousness of clothes must be a wedding disco or perhaps some kind of yokel town hall jolly.

I digress. Of course now that I have left university and become a sushi-eating metropole, with an actual job to boot, I thought such joys were closed to me forever. Not so. In the company of W (identifying quote: "When I started at university, we didn't have the internet. We didn't even have email.") I dared to venture to the "Old School" bop. I have to say I feel they missed a trick by not spelling that with a "k", and indeed by not basing it on the film of the same name, but you can't have everything.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I am far too old, really, for such capers - and certainly too old for: dancing to Britney Spears with any degree of credibility, sleeping on the floor, and talking about "the system" to 19 year olds, all of which I attempted.

--

Please let it be noted that the crapness of this post can be explained with reference to my new theory: February is a pointless month, in which nothing good or memorable has ever happen. here's the proof.

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me... or, pass the vodka

2006-02-16T21:18:00.000+01:00

This Valentine's Day saw a dinner party chez Galatea for all my most
single friends - 17 in all. Quite an impressive number, considering
that I always feel like everyone is coupled-up. Although I am
beginning to be worried that I am, as I have long suspected, some sort
of Typhoid Mary of singledom. At university, I lived with one
relationship long-termer, but mysteriously my other two housemates
remained resolutely single, with only a few near-misses to their name,
all year. Only when I got a boyfriend in the penultimate week of the
year did they both, as if by magic, find girlfriends.

I fear the same has happened this year. Housemate A is settled in for
the duration with her fella, but the other two would themselves
confess they have the roughly the same chance of getting laid as a
eunuch in a nunnery. I wouldn't particularly rate my chances of
getting a boyfriend much higher. I don't know why this is- they're
both personable, intelligent and far from hideous to look at... in
fact, as I looked round the assembled singletons on Tuesday
(intermingled with a few loved-up interlopers, such as Housemate A) I
asked the same question: "Why are these eligible people single?"

Immediately, I realised I had become a budget version of Carrie
Bradshaw, and slapped myself quite hard before I started saying things
like, "had Charlotte finally found her zsa zsa Jew?" (yes, an actual
SATC quote). However, I think I know the answer to the question (the
single one, not the one about the Jew) . It's partly because our
unofficial motto is "don't shit on your own doorstep", as we've pretty
much all had our fingers burnt by starting something within our group
of friends and it going horribly wrong.

Months of recriminations, guilt, and careful party planning to include
only one of the affected parties inevitably ensue. I, for one, am
getting tired of this (particularly the party-planning apartheid) and
if anyone else wants to embark on an ill-advised relationship with one
of their friends, well, frankly, on their own head be it.

The second part of the problem is that we are all enmeshed in a dating
etiquette system so complex and pitfall-ridden that it would have
baffled Jane Austen. For example: you can't just see someone in a bar
you like the look of and go up and talk to them. Ha, we scoff, and
chortle ruefully. If *only* it were that easy! no, no, that kind of
approach is for sex addicts and people from Essex who don't know
better. Oh yes, we're far too metropolitan and cool to ever let
on that we find anyone attractive.

Similarly, should anyone else tentatively venture the opinion that we
are attractive, we also scoff. The fools! Do they not know the biggest
mistake in any budding relationship is to look keen? No one, but no
one, likes a keen-o.

So you see the dilemma. The only possible way that two people who
think like this can get together is by some sort of synchronised
mutual declaration (probably impossible, due to laws of space/time).

Or by getting really wasted and forgetting all the above principles.

not the post i meant to write.

2006-02-13T15:10:00.000+01:00

What a great weekend. The sum total of my activity can be mathematically expressed thus: bugger all.

On Friday, I watched Batman Begins - a big sledgehammer of a film, with no space for nuance, character development, or indeed any characterisation outside hoary blockbuster stereotypes. Oh look, it's an inaccessible martial arts monastery thing. Cue the plinky plonky music and lots of impressive fights in the snow! What's this now? He was frightened of bats as a child? Ah, in finest Oprah fashion he's 'confronting his demons' by dressing up as a bat. (I realised, on this rationale, I would be the much-less-impressive superhero RecorderGirl, or possibly PE Lesson Woman.) What's that, Skippy? He's in love with a girl, but to know his true identity would put her in danger?

Actually, to be fair to the film, they dispatched that one pretty quickly, as poor old Bruce couldn't bear the thought that Katie Holmes thought he was just a shallow playboy, a lifestyle which He Did Not Enjoy At All. You could tell this, because Christian Bale's single facial expression, surely learnt at the Keanu Reeves School of Acting, was a mixture of ANGER and REGRET. Look, it seemed to say, you might think that driving a big nitrous-injected tank over rooftops is fun, but I am VERY SERIOUS.

I personally felt this was a real shame - I like a bit of breathless exuberance in my blockbusters. But it seems that ever since the disastrous cheesy Batman efforts of the 90s (Stand up, Arnold "The Iceman Cometh" Schwarzenegger, I'm talking to you) the only way to achieve credibility is to deny fun. As a result, cool fighty stunts which would make the average 10-year urinate with glee are tackled in the most irritatingly po-faced manner.

Strangely enough, po-facedness was quite lacking from the other film I saw this weekend, despite there being far more occasion for it. Cry Freedom is, like Gandhi, a sweeping Dickie Attenborough human rights epic. It tells the story of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, and a white journalist's attempt to publish his life story after Biko's extremely suspicious death from a 'hunger strike' in police custody. My companion, and indeed the instigator of watching the film (after I had waxed lyrical about my previous viewing of it, aged 15) was my housemate, who for the purposes of this blog shall be known as Max. I found him on the sofa on Saturday morning, clad in his distinctive weekend apparel of electric blue bathrobe and houmous, and the main character already dead. This being a Richard Attenborough film, that meant there was about two hours left to go.

Anyway, Cry Freedom is too good (and important, and worthy) a film to be flippant about. The music is fantastic, the scenery beautiful, and the story almost unbearably sad. It's handled with skill and sensitivity and the largest number of extras I've ever seen, and it resists the temptation to overplay the tragedy for cheap tear-jerking effect, recognising that the story itself is strong enough to be deeply affecting.

Well, look at that - a proper post. Imagine my excitement. That means I had better save Parte The Seconde for a bit later, as it's about Valentine's day. Don't worry, I shan't be writing about how I'm the First Person Ever to realise it's all a commercial enterprise, where makers of cards, chocolate and disgusting oversized stuffed toys cynically manipulate our collective paranoia (In other news, Christmas isn't just about the birth of Jesus). It'll be about laughter, and the good times, and playing Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now and Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah over and over at my dinner guests until they cry.

PS. Props to Dr Feelgood for realising, as I have, that Richard Hammond is taking over television. The pint-sized sexpot has been an obsession of this blog for some time - ever since topping Heat's Weird Crush Poll - and I too saw him on Petrolheads, the lamest panel show of all time (apart from that mental arithmetic one with Marcus du Sautoy on BBC4) and I felt a little piece of his soul die.

The man's a TV whore! He'll do anything - dog shows, pop-science programmes, health scare shows. I can't shake off this feeling he's having Alan Partridge's career in reverse. I note from his wikipedia entry that his next live gig is presenting... oh, no, you'll be glad I made you wait for this... here it comes... The British Parking Awards. At the Dorchester. And that noise you hear, as Bill Hicks would say, is the sound of him sucking Satan's cock.

Thankfully, it was obvious from last night's Top Gear that James May and Jeremy Clarkson are willing to stand up to him, referring to him as "TV's Richard Hammond" and keeping up the teeth-whitening gags for the fourth successive month. On that note, I should add that the Top Gear Winter Olympics special is one of the best pieces of TV I've seen recently, featuring as it did both James and Jeremy eating pissed-on snow. TV bigwigs take note - that's prime time entertainment.

fire alarms, fluffy thongs and divers alarums.

2006-02-09T22:56:00.000+01:00

as seems to be par for the course these days, i must begin by apologising for my lack of my posting. fear not, unlike artegall i have not renounced blogging for higher things (like making celebrities wait to use the loo) but have been working on Macs. Yes, they don't like blogger - and because I work on computers eight hours a day, I refuse point blank to use them in my free time unless absolutely necessary.

Another thing is that I've been working evenings, effectively killing my social life and depriving me of tasty morsels of gossip and discussion to toss into the bear pit of this blog. The one night I did try to go out - last Saturday - I rather unwisely over-indulged and ended up in the alleged VIP area of an electronica club in Shoreditch. It was, I may say, exactly what I expected an electronica club in Shoreditch to be like. The management had eschewed interior decoration and gender division of the toilets - neither of them wise decisions. Still I had a good night, right up until I was manhandled into a taxi at 4am. Then karma came and bit my in the ass at work the next day. Oh yes, Sunday is Fire Alarm Testing Day. As the sixth 15-second burst rang out across the office, I could have sworn I was going to be sick.

On Friday I went to see A Cock And Bull Story, Michael 'High Class Porn' Winterbottom's retelling of Tristram Shandy. I'm very glad I've seen it; as previously discussed, my crippling attention deficit disorder means I will never read the original book. It was very funny - laugh out loud stuff - but, as with so many other clever-clever postmodern things, it seemed to lack soul. I suppose that's the point, though: we've got so used to neat little narratives in film and books, that anything which attempts to portray the randomness and untidiness of real life (as both Tristram Shandy and the film do) seems bizarrely artificial. I'm a bit disturbed by my clear unconscious need for everything to have 'resolution': in fact I think it's a force for bad in my real life as well. It means I assume that if there is a denouement, and everybody knows everything, it will all work out in the end. Of course, it doesn't, and I look like the interfering gossip I am, rather than the winsome Puck-like figure I imagine myself to be.

Tomorrow hopefully brings the long-delayed trip to the British Library, where I intend to do some... wait for it... homework! Yes, I have given up my search for copies of BS Johnson's The Unfortunates and Travelling People, and am forced to seek them out in the library. Somehow, I knew that Rotherhithe and Peckham libraries, while possessing a Jack Clancy selection which cannot be faulted, were not the place for forgotten modernist authors.

Then it's off to the cinema to see Michael Haneke's thriller Hidden, about which I have heard great things. Unfortunately, as well as having no attention span, I am half-blind and in denial (and penury, hence no glasses) so I'm not sure how I'm going to get on with a fast-paced subtitled film. Oh well, I'm always saying I need to improve my French.

And on that note, I shall leave you with my plans for Valentine's Day: a piss up. Yes, I have forsworn the tempting options of a suicide pact or shotgun rampage, and plan to sit at home with my friends, muttering darkly about how it's all commercial bollocks anyway, and who wants a 'romantic' pink furry thong or similar branded wank, before sobbing quietly into my White Russian about how I'm going to die alone.

To be fair, Valentine's has not been kind to me of late. I usually wouldn't kiss and tell, but last year I received a book on the Rwandan genocide, and the year before that I was given some tea. From China. When a friend confronted the unfortunate gift-giver with his obvious tightarsedness, his only reply was: "It cost £3! That's a week's wages for a Chinese!" Although that's better than my first boyfriend, who turned up with two red roses, claimed he got two because they were on sale. When I murmured something appreciative, he turned on me and went, "Don't be stupid - red roses on sale on Valentine's Day? You must have been born yesterday!" Which took the shine off the evening somewhat, as did the fact he was too cheap to take me out so I cooked him dinner at my parents' house.

Still, he did make up for it by sending me a love letter (one of only two received by Galatea to date) with a thoughtfully attached picture of Carol Vorderman and Jimmy Tarbuck, captioned: "They look happy together, and so do we..." Don't believe me? I'll show it to you. Although I would like to point out that when he mentions me picking my nose and eating it, that was just a disgusting teenage habit which I don't do any more.

And on that mucus-based bombshell, I shall leave you.

i've got more in common with a goldfish than you might think

2006-01-27T15:09:00.000+01:00

"Your problem," said the Protestant (obviously not his real name) to
me this weekend, "your problem is that you have a two-second attention
span." He's right, of course, and the fact that he was trying to tell
me a long and extremely complicated story to do with Northern Irish
politics affords me no excuse.

For years, I've been trying to make the best of my total inability to
concentrate. I like to pretend to myself I have a quicksilver
intellect, quickly making connections and skipping on polymathically
to the next topic. Unfortunately, it's more the case that I'm just
totally unable to concentrate on anything for more than, I'd say, five
and a half minutes.

As you can imagine, this makes life very difficult. Now, we've all
heard evolutionary biologists tell us woman are genetically programmed
to be able to concentrate on more than one thing at once, whereas men
pour everything into one activity and become metaphorically deaf to
everything else (or, in the case of my dad watching television,
literally deaf to everything else, up to and including a smoke alarm)
. I can see that this is very useful when you have a baby, and it's
vitally important you don't get so wrapped up in Deal Or No Deal that
you are blissfully unaware that your pride and joy is bawling its
little lungs out in a cesspool. And has colic.

But until that time, it's just bloody annoying. And I'm hardly being
helped by today's media, who pander to my blink and you'll miss it
attention span by feeding me all my information and entertainment in
tasty, bite-sized pieces. I got an email yesterday offering to send me
the Guardian web site front page to my inbox every day, as if the
massive effort of scrolling down the web page itself might overload my
three remaining neurons.

A friend of mine is in the middle of reading War and Peace. I've got
to face up to the fact I'm never going to read that, just like I'm
sure deep down I'm never going to sit through Citizen Kane or
Battleship Potemkin, or any silent film. God, that makes me feel guilty. I haven't been to the cinema for months. Going to remedy that by seeing A Cock And Bull Story tomorrow. But that's only because I'm never going to be arsed to read Tristram Shandy. Argh...

My butterfly intellect has other secret repercussions, too. During my
English degree I very quickly realised I didn't have the dedication to
plough through any novelist's complete works, and a fair selection of
criticism, and write an essay, all in the space of a week. So I
focused on poets, and letter writers, and journalists. I realised,
reading Alexander Pope in the second year, that my ideal author would
exclusively write epigrams. That way, I could be a world expert after
about two hours.

Sadly, to the best of my knowledge no such author exists. e e cummings
is pretty pithy, I suppose, but I don't know what to do when it comes
to prose. I've been using my literary dilettantism to justify buying
short story collections - Tibor Fischer's Don't Read This Book If
You're Stupid and lots of Borges - and ploughing through the
collected journalism of The Hitch.

Anyway, I'm typing this while watching a very good Horizon documentary about intelligent design. So I, er, better give that my full attention...

Friday, I'm (not) in love

2006-01-20T15:52:00.000+01:00

I don't want somebody to love me/just give me sex whenever I want it/Cause all I ask for is instant pleasure/Instant pleasure, Instant pleasure...

Thank you, Rufus Wainwright, for illustrating the point of today's post, which is about the last taboo. No, not anal sex - as The Hitch points out to the left, it's rubbish - but (gasp with horror at my bravery) enjoying being single.

I know. What happened? I watched Bridget Jones, I thought about being eaten by alsatians; I read End of the Affair, Romeo and Juliet, and the bloody English Patient, for chrissakes; I've compulsively watched Sex and The City and thought about the awfulness of churning through flaky men, trying to find Mr Right, to the accompaniment of the ever-louder ticking of my biological clock. And yet - I'm really rather liking being toute seule.

The reason it's taboo, surely, is that all my reasons are selfish. I don't want to get hurt (which is itself selfish, I suppose) but more than that, I can't be bothered. I like having my bed to myself; doing what I want, when I want; having weekends where I spend the days on the sofa watching Cracker, and the evenings with my friends; it's a hell of a lot cheaper (I always go for poor blokes, and am a soft touch) and I now exude the granite-like emotional stability of, say, Gordon Brown.

Of course there are downsides, soppy ones mostly, like lazy mornings in bed, and the pleasant surprises a relationship throws up from time to time. I suppose I should miss 'having someone to lean on' who is 'always on my side', but my friends pick up the slack quite nicely on that one, and cause less argments to boot.

The only drawback that really bothers me now is ridiculous, really: I feel like I'm letting the side down. I'm in my twenties, living in London, I'm neurotic and over-educated, I enjoy trashy romantic comedies and my friends have started getting married. Why am I happy being single? There must be something wrong with me.

Anyway, some of you may have heard about the "manbargo" I imposed last year, which expires in February. Well, I'm renewing it for another three months - maybe I can flush all this exuberant independence out of my system, and become a normal twentysomething woman again.

PURE HELL. Or not.

2006-01-12T13:57:00.000+01:00

Now, I'm sure you're aware of how much I love London. I love love LOVE
it. But sometimes i feel that it doesn't return my affections, that it
wants me to be unhappy. Its agents, usually are the staff and
passengers of the Tube.

This weekend, there was another tube strike, which I have to say - the
Evening Standard's "PURE HELL" headline notwithstanding - seemed a bit
of a washout. Then I read the LU press release. It said that the
reason the RMT staff were striking was that they would not accept the
new rota deal for - get this - a 35-hour week, and a whopping 52 days'
holiday. Shurely shome mistake? 52 days? That's nearly two bloody
months! My sympathy for the oppressed masses of tube workers has never been lower, especially given the fare rises which came in on January
2. The whole thing makes me feel like a pub bore, shrouded in
nostalgia, holding forth to anyone who will listen (this is you):
"When I first came to London, a zone 1 single was £1.70.... "

As if to confirm that the Tube is an agent of Satan, I witnessed
something disgusting last week. A man got on at Bermondsey station,
with a large and splenetic-looking dog. It reminded me of Bill Sykes'
dog in Oliver! - mean, calculating, smelly. For several minutes I
sniggered behind my book as its overgrown claws meant it had no
purchase on the slippery train floor. But karma was about to jump up
and bite me on the ass (although the dog, thankfully, stopped just
short of that). Before I knew it, the man had decided to sit down a
seat away from me. How unpleasant, I thought, to have the dog sniffing
round my ankles.

But no! He encouraged the dog to jump right on up and have a seat. it
can't have been any happier with this arrangement than with skidding
round, because it fidgeted for several minutes, before starting - I
swear with an insouciant look at me first - to lick its balls, slowly
and deliberately. As is obligatory with medium-sized dogs, they were
huge - massively out of proportion with its scrawny frame- and yet so
very much in contact with a seat on which an unsuspecting human bottom
would be sitting mere minutes later.

Again; not a real post. But I've been reading some very interesting books - try being a girl and reading a book subtitled "The Failures of Feminism" if you want male attention in public - so I will be airing my fatuous opinions on them very soon.

Sub standard.

2006-01-05T20:33:00.000+01:00

I apologise for not posting, and have decided to clear up any rumours
which may, or may not, have been flying round - taking my inspiration
from none other than Charles Kennedy, and his dignified announcement
that -shock! - he may have had one whisky too many.
Now, now, once you have taken a moment to register this mindboggling
and, crucially, BRAND NEW piece of information, let's proceed to my
excuse for being a bit under-par of late.

The date: Christmas Day. The scene: my eldest sister's house. The
weapon: the nostrils of my middle nephew, the charming yet undeniably
snotty D, aged two and a half. Ah yes, having long ago been
established in family mythology as 'good with children', it seemed
that I had been appointed Person In Charge of Making Sure Three
Children Didn't Injure Themselves Or Eat the Baubles. Not an easy job,
when D's high spirits could be more uncharitably interpreted as ADD,
eldest nephew J, aged nearly 3, is cleverer than I am and O, at three
months old, can't bear to be put down. Or cuddled sitting down. And
weighs as much as, say, a generously-proportioned Christmas turkey
(something his mother, weirdly, drew attention too, saying in a
cutesy-baby-voice, "Ooo, you're sooo chubby-wubby, maybe we should put
yoooo in the oven!" before catching my expression of horror).

Anyway, one of thess miniature spawn of Satan, sorry, Little Angels,
sneezed all over my food, and my money's on D. Obviously, my Christmas
indulgence, combined with the diet of half of Michelle McManus (before
going on You Are What You Eat) and avoiding fresh air and exercise
since leaving school, has left me with the immune system of a newborn
rat. So of course I caught D's cold. In fact, I saw the cold, and
raised it sinusitis.

Still, there are consolations - despite having all the symptoms
described on NHS direct, I haven't yet got any of the complications,
which include the ever-charming "brain abcesses" - and it sounds so
much more impressive in conversation. So for now, I am living a
hermit-like life, leaving the house only to go to work, and with no
other entertainment than guessing what colour my mucus will turn next
(why does no-one else want to play that game with me?)

On that note, I'm off to the canteen. Not that I can taste anything,
of course. Normal service will be resumed once I regain use of all
five senses, and stop sleeping eleven hours a night....

i ain't unwrapping no present, fool!

2005-12-20T17:33:00.000+01:00

happy christmas from my new best friends, the a-team, and me. normal service will be resumed, well, probably on Christmas Day when I tire of my family at 5pm and decide to write a blog entry rather than watching my dad laugh like a drain at some woefully unamusing Morecambe & Wise skit, while my mother gives me a lecture on how modern comedy "just isn't funny any more".

i enjoyed writing this. so there.

2005-12-15T16:28:00.000+01:00

So what if it was published six years ago? I've only just read Martin Amis's memoir, Experience, so I feel perfectly entitled to write a review. Should you not want to read it, I should point out there's Clarkson and Sir Cliff at the bottom... Go on, you know you want to!
--

"But it's all about his bloody teeth.."

I don't remember who said this to me, on the subject of Martin Amis's Experience, but they were bang on the money. He is obsessed with his teeth, and at pains to point out that the work he had done on them was medical, not cosmetic, every time they come up.

Indeed, there's a great bit in the postcript to the book, on the subject of the press, where Amis observes, "If these pages have so far been without rancour, it is because I feel very little."

Well, "Mart", you could have fooled me. In fact, every time The Teeth come up (and believe me, they have a far more starring role in the book than either his ex-wife or current partner), an adjunct is usually added over how the press disgracefully made out that his surgery was frivolous and unnecessary. This seems to enrage him enough to give us another few pages on the subject, complete with gruesome descriptions of his bleeding gums etc. Now, I've had a fair amount of (largely unsuccessful) work done on my teeth, including fourteen extractions and the cruel imposition of traintrack braces in my first term of university, but I'll be the first to admit that it's not a greatly fascinating subject to anyone else.

Amis seems to feel that the fact that James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov were similarly dentally challenged is somehow significant, stopping on the brink of suggesting that crap teeth equal a tendency towards becoming an experimental prose stylist.

I don't know, perhaps I'm carping. Perhaps he's justified in his complaints about the Press's obsession with his teeth rather than his pen: I have to admit that neither Amis impinged greatly on my consciousness until quite recently, and I was too busy taking exams and not pulling (aka: being a teenager) to remember any of the apparent furore that accompanied the events described in the book.

This, I began to feeling as I got further in to the book, was a bit of a drawback. Amis blithely assumes that the reader knows the salient features of his life and plays merry hell with chronology, leaping from childhood to middle age between sections, if not paragraphs. I suppose to the more savvy reader this prevented the boredom of rehashing well-known events; I, however, was left floundering as it seemed the 7-year-old Amis suddenly started having problems with his ex-wife.

None of this means I didn't enjoy reading the memoirs - far from it, they were extremely readable, and certainly illuminating on the subject of Kingsley Amis's writing. Amis junior admits he's not his father's perfect reader - claiming that is Christopher Hitchens - but his analysis of the misanthropy of Stanley and The Women in light of his father's split from Jane Howard, for example, is usefully illuminating. I've now vowed to give it another go, having got to page three, and discarded it with a distinct 'harrumph' at the last attempt.

In fact, the descriptions of KA and the analyses of his writing are so good, and his sweary, bigoted, wine-sodden presence so overwhelming, that I finished the book wishing that it was just about the father-son relationship. Amis is clearly afraid of offending the living - having, he feels, been so comprehensively screwed by biographers and journalists himself, he seems reluctant to pass anything but the most anodyne judgement on contemporaries, and even refuses to quote more than "fuck off" from Julian Barnes's friendship-ending letter to him.

With KA, on the other hand, he faces an opponent able to defend himself - Kingsley produced his own published memoirs, and also left a comprehensive account of himself in his letters, particularly to Larkin - despite, bizarrely, his death. Perhaps if Amis lives as long as his hero and mentor Saul Bellow, his contemporaries will die off before him, and we'll be able to get a brutally honest assesment of them, too.

--
Anyway, Experience is not the only book I've read recently, but I won't try your patience with thousands more words about random books published years ago. After Christmas, however, prepare for the deluge: it seems that all I'm getting in the way of presents is books, after foolishly drawing my family's attention to my Amazon Wishlist.

--

In other news: despite it having been broadcast without comment last month (!) both the Mail and Mirror today carry the story that Jeremy Clarkson gave a Nazi salute on Top Gear. Now, as you know, Clarkson is God on this blog, and therefore could probably invade Poland without drawing a rebuke from me... but I thought it worth mentioning as the Mirror headlined it "SIEG VILE" and even devoted an oped to denouncing it, noting: "FA Bosses are keen to stop fans whipping up trouble next summer by singing anti-German chants and the theme from war movie Dambusters".

Yes, you read that right. Such high-mindedness from the paper that brought us "ACHTUNG SPITFIRE" and front page photos of Gazza in a WWII helmet at the last World Cup. I could mention the Daily Mail's 1930s "HOORAY FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS" headline, but I won't.

--

Also causing a flicker on my total-lack-of-self-awareness-ometer today is Sir Cliff Richard. Although he might have spared us his usual Christmas warblings (or has he? am I still to encounter them?), he's constitutionally unable to keep his yap shut on the subject of Christmas Christianity.

He's spoken out in the Mail on (yawn) political correctness, yes, that curse of our society meaning we are all busy saying "Winterval" and, er, being prevented from going to carol services by lefty do-gooders worried about angering Muslims. Cliff's pearls of wisdom on the subject: "I'm saying, 'Hello, I've got friends who are Asian. I wish them Happy Diwali, they wish me Happy Christmas.' In fact they enjoy Christmas."

No! Thank god we have an ambassador for multiculturalism like you, Sir Cliff. I hope they sing along to the Millennium Prayer, too, like all true Brits should. He also offered this piece of stunning political forecasting: "As far as I'm concerned, if Jesus was Prime Minister, we'd have absolutely no problems whatsoever. If he was also Treasurer, we'd also have no trouble with money."

Sadly, he added, "But we're not realistically ever going to find people like that." Shit. Really? And I was so holding out for the Holy Ghost to be foreign secretary - bet Chirac would give us our EU rebate then.

I'm reading Balzac, knocking back Prozac

2005-12-13T15:40:00.000+01:00

To A Friend in Search of Rural Seclusion

When all else fails,
Try Wales
- Christopher Logue

As previously discussed, I spent the weekend in the countryside - the Sussex/Hampshire border, to be exact. The visit marked a rare departure for me as I usually hate the countryside, and most particularly, taking holidays in it. I am a city girl through and through, and get itchy if out of trotting distance of a newsagents, supermarket and public transport point. I think I'd probably enjoy the countryside a hell of a lot more if I could drive, because then it would be something pretty I'd glimpse at speed from a window, rather than something stuck to my shoes.

Besides which, I'm a lover; not a walker - something I reflected on as I trudged to the next village on Sunday to buy the papers. I think my hatred of the country stems from childhood, when my parents would uproot me from in front of the TV every summer and drag the whole family off to some godforsaken corner of France, believing that the "authentic" French farmhouse experience - no central heating, intermittent running water, overpowering smell of livestock, bugger all to do - was somehow more worthy than a week in the Costa del Sol. I guess it's a Catholic thing: the less fun you're having, the better an experience must be for you.

Even now, my mother still tries to tempt me on holiday with her and Dad. "We'll pay for your flights," she coos. "It'll be a real chance to get away from it all". But sadly, bitter experience has taught me that I don't want to get away from it all, I want specifically to stay in the middle of it all, eating convenience food and exploring the possibilities of 24-hour media access.

Another problem is that my mother (and sister) believe that sunbathing is an activity. It is not. It is the absence of activity, whilst being too hot and having things land on you. Tack two of Mother's Holiday Recruitment Plan is, therefore, "ooh, it'll be really sunny". Even she really ought to be able to read my lack of desire to go sunbathing in my constant refusals to do so, and incredibly pasty complexion. (Blood Donation Nurse, peering concernedly at me: "Are you always that pale?" Me: "Yes." Nurse: "Oh. Gosh.") In recent years, however, my total refusal to venture outside between April and September unless absolutely necessary has won me new found respect from my mother, who has even acknowledged that years of sunbathing may have taken their toll, admittingly ruefully, "I look a bit like a handbag".

Anyway, now I refuse to go on holiday except to cities, and not in summer. The cottage this weekend was an exception, and I hope my companion for the weekend appreciates my noble sacrifice on his behalf, particularly as there was initially no heating, and I fell over in a puddle on the first day, manking my jeans. My back-up trousers, alas, were not actually trousers, but a pair of ill-advised black city shorts/pedal pushers, which are a bit too much like piratey pantaloons for my taste. Combined with my new trilby (the subject of many jibes by my ex-boyfriend over how I look like Liza Minelli), knee-length boots, jacket and jaunty stripy gloves, I had to fetch the papers looking like a Michael Jackson impersonator who had fallen on particularly hard times (perhaps an easily explicable occurrence...)

So there you have it: I hate the country, and the country hates me right back. It senses my presence, and over the years has thrown whatever it could at me in the form of freak weather and over-affectionate animals. I might well be a professional cynic not to appreciate the rolling hills, fresh air and general bucolic idyll... but I think I like it that way.

--
An Illustration of Why I Hate The Countryside...

Fantasy, and Reality

the definition of a bad idea

2005-12-13T11:15:00.000+01:00

From the Daily Mail's article on Agnetha from Abba:

"Her last relationship was with Dutch forklift driver Gert van der Graf, who had stalked her with cards and letters for 20 years before romance finally blossomed.

After they split in 1999, he hounded her until she sought a restraining order on him."

Honestly - how could she ever have guessed he was the obsessive type?

Anyway, more later - I'm back from my weekend of rural seclusion, and raring to blog... but there is a rather large fire in Hertfordshire which is demanding my attention.

the weekend essay, apparently.

2005-12-09T14:45:00.000+01:00

Warning: the following post is probably of no interest to anyone without a lively interest in medieval history. I accept that not everyone shares my deep and abiding love of the subject, and I do not judge you. If you were the sort of child who played with the other kids, rather than sitting indoors reading about Lucrezia Borgia, I'd skip this one.

---

Well, I promised you Anne Boleyn, and I am delivering Anne Boleyn. I recently watched the TV adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl, adapted from Philippa Gregory's best-selling novel. It was a little unsettling at first - the makers seemed to have decided that the impression of historical realism could best be created by shaky, Office-style camerawork, and lots of rustling.

The other Boleyn girl was Anne's older sister Mary - a beautiful, blonde, slightly drippy thing, who attracted the attention of Henry VIII and was soon persuaded to be his mistress. Natasha McElhone certainly fulfilled the beauty criteria - next to Jodhi May, who played Anne, there was no question who was the looker. Her Mary was a bit more pious than I remembered (admittedly, not from any serious historical study, but from, er, another historical novel).

It was quite a brave decision to base a plot on what most people would consider to be a minor character in the saga of the Boleyn family. Not that this kind of thing hasn't happened before, and very successfully too - look at Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, or the Flashman series - but what was unusual about this was that it didn't pretend that Anne wasn't the main attraction. Her very lack of beauty made her more fascinating - after all, it was pretty bloody obvious why Henry fancied her meek, gorgeous sister - but Anne seemed to win him over by being rude to him and playing chess in a provocative way (who knew that worked?)

Anyway, I'll be the first to admit it was a watchable hour or so of television, and one I would recommend. I bet you'd never guess that Anne Boleyn was one of my heroines as a child, what with getting to be Queen despite being a bit plain, brunette and intellectual, rather than dimpled, rosy-cheeked and unthreatening.

While we're on the subject, may I take the opportunity of recommending some historical fiction as light Christmas reading? It's trashy, the stories may well be familiar enough to let you skip through it, and there are some genuinely great mental people in history who should be better known to the public at large.

Take, for example, Queen Juanita of Spain, sister of Catherine of Aragon. She was proper mad, and after her beloved husband died, used to transport his dead body everywhere she went, and kiss it. Unhygienic? Just a bit. In fact, medieval royalty - due to rigorous in-breeding - did mad rather well. Another 'eccentric' was Charles VI of France, whose main hallucination was that he was made of glass. Needless to say, this was a bit of a drawback in everyday life.

(Another historo-loon: uber-historical novelist Jean Plaidy would have you believe that Catherine de Medici managed to send one of her sons, Charles, mad and gay by showing him hardcore gay porn woodcuts from an early age, so that her favourite son, Henry - who actually was gay - could inherit the throne. The youngest son of the family might also be familiar to you as the cross-dressing suitor in Elizabeth who asks if he can touch her 'chatte'. Throw in the fact that the family's only daughter was a nymphomaniac, and Catherine herself had a nasty habit of dishing out poisoned gloves, and imagine what family Christmases were like with the French royal family.)

And perhaps it is true that there are only three stories in life and literature. Certainly the "oh-bollocks-I-need-a-male-heir" gambit was very popular in medieval monarchy, to the extent you'd think someone would twig that maybe they should just let women inherit the throne and be done with it. Yes, she might well turn out to be terrible at reigning, but that was a risk you were always going to take by handing the throne to any milk-fed inbred - I'm sure it can't be coincidence that the best medieval monarchs - including Elizabeth I, and France's Henri 'Paris is worth a mass' Quatre - had some 'hybrid vigour' from non-royal parents. Marrying your cousin? Never going to end well.

Oh dear. I seem to have written a history essay. Perhaps I'm turning into Simon Schama. I await my own BBC2 'History is Fun' show, where I jump round saying "Yeah? Did Henry like THAT? NO!" with bated breath. I can't help getting animated on the subject; I'm sorry. I learned everything I know about Kings and Queens from historical fiction, so I owe it a great debt - history at school, cruelly, was always about the Industrial Revoltion and new methods of ploughing and Jethro Tull's horse-drawn seed drill. I did wonder if the powers that were thought there were too many people doing History at university, and deliberately devised the GCSE syllabus to put us off. And doing the subject at university would have involved looking at the causes of stuff, and documents, and all the stuff I can gleefully ignore as an amateur, in order to get to the smiting, shagging and longing looks from castle battlements.

--
In other news: A great story came out of Japan last night: a trader at financial firm Mizuho Securities made a typo which cost the company around £128 million. Its Christmas party was also cancelled due to the incident.

The trader (who may well be wishing hara-kiri was still an option) wanted to sell one share in a company for 600,000 yen. Alas, the order went through as a sale of 600,000 shares at 1 yen each. Oops. Cue instant chaos, rending of garments, gnashing of teeth etc (if you want the technical details, I suggest you read the original Times article here, since, I am deeply ashamed to confess, my knowledge of financial markets is a little rusty).

If it weren't for the fact that I am deeply opposed to traders and financial markets, despite knowing approximately bugger all about them, I would actually feel quite sad for the man. But the trouble is that it's very hard to feel sorry for someone who works in such a ridiculous job - the whole concept of trading, especially futures trading, just seems set up for this kind of thing to happen.

The best thing about the story is undoubtedly the fact that incidents like this happen enough to have a proper name: fat finger syndrome. What a cracking piece of terminology! When I saw it on the BBC news ticker, I was genuinely intrigued, imagining a new disease where your fingers instantly swelled like up to resemble artisan sausages, or something similarly grotesque.

You can't beat a catchy epithet, if you want to get a reasonable amount of press coverage for something. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy was on a highway to nowhere until some genius came up with Mad Cow Disease - fame, fortune and being used as the title of a crap Kathy Lette novel awaited...

the hors d'oeuvres of anger are modulated into the appetizers of wrath...

2005-12-08T17:50:00.000+01:00

So it turns out that my rage yesterday was but an amuse bouche to the full-on smorgasbard of ire with which I am suffused today.

Several things have caused this: the approach of Christmas, my total lack of money due to the grasping thugs at Southwark Council who have put our council tax up by a whopping 40%.

But chief among the reasons for my disgruntlement is the fact I'm trying to break in a new pair of shoes. Yes, I know it's not the Middle East situation, or extraordinary rendition - but trust me, in the tiny personal universe of my feet, it's as bad.

Unlike hangthedj, who seems to buy a new pair of shoes every week, I lack the steely determination and (presumably) elephant hide-like skin to make new shoes fun. Despite affixing no less than four plasters to be soon-to-be-tested tootsies this morning, I currently look like I'm suffering from a particularly chic version of trench foot.

And tonight is the company Christmas party, where I had hoped to be Cinderella (if Cinderella had turned up early doors and, instead of dancing with the Prince, had scoffed all the canapes and tried to sneak out with two bottles of wine tucked into her waistband).

And all day my colleagues have been giving me dire warnings - telling the story of the trainee who was sick on the Chief Executive (worrying. as I typed that, he appeared in front of me - maybe he's like the Candyman...) and advising me to steer clear of the canapes, "which might have been hanging around all day".

What they do not know is that I have an appointment with around thirty Frenchmen in Elephant & Castle at nine, so will be long gone before anyone starts photocopying their arse.

Anyway, a proper post tomorrow - although, quite possibly, it will be about Anne Boleyn.

cold baked beans and diagnosis murder.

2005-12-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

Three fun facts to kick off the day with (all learnt by me in the course of my work):

The bigger a bat's testicles, the smaller its brain.

Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin's first date was in a chip shop.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's real name is Gideon.

I feel unable to mount a sustained. coherent argument on anything today, such is my generalised rage. I seem to be able to get angry at anything, anywhere, and to hold forth on the subject for a surprisingly long time. But you don't want to read my sub-Hefferesque bile on Robbie William's libel win, or the fact that, although it seems to escape all newspaper columnists, Christianity is for life, not just for Christmas. You want laughter mixed with ruefulness, twinkling observations and wry sideways glances, don't you?

Besides which, I'm far too excited about PMQs today, with David 'blank sheet of paper' Cameron taking on Big Tone mano-a-mano at the despatch box. Watching the Channel 4 news last night, I finally realised I'd never really listened to Cameron's voice before - I saw his entire Party Conference speech with the sound turned down. He's got lovely gestures, but until yesterday I couldn't have recognised him speaking.

It made me realise what a string of judgements I make about people based on how they talk - perhaps there was a point to banning Gerry Adams' voice all those years - one of my most bizarre childhood memories - although I wish they'd also ordered that one of the people who did the dubbed voiceovers for Eurotrash had been employed as his 'voice double'. That would have undermined the credibility of the IRA and no mistake.

And frankly, Cameron's voice was what I should have expected. Classless in the studied way of the extremely-posh-but-embarrassed-about-it, a little bit higher than I would have imagined - but the overall impression was of blandness, which seemed fitting, given that that's the salient quality of his campaign. "Come on," his supporters cried, "there's almost nothing to hate about him! How dare you take the piss that he went to Eton - class obsessive! Look, his wife's got a tattoo - that's modern for you!"

There's a great line from Wendy Cope's Triolet, which begins by observing, "I used to think poets were Byronic/ Mad, bad and dangerous to know". After meeting some poets, she observes, "They're mostly wicked as a ginless tonic/ And wild as pension plans". That, to me, is David Cameron. I actually think he might he started the drug rumours to seem a bit more cool and yoof.

I mean, take that line - "I had a normal university experience" - did you? did you really? You got a first in PPE from Oxford, so you must have worked quite hard, for a start, and your days probably involved less sitting round in your pants, eating cold baked beans and watching daytime TV than the average student's.

Then there was your membership of the Bullingdon Club, Oxford's infamous dining society. Now, I know some people who were members of similar societies, and let me tell you, they were tossers. Not wild, debauched, elegantly-wasted Byronic tossers, either, but narrow-minded, slow-witted bores. It's my contention that they smash up restaurants because it's so boring talking to each other about shooting weekends and Monaco that the cleverest member of the group snaps, and hurls the first piece of crockery. After that, the aristo herd instinct kicks in.

But enough of my rampant prejudice; he seems to be doing well at PMQs, and I suppose it's time to give him a chance. (I reserve the right to take this largesse back if he does something awful when naming his shadow Cabinet, e.g. ignores Boris Johnson, or appoints Nicholas Soames Minister For Health.)

Told you I was full of rage.

the chronicles of narnia: a bunch of arse.

2005-12-05T18:37:00.000+01:00

Polly Toynbee's article in the Guardian about her hatred for of the Chronicles Of Narnia's 'toe-curling, cringe-making' Christian allegory struck a chord with me.

Before we start: cards on the table. My father is a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church, my mother an RE teacher. Both are, it's fair to say, more than a Little Bit Religious, and they sent me to a Convent school, and took me to church every Sunday until I was 18 and escaped to university.

Interesting statistic: that means I must have gone to church more than a thousand times before my eighteenth birthday. Since turning 18, I'd estimate I've gone about twenty times.

Anyway, it's probably pretty obvious to you (if you've been paying attention) why I don't like religion - I am militantly pro-gay rights, pro-choice and anti-being told what to think.

But, like many a child, I was not always such a contrarian on the subject. I took my first communion, I got confirmed (admittedly with a slightly-joke confirmation name, Agnes, which summed up the worst excesses of medieval religion's obsession with gore and virgins). My rebellion only really extended to occasionally refusing to say 'I do' when asked to say whether or not I rejected Satan at the Easter Service and eating the odd unconsecrated wafer left lying about. (Yeah, OK, it's hardly saying the Black Mass in my bedroom, but it felt naughty at the time...)

Actually, I think the thing I did which probably most scared my mother was claim to have had a dream vision of heaven aged about 9. As any Catholic will tell you, it doesn't do to get excited or enthusiastic about religious belief, that's best left to crazy evangelicals and other, more common, religions.

So, as you might expect, my parents were keen on improving literature, particularly that with a Christian bent - and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe duly arrived one Christmas. I read that in a day (a combination of fast reading and terminal boredom, I'd imagine) and I liked it. Might have even shed a tear or two when the stone table broke, and the little mice gnawed Aslan's ropes off.

Then I read the Magician's Nephew; liked that better - out with the fauns and the dangerous confectionery, in with different coloured magic rings, a scary Queen and the deplorable word - this was more like it.

But then, reading on over the next few months, I became more and more repulsed as my emerging egaliterianism blossomed. What happened if you weren't chosen to become a King or a Queen? That's surely much more likely, that you'll just be some pleb - and then you don't get to do anything interesting with your life, you just knock around as a bit part player. And why do you have to be blonde to be a princess? Had I been excluded from princess-dom by melanin?

Those were my first objections - now, I could give you so many more - and not just religious. For example, the blatant racism of the 'Calormen', obviously intended to be Arabs. But that's for another day... it's the religious bits that currently have my goat; and I doubt they'll let it go.

The Last Battle, the final book in the series, is a classic example of the apocalyptic hysterics that seem to affect religious writers. After some nasty business in which a talking ape convinces all the Narnians that the Anti-Christ, Tash, is the same as Good Ol' Aslan, everyone is summoned to walk through a mysterious door to test their faith (read: die).

Well, excuse me if I don't think that pointlessly snuffing it is a particularly admirable pursuit. Could they not have proved their goodness in another way? Joined a folk band? Volunteered at a local homeless shelter? That's the trouble with religious types, first whiff of trouble and they decide the best solution is to die. Honestly.

Anyway, here's the delicious: they all walk through the door and find themselves in Heaven (which manifests itself as the ability to run without getting tired. Yeah, great, eh? Tiredness or nay, endless jogging not my idea of a great afterlife). All apart from Susan. Oh Susan, silly, silly Susan. You see, she was only interested in "nylons, lipstick and invitations" and therefore did not go to Heaven and participate in the Great Celestial Fun Run.

I think it might have been a horrible coincidence that I read The Last Battle aged about 14 - about the time I too was developing a lively interest in, well, if not lipstick and nylons, then certainly invitations. And presented with the choice between hanging out with a bunch of goody two-shoes fitness obsessives for evermore, or going out on the razz and the ability to wear tights, I'm afraid I turned to the Dark Side.

So it cheered me to be reminded that one of my favourite authors, Philip Pullman, hates the Narnia Chronicles too, denouncing them as propaganda. Ironically, I came near to an epiphany last Christmas when reading the His Dark Materials trilogy - this, I thought, this is why I hate religion! All the exclusionism of "I'm going to Heaven and you're not", like God is some kind of nightclub bouncer, and if your name's not down, you're not coming in. And the endless need for hierarchy. And the total fear of human sexuality and its power.

So if you haven't read the Pullman books, imagine that I am jumping up and down inside your computer right now, begging you to read them. They are excellent - they even made reading Paradise Lost in the first place worthwhile (yes, that good).

gay marriage

2005-12-05T12:09:00.000+01:00

I hope you’ll excuse me today for recycling old material, but since today marks the first day of ‘gay marriage’, thanks to the Government’s Civil Partnership Bill, I thought it only right to celebrate it in some way - even if I don’t think the current legislation goes far enough. So, for your delight and edification, an article I wrote in more youthful, idealistic days. I apologise for the bit about the pigeons.

--
IN PRAISE OF GAY MARRIAGE

First of all, I'd like to sidestep the whole John Kerry "I support civil unions but not gay marriage" gambit. Most marriages are essentially civil unions anyway, whether or not Christian vows are included to please parents or to satisfy the bride's desire for a big entrance and a white dress. The way I see it, there are three main objections to gay marriage: biblical, traditional and social.

Since the two countries in which gay marriage is touted, Britain and America, are Christian, I hope you'll forgive me using Christian arguments. The Old Testament, it is true, talks about a man leaving his mother and father and joining with his wife, and Sodom and Gomorrah is condemned pretty strongly. Interesting, and in one of my favourite passages from the Old Testament, Lot is so disgusted by the baying crowd's desire to sodomize his male guests that he offers them his virgin daughters instead. Good honest family morals there.

The trouble with using Biblical evidence is that it relies on some pretty acute picking and choosing of texts: for some reason, the strictures against homosexuality are championed, whereas no one mentions much of the Old Testament's other useful advice for life. Do you know what to do if you have a mouldy skin disease? What about purifying yourself after a period? (I think the first answer is see a priest; the second involves burning some doves.) Not only this, but as The Economist's pro-gay marriage editorial points out, religious objections should not (and under the American constitution cannot) affect the legislation of a secular state.

Secondly, traditional. Marriage, we are to believe, is a sacred and long-established tradition where two people who love each other form a lifetime bond, which has consistently preserved society as we know it. Wrong. Until this century, marriage was a means of property transferral via the medium of a woman (at least for those with property), and a woman's only way of securing her and her children's future. Love had nothing to do with it - it was only in the late 18th century that the idea of 'companionate marriage' suggested that it would be nice for the participants to be fond of each other. Of course, divorce rates were low - women risked losing their children and being condemned to a life of poverty, as well as to a lively social stigma. If we are to re-imagine marriage as a loving bond between two people, why should they necessarily be a man and a woman? Even a cursory examination of historical or literary writings from previous eras will show you that homosexuality isn't a modern phenomenon - it just wasn't allowed to interfere with the cultural function of marriage. If we acknowledge that homosexual relationships exist, why not encourage them to be monogamous and long-term, rather than taking place furtively outside a loveless marriage?

The social argument is that marriage is a stabilising force - many Daily Mail pieces lament the decline of marriage as evidence that the youth of today aren't willing or able to take responsibility, and cannot function in adult society. Research shows that marriage reduces the incidence of domestic violence, for example, and forces both parents to undertake commitments to children. I'm sure this will sound glib, although it's not meant to: if marriage is great, why not have more of it?

One of the most common complaints about gay men and women is the culture of promiscuity which is supposed to be inevitably linked to homosexuality. Although there are promiscuous queer people, as there are straight, the sheer numbers of gay couples who rushed to be married in San Francisco recently shows that many wish to formalise and celebrate their relationship. Why would we stop them?

The institution of marriage has never looked more shaky, with an ever-growing percentage ending in divorce. Perhaps the only way to revitalise marriage is to shrug off the phenomenon's historical baggage and revisualise it as a solid, stable and loving bond between two people - regardless of gender.

But if you'll excuse me, I've got several years of pigeon-sacrificing to catch up on.

--

told you the pigeons were upsetting. anyhoo, to look forward to later in the week: Buying Porn for MRSA Sufferers; Use-By Dates Are Made Up By Supermarkets; Quite Literally, I Am Always The Bridemaid; and Why I Hate Narnia.

my ambition: to touch celebrities

2005-12-02T14:19:00.000+01:00

Statistic of the day: At parties, men are twice as likely to ask for a pay rise, three times as likely to strip and five times more likely to be sick on a colleague than women.

But to business: Yesterday didn’t start well. An epic shower session from the Housemate Who Cannot Be Named meant that I stumbled into work late, with unwashed hair. Not the best day start to any day.

Things perked up a bit later, however, when Weave (she of never-updated blog Weave Ponders, see left) texted mid-afternoon to offer tickets to the League of Gentlemen panto, and aftershow party, courtesy of everyone’s favourite right-wing media organisation (no, the other one). I wavered briefly, until she clinched it with the un-turn-downable, “Derren Brown’s going”.

Well, that was always going to swing it. Many’s the time I have dreamed of nodding sweetly as Derren explains the finer points of Neuro-Linguistic Programming to me, before interjecting with an incisive, “yeah, but, it’s all old-fashioned slight of hand, at the end of the day, isn’t it?” How we would laugh together at the simpletons who follow religions and believe that men in shiny suits in Vegas can talk to the dead. I might have even touched his parrot.

Weave was late; I, as usual, was early, and had joined four other people at the prison-eating bench in Hammersmith station McDonalds to pie down a Nugget Happy Meal. Fellow diners included a six-foot woman wearing clothes of such consummate vileness she could only have been a model. I even became one of those people I hate by ordering a Diet Coke, to accompany my myocardial infarction and chips.

When we finally took our seats, I reflected that the experience was coming dangerously close to vindicating my choice of journalism as a career, especially as Stephen Merchant ambled past me for the second time this month. All the more so when Sean Hughes sat down next to Sarah, with a scruffiness that only the rich and Irish can truly pull off with aplomb.

Cursing myself for sitting on the left, denying me the chance to touch a celebrity (something I never turn down), I glanced round... to be confronted with Derren Brown, heading for the seat next to me. And all I could think at that perfect moment was: My hair! I hate my bloody housemate.

All my hopes and dreams of him pickpocketing my phone and putting his number in, before returning it without me even noticing (ooh, he's quick like that) - dashed. At least that’s what I’m going to blame it on in all future anecdotes about the incident. Weave's suggestion that I go up to him and say, "look into the eyes - not around the eyes - look into my eyes" was given short shrift.

There’s something odd about celebrities in real life: they look, well, not exactly glossier than us mere mortals - but somehow more in focus. (For the record, Derren had a strong, manly clap and was wearing very shiny shoes.) And there's nothing better than demonstrating to slebs how totally and utterly unimpressed you are with their proximity. And then running off and texting all your friends.

The show was good, if a little obvious - featuring lines surely stolen from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Panto Jokebook, circa 1380, along the lines of "are you enjoying it? well, tell your face". According to Gail Porter, who we collared at the after-party (yes, Grinch, she is still sexy with the slaphead), they only had a few weeks to pull it together.

I don't think she was impressed when in response to her assertion that, "we couldn't have done as well in three weeks or whatever," I replied: "Well, I'd like to think so, really." But she did not see my seminal performance in St Peter's College Blind Date (cruelly overlooked for a Tony, 2002) so I suppose she must be forgiven.

Anyway, the weekend brings the first Christmas party of the season (although I cracked on Wednesday and had my first mince pie). Let's hope I don't become another vomit-stained statistic.

Strange meeting

2005-11-30T12:34:00.000+01:00

Last night I went for dinner and drinks with my friend Emma. We must have looked an odd couple in the cool Soho bar, both equally out of place among the stilettoed and quiffed posers. I had come straight from work - minimal make up, hair in a ponytail, quiet air of exhaustion; she had come up from Kent, where she works as a piercer, and was sporting a different kind of uniform - dreadlocks, denim skirt and footless tights, tasteful niobium piercings in her cheeks, nose and lip.

We must have looked like complete opposites, me City-smart and her Hoxton-trendy. The only clues that we were once the same were the ears - we both have stretched earlobes, mine an almost-unnoticeable centimetre, hers a more extravagant couple of inches.
We first met aged 17, in Worcester, a place which demonstrates amply Morrissey’s small-town lament: every day was like Sunday, every day was silent and grey. It is alleged that in the four or so years since I left, Worcester has improved immeasurably. I find this very hard to believe.

We were both looking for a way out - I was counting the days until university, when I could shed my Convent school friends, with their alice bands and narrowmindedness. We ended up meeting through friends who ran a tattoo and piercing shop (now sadly defunct).

I loved that place, loved the people - loved particularly the fact that they were different, they didn’t care. I met my first real boyfriend there, a 21-year-old who had at least ten jobs in the course of our nine-month relationship, who lived with a paedophile, had a child-killer for an uncle, and proposed to me to end an argument he couldn’t win. We broke up two weeks before I left for Oxford.

Emma met someone too, an American piercer. And when I left for university, she escaped too - by moving to America and marrying him. By the time I graduated, having shed the piercings, the pink hair and, it must be said, the world-owes-me-a-living attitude I’d adopted with them, she was back in Britain, a divorcee at 21.

I expected that meeting her would make me feel sad and boring, having given up my attempt at non-conformity pretty easily in the face of financial and career blandishments. But as we sat together reminiscing, I realised that I hadn’t changed that much. That angry 17-year-old might now be buried until several coats of adult veneer, but she’s still there, but tamed now. More than that, I realised that the only things which have really moulded me have been my mistakes - the wrong man, the wrong job, the wrong thing to have said or done.

That cheered me up. The only thing worse than having to be a grown-up would be having to be that teenager again, with all those hard lessons left to learn.

unfunny women.

2005-11-23T10:38:00.000+01:00

Have been reading Tibor Fischer’s Dont Read This Book If You’re Stupid, and came across a story in which a female stand-up comedian ponders the meaning of humour. She also scales Nelson’s Column naked and loses eight pairs of tweezers, but that’s modern fiction for you.

Various neurons winked off, and I started thinking again about one of feminism's great unsolved questions: why aren't women funny?

It's been bothering me for some time. In a recent FHM awards, there were plenty of nominations for their 'Funniest Man' award, but a rather poorer showing in the female equivalent. Catherine Tate, Victoria Wood and Jo Brand all picked up a few per cent each, but the overwhelming winner was, "No women are funny".

Then I found a survey of Britain's funniest women, carried out by Readers Digest. Look at this:

TOP 10 FUNNIEST WOMEN
Victoria Wood
Dawn French
Jo Brand
Jennifer Saunders
Julie Walters
Joyce Grenfell
Hattie Jacques
Joanna Lumley
Maureen Lipman
Kathy Burke

God. It's depressing, isn't it? The only faintly amusing thing about Victoria Wood is her haircut, and I don't think that's intentional. As for Joyce Grenfell and Hattie Jacques - it's 2005! Imagine a male top ten that still included Benny Hill and Larry Grayson.

So is it really be true that women aren't as funny as men? this blogger certainly thinks so. All the arguments he trots out are pretty well-worn: being funny is a competitive activity, and therefore men take it more seriously; men and women have different types of humour; women can't remember punch lines in the same way they can't read maps.

Really, though, this is the twentieth century, and this just won't do - neither can we totally cop out and do some 'comedy is in the eye of the beholder' schtick. Yes, I know there's no objective yardstick for humour, but it's pretty clear there are some reasons why Bernard Manning plays to thousands of people and the majority of stand-ups face an audience of about 10 (although I'm not sure I want to question Manning's popularity too closely, for fear of losing my last remaining scintilla of belief in humanity).

So allow me to present my theory: women are funny, but usually only to other women. I see this anecdotally: things that my housemate A finds funny on this blog leave my male readers stony-faced. Weirdly, though, the reverse isn't true: things that men find funny, my female friends and I do too...

I tried this argument out on W recently, figuring he'd wouldn’t laugh at me (so to speak). "I think," I opined, "that it's a gender divide thing. There's no 'universal' humour - like all male-dominated discourses, women are just made to think that comedy about beer and farting is 'universally funny', whereas as Jenny Eclair-ish stuff about periods is 'women's humour', and therefore devalued."

Sadly, although this kind of reasoning found great favour with the Oxford exam board in my magnum opus ‘The Mail/Female Divide’, it seemed he was made of sterner stuff.
"OK," he said. "Tell me a funny joke about a period."

And that had me stumped. I hate Jenny Eclair’s comedy. Arabella Weir let the Fast Show down, frankly. And they were certainly doing ‘women’s comedy’, if such a thing exists. Whereas I loved Men Behaving Badly and Bottom (but, looking back, I’m going to attribute that to the overexuberance of adolescence, as it is quite crap). But perhaps that’s because I have been indoctrinated to despise jokes about tampons, in favour of knob gags?

So now I have refined the theory, although it’s still pretty old-school feminist. If the discourse of comedy is male-dominated, then women learn to appreciate ‘male comedy’, even if they are not native speakers. With ‘female comedy’ being more marginalised, and in a lower hierarchical position in the binary, men never have to acquire its resonances and references.

At least, that’s what I think. You may say: Balls. But comedy is so much about points of reference - there’s nothing less funny than a joke that needs explaining - that it doesn’t seem a completely outlandish theory.

I suppose that means I should advocate all men to watch back-to-back episodes of Ellen and Roseanne. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Instead, try Smack The Pony, Sex and The City (there’s tits in that, you’ll like it), anything with Tamsin Greig in, Jo Brand and Ronnie Ancona. No, Eddie Izzard does not count. Yes, I know he wears dresses, but that’s not the point.

--
Gluttons for punishment, more here:

Stand Up For Equality, from feminist e-zine the f word.

ah, the Guardian. Standing up for the inexplicably successful Gina Yashere.

what a let down.

2005-11-20T19:46:00.000+01:00

musing on the lyrical stylings of R Williams Esq for the last post got me thinking about bad lyrics. A common complaint of my mother's is, "These modern bands! The words just don't mean anything!" Which I think is a bit rich from a woman who:

a) mis-heard Abba's Summer Night City as Have A Nice Day for seventeen years, until the release of Abba Gold (she also believe that minge was a verb, a synonym for whinge, until my sister and i, choking with laughter, corrected her).
b) champions the Beatles, peddlers of such toss as "It's been a hard day's night/And I've been working like a dog/It's been a hard day's night/I should be sleeping like a log".

But she does have a point. I read recently that Scandinavian songwriters are much in demand in the modern pop industry because they write the kind of rhyme music producers love, and native English speakers would be too embarrassed to inflict on the public: together/forever, love/above, boy/toy and so on.

The trouble with bad lyrics is that they pop up even in great songs, totally ruining them with their tooth-sucking badness. I can't listen to the otherwise excellent Flip Flop Rock by Outkast any more, after many evenings laughing with Artegall over Jay-Z's pisspoor contribution... "YO! CASH! BITCH! HOLLER!" Admittedly, trying to rap after Big Boi, an MC so talented he transcends the beat, is never going to make you look good (rather like the poor kids in the Harry Potter films being acted off the screen by the cream of British acting talent in cameo roles) but really... "Niggers want to hijack the flyness"? Pull yourself together, man.

It's not just lyrics, either. My enjoyment of the Killers' fantastic Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll has been shot to pieces by some monkey's decision to insert a jangly flourish of a tambourine directly after the lyrics, "She plays the drums/I'm on tambourine" - like we'd otherwise be completely in the dark about what a bloody tambourine sounds like. While we're on the Killer, what's up with "save some face/you know you've only got one" as a statement of the bleeding obvious? If she had two faces, that might be a nice twist, in keeping with the general bitterness of the song.

--

So, as a management consultant might say, I've outlined the problem. What's the solution? Well, there are a few simple steps which might help. Forcing Jay-Z's immediate retirement would be start, as would sitting down all the Scandinavian songwriters and explaining patiently that some rhyming combinations are now beyond parody, and should be banned. Then confiscate their rhyming dictionaries.

The next step would be to make all aspiring songwriters listen to the work of the great lyricists of the day: Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Morrissey, REM, Outkast (and before you start, yes, all of the above have off days, but cut them some slack - you'll never write anything with the beautiful purity of "I long to see you in the early light/I long to reach for you in the night"). You wouldn't write a novel with reading a few of the classics, surely, so why think you can write good lyrics on a diet of Sugababes and Westlife?

--

after further pondering, i have decided who the worst lyricist in pop is. Step forward and take a bow, Noel Gallagher.

Dear Noel wins because, frankly, he should know better. He's not a 12-year-old, or a foreigner. In interviews, he's lucid, amusing and charmingly self-deprecating. Why then, does he consistently produce absolute twaddle, and think that sprinkling it with a few literary or cultural references makes it OK? He's the Tom Stoppard of the music world - all glitz and no substance.

Again, Noel wins on points over more obvious choices like 2Unlimited because he's so nearly there. You can tell in songs like Wonderwall, Champagne Supernova and Stand by Me that there's a kernel of something beautiful and meaningful. Unfortunately, it's lost beneath a morass of trite and simperingly over-neat rhyming like "And all the roads we have to walk are winding/ And all the lights that lead us there are blinding" or "Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannon ball".

--
P.S. After consultation, the jury's still out on Chris Martin's lyrical ability. Complete twat or touching wordsmith? You'll have to decide for yourself.

Take That

2005-11-17T13:28:00.000+01:00

Last night my housemate A and I (and, apparently, every woman I know) sat down on the sofa with a bottle of red wine, to watch the Take That documentary.

Now, being a young ‘un, my memories of Take That only start when they were already on their way out. My older sister, bless her, was more into New Kids on The Block, but still managed to introduce me to the Northern five-piece, if sadly not in time for Gary’s Morrissey haircut.

I certainly remember them splitting up - the crying, the wailing, the helpline, the items on the ten o’ clock news. Never let anyone tell you that journalism is dumbing down, when it seemed in the 90s that some pop story made the BBC news every other night. I mean, Oasis against Blur for number one? It seemed important at the time, but now I think - did NO–ONE die that day? People, people.

It was a very well-made, well-edited affair. They’d interviewed each member on his own, in his own house, which threw up the differences between them. There was Howard, in a woolly cap, in some minimalist pad, the only decoration a distorted portrait of himself. Then we saw Mark Owen, with a spaniel, in the Lake District; Jason, much camper than I remembered. But these three, you felt, were always condemned to be the padding; now, just as much as they were ten years ago. It was Gary and Robbie we were interested in. We remembered how the headlines went: Gary, the obvious songwriting talent, destined for success, while Robbie attempted some lame Liam Gallagher impression... but then Angels happened, and suddenly Robbie was a global superstar, and Gary was yesterday’s pop star, dropped by his record label and consigned to obscurity.

What this documentary did, though, was show that this is entirely the wrong way to look at it. Robbie’s chart success came at a terrible price - devastating alcoholism and drug addiction, swings from mania to depression, and awful, seemingly eternal loneliness. As he was interviewed, you could see exactly what a feckin nightmare he must have been to live and work with - constantly showing off, doing impressions, saying outrageous things for effect. It must have been like working with a drug-addled five-year-old.

Gary, on the other hand, was interviewed in his (admittedly extremely tacky) Cheshire home, at his piano. Every so often one of his unbelievably cute children would show up, clamber on his knee and hug him. His wife, former TT dancer Dawn, was there too.

It should have been nauseating, but it was constantly intercut with Robbie, in solitary splendour, receiving Brit Awards and adulation.

The best bit came right at the end, when Gary, Mark, Howard and Jason were re-united. They made brittle conversation, waiting to see if Robbie would deign to grace them with his presence.

“We asked Robbie to come,” you heard one of the producers say off-camera. A long pause. “But he declined.”

Instead he had recorded them video messages, telling Gary he was a great songwriter, and the others they were great people. Gary looked disappointed, in a grown-up way.

It cut to former manager Nigel Martin-Smith. “Robbie and Gary were at each other’s throats,” he said (or something similar), “but Robbie did Gary the biggest favour ever. Look at them now. Who’s happiest?”

Back to Gary, teaching his daughter to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Then back to Robbie. “I’ve got one more thing to say - fourteen Brit Awards! Aaaaaaaaaah!”

The tragedy of it nearly brought a tear to my eye, I can tell you - between the two of them, they had one perfect life, and yet they’re both doomed to wishing for what the other one has.

It’s a pretty basic choice that a lot of people make - career success or domestic happiness. Robbie admitted in a recent interview he hadn’t had a girlfriend for six years. Gary, despite being dropped by his label, is now writing for Charlotte Church.

I know which one I’d rather be.

(And I would have rather written Back For Good than Angels, if it comes to that - they played it, and the lyrics are shocking. How can pain walk down a one-way street? And since when have traffic restrictions been an emotive metaphor?

Whereas lipstick still on a coffee cup, well that just says everything about a failed relationship - the mundane things which are all you have left when the romantic fantasy is over.)