Hey! They're learning for free!

It is rare that living in the modern world makes me feel full of joy, but I picked up my copy of Oxford Today magazine when I was staying with my parents. From my limited perusal, Oxford Today appears to be a magazine for people who have proved they can routinely read ten books a week and are now content with a thrice-yearly magazine. (The adverts which fell out of it were: 15% off Homebase stuff, a discounted subscription to The Economist, a flyer for the Ramblers, another for an investment trust and a plea from Amnesty International to help them stop rape as a weapon of war. Make of that what you will.) Anyway, in amongst all the articles was, ohmigod, a pointer towards this. Podcasts! Clever podcasts! Free clever podcasts! Many, many, many free clever podcasts! I think I am going to have to go on the trans-Siberian express in order to listen to them all.

So much free knowledge. The internet is wonderful.

Incidentally, I have started reading The Group by Mary McCarthy, a sex-and-anxiety-filled novel about eight Vassar graduates in the 1930s - quite apart from the pertinence of reading about lots of intelligent and angsty women, beginning their adult lives in a time of economic recession, I have also learned a LOT about pre-Pill contraception, both technically and sociologically. Fascinating.

"God! I must pack and take a train"

I am not unaware of the indignity of wailing into the internet about how my parents are so mean and don't understand me, so I shall skip over that, despite it occupying much of my headspace this week...

Had to go to London yesterday, and I can officially declare that there is nowhere in the whole of Canary Wharf to buy a copy of 'Country Smallholding' magazine. Also, that the first time I've actually been chatted up on the Tube, I was reading a radical feminist text. Go figure.

Unearthed some bees on my allotment and sent an email to the council saying, 'I have bees... get rid of them... but please don't kill them... we need bees, and they're in trouble.' Apparently they're digger bees rather than honey bees, and they're going to be taken away and released in some woodland. Yay!

Also, I have to get yet more time off work, despite possibly being over my limit since I'm leaving halfway through my 'year', to go to a wedding in July. However, both my friends who are getting married within a week of each other in July have very considerately conferred with each other and arranged to hold their hen dos on different weekends. Which was most thoughtful of them. ;-)

Off to Northumberland later this afternoon to spend the weekend hopefully not sniping at my parents. I have:

• a big pile of exciting books
• gorgeous yarn, needles and pattern
• a week's worth of Farming Today podcasts (note to self: get antidepressants)
• potatoes boiling for salad for dinner.

=)

Computer woes

Please, geriatric laptop, I know you're suffering. But if you could just bring yourself to open Outlook attachments, that would be really peachy. I kinda need them for work.

Also, if emails I delete could please stay deleted? Also helpful.

This thing is so not going to last me through my MA. Curses.

Help!

Can I really commit to spend the rest of my life with someone who talks about having a baby as 'an opportunity cost'?

*gulp*

Stuff wot I've done

Have just received a leaflet about swine flu from the government. I wonder if their advice to 'set up a network of "flu friends"', taken out of context, could be counter-productive.

I have also been reading many interesting books which I splurged on last week on the (middlingly spurious) basis that they were course-related, i.e. not set texts but the sorts of things that would turn me into a well-read person. On the plus side I have learnt an awful lot of exciting things about beer and class and urbanisation in the Victorian era. On the other hand, my dreams of having a smallholding have been more or less crushed. Boo. I wanted pigs and an orchard.

I went to a farm in Devon to learn how to make wine and ate lots and lots of yummy things. I also went to a fab, myth-busting talk about the Special Period in Cuba - yes, they were all growing organic vegetales and yes this probably kept people alive, but most agriculture still used pesticides and was very intensive.

Once I've written up these minutes for work, I've finished helping oil companies sack people for the forseeable future. Huzzah.

The allotment is also shaping up and soon I am going to plant some peas out in it. Yay! Peas! Nik has been heroic doing Heavy Lifting and Ferrying of Things to the Tip on the allotment while I am floored by a mysterious fatigue. I don't know if it's physical or psychological, but I had 11 hours' sleep on Friday night and woke up feeling like a normal person again. I then slept badly on Sunday and now feel like a rubbish person again. Boo. This has been going on, on and off, since February and is probably Not Healthy. Unfortunately my doctor is on holiday and I can't get an appointment until 2nd June. Boo.

Anyway. Lunch.

I wonder....

I wonder if.... if Nik and I eat the rest of the cannelloni that I made yesterday for my dinner... does that mean that technically I cooked and he has to do the washing up?

Blah, I said I was going to write a proper post, but I spent all today wandering around Reading trying to find a thing that would connect my computer to, well, some electricity so that I could actually, well, work and stuff. And I'm tired. And I'm going to eat cannelloni (when Nik gets back) and drink more shiraz (hey, we need three more screw-top bottles to put our home-made wine into, so technically this is a public service) and read my new book ('Surviving and Thriving on the Land - how to use your time and energy to run a successful smallholding', since you ask) and cuddle my fiancé (you know about him, he doesn't need parentheses).

Said fiancé has been away since Tuesday morning. In the intervening time, my dalliance with Charlie Brooker has kept me more than occupied.

Historical flu precautions

On last night's Case Notes, they looked at some coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Not only did the newspaper report encourage people to keep reasonably calm and not worry too much, in sharp contrast to today, the following "practical precautions by a medical correspondent" were offered:

• Keep a stout heart. Don't expect to fall sick.
• Eat as well as possible. Drink half a bottle of light wine or a glass of port at dinner.
• Take a hot bath each evening on returning from work.
• Smoke in moderation.
• If there is any tendency to sore throat, consult a doctor at once.

How times change....

Mild-to-moderate angst

Aargh, I'm doing that thing again, where it would have been perfectly possible for me to complete all the things I am supposed to do before going out but, because I am anxious about the social situation in question, I procrastinate so I can then say, 'Oh, I haven't finished my work... can't go out/come camping... sorry...'

I don't want to give in to my conniving subconscious by allowing myself to ring and cancel, especially as I probably would regret it, but on the other hand I do need to do my work. And, because I wish to spite the Sleazy Bastard by writing watertight minutes that record the hearing accurately but yet make it clear I think both he and his behaviour are/were despicable, I also want to do it well.

Argh.

Also, I've rashly committed/been hustled by circumstances into committing to get married on 10th April next year. I am very fond of this time of year, and so this decision was bolstered by a glorious gardening-filled day on Monday, but now it is grim and pissing it down and I'm tempted to totally screw Nik's family's plans up and ask my parents to un-book the church by defaulting to the summer. Someone remind me this could equally happen in July and it's not the end of the world if it rains anyway.

Ire

RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The world is crap, misogynistic, and crap.

I have drunk 3/4 of a bottle of rosé and overused the word ire.

That is all.

Scratch the whining, week got better

Okay, aside from the tea thing and the still-having-no-money thing, my week has actually dramatically improved. Not only has one of my deadlines been extended, but, thanks to a felicitous and somewhat unlikely combination of incompetent bankers and violent protesters, both the meetings I was supposed to attend tomorrow have been cancelled. Hurrah. So not only do I have to work like stink today to get my other work done today, I also don't have to get up at stupid o'clock tomorrow.

Why I hate this week

• I have to get up stupidly early 4 days this week for work and am absolutely knackered
  
• I have, in fact, to do a stupid amount of work full stop, most of which is grim and depressing
  
• HMRC have actually taken all of last month's pay away from me so I have no money, even though I wasn't the one who cocked up (although I can still have fun on the joint account!)
  
• Nik bought fizzy strawberry laces and ate them all before I got home
• tea prices are going up (linky)

Please send gin!

Hmmmm

Dear Facebook,

Using 'unlike' as a verb has really given this descriptive linguist pause for thought.

Yours sincerely,

Fighting-my-inner-grammarian (Berks.)

Another boring tax return post

The ongoing saga of the only real down-side to being self-employed continues... HMRC have helpfully sent me a letter telling me I overpaid in tax last year (which I told them on my actual tax return). This letter kindly explains, in great detail, how I should go about paying my tax, but is surprisingly unilluminating on how to reclaim money from them.

Harrumph.

Well whaddya know...

Apparently I 'lack [...] a sense of humour (citation needed)'.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Feminist_style

Dear lord... Go to the main article on feminism, if you dare. It starts by essentially saying that the suffragettes were more-or-less okay because they were 'predominantly pro-life' and, y'know, wanting to vote is probably just about acceptable, then starts blathering about co-ed submarines and then cherry-picks loads of all-sex-is-rape quotes to illustrate that all feminists are man-hating, bra-burning weirdos.

On 'pro-choice':

The "pro-choice" position in the abortion debate maintains that the decision to give birth is entirely a personal one for the mother, literally a "matter of choice" with no one else, including the father or child, having a say. A doctor may advise, but only in a limited capacity. He ought not try to influence the pregnant woman, even if she's just a girl. He should not inform her about the long-term medical harms of the operation, or the emotional or social consequences, but simply let her make up her own mind. Advocates justify this position with the materialistic idea that a human being does not exist until after his complete birth (see partial-birth abortion).
(my emphasis)

And at the bottom: 'Categories: abortion, deceit.'

Also, 'The atheistic worldview has a variety of effects on individuals and society at large...'

On Barack Obama: 'Obama used his Muslim middle name when sworn in as president and chose not to use the Bible for his real, private oath. Elected by claiming he's a Christian, Obama has since avoided attending church on Christmas and Sundays.' Really? I thought Obama was elected by, mainly, winning the election... 'Obama refers to America in the third person, as a foreigner would.' (As a linguistics geek, this is interesting - do they mean, 'that is what a foreigner would do and, since he is a foreigner, he does this,' or, 'if he were a foreigner, which he is not, that is what he would do'?)

Oh, oh, I could go on, but it's too painful. Please someone tell me this is a piss-take...

False economy

Walking an extremely circuitous route back to Waterloo, in four-inch heels and carrying my enormous laptop and overnight bag, to avoid paying for the Tube, only to be too tired to walk home from Wokingham station and having to take a taxi.

Snow in Northumberland

I want to go hooooooooooome........

Fab quotation from 'The News Quiz'

"The private sector is just incompetence combined with greed. At least the public sector is well-meaning incompetence."

Sleep

Oh dear lord, I am SO TIRED. I had been having difficulty sleeping again, but that appears to have lifted for the time being (*hammers forcefully on wooden table*) and now the accumulated sleep debt of 24 1/2 years appears to have hit me all at once. I have been in bed by 10 every night this week and asleep usually by midnight and habitually woken up about 10 minutes before I'm meant to start work. And I'm still constantly tired. Argh.

Meanwhile, Nik has turned into Mr Sprightly, and woke me up this morning by bouncing on the bed at 7.30 and saying cheerfully, 'I've just been for a 6-mile run!! I've been up for an hour and it's a lovely day and now I'm going to go and pro-actively do lots of useful things!!'

In fairness, it is a lovely day, but that's still no reason to be unneccessarily chirpy.

Still, this peculiar role-reversal has upset the balance of forces in the universe. I find it deeply unsettling to be the one who goes to sleep first and gets up second. Hmmm.

Self-indulgent Bob Dylan-fest

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge

An Open Letter

Dear institution at which I was 85% certain I would be studying next year,

When you offered me a place last week, your tuition fees for the coming academic year had not yet been finalised. You kindly enclosed the fees from 2008/9 to give me an idea of what I might be expected to cough up and I was reasonably confident that if the money I am expecting to inherit had not come through by then, I could liquidate my savings in anticipation of said funds, pay for the masters and reimburse myself later.

This morning I received a letter advising me of your fees for 2009/10 and I notice you have spontaneously decided to create a separate category for MAs in Anthropology, which means I will be paying £1000 more than if I were studying Linguistics, Music or Small Melanesian Island Studies and approximately £1000 more than I have saved, which I would not have had to do last year.

I will spare you my rant on the failure of the education system to promote social mobility in general and MA funding in particular, but I can sort of, maybe, at a pinch see the justification in charging more for things like Law or Economics which offer a much better return on investment than Gender Studies with Zambian Literature. I can even, at a pinch, see why cinema/media students might be charged more as they probably need to use expensive audio-visual equipment and, well, if I had to pay to insure stuff I was routinely lending to students I'd probably pass on the cost if I could too. I am sure you are, as you claim, 'synonymous with intellectual excitement and academic achievement' and there may, in fact, be an enormous array of employers waiting to entice Anthropology graduates with offers of astronomic salaries and fabulous benefits, but, as a prospective student, I have done a small amount of research into this matter and failed to find evidence that it is anything like as lucrative as, say, Law or Economics.

I will not project any issues about how I should have had the courage to do something funky two years ago instead of rotting in suburbia onto you, nor take out on you my slight annoyance that my parents are willing to pay stupid money for a wedding while adamantly refusing to support me, even morally, in moving into the career I want (gift horses, mouths and all that, not to mention that it means we won't now have to feed our guests baked beans off paper plates just because my MA is costing ££££ more) but, still, YOU SUCK.

Yours sincerely,

She-who-is-furious-yet-grateful-she-is-neither-an-international-student-nor-doing-International-Relations