Oof, cheeky beggars! The glory that was the GNER East Coast mainline is now charging you for first class postage to send your tickets or even just to pick them up from the machines! Bet this is the corrupting influence of National Express - offer 'em cheap tickets, sucker 'em in, then whack on some extortionate charges for anything else you can think of and hope the punters are seduced by the advertising. Honestly, if I wanted to be treated like a battery chicken and pay for the privilege of being able to take a change of underwear, I'd have flown, or at least gone with Mr Branson, which is much the same (poor service, bright colours to try and distract you from it).
Bet they don't use the word 'alight' in their announcements any more, either.
What is the world coming to?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Barbara Kingsolver
Please ignore the previous self-indulgent screed.
Barbara Kingsolver is talented, successful, principled, happily married, a mother and a gardener. Hah! Found one! Please say 'Barbara Kingsolver' to me whenever I complain from now on. And, if you haven't already, go and read The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
It has nothing to do with suburbia, feminism, the education system or the corporate world. I just need to sodding get on and do something. Argh, why is sitting in the sun talking about myself so much more appealing than weeding?
------
Incidentally, I think Barthes should be taught in primary school. I'm soooo sick of people using silly arguments like, 'Well, what if the writer didn't want you to think that? What if s/he just wrote it?' as an argument for the worthlessness of the entire practice of teaching literature. BOLLOCKS! Please, someone tell them about the death of the author.
Barbara Kingsolver is talented, successful, principled, happily married, a mother and a gardener. Hah! Found one! Please say 'Barbara Kingsolver' to me whenever I complain from now on. And, if you haven't already, go and read The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
It has nothing to do with suburbia, feminism, the education system or the corporate world. I just need to sodding get on and do something. Argh, why is sitting in the sun talking about myself so much more appealing than weeding?
------
Incidentally, I think Barthes should be taught in primary school. I'm soooo sick of people using silly arguments like, 'Well, what if the writer didn't want you to think that? What if s/he just wrote it?' as an argument for the worthlessness of the entire practice of teaching literature. BOLLOCKS! Please, someone tell them about the death of the author.
Do what you love or love what you do
"All children are artists. The trick is remaining one when you grow up."
I've just had my gap year friends to stay. Everyone arrived and said, 'Is Si still a vegetarian?' rolling their eyes, and then in the same breath, 'Ooh, those bean-burgers look nice, can I have one of them too?' I dyed my lips with a little too much red wine and was a little too frank about my job.
One of the side-effects of having gone through quite an intense experience together is that you don't grow apart in the same way. There's never any of the awkwardness as when you meet people from school that you haven't missed in the three years you haven't seen them. To some, crucial extent our friendship is based on experience, rather than character, and experience doesn't change as you get older. So even though we have changed and are doing very different things, it somehow doesn't matter, because it never mattered. In the nicest possible way, we were lumped together and made the best of it.
--------
A girl whose blog I read has just had an article published in a magazine. Her writing was among the best in it, and I don't think I'll be buying the magazine again, but I had two simultaneous and contradicting emotions: 'oh, she's so lucky, that will never happen to me' and 'huh, I could do that'. There was nothing in the magazine that struck me as shockingly bad (like, for instance, this series of House) but some of it was distinctly mediocre (if that isn't an oxymoron). Bad writing irks me; I feel that if other people are making a living from bad writing, I should be able to make a living from the half-finished scribblings on my hard drive.
The difference between this girl and me, though, is not that she can do it and I can't, but that she has done it and I haven't.
I get incredibly envious, but, as my dad repeatedly told me (probably so I wouldn't accuse him of passing on bad genes) genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration or, to update it for the computer age, 1% inspiration, 99% not being distracted by the internet. I could, of course, write an article about my experiences container gardening, pitch it to a similar magazine and possibly earn a modest sum for it. I had to attend an extremely dull AGM the other week, and I was too much in view of everybody to knit or get my book out, so I read through some of the things I used to write and smugly thought some of them were quite decent. There is nothing stopping me finishing them or starting something else and finishing that, except the fact that I have made certain choices that mean after a day of translating corporate guff into proper English (I changed 'cascaded' to 'disseminated' the other day - descriptive linguist my arse) I no longer feel like thinking about words.
I used to say the same about my degree, I'd write in the holidays but not during term. During fourth year, I didn't even do that. I did my dissertation in the Christmas holidays, then I sent myself slightly mad and baked cakes in the Easter holidays, occasionally punctuated by half-hearted revision, and wrote a poem over the summer and a couple of paragraphs of my novel and that was it. When I think of how obsessively I wrote that screenplay in second year or how intricately I wove that plot-that-never-came-alive in first year, the contrast is obvious - one was a refuge, a passion and one was a poor attempt to fulfil some self-imposed obligation and prove I wasn't a hypocrite for berating Nik about giving up on becoming a film producer.
But now, since I came back from Africa, since the world fell into place and I've started to carve out a place in it (it involves baking cakes and growing tomatoes), something seems to have snapped. I feel a strange sense of contentment I never felt as a troubled teenager or an anxious Oxford second-year. I once talked to Nik about it, asking him to name me a published, respected, successful female writer who had children and was happy. He thought for a long time and I threw around names of extremely talented and extremely miserable people (Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Jane Austen, the Brontes) and (in what I assume was a bid to stop me leaving him and going to starve in a garret turning my shocking cruelty and self-imposed broken heart into wonderful poetry) he feebly tried J.K. Rowling. I scoffed, muttering about 'unimaginative prose' and 'selling out'. (Any other suggestions?) I don't even think it's being happy in a relationship that's done it, it's the sense of purpose I felt since my food/environment obsession came on. They say the greatest enemy of creativity is the pram in the hall; I used to think this was because babies were noisy and time-consuming and cried a lot and stopped you concentrating on what you were writing. I said I wanted to write and publish a novel before having children. I now realise that Western feminism has been 'had', and that (to paraphrase four years of studying 20th century literature) we need a new pie, not a bigger piece of the old one, that I should stop trying to be a man, and decided that actually it's because being a parent is generally engaging, absorbing and purposeful,* not that I'm comparing gardening to motherhood (though both are messy and never-ending, you can read four books by experts and get five different opinions and it's terribly difficult to allow your babies to go out into the world and fend for themselves).**
So I keep making excuses: no-one can be creative in suburbia, didn't you read The Hours; I don't want to write after a day churning out words for the corporate world; my brain needs to recover after my degree; I'm blogging, and the internet has really changed how we see and use language, don'cha know... And yet, I feel horribly close to becoming one of those boring people who's always knocking where they live and doesn't move, or always complaining about their job and doesn't look for a new one, or listens to Choral Evensong and tuts at the poorly enunciated psalms but can't rub along with any of the choirs they could actually sing with, or says, 'I always wanted to be a writer... I was quite good, you know...' and hasn't actually done anything to make it happen. In short, one of those people who was at Oxford and once upon a time felt terribly clever and terribly special and nothing since has quite lived up to it, for the world feels full of identikit houses and identikit jobs and education seems like a ruse to turn you into a good little capitalist (starting out with £13,000 of debt'll do that to you).
I just need to stop feeling sorry for myself and take responsibility for the fact that I'm not writing.
Or write.
I need to accept this might be called 'growing out of it' and that I don't have to be a troubled artist in order not to be boring and ordinary, that I might be channelling my revolt into something I can eat instead of into words, and that that's fine, I just need to stop whinging about it. Or, I need to just sit down and bash out, say, 500 words a day, every day and see what happens. In first year, my incredibly tall General Linguistics tutor told me he wrote 500 words a day of his DPhil Monday to Thursday and edited it on Fridays, which seemed terribly calculated and soulless to my 19-year-old mind, but now, as the kind of person who can no longer stay up all night to meet a deadline, I can admire the sheer discipline it must take. Maybe I should do the same, stop expecting it to absorb me and try and absorb myself in it and hope it will rub off, like pretending not to be shy.
In short I should do what I love, either in the evenings or by finding a job that doesn't involve sitting at a laptop herding words around the page so I free up the mental space I need; or, I should grow old with dignity and start being more positive about my boring job and this suburban hellhole. After all, you don't want to be the boring old sod who's always banging on about what might have been; one way or the other, you needs to be.
Anyway, as Voltaire said, Il faut cultiver notre jardin. No, il really faut. There is weeding to do, and planting out, and turning the greenhouse back into the sitting room, and when I'm indoors I feel the constant need for music, Radio 4 or conversation, but outdoors there is a strimmer, a sander, the occasional train and the horrid realisation I no longer notice the constant murmur of the London Road.
I wonder if you can be a writer and live in the moment.
*Take note, all you teenagers who think you are stronger than your biological instincts. One day you will turn 23 and you'll be horribly broody. You think it won't happen to you, but it will. Survival and reproduction, that's all we're here for, you'll all turn into broody gardeners one day, you mark my words....
** If, after all, gardening is like motherhood, I sincerely hope children are more like tomatoes, lettuces and pumpkins, which are sturdy and resilient to all my incompetent attempts at nurture, and less like peppers, which have a death wish, and pak choi, which got eaten by slugs.
I've just had my gap year friends to stay. Everyone arrived and said, 'Is Si still a vegetarian?' rolling their eyes, and then in the same breath, 'Ooh, those bean-burgers look nice, can I have one of them too?' I dyed my lips with a little too much red wine and was a little too frank about my job.
One of the side-effects of having gone through quite an intense experience together is that you don't grow apart in the same way. There's never any of the awkwardness as when you meet people from school that you haven't missed in the three years you haven't seen them. To some, crucial extent our friendship is based on experience, rather than character, and experience doesn't change as you get older. So even though we have changed and are doing very different things, it somehow doesn't matter, because it never mattered. In the nicest possible way, we were lumped together and made the best of it.
--------
A girl whose blog I read has just had an article published in a magazine. Her writing was among the best in it, and I don't think I'll be buying the magazine again, but I had two simultaneous and contradicting emotions: 'oh, she's so lucky, that will never happen to me' and 'huh, I could do that'. There was nothing in the magazine that struck me as shockingly bad (like, for instance, this series of House) but some of it was distinctly mediocre (if that isn't an oxymoron). Bad writing irks me; I feel that if other people are making a living from bad writing, I should be able to make a living from the half-finished scribblings on my hard drive.
The difference between this girl and me, though, is not that she can do it and I can't, but that she has done it and I haven't.
I get incredibly envious, but, as my dad repeatedly told me (probably so I wouldn't accuse him of passing on bad genes) genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration or, to update it for the computer age, 1% inspiration, 99% not being distracted by the internet. I could, of course, write an article about my experiences container gardening, pitch it to a similar magazine and possibly earn a modest sum for it. I had to attend an extremely dull AGM the other week, and I was too much in view of everybody to knit or get my book out, so I read through some of the things I used to write and smugly thought some of them were quite decent. There is nothing stopping me finishing them or starting something else and finishing that, except the fact that I have made certain choices that mean after a day of translating corporate guff into proper English (I changed 'cascaded' to 'disseminated' the other day - descriptive linguist my arse) I no longer feel like thinking about words.
I used to say the same about my degree, I'd write in the holidays but not during term. During fourth year, I didn't even do that. I did my dissertation in the Christmas holidays, then I sent myself slightly mad and baked cakes in the Easter holidays, occasionally punctuated by half-hearted revision, and wrote a poem over the summer and a couple of paragraphs of my novel and that was it. When I think of how obsessively I wrote that screenplay in second year or how intricately I wove that plot-that-never-came-alive in first year, the contrast is obvious - one was a refuge, a passion and one was a poor attempt to fulfil some self-imposed obligation and prove I wasn't a hypocrite for berating Nik about giving up on becoming a film producer.
But now, since I came back from Africa, since the world fell into place and I've started to carve out a place in it (it involves baking cakes and growing tomatoes), something seems to have snapped. I feel a strange sense of contentment I never felt as a troubled teenager or an anxious Oxford second-year. I once talked to Nik about it, asking him to name me a published, respected, successful female writer who had children and was happy. He thought for a long time and I threw around names of extremely talented and extremely miserable people (Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Jane Austen, the Brontes) and (in what I assume was a bid to stop me leaving him and going to starve in a garret turning my shocking cruelty and self-imposed broken heart into wonderful poetry) he feebly tried J.K. Rowling. I scoffed, muttering about 'unimaginative prose' and 'selling out'. (Any other suggestions?) I don't even think it's being happy in a relationship that's done it, it's the sense of purpose I felt since my food/environment obsession came on. They say the greatest enemy of creativity is the pram in the hall; I used to think this was because babies were noisy and time-consuming and cried a lot and stopped you concentrating on what you were writing. I said I wanted to write and publish a novel before having children. I now realise that Western feminism has been 'had', and that (to paraphrase four years of studying 20th century literature) we need a new pie, not a bigger piece of the old one, that I should stop trying to be a man, and decided that actually it's because being a parent is generally engaging, absorbing and purposeful,* not that I'm comparing gardening to motherhood (though both are messy and never-ending, you can read four books by experts and get five different opinions and it's terribly difficult to allow your babies to go out into the world and fend for themselves).**
So I keep making excuses: no-one can be creative in suburbia, didn't you read The Hours; I don't want to write after a day churning out words for the corporate world; my brain needs to recover after my degree; I'm blogging, and the internet has really changed how we see and use language, don'cha know... And yet, I feel horribly close to becoming one of those boring people who's always knocking where they live and doesn't move, or always complaining about their job and doesn't look for a new one, or listens to Choral Evensong and tuts at the poorly enunciated psalms but can't rub along with any of the choirs they could actually sing with, or says, 'I always wanted to be a writer... I was quite good, you know...' and hasn't actually done anything to make it happen. In short, one of those people who was at Oxford and once upon a time felt terribly clever and terribly special and nothing since has quite lived up to it, for the world feels full of identikit houses and identikit jobs and education seems like a ruse to turn you into a good little capitalist (starting out with £13,000 of debt'll do that to you).
I just need to stop feeling sorry for myself and take responsibility for the fact that I'm not writing.
Or write.
I need to accept this might be called 'growing out of it' and that I don't have to be a troubled artist in order not to be boring and ordinary, that I might be channelling my revolt into something I can eat instead of into words, and that that's fine, I just need to stop whinging about it. Or, I need to just sit down and bash out, say, 500 words a day, every day and see what happens. In first year, my incredibly tall General Linguistics tutor told me he wrote 500 words a day of his DPhil Monday to Thursday and edited it on Fridays, which seemed terribly calculated and soulless to my 19-year-old mind, but now, as the kind of person who can no longer stay up all night to meet a deadline, I can admire the sheer discipline it must take. Maybe I should do the same, stop expecting it to absorb me and try and absorb myself in it and hope it will rub off, like pretending not to be shy.
In short I should do what I love, either in the evenings or by finding a job that doesn't involve sitting at a laptop herding words around the page so I free up the mental space I need; or, I should grow old with dignity and start being more positive about my boring job and this suburban hellhole. After all, you don't want to be the boring old sod who's always banging on about what might have been; one way or the other, you needs to be.
Anyway, as Voltaire said, Il faut cultiver notre jardin. No, il really faut. There is weeding to do, and planting out, and turning the greenhouse back into the sitting room, and when I'm indoors I feel the constant need for music, Radio 4 or conversation, but outdoors there is a strimmer, a sander, the occasional train and the horrid realisation I no longer notice the constant murmur of the London Road.
I wonder if you can be a writer and live in the moment.
*Take note, all you teenagers who think you are stronger than your biological instincts. One day you will turn 23 and you'll be horribly broody. You think it won't happen to you, but it will. Survival and reproduction, that's all we're here for, you'll all turn into broody gardeners one day, you mark my words....
** If, after all, gardening is like motherhood, I sincerely hope children are more like tomatoes, lettuces and pumpkins, which are sturdy and resilient to all my incompetent attempts at nurture, and less like peppers, which have a death wish, and pak choi, which got eaten by slugs.
Friday, June 06, 2008
If you were my sub-fusc, where would you be hiding?
Oxford, I thought you were strange when I found myself celebrating Christmas before the start of Advent, but this is odder by far. Summoning us back to your dreaming spires, after a year spent realising that 'real' life lacks rigour and the constant search for truth, a year of letting your brain atrohpy but not enough not to regret it... Long enough to forget where I put my sub fusc hat and naff ribbon (ultimate proof of how sexist Oxford is - we'll let women in, but on all important occasions men will look sexily splendiferous while women will all look very silly) - I mean, it's not the kind of thing that has an obvious place in your new house.
Maybe this is why Oxford people are so dogmatically nostalgic, far more so than Tabs (we are also just infinitely more poetic) - because we get summoned back just as the prospect of spending all summer and every summer for the rest of our active lives in an office makes itself real...
Maybe this is why Oxford people are so dogmatically nostalgic, far more so than Tabs (we are also just infinitely more poetic) - because we get summoned back just as the prospect of spending all summer and every summer for the rest of our active lives in an office makes itself real...
Thursday, June 05, 2008
World's gone mad
Heehee. The other day I saw an advert for Sky+ boasting, 'It remembers so you don't have to,' or something. About 200 yards further on, I saw an advert for one of those strange 'train your brain' gadgets.
World's gone mad.
Last week we got the first strawberries off my plants. Five whole ones now. Orgasmic.
I've also knitted 3/4 of a sock. Progress.
World's gone mad.
Last week we got the first strawberries off my plants. Five whole ones now. Orgasmic.
I've also knitted 3/4 of a sock. Progress.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Huh?
I'm currently sitting in a cafe in Canary Wharf being all corporate. But woo, free wifi!
Is this not just the oddest sentence, though?
From the Guardian:
"I didn't know any women who were working at that time [the 1970s], unless they were childminding or starting up a nursery."
Whose children were they minding then?
Is this not just the oddest sentence, though?
From the Guardian:
"I didn't know any women who were working at that time [the 1970s], unless they were childminding or starting up a nursery."
Whose children were they minding then?
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
I love...
... working from home.
For lunch today, I had pork chops braised in red wine with caramelised onions and herby-garlicky-ness, with a wee French-sized glass of red wine, followed by a few slivers of cheese and a pot of coffee and a home-made nutty brownie.
So civilised. =)
For lunch today, I had pork chops braised in red wine with caramelised onions and herby-garlicky-ness, with a wee French-sized glass of red wine, followed by a few slivers of cheese and a pot of coffee and a home-made nutty brownie.
So civilised. =)
Friday, May 16, 2008
Heehee
"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I just go into the other room and read a book."
I'm not sure 'educating' is a word, but otherwise this Groucho Marx quote will be used to drive Nik to distraction for the rest of our lives together. Muahahaha.
Edited to add: Of course 'educating' is a word. (Depending on how you define word. Now, there was something I thought I'd never have to spend 1500 words debating and then concluding I couldn't do again.) I mean, I'm not sure 'educating' can be used in that sense. We had a word. It was called 'educational'. It was a fine word, that served its purpose very well.
Mmmmm, sloe gin.
I'm not sure 'educating' is a word, but otherwise this Groucho Marx quote will be used to drive Nik to distraction for the rest of our lives together. Muahahaha.
Edited to add: Of course 'educating' is a word. (Depending on how you define word. Now, there was something I thought I'd never have to spend 1500 words debating and then concluding I couldn't do again.) I mean, I'm not sure 'educating' can be used in that sense. We had a word. It was called 'educational'. It was a fine word, that served its purpose very well.
Mmmmm, sloe gin.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Mr Ramsey
Okay, I kind of see where he's coming from, I think people who eat imported strawberries or asparagus in November are mad and I'd certainly never want to pay through the nose for them in a restaurant... and go for it with the bitch-slapping that turncoat Delia... but really.... he's suggesting criminalising serving out-of-season produce. Even I think that's a bit strong.
Linky.
Linky.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Curly-haired with yoghurt
Well, for the first time, after dalliances with every kind of live yoghurt Waitrose offer, wasting countless pints of milk, and results ranging from the unpalatable to the unchanged to the verging-on-ricotta-cottage-cheese-type-thing that was okay in pasta, or at least better than wasting it, I have actually managed to successfully make yoghurt that looks and tastes pretty much like yoghurt. Woo. The exercise was largely financial (although the challenge of making something new was also welcome) - now we get the veg box and buy meat in bulk, I found I was going to Waitrose just to buy milk and yoghurt and also ending up coming home with 40-odd things I didn't need (special offer crisps are my biggest downfall), so, since I also date my good, fair food obsession roughly from when we stopped getting milk delivered and started getting the watery, homogenised pap from Tesco and have always hankered after the reusable glass bottles, we've taken the very retrograde step of organising a doorstep delivery, which is much more convenient and works out financially if I make yoghurt instead of buying it. After a month and a half of failing miserably and allowing another six months or so to make back the cost of the thermos flask (I'm tempted to use the word 'capex' here), I expect it to pay dividends by Christmas. And the satisfaction I get from being able to make yoghurt (and the thought that if feed prices rocket, the economy crashes, our just-in-time food system breaks down and the milk from the local dairy delivered a short distance to my door continues to be viable, I will be the only person in Wokingham with dairy products) are just a smug foodie bonus.
Barbara Kingsolver (in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a wonderful book, you should read it) has now inspired me to make proper ricotta and mozzarella, and she's lactose intolerant so it must be good!
The latest batch of bread, however, was a disaster - flat, burnt and incredibly dense.
I had my hair cut yesterday. What is it with hairdressers? Why can't they just leave well alone? I gave her a very clear brief (hack off the split ends, leave it easy to manage without an arsenal of styling products, a Level 3 NVQ in hairdressing and the intrinsic advantage of someone else's head being in front of you) and halfway through she said, 'Your hair's really curly, you know?'
Curly? My hair has been described as many things, from 'flat and lifeless on top' via 'so easy to straighten' to 'a total mess, darling, please get a haircut', but never 'curly'.* Curly was new. So, foolishly, swept away by the experience of a stylish stranger massaging my head and paying me compliments, I somehow agreed to let her put some squidgy stuff from a blue bottle on my head, twist my hair painfully through the drying process and then shunt me out onto the street (maybe so she could have a cup of tea before her next client) by telling me it would be much better to let it finish drying naturally.
It didn't really take. Nik, bless him, came home from work and gave me the standard must-remember-to-notice-girlfriend's-had-a-haircut line of 'it looks nice', but when he actually looked at me, he agreed it was somewhat peculiar.
And then he brought a friend home for dinner, whose overriding impression of me will now be as a straw-haired, muddy person who sits upstairs listening to five-second segments of audio over and over again and can't make bread rise.
* Though I did go through a phase at school of sleeping with mini plaits in and having it frizzy in the morning.
Barbara Kingsolver (in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a wonderful book, you should read it) has now inspired me to make proper ricotta and mozzarella, and she's lactose intolerant so it must be good!
The latest batch of bread, however, was a disaster - flat, burnt and incredibly dense.
I had my hair cut yesterday. What is it with hairdressers? Why can't they just leave well alone? I gave her a very clear brief (hack off the split ends, leave it easy to manage without an arsenal of styling products, a Level 3 NVQ in hairdressing and the intrinsic advantage of someone else's head being in front of you) and halfway through she said, 'Your hair's really curly, you know?'
Curly? My hair has been described as many things, from 'flat and lifeless on top' via 'so easy to straighten' to 'a total mess, darling, please get a haircut', but never 'curly'.* Curly was new. So, foolishly, swept away by the experience of a stylish stranger massaging my head and paying me compliments, I somehow agreed to let her put some squidgy stuff from a blue bottle on my head, twist my hair painfully through the drying process and then shunt me out onto the street (maybe so she could have a cup of tea before her next client) by telling me it would be much better to let it finish drying naturally.
It didn't really take. Nik, bless him, came home from work and gave me the standard must-remember-to-notice-girlfriend's-had-a-haircut line of 'it looks nice', but when he actually looked at me, he agreed it was somewhat peculiar.
And then he brought a friend home for dinner, whose overriding impression of me will now be as a straw-haired, muddy person who sits upstairs listening to five-second segments of audio over and over again and can't make bread rise.
* Though I did go through a phase at school of sleeping with mini plaits in and having it frizzy in the morning.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Do they not WANT me to vote for them?
We had local elections yesterday (lucky us) and being a good little democratic citizen I trotted off to the polling station, where I was surprised to discover that we did, after all, have a Lib Dem candidate and a Labour candidate.
Now, I'm a bit of a leftie. I don't really ally myself with any particular party, but I general fall somewhere between what Labour should stand for and what the Lib Dems stand for, with the caveat that they can say whatever they want cos they'll never actually get elected. I readily admit that the kinds of changes I am looking to see in the country are waaaay more radical than what any self-respecting candidate would be prepared to actually put in their campaign literature, but I'm pretty realistic and would be happy to be swayed by a convincing candidate of general leftie persuasion, especially in the local elections: in a general election, although you aren't really supposed to, I would tend to vote for a party and a Prime Minister, but in the local elections I would tend to vote for the candidate I felt most confident in. Overall, I generally believe that public services are in principle a good thing, I think we need to do A LOT more for the environment, I think the gap between the rich and the poor is too wide and I'd love to completely overhaul the education system. And I'd vote for anyone who promised more allotments.
So, I had been looking forward to all the candidates coming around and asking me what issues were on my mind so I could grill them about their ideas for making Wokingham a more sustainable, resilient and environmentally-friendly place, about how they would follow up on the suggestions Friends of the Earth (of which I am a member) gave them last month and if they would please stop concreting over everything and get rid of all the cars, please, if it isn't too much trouble, thank you. And can I have an allotment before 2015 please?
Now, I work from home and am usually in of an evening, so if anybody had come round canvassing, I would have known. We had leaflets shoved through the door by the Conservatives, UKIP and the BNP, but they ran away immediately afterwards and didn't want to talk to me. Labour and the Lib Dems didn't even bother to do that, let alone actually try and talk to me. It never even entered my mind to vote for UKIP or the BNP (despite the hilarious reply UKIP gave to an email I sent to various MEPs about biofuels), and I didn't really want to vote for the Tory candidate because a) his environmental policies were rubbish (basically: environmental issues begin and end with waste and recycling, and we couldn't ever have alternative weekly collections, never, never, never, never, NEVER, although had he come and asked me what I thought I'd have shown him my bokashi bin) and b) all the material we've ever had from him has contained a big whine about how little funding the Borough gets from central government compared to..... councils where there are lots of poor people. Now, there is a genuine issue about how basing it on averages means the worse off in overall richer areas are even worse off than they would be in poorer areas where there was more central funding, but do they talk about this? No, it's just 'poor us, aren't we hard done by?' never mind that that's how local government funding works or that the reason we don't get as much is because we're all well-off and don't need it - it's like saying, 'Oh, poor stockbrokers, they have to pay more tax than nurses and bin-men.'
So I didn't want to vote for him either.
And so since I knew nothing about the candidates representing the two parties I might have swung between or their policies, I was damned if I was going to vote for them.
So, ladies and gentlemen, since people died so that I could have the right to vote and I did not want to dishonour them by allowing apathy to win the day, I am ashamed to say that I spoilt my ballot. I voted for all the candidates and drew a silly face at the top of the paper for good measure.
Now, I'm a bit of a leftie. I don't really ally myself with any particular party, but I general fall somewhere between what Labour should stand for and what the Lib Dems stand for, with the caveat that they can say whatever they want cos they'll never actually get elected. I readily admit that the kinds of changes I am looking to see in the country are waaaay more radical than what any self-respecting candidate would be prepared to actually put in their campaign literature, but I'm pretty realistic and would be happy to be swayed by a convincing candidate of general leftie persuasion, especially in the local elections: in a general election, although you aren't really supposed to, I would tend to vote for a party and a Prime Minister, but in the local elections I would tend to vote for the candidate I felt most confident in. Overall, I generally believe that public services are in principle a good thing, I think we need to do A LOT more for the environment, I think the gap between the rich and the poor is too wide and I'd love to completely overhaul the education system. And I'd vote for anyone who promised more allotments.
So, I had been looking forward to all the candidates coming around and asking me what issues were on my mind so I could grill them about their ideas for making Wokingham a more sustainable, resilient and environmentally-friendly place, about how they would follow up on the suggestions Friends of the Earth (of which I am a member) gave them last month and if they would please stop concreting over everything and get rid of all the cars, please, if it isn't too much trouble, thank you. And can I have an allotment before 2015 please?
Now, I work from home and am usually in of an evening, so if anybody had come round canvassing, I would have known. We had leaflets shoved through the door by the Conservatives, UKIP and the BNP, but they ran away immediately afterwards and didn't want to talk to me. Labour and the Lib Dems didn't even bother to do that, let alone actually try and talk to me. It never even entered my mind to vote for UKIP or the BNP (despite the hilarious reply UKIP gave to an email I sent to various MEPs about biofuels), and I didn't really want to vote for the Tory candidate because a) his environmental policies were rubbish (basically: environmental issues begin and end with waste and recycling, and we couldn't ever have alternative weekly collections, never, never, never, never, NEVER, although had he come and asked me what I thought I'd have shown him my bokashi bin) and b) all the material we've ever had from him has contained a big whine about how little funding the Borough gets from central government compared to..... councils where there are lots of poor people. Now, there is a genuine issue about how basing it on averages means the worse off in overall richer areas are even worse off than they would be in poorer areas where there was more central funding, but do they talk about this? No, it's just 'poor us, aren't we hard done by?' never mind that that's how local government funding works or that the reason we don't get as much is because we're all well-off and don't need it - it's like saying, 'Oh, poor stockbrokers, they have to pay more tax than nurses and bin-men.'
So I didn't want to vote for him either.
And so since I knew nothing about the candidates representing the two parties I might have swung between or their policies, I was damned if I was going to vote for them.
So, ladies and gentlemen, since people died so that I could have the right to vote and I did not want to dishonour them by allowing apathy to win the day, I am ashamed to say that I spoilt my ballot. I voted for all the candidates and drew a silly face at the top of the paper for good measure.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Hello again
I've just taken delivery of a swish new curvy, RSI-busting keyboard so I can now do non-essential typing with a clear conscience and working wrists. I might, therefore, start blogging again in moderation.
Today it is raining and I get 15 minutes grace on starting work because I'm recording something and can't work on other audio at the same time. I would go out and plant some more seeds, but it's raining. Instead I shall drink tea, read the Guardian and knit my cardigan. It's getting pretty big now.
Yesterday I got a new bike off Freecycle. Bit of a struggle to get it in the back of Nik's car and it needs a clean, but my word, it's exciting to have a bike with gears that work and that won't get laughed at when I take it in for repair.
Hmmm. What else is interesting? I made a nice frittata at the weekend with . My sewing machine is now working and I made a cushion cover on it. Nik's mum is moving, so we're going down at the weekend to help shift all the stuff Nik has in her loft out of it and into our loft.
Today it is raining and I get 15 minutes grace on starting work because I'm recording something and can't work on other audio at the same time. I would go out and plant some more seeds, but it's raining. Instead I shall drink tea, read the Guardian and knit my cardigan. It's getting pretty big now.
Yesterday I got a new bike off Freecycle. Bit of a struggle to get it in the back of Nik's car and it needs a clean, but my word, it's exciting to have a bike with gears that work and that won't get laughed at when I take it in for repair.
Hmmm. What else is interesting? I made a nice frittata at the weekend with . My sewing machine is now working and I made a cushion cover on it. Nik's mum is moving, so we're going down at the weekend to help shift all the stuff Nik has in her loft out of it and into our loft.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Battening down the hatches
Growing up at the bottom of a valley in the North East tends to make you aware that, despite the best efforts of our industrialised, urbanised society to convince us otherwise, we are still, essentially, subject to the vagaries of weather and climate.
We are supposedly preparing for the worst storm ever to hit the UK, although as the BBC seems rather more insistent on this point than the Met Office, I remain sceptical. We should, here, be out of the worst of it anyway (the wee line on the weather map neatly bisects Berkshire) but nonethless, yesterday, I suggested buying a small camping gas ring, as it would be a sorry state of affairs indeed if the power went off and I couldn't have a cup of tea. Nik looked at me as if I was a bit mad, but I did it anyway.
It still looks very sunny, though, and if I've given up an afternoon of pottering around in the garden (it's full of comfrey AGAIN!!) because I didn't want to risk being halfway through turning the compost heap when the force 10 started for nothing, I will be most displeased.
It's very odd - part of me is relishing the prospect of a big storm, I always used to love power cuts and being snowed in and suchlike when I was younger, and part of me is utterly convinced it will be a pathetic Southern affair, where a couple of tiles get blown off a roof and the 24-hour news channels immediately commission half their staff to go over there and dig around for footage of distraught people sifting through the wreckage of their homes, in a manner reminiscent of London during the Blitz. I was trying to point out to Nik yesterday that storms on the magnitude of 1987 happen all the time up north and in Scotland and we just get on with it, nor does everything grind to a muffled halt when more than two flakes of snow fall in the same afternoon, but he just sort of blinked at me and looked a bit confused.
We are supposedly preparing for the worst storm ever to hit the UK, although as the BBC seems rather more insistent on this point than the Met Office, I remain sceptical. We should, here, be out of the worst of it anyway (the wee line on the weather map neatly bisects Berkshire) but nonethless, yesterday, I suggested buying a small camping gas ring, as it would be a sorry state of affairs indeed if the power went off and I couldn't have a cup of tea. Nik looked at me as if I was a bit mad, but I did it anyway.
It still looks very sunny, though, and if I've given up an afternoon of pottering around in the garden (it's full of comfrey AGAIN!!) because I didn't want to risk being halfway through turning the compost heap when the force 10 started for nothing, I will be most displeased.
It's very odd - part of me is relishing the prospect of a big storm, I always used to love power cuts and being snowed in and suchlike when I was younger, and part of me is utterly convinced it will be a pathetic Southern affair, where a couple of tiles get blown off a roof and the 24-hour news channels immediately commission half their staff to go over there and dig around for footage of distraught people sifting through the wreckage of their homes, in a manner reminiscent of London during the Blitz. I was trying to point out to Nik yesterday that storms on the magnitude of 1987 happen all the time up north and in Scotland and we just get on with it, nor does everything grind to a muffled halt when more than two flakes of snow fall in the same afternoon, but he just sort of blinked at me and looked a bit confused.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Further witterings of the Hamster
Ack, tis a sorry state of affairs. The fact that I update this so infrequently, and the fact that I have seemingly so little inclination to do so, is a sad testament to the fact that being a grown-up is just not as much fun as being a student.
Ah well.
Nik and I went out for dinner yesterday, and (demonstrating one of the ways in which being a grown-up can be more fun than being a student, at least if you're an actuary) spent approximately four times our weekly food budget on a single meal. I kept looking at the price of my steak and thinking, 'That's two and a half veg boxes! Preposterous!' However, I suppose, the veg box doesn't come with truffle sauce. EVERYTHING on the menu came with truffle sauce (seemingly - one thing came with lentils, so that restricted my options). And it was by far the best food in Wokingham, by quite some way. (I did wonder how Italians have the energy to be so enthusiastic about sex, though, if they eat like that all the time. Maybe it's just an act. Or maybe they normally eat pasta and fresh, seasonal vegetables and go easy on the steak.)
I'm currently in the middle of transcribing some DULL financial conference about complaints. Dull, dull, dull, though marginally more fun than the one about financial regulations. Yawn. I really have to go out and get some bits for my dressmaking course, but I'm so tired (woke up at 5 for some reason) I don't know if I can face going to Bracknell this evening, let alone compos mentis enough to operate a sewing machine. While I don't want to start unmitigatedly slagging off Bracknell, as that's far too much of a cliche, it is one of those places that is designed for cars, and is thus impossible to navigate your way round on foot. My first week at the college, I tried to follow the footpath that went in the right direction, and ended up getting shunted round a deserted shopping centre and trying every exit in a labyrinthine underpass in the middle of a roundabout. And, of course, it being designed for cars, nobody else is walking. I never felt particularly unsafe, there were no gangs of youths leering threateningly from doorways, but there was nobody around to ask directions from. Bah. Nearly finished my skirt though. Need a pattern to start next week now (or tonight, if I can drag my weary carcass to John Lewis, back again and out to BRacknell, having done a respectable amount of work).
Parents coming this weekend, sans chien this time. Not that the chien was a particular problem, but we have got bacon curing all over the kitchen, so perhaps it's best she's not sleeping by it. (Yes, my food-buying obsessiveness led me to buy half a pig from the butcher at the farmer's market. We got very funny looks carrying the crate between us through the streets of suburbia. We had the most divine pork chops the other day... and can have them again... and again.... and again..... and again.... till next year! Nik thought we'd been swizzled and been given a whole pig instead of a half, but seeing as we were only charged for a half, it would be the world's worst swizzle...) Have no idea what we're going to do with them. Last time we all got horribly worked up about going to dinner with Nik's family and spent the entire afternoon stressing over a cake, but I don't think any of us is ready to go through that again, so we may be on that never-ending search for entertainment that is far enough away from Wokingham to be interesting, but near enough that my poor beleagured parents, who will be sandwiched between days involving hours spent on the M-sodding-1, won't balk at the idea of travelling to it. Hmm.
Anyhow, must press on with the dull financial conference. A particularly camp bloke is explaining how retired actuaries are really annoying. Yes, I know, but I need to keep body and soul together and all that. Hohumm.
Ah well.
Nik and I went out for dinner yesterday, and (demonstrating one of the ways in which being a grown-up can be more fun than being a student, at least if you're an actuary) spent approximately four times our weekly food budget on a single meal. I kept looking at the price of my steak and thinking, 'That's two and a half veg boxes! Preposterous!' However, I suppose, the veg box doesn't come with truffle sauce. EVERYTHING on the menu came with truffle sauce (seemingly - one thing came with lentils, so that restricted my options). And it was by far the best food in Wokingham, by quite some way. (I did wonder how Italians have the energy to be so enthusiastic about sex, though, if they eat like that all the time. Maybe it's just an act. Or maybe they normally eat pasta and fresh, seasonal vegetables and go easy on the steak.)
I'm currently in the middle of transcribing some DULL financial conference about complaints. Dull, dull, dull, though marginally more fun than the one about financial regulations. Yawn. I really have to go out and get some bits for my dressmaking course, but I'm so tired (woke up at 5 for some reason) I don't know if I can face going to Bracknell this evening, let alone compos mentis enough to operate a sewing machine. While I don't want to start unmitigatedly slagging off Bracknell, as that's far too much of a cliche, it is one of those places that is designed for cars, and is thus impossible to navigate your way round on foot. My first week at the college, I tried to follow the footpath that went in the right direction, and ended up getting shunted round a deserted shopping centre and trying every exit in a labyrinthine underpass in the middle of a roundabout. And, of course, it being designed for cars, nobody else is walking. I never felt particularly unsafe, there were no gangs of youths leering threateningly from doorways, but there was nobody around to ask directions from. Bah. Nearly finished my skirt though. Need a pattern to start next week now (or tonight, if I can drag my weary carcass to John Lewis, back again and out to BRacknell, having done a respectable amount of work).
Parents coming this weekend, sans chien this time. Not that the chien was a particular problem, but we have got bacon curing all over the kitchen, so perhaps it's best she's not sleeping by it. (Yes, my food-buying obsessiveness led me to buy half a pig from the butcher at the farmer's market. We got very funny looks carrying the crate between us through the streets of suburbia. We had the most divine pork chops the other day... and can have them again... and again.... and again..... and again.... till next year! Nik thought we'd been swizzled and been given a whole pig instead of a half, but seeing as we were only charged for a half, it would be the world's worst swizzle...) Have no idea what we're going to do with them. Last time we all got horribly worked up about going to dinner with Nik's family and spent the entire afternoon stressing over a cake, but I don't think any of us is ready to go through that again, so we may be on that never-ending search for entertainment that is far enough away from Wokingham to be interesting, but near enough that my poor beleagured parents, who will be sandwiched between days involving hours spent on the M-sodding-1, won't balk at the idea of travelling to it. Hmm.
Anyhow, must press on with the dull financial conference. A particularly camp bloke is explaining how retired actuaries are really annoying. Yes, I know, but I need to keep body and soul together and all that. Hohumm.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Wrestling with the tax office and a treadle machine
Oof, have just rung the tax office. Been putting it off for... well, until about a week before they'd fine me for not having told them I'm self-employed! And, as ever, the chap on the end of the phone was very helpful, not at all scary and it was all fiiiiine. Don't know why I get so worked up about dealings with the Tax Office - I always get in a tizz and put it off for ages and ages, and then it's never as bad as I think! I shall let that be a lesson....
Been rather busy with work after a downturn over January, when I sorted out all the cupboards in the kitchen and various other worthy and boring things like that. Got called in to do an emergency eleventh-hour translation by the rubbish agency who have never given me any work before (I'm basically so unmarketable as a translator that I've given up responding to their emails), which required me to get up at six in the morning and do it in 'real time' online so someone could proof-read it simultaneously. I felt somewhat naked, sharing my rather idiosyncratic work processes with total strangers who might be judging me and my warped brain.
Still plodding away with my dressmaking course, though, have to pin and press the hem of my skirt for tomorrow and then I should be able to finish it off, with a bit of help. The sewing machine is almost working - I had it at the stage where the mechanism was fine, but I couldn't thread it, and now Nik's mum has shown me how to thread it, and something seems to have gone wrong with the belt.... Grrrr......
The veg box sent us a mixed fruit and veg box instead of just a veg box, which means no sprouting broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables) and a surfeit of bananas this week. Hohumm.
Anyhoo, have hemming and shopping to get on with. I'm having a 'freelancer's weekend' today. We've run out of almost all dry goods imaginable, and I feel rather vulnerable not having a well-stocked cupboard. There might be a nuclear holocaust or something.
Been rather busy with work after a downturn over January, when I sorted out all the cupboards in the kitchen and various other worthy and boring things like that. Got called in to do an emergency eleventh-hour translation by the rubbish agency who have never given me any work before (I'm basically so unmarketable as a translator that I've given up responding to their emails), which required me to get up at six in the morning and do it in 'real time' online so someone could proof-read it simultaneously. I felt somewhat naked, sharing my rather idiosyncratic work processes with total strangers who might be judging me and my warped brain.
Still plodding away with my dressmaking course, though, have to pin and press the hem of my skirt for tomorrow and then I should be able to finish it off, with a bit of help. The sewing machine is almost working - I had it at the stage where the mechanism was fine, but I couldn't thread it, and now Nik's mum has shown me how to thread it, and something seems to have gone wrong with the belt.... Grrrr......
The veg box sent us a mixed fruit and veg box instead of just a veg box, which means no sprouting broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables) and a surfeit of bananas this week. Hohumm.
Anyhoo, have hemming and shopping to get on with. I'm having a 'freelancer's weekend' today. We've run out of almost all dry goods imaginable, and I feel rather vulnerable not having a well-stocked cupboard. There might be a nuclear holocaust or something.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Campaign for a free range future
Now, I don't often do this any more. Most food rants are kept on my secret hippie blog nowadays, so you don't have to read me moaning on about raw milk or muddy vegetables, but this is very, very important, so I want you to pay close attention.
If you click on the link above you will be taken to the Chicken Out! campaign website, where you can find out the horrendous facts about the life of a battery chicken. Chickens are supposed to live outdoors, scratching around in the dust and pecking at things on the ground and suchlike. Y'know, normal chickeny things. That's what chickens like doing.
Instead, because we demand cheap animal protein and the supermarkets want to sell us whole chickens for £2 or packs of anaemic chicken breasts for under a fiver, hundreds of chickens, bred to be genetically obese, are crammed into broiler houses, forced to live in spaces smaller than a piece of A4 paper each, reared to slaughter weight in around 39 days - about half the time of an organic chicken.
Chickens that die during the 39 days are just left in the cages until the others go off to slaughter, and many of them do die, because they can't get to their food or water.Also, have you ever seen a chicken with those black marks on its legs, like the one in the picture? Those are called hock burns, and they are a result of ammonia - i.e. because of the chicken walking around in its own droppings.
If you want more information, Compassion in World Farming have a good page here.
Your personal views on meat are probably varied and diverse (and I would love to talk about them more if you want to leave a comment or email me), but I firmly believe that if we have decided it's okay to eat an animal, we owe it to that animal to make sure it has as good a life as possible and is as happy and healthy as it can be.
Free range (or ideally organic) chicken is more readily available than ever, and it does cost more, which can be offputting, but that cost reflects the fact that they cost more to produce - because they are raised more humanely - and the superior quality of the meat.
If money is an issue, buy chickens whole (ask your butcher to joint them if you prefer) as you get much better value for money that way - Nik and I bought an organic, free range chicken for only £8.50 the other week, and roasted it (2 portions), made a risotto (2 portions) and made 3 lots of curry to freeze (6 portions), then made stock from the carcass (easy as pie - in fact easier, cos pastry's a faff, while bunging some chicken bones, an onion and a carrot and some herbs in a pan is dead simple), enabling me to make 3 lots of soup/risotto/stew (i.e. another 6 portions of something else). That's 85p a portion, not including the stock, or slightly more than 50p a portion if you count the stock. I am more than happy to post lots of recipes for risotto/casserole/curry if you like.
So, please, go the the Chicken Out! website, watch Hugh's Chicken Run on the 8th, 9th and 10th of January at 9 p.m. on C4 (and Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay when they're on as well), and, please, sign the petition, but remember that signing the petition is a completely, utterly, totally empty gesture, unless you think next time you're in the poultry aisle at the supermarket, and buy free range instead of that 'oh-so-tempting' £2 bird.
I would love you to sign the petition, and I would love you to leave me a comment saying that you've signed it, but I would love it even more if you promise me you are never, ever going to buy a battery chicken again. (Unless you're a vegetarian, in which case it's irrelevant, and you probably care deeply about animal welfare already and only buy free range eggs anyway.) If you feel even slightly uncomfortable at the thought of battery chickens, don't be a hypocrite - remember that you can make the choice to buy something else.
Next week: what the .tv suffix has to do with global warming.
Friday, December 14, 2007
In which the Hamster descends further into middle age
Dear lord, I feel frightfully grown up!
And also frightfully cold. Am sitting here typing with fingerless mittens on and feeling like I should be being more organised about Christmas. I think one of the signs of being an adult is that you no longer look forward to Christmas with unadulterated excitement but also start to dread it. I refuse to go that far, but signs of the 'it's such a faff' feeling are starting to make themselves felt.
Mostly because I unfortunately succumbed to Nik's cold this week. I had felt myself coming down with it last week and successfully fought it off, and went round feeling smug and waxing lyrical about the healing powers of echinacea, zinc, onion soup and sheer bloody-mindedness. I was then cruelly struck down last weekend, limped through to my deadline, decided I would be healthy on Tuesday and do all the things that needed to be done (ordering Christmas decoration kits from ebay, putting finishing touches to presents, learning how to do ribbing so I can make gloves and hats etc, writing cards, buying paint and making the cheapie recycled brown paper I'm wrapping things in more exciting, etc etc) and felt distinctly unhealthy on Tuesday after all. My eyes were streaming, as per usual, and I couldn't actually see to focus on anything long enough to read, knit, write cards, cross stitch, look at the computer etc etc and consequently I spent the day either in a foul mood or asleep.
On Wednesday, I dragged myself to London very much against my better judgement to put in an appearance at the Sustain Christmas party. After a couple of glasses of local, organic cider in a plastic container that could be returned to the producer, I suddenly felt much better, and found myself on the penultimate train home and crawling into bed at 1 a.m. with extremely cold feet.
Yesterday I had a 1950s housewife day, and made carrot cake and used up one of the peculiar joints that we got when we ordered half a lamb. This required excessive quantities of stuffing and slow roasting to make it palatable. I also boned it out myself, which made me feel very thrifty, esp as am now going to make stock! My hero, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, had a very exciting looking recipe, but it involved storing things overnight in jam jars, so I refrained from going down that road.
My garden is full of pigeons and a grey squirrel. Vile, southern, urban wildlife. Had a fox once, too, that came right up to the window. Have pathological fear of urban foxes, creepy unnatural things that they are. Foxes should not be that tame!
Also had a robin once. I can deal with that! Am quite pleased, in theory, that despite being paved over my garden can still be part of a wildlife corridor. I wonder if I can encourage 'good' wildlife without encouraging ugly, scroungy things though...
And also frightfully cold. Am sitting here typing with fingerless mittens on and feeling like I should be being more organised about Christmas. I think one of the signs of being an adult is that you no longer look forward to Christmas with unadulterated excitement but also start to dread it. I refuse to go that far, but signs of the 'it's such a faff' feeling are starting to make themselves felt.
Mostly because I unfortunately succumbed to Nik's cold this week. I had felt myself coming down with it last week and successfully fought it off, and went round feeling smug and waxing lyrical about the healing powers of echinacea, zinc, onion soup and sheer bloody-mindedness. I was then cruelly struck down last weekend, limped through to my deadline, decided I would be healthy on Tuesday and do all the things that needed to be done (ordering Christmas decoration kits from ebay, putting finishing touches to presents, learning how to do ribbing so I can make gloves and hats etc, writing cards, buying paint and making the cheapie recycled brown paper I'm wrapping things in more exciting, etc etc) and felt distinctly unhealthy on Tuesday after all. My eyes were streaming, as per usual, and I couldn't actually see to focus on anything long enough to read, knit, write cards, cross stitch, look at the computer etc etc and consequently I spent the day either in a foul mood or asleep.
On Wednesday, I dragged myself to London very much against my better judgement to put in an appearance at the Sustain Christmas party. After a couple of glasses of local, organic cider in a plastic container that could be returned to the producer, I suddenly felt much better, and found myself on the penultimate train home and crawling into bed at 1 a.m. with extremely cold feet.
Yesterday I had a 1950s housewife day, and made carrot cake and used up one of the peculiar joints that we got when we ordered half a lamb. This required excessive quantities of stuffing and slow roasting to make it palatable. I also boned it out myself, which made me feel very thrifty, esp as am now going to make stock! My hero, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, had a very exciting looking recipe, but it involved storing things overnight in jam jars, so I refrained from going down that road.
My garden is full of pigeons and a grey squirrel. Vile, southern, urban wildlife. Had a fox once, too, that came right up to the window. Have pathological fear of urban foxes, creepy unnatural things that they are. Foxes should not be that tame!
Also had a robin once. I can deal with that! Am quite pleased, in theory, that despite being paved over my garden can still be part of a wildlife corridor. I wonder if I can encourage 'good' wildlife without encouraging ugly, scroungy things though...
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Maybe I should write to 'Feedback'...
Oh, oh, oh, PEOPLE! The reason I listen to Radio 4 at 2 a.m. is because I can't sleep. While I am really very sad that Stockhausen died, broadcasting a tribute to him at that time is not very conducive to sleep and restfulness!!!
Urgh, it's only 8 a.m. Why am I up so early on a Saturday?
Urgh, it's only 8 a.m. Why am I up so early on a Saturday?
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Cross stitch, carbon footprints and Broadmoor
Right, I am going to get into the habit of updating this again, even though my life is really boring, because Rob just reminded me that he actually reads this and now I feel bad. If you read this too, I promise to write more random drivel to distract you from work/study.So, what have I done that isn't really boring.....?
I made a massive cross stitch sampler for my parents' wedding anniversary, which you can see on the right. Their anniversary was in September and I finished it last week.... Ahem....
I have booked myself onto a dressmaking course for next term, so I can learn how to use my beautiful new sewing machine. Hurrah.
I have made excellent progress on my Sustain project today. Need to chase a few more people, but am feeling more confident that I'll get it done for Christmas.
I calculated my carbon footprint tonight, on the government website thingy. We're doing pretty well, given as we're renting and aren't allowed to faff around with solar panels, switch electricity suppliers or bung fluffy stuff in the loft. I can't believe we did so well compared with the national average. Who are these people who actually boil a full kettle of water just for one cup or leave their mobile charger plugged in? Do they really exist?
Work is going well. I quite enjoy getting to sit around arranging words on a page all day, and I have a far wider range of good quality teas than any office. (Except maybe if I worked at Whittard's...) I think it's making me a bit agoraphobic, though. Or a sociopath. I don't know if it's my inner anti-consumerist reacting to the time of year, but I find going out a less and less attractive prospect.... Hmm. There is the Sustain party next week which I am looking forward to. Anyone else's office party sounds dire, though! I think it's partly to do with my insomnia earlier in the year. I managed to 'cure' it by getting into a bedtime routine, but the trade-off is that when I want to stay up later, I can't, so I'm pretty rubbish at anything exciting and eveningy...
Oh, and I found out what the air-raid siren is. It isn't an air-raid siren (or it is, but it doesn't mean there's an air-raid), it's the escape alarm at Broadmoor! They test it every Monday at 10. If you go here you can read lots of people's memories of it going off. All the schools have specific procedures to follow in the event of an escape. Pretty scary stuff.... Oh, I do like being smug and telling people I've been inside!
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Another moment of perplexity
Cor, there's some odd stuff available on ebay. Why on earth would anyone buy bright orange curtains?
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