Band names and bands they suit

Bolus – crappy heavy metal/rock band like Primus, and all those inexplicably popular bands like Good Charlotte and Blink-182.

Behemoth of Love – sorry kids, this one’s taken. Mine and Therese’s girly rock band, with jingle-jangle sounds and handclaps (like Heavenly meets the Posies). Formed (I think) in a bar one drunken morning, the band hasn’t progressed past naming. The obvious next step is designing T-shirts, bags and badges, and then drawing album covers. What instruments can we play? Don’t be so ridiculous.

Lord Huggington – this would be a faux-pompous Guided by Voices/Buff Medways affair, with all band members wearing red jackets with epaulets and brass buttons. Despite looking faintly silly, they would blow your socks off with the power and skill of their Rock.

Tasty Veil – three Japanese women dressed in very expensive, understated skate labels, singing about chocolate cake and hating their jobs.

Today I am sitting around eating carbohydrates, and that’s about all. Tesco almond fingers (currently buy one get one free!) are bloody delicious, and highly addictive. Plus I woke up at 4am cos Steve has flu and was having an attack of the shivers, so I got him some water and paracetamol and covered him in layers of clothing. Poor lamb.

For some reason the thought of updating my blog this week is like eating liver: I know I should do it, but I just really don’t want to, and keep putting it off. (Ok, not really like eating liver. I don’t put that off, I just don’t ever do it.) Here are some little odds and ends I wrote this week, very outdated, so what.

Last night I put away all my summer clothing and sorted my closet out according to these rules. I tell you, it felt so good.

Wore a beret to work, cos my hair was wet. Think I looked like a Chelsea Pensioner rather than Amelie, though.

He didn’t make us feel like dancing . . .
Steve and I saw Leo Sayer today. He had the trademark halo of curls, but light brown and not black as I remembered. Speaking of hair, today I am sporting a Jesus Christ ’do.

Wow, did you see that? So good I posted it twice... duh.

I’ve eaten at this place twice in the last two days. But it’s so damn good, as cheap as McDonald’s, and a lot nicer. Last night Tim bought me dinner there: we had a salad, two giant plates of pasta and a bottle of highly drinkable house red for £18. As Jodie once said, you can’t beat that with a big stick. Today I had lunch there with Steve, cos he is a sad puppy at the moment, and I wanted to cheer him up. We had pudding, too: how can you turn down the dessert menu when one of the options is called Funky Pie? Steve had the pie, which was, sadly, not as funky as I’d hoped, but tasty nonetheless. And I could sing ‘Funky Town’ while he ate it, too, as if I needed a reason. I had a fudge bombe (stop sniggering at the back!), and it was most fine.

Oh and Steve and I have decided that Mark Ruffalo and Janeane Garofalo have to get it together, just so they can have a baby called Griff Ruffalo Garofalo. Say it five times really fast.

Also, here’s the best thing in the world. Adam Ant has apparently recorded a charity version of Stand and Deliver. All proceeds will go to the Diane Fossey Fund. The song title? Save a Gorilla…

Oh and Steve and I have decided that Mark Ruffalo and Janeane Garofalo have to get it together, just so they can have a baby called Griff Ruffalo Garofalo. Say it five times really fast.

Also, here’s the best thing in the world. Adam Ant has apparently re-recorded a charity version of Stand and Deliver. All proceeds will go to the Diane Fossey Fund. The song title? Save a Gorilla…

Last night Steve and I were forced to shop at the Sainsbury’s of Despair: it's laid out all weird, so you spend 10 minutes looking for the milk, and everyone is wandering about in a similarly aimless, desperate manner, looking like they’re about to cry. It’s the one on Clapham High Street, and I was getting very bad vibes from it. Bought ingredients for fajitas and got the hell out. Made dinner, drank a Miller Lite (the Champagne of Beers! Or is that High Life?), which Steve had brought all the way from Chicago!

Now I am at work eating a crayfish salad (one of the saucy buggers has a bit of crayfish poo on it. I took it off, but what if I missed some? Will I live? Check back tomorrow if you care) from atop a pile of page proofs (I like to live dangerously) and looking at my Hotmail to see if I’ve somehow missed an email from a major publishing house saying ‘Yes, we’d love to employ you.’ Where could it be?

Have also had my hopes dashed (again). Was hoping to win the Green Card Lottery, move to Chicago, and live happily ever after. Steve was gonna hitch a ride on my coat-tails, too, so he’s bummed. We had a whole marriage deal worked out! Damn you, Immigration Services and your unreasonably strict guidelines! See, although UK nationals aren’t eligible for the lottery, if either of your parents were not born in the UK you can apply. As soon as I read this the tape loop of me sucking down beers at Ten Cat, hi-fiveing jazz musicians at Green Mill*, buying coffee and cheap organic ready meals at Trader Joe’s, all accompanied by Therese, started to play. Then when I read it again a few weeks later, it became apparent that what the clause actually says is that if one of your parents were not resident in the UK at the time of your birth, and if the country they resided in was eligible, then you could apply.

Back to the drawing board.


* This has never happened. It just suddenly sounded good to me.

A woman got on my bus this morning, at the Cabinet War Rooms, wanting to go to Trafalgar Square. Now, if you live in London you probably know that this is, literally, two stops, or a five-minute stroll. But she was all agitated and asking the driver “I have a ten pound note which the ticket machine won’t take, and thirty pence, how am I supposed to get to Trafalgar Square?” Um, walk? Using the perfectly serviceable pair of legs God gave you? I sneaked a look at her, to see if maybe she was afflicted with a peg leg or something, but she looked capable of walking as well as anyone. In the end she threw a strop at the driver (who, in a feat of patience and restraint, never stated the obvious and told her that if she got going now she’s see him pulling up at the lights as she got to the National Gallery) and got off the bus.