Living well is the best revenge

Well, mostly it is. Just to make sure, I'm still writing to my MP and even going on the climate march this weekend, but we had a little inspirational talk at Slow Food on Monday about how we were part of a revolution and, I must say, I prefer a revolution that has toffee apples for pudding.

I don't want to join your revolution if I can't dance.

Apparently Emma Goldman never actually said that, (see here under Living my Life, 1931) but "the sentiment is consistent with Goldman's insistence that revolutionary anarchism was not inconsistent with pursuits of beauty and the pleasures of life".

I don't know what she'd have said about plucking a pheasant in your party frock. One of the more surreal moments of my life by quite some way.

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The Word spell-checker frustrates me more and more each week. Current number one irritating feature is its dogmatic insistence that 'staff' should be singular.

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I have been organised and worked hard and achieved something when I said I would. Hopefully this is a step towards becoming a happier person who takes pleasure in things again and doesn't drink too much. I will give more details at some point, but not yet ;-).

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I watched an interesting documentary on forced marriage that was on BBC2 the other day, which is available for five more days here. I don't really know enough about the issue to have anything particularly intelligent to say about it beyond, 'how sad,' but one thing that really struck me was the fact that many of these forced marriages were a way of allowing other family members to get UK visas, essentially of spreading wealth and opportunity around. The portrayal of forced marriage by the British press usually capitalises on ideas about 'honour' and 'tradition', more often than not bound up with religion, or harps on about 'lack of integration' and the 'failure of multiculturalism'. It seems it's easier to respond to such horrific practices by characterising them as primordial tribal customs rather than as the product of specific economic circumstances. I'd wondered before if there was a more nuanced explanation, less reliant on a perception of Islam as 'other', so it was interesting to hear it articulated.

I also watched a 'documentary' on GM food on BBC2 the other day, which was so disgustingly biased I spat feathers for two days before being able to compose myself enough to write and complain. I would rant about this more, but I've had my curiosity piqued and am now going to finish writing this and go and research the origin of the phrase 'spit feathers' instead!