Mini-rant

Urgh. "Alternative careers." What does that even mean? It makes it sound like there's something strange about you, something wrong with you if you don't want to be an investment banker. I feel as if the Careers Service are somehow judging me for wanting a job I enjoy; or a job that also gives me time to write and sing and cook and maintain some semblance of funtional human relationships outside work; or a job that fits in with my principles. It's like an 'alternative lifestyle' is always something that society doesn't really approve of, even if it makes you happy.

Bah.

Green living, Hamster-style

According to a list of tips on how to save the environment which I read on the back of a toilet door in Magdalen, recycling two glass bottles will save enough energy to boil the kettle for five cups of tea or coffee.

Which means that if I drink two bottles of wine a day, I can justify the amount of hot beverages I consume.

Why?

Meh. This term I have made a concerted effort to be healthy. Yet, despite taking more exercise, getting to bed at a decent time, eating lots of fresh fruit and veg and drinking nothing but herbal tea, I once again find myself beginning second week surrounded by vitamin C, zinc, echinea, Kleenex balsam and an inability to concentrate cos my head's all stuffed up. What more can I do??!!!!!

Last night my friends and I had a dinner party. We ended up talking about property prices.

Help.

Hee hee!

Lost Earl Grey - distraught.

Me: Hello! How are you?

Aged relative: Fine, thank you. How are you?

Me: Fine. Has Daddy arrived at your house yet?

Aged relative: Not yet. He rang to say he'd be late. We're expecting him any minute.

Me: Okay... [slowly] It's just that he said that he and Grandpa would either get here around 4 so we can meet before choir practice, or come straight to evensong at 6.30. I don't mind either way but I'd just like to know.

Aged relative: Right. What time is evensong?

Me: 6.30.

Aged relative: So it'll finish around 7.30.

Me: Usually around 7.

Aged relative: I see.

[Pause]

Aged relative: But you have a practice, don't you?

Me: Yes.

Aged relative: What time?

Me: 5.

Aged relative: So if they're coming before evensong, they'll need to get there about 4.

Me: Yes.

Aged relative: So maybe they'd better come at 6.30.

Me: Maybe.

Aged relative: Do you know which they're going to do?

Me: No...

[Sounds of me banging my head against the wall in frustration.]

Me: Do you think you could ask Daddy to ring me when he gets to yours, please?

Aged relative: Yes, of course. What on?

Me: Err, my phone. He'll have the number.

Aged relative: Okay. What do you want him to tell you?

.......


I probably shouldn't mock the elderly, but my Granny is otherwise perfectly mentally sound and has always been like this to some extent.

I have made about 2.5l of butternut squash soup, dyeing parts of the kitchen orange (sorry).

I want these shoes.

My teapot arrives in a few hours.

I have mislaid the box of Earl Grey I'm convinced I had last term.

Sally gave Sybil a good trim and she looks much healthier now. I might get some coriander, mint and/or chives to keep her company on my windowsill.

I know what I'm going to write about for my seminar tomorrow.

I woke up at a sensible time this morning. I would have got in the shower during Thought for the Day as I usually did last term, but they were talking to Sebastian Faulks about WW1 veterans afterwards so I had a little more of a doze and listened to that, as I'm sure it counts as work. Though he didn't say anything massively insightful. The recordings of the veterans were more interesting. There are only 4 surviving WW1 veterans alive today. Which, given as they must be over 100, is pretty amazing.

Today has been a good day for M&S Food special offers.

Vindicated

Just found this on the BBC Food website. It made me want to jump up and down, waving my arms and shouting, 'Yes, yes, you morons! This is what I've been saying all along!'

Fresh is best

Often foods marketed at slimmers are not very nutritious. One so-called 'slimming' chicken and sweetcorn flavour packet soup mix contained no sweetcorn and only one per cent chicken, water and glucose syrup being the first two ingredients. Okay, so it's less than 60 calories a serving but where's the goodness in it?

The healthiest food you can buy probably doesn't come with a label. Fresh ingredients won't list their nutrients, additives (or absence of) or boast that they're good for you. But if you buy organic broccoli from a farmers' market you know that it has been grown without pesticides and that it's packed with nutrients. It might even have been picked that very morning.

So, beware of the claims of labels. Look for the Government-approved traffic light rating - if there is one - and look even more carefully where there isn't.

Where possible, prepare foods yourself. You'll know exactly what you're eating and nothing with a 'healthy choice' label emblazoned on it is likely to be as virtuous - or as delicious.

In which the hamster escapes the tyranny of language policy and mulitlingual nation states by going to Brussels

I went back into Oxford on Thursday (for some reason I said in my last post I went to Brussels the next day - it wasn't true) to get my boots reheeled and then had to hang around and wait for them, which was a fantastic piece of work-avoidance. I ended up traipsing round the cooking sections in both Boswells and Debenhams and fantasising about, at some point in the future, having a large, well-equipped kitchen where I could make soup and jam and all those other things. Sigh. I bought a hand blender for a tenner and made stilton soup, as Nik's mum had kindly given me approximately 200g of strong stilton on the verge of going mouldy that went out of date about two days afterwards. There was an exciting Mozart concert on Radio 3 and I sat and listened to it and pondered at what point I had turned into the kind of person who rated buying a kitchen gadget as the high point of their day. Then I listened to Choral Evensong and packed and then got up early on Friday and went to Brussels.

Firstly, the Eurostar is fantastic. Even including the Oxford Tube journey, getting the tube to Waterloo and checking in and waiting for the Eurostar, I still got from Oxford to Brussels in the same time as it takes to get from Oxford to Newcastle. Madness! Even more madly, I got in before Livvy and waited around, reading, in the station (my bag being too heavy to permit much window-shopping) and then met her off the train. Heehee. We went back to her house and drank a pint of tea in the new mugs I'd got her and then went to the supermarket to get olives and pizza and salad and wine and came back and made dinner. Then we drank a pint of coffee and stayed up until 3 a.m. talking, amongst other things, about how annoying it is having a boyfriend who doesn't appreciate Radio 4.

We had made such great plans for Saturday, but, after the exuberant conversational exertions of the night before, overslept rather dramatically, so (with further encouragement from the rain) decided against the lengthy but scenic walk into the centre of Brussels. We fare-dodged on the tram and took a perfunctory look at the Grande Place, then went and had coffee (which came with free chocolate mousse!!) in a pretty shopping arcade with lots of funky small boutiques with beautiful shoes and bags and gloves and suchlike. Livvy then urgently needed my opinion on a pair of boots, so we went to Zara, lost each other in the seething mass of undignified humanity that was trying on jumpers and leaving them in untidy piles so no-one can find a V-neck, proceeded to H&M and forgot to go to the musical instruments museum. We had lunch in an earthy, whole-foody type place, though my eyes proved bigger than my stomach and I ate my tuna and wheat salad on the train the next day, and were torn between excitement that someone had left an English newspaper and disappointment that it was the Daily Mail. We read it anyway and felt dirty and angry afterwards. Hissss. My personal favourite article was: 'Why joining the EU has led to the loss of civil liberties, the decline of British values and a glut of immigrants taking our jobs!' Livvy enjoyed the expose about Lembit Opik and the Cheeky Girl's sex life.

Having abandoned any hope of being cultured and touristy, we carried on looking at shoes until it was time for live jazz at an exciting bar. We sat upstairs and had coffee, and then Livvy had another coffee and I had a cocktail (cos I was tired and needed the sugar rush) until we got too hungry and restless to be assuaged by free peanuts and went to the supermarket and bought chicken for dinner. We ate it with the world's finest chips and, as Nik had requested any present "as long as it's worth millions" and had only agreed to me bringing beer on condition that the bottle was encrusted with diamonds and rubies, I spent the evening sticking nail decorations onto a beer bottle to create said effect on my shoestring budget. (He had also stipulated it was to be brewed with liquid gold, but the only beer claiming to have anything to do with gold had a nasty plastic top, while the one I chose had a funky wooden cork and had already been approved of by Jon and Rob.) Then we watched 'Coupling' on YouTube (which was annoying cos the clips only last 10 mins and we had to keep changing them), cackled extensively, and then, again, talked until far too late about philosophy and politics and history and linguistics and literature and culture, or at least insofar as they relate to sex. Oh, and we tried to decide what we'd take on Desert Island Discs. I entered into the spirit of this rather too enthusiastically, imagining I really was going to be abandoned on a desert island and therefore choosing a wide variety of long things with good tunes so I wouldn't get bored, until I remembered it was really a sort of musical 'This is Your Life' and Livvy suggested I follow the more general tactic of choosing either my favourite things* or things that reminded me of certain points in my life. Ahem. Yes. Of course. We both agreed choosing one book was the hardest part of the whole endeavour. Livvy wanted to take a piano and limitless supply of music. I can't decide if my luxury would be unlimited paper and pens or an espresso machine.

Ooh, ooh, yesterday I bought a stovetop espresso maker with 2 porcelain cups and saucers with a pretty pattern on them for an extremely bargainous price in the Boswells sale AND made successful espresso (minor spillage incident, probably design flaw, kitchen otherwise unscathed). On the strength of this, the cafetiere and the new teapot, I am going for the title of Aldate's hot beverage queen HT07. Must now resist utterly pointless urge to buy more mugs and a mug tree in complete denial of proximity to overdraft even before paying battels.

On Sunday, we again overslept, though less dramatically, and went for a brief wander through the market (fresh vegetables! cheese!) and had a brief but chocolatey pain au chocolat to curb my hunger cravings. I wish I weren't grouchy and prone to dizziness until I've had breakfast. It seems very indelicate. Then I got the train home, and again it was fast, clean, cheap, efficient, environmentally friendly and pleasant. I was sitting next to someone from SOAS, but I decided against plunging into conversation with him as 'Ooh, I nearly went there for my degree but decided I'd rather do linguistics than Chinese and went to Oxford instead, and then I nearly went there again for postgrad, but then I decided I wanted to do literature, and then I thought this would be damaging to my writing, so I've decided not to do postgrad, at least not yet, but I have no interest or aptitude for anything else, so... - what do you think I should do with my life?' was not an opening gambit conducive to other people's high estimation of my sanity.

I got home and felt tired so I went to sleep in the afternoon, woke up grouchy and was too bored to cook and sent Nik out in the rain to get a kebab with our meagre cash. Classy. I was speaking to my mother while he was out and told her he'd gone to get a take-away. She asked me what we were having. "Err... I don't know - it's a surprise!" I said. Then we watched excessive amounts of 'Coupling' and yesterday I finished a book and started another and we went for dinner with Rami and people in the evening. Yay.

Gaah, I have a seminar in two days and I've read one book and 50 pages of another out of the whole reading list. Where did the vac go??? Why am I in bed, writing this, instead of working??? I keep telling myself I need a break, in a calm-before-the-storm sort of way, heedless of the fact that the storm would be calmer if the calm was a bit stormier. Balance. Moderation. Being sensible. New Year's Resolution anyone? My tutor sent me an email asking if I could come to a meeting on Thursday about teaching arrangements. I replied, saying I would be in said seminar. I received this:

Do you mean that teaching is already beginning this coming Thursday, in Oth Week, before term has begun??

I was tempted to reply simply by saying 'Yes'. I haven't yet come up with a more elaborate response, so it's still sitting in my drafts folder.

Anyway, I'm hungry. I will go and have some soup and read like a wee beastie, as Catherine would have said in first year, until Nik gets home. Which will be in about two hours. Hmm.


*"These are a few of..."

Happy New Year!!!

Gaah. They've changed blogger again. It's no longer beta, whatever that means, which I'm not entirely unhappy about, cos it was faffy and annoying, but I can't find any new cool stuff on this thingy, whatever it may be.

My camera is playing up. It keeps freezing up and not responding when you press the buttons. Suggestions, anyone?

I'm now back in Oxford, theoretically working. I went to my Auntie Margaret's for lunch on Saturday, which was great - we had yummy pie and I got given a teapot. My cousin has a new car - a swanky BMW with all sorts of hi-tech thingummies including self-dipping headlights (which nobody can figure out how they work*, but they do) as a wedding present from his fiancee's father. Eek.

I went down to London for New Year's Eve, and managed to get the bus to where I was supposed to be all by myself. Nik and I were at a party with one of his friends from school and his uni friends. I had a great time, managing not to get horrendously drunk and was compos mentis enough the next morning to fry eggs for everyone who was up. Hurrah. Here are some highlights from the evening when enthusiasm for Jenga waned, and certain people among us decided to instead play 'How many Jenga bricks can you fit in your mouth?', thus proving the victorious Nik's claim that 'everything is a competition if you want it to be.'
All the other photos on Facebook were a result of flagrant camera abuse by other people. Nik is a hero for making chilli at 1 a.m.

We went back to Surrey afterwards and sheltered under a blanket in front of 'Jeeves and Wooster'. I want to live in the 1930s. Lots of jazz and men in suits. Mmmm, Stephen Fry. Mmm. Too much Jeeves led to an after-dinner departure back to Oxford, and now I'm back in Nik's room where my stuff takes up half the floor space. This is supposed to be a comment on the size of his room, not on the amount of stuff I have. However, I do have more stuff. I wanted to buy some stuff in the sales, so I started in New Look, thinking I'd then move on to some real bargains, and pick up some lovely, well-cut, non-boring-high-street-chain-store clothes elsewhere, but no other clothes in Oxford fit me at all. Particularly jeans. I'm just too short. So I resigned myself to this and went and bought lots of tights to go with my two skirts from New Look. Hmm.

Off to Brussels tomorrow, yayayayayayay.

Am just going to listen to Just a Minute and then go and do something useful like post my brother's birthday card and get my boots reheeled. And make some soup with the enormous quantity of Stilton Nik's mum kindly gave me.

"Hey Churchill, are you the First Lord of the Admiralty and war-time Prime Minister who kept the Nazis from our shores?"

"Oh yes."

"Were you invested as a Knight of the Garter, bestowed with a Nobel Prize for Literature and voted the greatest Briton of all time?"

"Oh yes, yes, yes, yes."

"And are you pleased to have those achievements commemorated by a talking, nodding insurance dog?"

"Errr... no."

*Oh lord, my first thought on typing that sentence was 'I'm sure I've written a syntax essay arguing why this is an impossible sentence'. Am now filled with vague uncomfortable twitchy feeling.