Radium Dial

2010-01-20T11:12:00.002Z

Morning! So here's my big news for 2010: me and Steve are going to be parents. It's exciting and very, very scary. There will be a person in the world totally reliant on us, who will eventually call us mummy and daddy. Even though we wanted this, I still find myself thinking occasionally that I could do with a time-out. The nipper isn't due till July, so I guess we have some time to get used to the idea, not to mention to clear out and redecorate parts of our flat...

The past few months have gone quickly. Here's my big secret: pregnancy isn't fun. It's really not. I'm probably a bad woman for saying that. All the pregnancy magazines and books and blogs have a cheery, chin-up tone that makes me want to curl up into a ball and hide. And my first trimester wasn't even that bad, compared to a lot of women's. I felt sick and queasy all the time, was exhausted by about noon even if I got up at 9 (never have I been more appreciative of my freelance lifestyle), and cried at anything. ANYTHING. A BT advert? The news? Family section of the Guardian? I blamed it on hormones, cos they are actually to blame. Other glorious symptoms: piles! nosebleeds! forgetting everything!

And right now I have a cold. Feel sick and sleepy and gross. Dreaming about a big mug of Lemsip, making do with a lemon and ginger tea.

2009-11-02T12:15:00.003Z

Halloween weekend was full of dancing and heavy eye-makeup and a slightly painful left leg. All my Actionette-related leaping around has caused my sciatica to flare up again, and my leg is tingly and heavy and just feels a bit weird. I am hoping someone invents a pair of MBT go-go boots so that I can continue performing. Although as they'd be the ugliest footwear known to man, I'd sooner resign.

Since then, I've been spending lots of time with baby Leon, or Cuckoo-Ricoo as I sometimes call him, to his bemusement. (Just as Polish dogs say 'how' (try repeating it loudly), and cats say 'mru mru', the cry of the rooster is 'cuckoo-ricoo!' Which still doesn't explain why I have that nickname for L.) He still naps, but finds little ways to rebel. He's taken to removing whatever trousers my sister or her husband dressed him in that morning, and chewing on them. I think he's trying to say he prefers onesies, and after seeing him in the indigo velvet dungarees with an owl on the front, I have to say I agree. Chomp on, little flea!

In November the Actionettes went to Rome for a weekend of prosecco, pizza, other amazing Italian food (courgette flowers stuffed with mozarella and anchovies? I'll have five) and an appearance at club night Twiggy. It was all fun and games until bastard EasyJet lost the communal 'ette suitcase. (Contents: seven kitschy washbags filled with false eyelashes, hairspray and black eyeliner, and my dancing dress.) After an hour of watching the empty carousel at Ciampino airport, we admitted something might be wrong and reported the luggage lost. We left the address of our HQ for the weekend and were told the bag would be on the evening flight from Gatwick, and that we'd be happily reunited before the day was out. Long story short, that didn't happen. We spent the weekend toiletries-free (well not entrirely, come on - we bought some cheapy ones to share, oh and seven toothbrushes) and I didn't have a dancing dress. On the night we performed, this wasn't actually as big a ball-ache as it could have been. The lovely Miss Corvette lent me her dress for the first set, and then I handed it back, slightly damp, for her to wear in the second. The only downside was thatwhile all the other 'ettes got to prance around in pink dresses covered in giant pink and red discs, I looked like I'd come straight from the office. It was still an amazing night.

2009-10-20T15:36:00.002+01:00

So far today has been a big wet raspberry, but it'll get better around 7pm, when Mags and my two lovely sisters arrive for dinner. For the vegetarian sister there's cheese and salmon (yes, she eats fish), for the other vegetarian there's sausage and ham (she won't eat beef but everything else is fine) and for me and other sis there's a lot of everything else. Pumpkin, coconut and sweet potato soup, too.

Things I am watching on eBay

Black cat brooches, to be pinned to orange dress for Halloween Actionettes gig
Black spider brooches, as above, but they're too scary and I know I'd keep seeing them on my dress and freaking out
Vintage biscuit tins and canisters. Plan is to buy some and bake amazing cookies, and give these as homemade Christmas gifts in the tins
Usual lineup of 70s vintage dresses with puffy sleeves, patterned yokes and A-line skirts. Sigh.

Baby Leon, last seen on this blog at a cute five weeks, is now an all-crawling, loud-laughing, curious eight-month-old little sweetheart. He loves books and music and wiping his nose on his auntie's clothing.

2009-10-14T17:14:00.002+01:00

How did I go nearly three and a half months without posting? It was easy. And it's not even like I was so busy doing amazing stuff the whole time. Since the end of June, I've done... nothing. Well, a bit of work, a weekend in Bournemouth with the Actionettes, five days in Wales for my and Steve's wedding anniversary, and not much else. I did buy tickets for next May's All Tomorrow's Parties, as it's curated by Pavement and I've wanted to go to ATP for years, so this was all the encouragement I needed.

Guilt has made me update this blog. I was reading about this thing http://www.broadsummit.com/about/ on Mimi Smartypants's blog, and it made me sad and jealous. If I'd been good and updated my blog daily, or at least a couple of times a week, maybe I would be attending the UK equivalent (although I bet there isn't one...) of this sweet shindig. A weekend doing yoga and tasting wine? At a spa? It's a hard life.

I had a look at some of the blogs of the attendees. I really liked a few, but there really is a certain arrogance you need to keep - and very regularly update - a blog. Whole conversations retyped, verbatim. Endless stream-of-consciousness riffs on your love/hate of sweetcorn. I mean, who cares? If I did like those other ladies do and wrote down every last thing that happened to me, my blog for today might read something like this:

Got up. Late. Coffee, toast and marmite for breakfast. Did some proofreading, but not enough. Faffed about online for ages. Steve went to Lewisham market to buy vegetables - he got me a really nice pumpkin. We had leftover chili for lunch: yum. In the afternoon I went to Brockley Mess and had ginger cake and a pot of Earl Grey. The cafe was full of mums with babies. I glared at a small child pretending to wail and it made me feel evil but actually very happy. Walked home.

That did actually feel pretty cathartic...

2009-06-29T17:12:00.002+01:00

Dear Bike Courier,

Please hurry up and deliver the work I'm expecting, as having to wear clothing in this weather is making me want to cry.

Thanks,
IJ

London is EFFING SCORCHING. Muggy. No breeze. I feel sluggish, duntish, and other negative words ending in -ish. It's too hot to think of more. And tonight I have the task of making a cottage pie. A couple of hours of cooking on the stove and baking in the oven. This must be done, as I have a packet of beef mince that's going out of date* and (what possessed me?) when we did an online grocery shop I ordered a 2 1/2 kilo bag of potatoes. I don't want to throw food out, there's no room for the beef in the freezer, so even though all I feel like ingesting is crisps, ice cream and loads of water, a pie will be cooked tonight. If it kills me. And it might.

*Those words normally form the beginning of any dinner invitation to my house

2009-06-17T15:26:00.002+01:00

Here's what we did in France: ate shellfish (oysters = yum, raw mussels = yuk), visited Pezenas (that's where the door knocker is from), lazed by the pool, cycled by the water, and cooked giant, elaborate delicious meals.

2009-06-17T15:07:00.004+01:00

The last month has flown by. Dan and Therese came over mid-May, and at the end of the month we all headed to France for a week of cheese, wine, sunburn, swimming in our lovely private pool, and playing Tom and Steve's patented game, Aquaminton. (It's badminton played in a pool, and it's amazing.) Dan and Therese left last week, and straight away I was on a train to Newcastle for a gig at the Star & Shadow, a beautiful venue that is part cimema, part bar, part performance space. The Actionettes danced and there was a screening of Beat Girl, and lovely Michael, who was running the night, even provided us with giant bags of popcorn. I only got back on Sunday afternoon, and since then I've been to a yoga class and that's about it. Oh and I went to Beckenham for my sister Jasia's birthday drinks. Also I picked up my framed Jeff Tweedy poster by my new girl-crush, Diana Sudyka. Here's her blog http://thetinyaviary.blogspot.com/ and somewhere here there should be a pic of the poster... I don't spend a lot of money on clothing or going out and I don't have any expensive hobbies (reading? a lot?) but I'll happily pay £60 to get a great poster framed. My next dream purchase is a Marcus Oakley painting, or another of Diana Sudyka's posters...

2009-05-02T23:13:00.002+01:00

I'm slacking off again... so here are some random snippets from the last few weeks.

Little sister is back from Gaza for a couple of weeks! Hurrah! She's travelling around the UK and to Poland, and is then planning to return to Palestine for the forseeable future.
Me and Steve had a weekend in Whitstable, a pretty seaside resort in Kent, our first holiday since the epic and amazing honeymoon in October. Seafood was eaten (April is the end of oyster season, so we tried to scoff loads of those. BEST ONES were covered in bacon and BBQ sauce. That's how they eat them in New Zealand, apparently. Gotta love those Kiwis), pints of local raspberry beer were drunk on the beach, seaside strolls were taken.
The Actionettes have had a few cracking gigs lately, and we've more over the next couple of months. A few weeks ago we danced at Shunt, the soon to be shut down cavernous venue under London Bridge station, and last night we were the guests of the Dulwich Ukulele Club at their May Ball. The hall where the ball took place was decked in spring flowers, there was a Maypole and there was a Green Man ritual. I didn't quite understand it, but I was drunk by then. In June we're heading to Newcastle, then July has Gay Shame in London with the people from Duckie, a tiki birthday party in Bournemouth, and (fingers crossed) the Port Eliot literary festival in Cornwall.
This warm weather is bringing with it the unwelcome return of fucking huge spiders. Get out of my house!
Bank holiday weekend so far = good. Lie-in, impromptu picnic and frisbee in the Horniman Gardens, red wine and chips in a lovely Bermondsey pub.
Night night.

2009-03-27T10:17:00.002Z

Last night was date night. We kept it cheap(ish) by heading to the East End Thrift Store for their monthly shopping event. I thought this just meant they were open late, but NO, there was free booze too, which does indeed make it an event. I did pretty well - two sundresses, a floaty floral skirt, and a blouse for T. Steve bought a jumper and just hung out by the fitting rooms, drinking free beer and watching ladies getting changed. Oh and he was wearing the jeans with the bad zip, so his fly was undone too. Way to go, perv! We tried to go to Tayaabs after, but there was a scrum outside, and it was just too much hassle, so Lahore Kebab House it was. Giant spicy meal (so spicy that Steve cried), a walk across London bridge (less romantic for being in a howling gale), and watching The Apprentice on BBC iPlayer in bed. Perfect romantic night.

Over the past month I've been fearfully ordering hundreds of pounds worth of new kitchen. I say fearfully because I can't actually believe that in a couple of weeks our crap old kitchen will be gone and we'll have an amazing new one. Is it really that simple? You buy the stuff, pay a man to fit it all, and voila, new kitchen? Why didn't we do this sooner?

I've also been trying to see my sister and Mru Mru a lot (mru mru is how cats purr in Polish. Just as Polish dogs don't say 'woof woof' but 'how how'). Not sure why I call L Mru Mru, I think it's because once when he was fussing and threatening to wail, I sang him a couple of Polish lullabies about kittens and he calmed down. Anyway, he is a little bundle of cuddly fun, and very sweet. He's about 5 weeks old and just beginning to smile.

Saturday is the Actionettes' crunch-bustin' club, Everything Must Go-Go. We're pulling out all the stops with careers advice, a black market stall, Lidl hamper raffle, and dancing till dawn. I'm not amazingly excited about our outfits, but it should be a good night.

2009-02-25T16:39:00.004Z

Mostly pictures this time... Nice Friday things: Baby Leon, sunny sky, Co-op daffodils, tea and banana walnut cake.

2009-02-19T11:30:00.000Z

Valentine’s Day was spent drunkenly caterwauling karaoke at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. I belted out a version of ‘My Sharona’ so atrocious that even now, five days on, I cringe thinking about it. Steve went to watch some football and showed up at 9.30, but we did manage to have some romantic quality time together, kicking Mags’s and Emerald’s asses at table football. We don’t celebrate Valentine’s (let’s call it by its initials, VD, for speed of typing) but I still get upset when I don’t get a card or anything. Steve insists we agreed years ago that we instead celebrate ‘Ily and Steve Day’, the date of which is pretty fluid and generally falls a few days after VD, when all the soppy-eyed fools have gone back to sitting on the couch watching University Challenge, and the restaurant menus have returned to normal. So it was on Monday that I arranged to meet my husband at Mason’s, a restaurant in Ladywell we’d been wanting to try for years. It has a three-course evening menu for £13, so in the interests of staying local and staying cheap, he’d booked a table. The food was pretty good, and at that price you can’t really complain. Steve also gave me a big bunch of tulips and a lovely card of a cat doing yoga. Who says romance is dead? Happy I&SD!

Things to look forward to

Right this minute, as I type, my sister is in hospital preparing to give birth. I am on Baby Standby and obsessively checking my phone several times an hour for updates. She’s not fully in labour yet, so can still lie around texting me about how bored she is.

Holiday in France. At the end of May, we and some friends are going to the south of France for a week of wine, cheese, swimming in our own pool, eating amazing seafood, riding bikes (basically the entire holiday is going to be Flight of the Conchords’ foux de fa fa made real) and wafting around in maxi dresses. CAN’T WAIT.

Today is Fatty Thursday! Forget Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday to give it its boring name. Tlusty Czwartek is the day in Poland where you make donuts and eat them all. My mum is doing the former, and I’m popping round later to help out with the other bits.

Things to not look forward to

Just been to the doctor, who diagnosed me with ‘classic sciatica’. Yippee. It doesn’t hurt, but my left leg is a bit numb and tingly and feels cold. No more aerobics for me, just swimming and a bit of yoga.

2009-01-23T13:05:00.002Z

Swings and roundabouts

Just paid tax bill, still feeling I've been ripped off and massively overestimated the amount of tax I owe. So come April I'll grapple with it again and hopefully claw back some cash... May need help with this (Emerald! In exchange for dinner!) Good news arrived today with my credit card statement (NEVER a sentence I thought I'd write). I've transferred the balance of my ridiculously high-interest card to a 0% card, but I somehow overpaid the transfer amount. So essentially my credit card company owe me £540 and are paying it into my bank account. Woot!

Crafty things I've done while - ahem - resting these past few weeks

1) Made a maxidress to take to the south of France. It is made from a polycotton bedsheet which I dyed a murky grey/blue. It's a funny shape and I think the hem is a bit too narrow to walk properly in. I will still wear it. I'd take pictures and post them here, if I thought Steve could stop laughing long enough to hold the camera.

2) Work in progress: making stuffed bear/cat/rabbit hybrid toys for Maddy's baby and my nephew (due in about 3 weeks, so excited!). They're going to be made from a blue flowery Cath Kidston fabric someone gave me a few years ago. They're a bit freestyle and I apologise in advance for any nightmares/long-term trauma they may cause.

3) Not crafty but long overdue - a new kitchen is on the horizon for the J-D family. AT LAST. I detest my kitchen with a passion. It has no storage (people think I'm exaggerating, until I show them space for a few food items and 4 mugs and they shut up), doors hanging off their hinges, and massive gaps behind the units, forming an adventure playground for mice. But we bit the bullet and headed to Ikea, and got a not-too-terrifying quote for a new one.

Am nearly as excited by the prospect of a new kitchen as by the imminent arrival of my nephew.

2009-01-12T16:03:00.002Z

WHAT A DAY. Fired our cleaner* as we can't afford to keep her. She was fine about it (I paid her double for today) and it'll be a bit of a relief to be able to find stuff in the house again. All random bits of paper with very important things on them tend to get shuffled into neat piles, and forgotten, and I nearly screamed today when I noticed that my very expensive left-handed fabric scissors had been washed up and left in the cutlery drainer.

If you hadn't guessed, I'm broke. I know - how chic. Everyone's broke, everyone's 'economising' - TopShop instead of Marni, Southwold instead of Thailand. What fun! But as someone with a flexible income, I'm living from cheque to cheque and counting my pennies. Trying to think of what to sell on eBay. Clothes? (Really should - I have over 50 dresses, most of which I've never worn...shameful.) Hair? (Not long and luscious enough, sadly. Maybe in 6-8 months' time.) Steve? (That man costs a LOT to keep.) Am trying to make my own fun, too. Here's my top five free fun things to do.

1) Bubble bath, manicure. Drink wine in the bath for added luxury. More realistically drink random sugary liqueur from drinks cabinet.
2) Read! I have a ton of books to get through.
3) Long, bracing walks. Ideally not along the South Circular.
4) Read blogs/online news.
5) Sew. Am making a dress into a top, and shortening things I've never worn in the hopes that they'll now fit/somehow be more appealing.

Even I got a bit depressed reading that list.

* Yes, I KNOW it's bourgeois, fascist, Tory whatever to have a cleaner, but she's really nice, I pay her well, and she only comes for three hours every two weeks and spruces the place up a bit.

2009-01-06T17:26:00.004Z

Happy 2009. Not sure why, but I'm not really loving Christmas any more. It just seems increasingly like a month or so of stress and scrabbling around to get gifts for everyone, and then sitting around stuffing my face for two weeks, followed by a month or so of self-hatred when I can't get my jeans on. Well that's what it was like this year, anyway. Sorry to sound all bah-humbug, but I think next year I'd like to take a ten-day vacation over the Xmas/NY period...

What else? Well, it wasn't improved at all by the Israeli strikes since the 27th, as my sister is in Gaza. She was due to come home on January 17th but as the boat she was supposed to travel on has been hit (thanks, Israel, for that too) she'll be there a while longer. And to be honest she's not in any hurry to get out. As the British representative of the Free Gaza movement, she can't just run home as soon as it kicks off. But it doesn't reassure me to know that when buildings are being blown up, rather than sheltering, she'll be heading towards the explosion.

January 15th is our 6th dating anniversary... I'm getting S a present, seeing as his Xmas gifts from me ran to a Terry's Chocolate Orange (in limited edition hazelnut!), a copy of Revolutionary Road, and some stroompwaffles (?!). We did venture out to John Lewis at one point, only to both become distraught at the crowds and the fact that the entire shop had been picked over. I wanted to get a jigsaw and there were none. Steve wanted a leather satchel. Nothing. We also wanted to get a goose or a duck for our Xmas dinner (traditionally held on the 29th or 30th of December), but no game was available.

Pics are of Our People's Christmas meal, eaten at 10.30 as cooking took 5 hours (Steve) and tidying the dining room (me) nearly as long. On the menu: pork belly cooked with garlic, herbs and orange, roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, sweet potato & black pudding mash, honey roast parsnips, sprouts with chestnuts, stuffing, and gravy. And port and champagne. Cheers!

2008-12-23T12:34:00.002Z

Am just about done with Christmas shopping, in every sense. Reached the stage where I was just buying things and not giving a hoot if people actually liked them or not... This was directly attributable to spending half an hour wandering round TK Maxx listening to Noddy Holder roaring 'IT'S CHRIST-MAAAASSSSSS!!!' and nearly culminated in me panic-buying my father-in-law a pair of tight briefs and anti-wrinkle cream. Got ahold of myself and purchased him some real ale instead. Tonight the kitchen production line will be in full swing - I'm making dark chocolate and hazelnut truffles (with orange-vanilla liqueur) and ginger and white chocolate cookies for various family we're seeing over the next few days. Am pretty happy to have done all my Christmas shopping for around £100. I made quite a few things - Steve had a couple of jumpers he didn't wear, which I felted in the washing machine. I cannot reveal what they have been recycled as, due to some of the readers of this blog being the 'lucky' recipients... I always feel faintly apologetic giving home-made gifts: 'I made you this - sorry.' But this year I'm actually pretty happy with them, the only downside being that due to cutting yards and yards of fabric, my left thumb has pins and needles and goes numb when I press on it in a certain place. Like when I'm holding a pen or a fork. Ooops.

2008-12-12T15:00:00.003Z

Here's one he made earlier (about six months ago, in fact)

Spent the morning on a frantic scurry to M&S in Beckenham, to take advantage of their crunch-busting ‘2 dine for £10’ offer. You get a main course, side dish, pudding and a bottle of wine for a tenner. There’s not much choice for vegetarians (boo hoo for you!), what with the mains being a seafood paella, chicken breasts with apple sauce (yuk), Italian beef meatballs, and a whole chicken. I was tempted to get two chickens (usually £7 each) as part of the deal, but in the spirit of Christmas decided to not be greedy, and leave some for the poor suckers who couldn’t get there till after work.

PURCHASED TODAY

Beef meatballs with provelone
Whole chicken for roasting
Potatoes with rosemary and tomato
Roasting potatoes
Sticky toffee puddings
Selection of British cheeses
Bottle of Chenin Blanc
Bottle of Shiraz

Usual price: £32.90
Special price: £20

Ker-ching! It gave me a warm glow, I can tell you. Not least because now I can theoretically cook an entire meal without having a nervous breakdown/ bursting into tears. Steve does most of the cooking in our house, and does it best. This is mostly down to innate mad kitchen skillz, but also because he follows a recipe, shops for specific ingredients, and locks himself in the kitchen for three hours creating a gourmet feast. I use what’s in the house, don’t like to dirty more that one saucepan, and season most savoury dishes with an Oxo cube and ketchup.

But when it comes to baking, that man can’t touch me.

2008-12-10T10:33:00.002Z

I'm back! And it only took me half an hour to sign in to Blogger after forgetting my password, which email address I'd used etc...

What's been going on in the 18 months since I last posted? Still freelancing, still (mostly) loving it. Steve and I got engaged in October 2007 in Sardinia, during the last week of sunshine the island had that year. After a few false starts on the proposal front over the holiday (he got a glint in his eye on a deserted beach, but a wasp spoiled the mood; again on the roof terrace of the World's Crappest Museum in Alghero, but I was too crabby to be approached), he got down on one knee in a cafe, and through my tears I managed to blub the word 'yes!'. We then celebrated with prosecco and crisps, followed by a horse & cart ride around the old town, lunch in a fancy restaurant, and hiring bikes in the afternoon. (Actually, we may have done the last bit the next day, but as all these activities would constitute my perfect day I'm selectively remembering it like this.) A ring was finally purchased in June 2008 (ahem...) and the wedding took place on September 20th. The groom wore a custom-made grey three-peice suit and a neat beard, the bride wore a $200 dress, £16 shoes, and jewellery and underwear that cost way more than that.
Honeymoon was a blow-out trip to Argentina and Uruguay, where we upped our iron levels with steak, chocolate and red wine, rode horses in the Andes, visited an amazing cemetary, and saw lots of birds. We returned to crashing poverty, kicking ourselves (OK, I was kicking us both) for not really saving up for the wedding or the trip. That's what credit cards are for, right?

So, December. I'm trying to catch up on lost earnings by working 6-7 days a week, and everyone's getting homemade stuff for Christmas (I apologise in advance).

Married life is like cohabiting life, but somehow different, too. Without wanting to be a Smug Married, it's just... nice. Like you're a team - you have to be, it's too late to get out of it now. Divorce is a lot of hassle. It feels like you have someone on your side, all the time.

2007-06-19T17:59:00.001+01:00

It seems that after many, many years (about four, I think) of happy if sporadic blogging, it’s time to call it a day. I hardly ever update (I keep forgetting my login and password, which doesn’t help), and in my freeform workday I don’t schedule time to blog (which I should), and in the evenings there is wine to be drunk, TV to be watched, dinner to cook and a sunny garden to sit in. (I tried taking the computer into the garden and working from there but the screen was so dark I couldn’t see shit.) But I am still around, still guiltily signing up for things and then not working on them enough (see www.girlsrockuk.org) and still dancing like a drunken 60s loon every few weeks (see www.actionettes.com for the evidence…)
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu.

2007-04-01T22:01:00.000+01:00

Happy smingus dingus, the Polish festival of throwing water over each other! We thought it was this morning and much kitchen-based wet frolicking ensued, but actually it's next Monday. Don't tell Steve!

I pretty much stopped keeping up with music and going to gigs (apart from Yo La Tengo) a couple of years ago. I just didn’t know who was new, who I’d like; I’d never heard of the hot new bands. I relied (and actually still rely) on recommendations from friends, especially Jodie, Therese and Anamik. But I’ve recently discovered the Fred Flare boombox. Showing every one of my 31 years, I am rocking out in my home office to Of Montreal (Heimdalsgade Like A Promethean Curse – crazy name, amazing song), the Shins (I’m so 2005), CSS, the Changes, and New Young Pony Club (and that’s just one DJ’s selections). They also throw in classics like the Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry and some random NKOTB (does it matter that I was a fan first time around?). Suddenly even ageing indie kids like me can be hip to what the young ‘uns are listening to…

Creative Cooking

Me and the boy decided to defrost over the weekend. This decision was sort of thrust upon us, seeing as the fridge (yes, the fridge) had about 6” of ice on the back wall. We had a big jar of pickles in there, and it was filled with ice. (Steve took a photo.) So we turned up the heat (or turned down the cold) and left the door open, not thinking this would affect the ton of food we had in the freezer… Sunday morning, and the frozen bagels are soft. The veg, pastry, prawns, mixed berries, fish fingers, Chicago Town pizzas* etc are all gently thawing. We put in an emergency call to Tom, who despite being skinny can eat three portions of everything, and still have room for pudding. I made a giant veggie curry with spicy stir-fried prawns, and a (bloody delicious) mixed berry pie. Waste not want not. But what to do with those five chicken breasts…?

*the official drunk food of the J-D household

2007-03-29T16:32:00.000+01:00

So not much has been going on these past few weeks - although I pretend to work really hard I actually do a lot of sitting around, drinking tea, and reading trashy magazines (Grazia has been replaced with high-street-fashion bible Look - Steve is disgusted, although he sneakily reads it... sometimes they have a piece on Beyonce, Scarlett or Zooey). During March and April I'm working in-house at a big company for 2-3 days a week. I sit at a desk, sometimes with amazing views to Hampstead Heath or St Paul's (the office is on the 14th floor), and check proofs for picture books, or input corrections, or sign off covers. It's fun, I get to work with my friend Christine, and I'm never sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Plus, I get a taste of why I left full-time publishing in the first place. A lot of the women working there (it's children's publishing - therefore 99.9% women) seem dissatisfied with how their careers are going, the amount of work they have (too much), the shitty 'no paid overtime' policy all publishing houses somehow combine with a deeply ingrained and well-observed long-hours culture. I figure 3 days a week is the maximum I can stand to be in an office. Spoiled, moi?

2007-03-02T11:12:00.000Z

What a surreal night. To celebrate the Oscars Soho House has a party for its members. A friend of mine has membership and asked me along, as everyone else has day-jobs and can’t stay out drinking till 6am on a Monday morning. So we met in Bar Italia at midnight (I felt incredibly conspicuous on the train, in my evening coat and black patent heels, until I got to Soho that is, which was like 10pm on a Friday) for double espressos (£3.80?! Yeah, that perked me up pretty quick. I know it’s an institution and all, but bloody hell. I can’t even calculate the mark up on that). Bagging a good table in Soho House, we were brought bellinis. And then more bellinis. When the free champagne ran out we were bought a bottle by a man who seemed to know everyone, and asked the waiters to take care of us. He took turns flirting with me and Anna, and his conversation ran a very fine line between being obnoxious, offensive and laughably charming. He left at about 2am, after showing us a photo of his hot son, who is studying in Paris, and was replaced by another guy, one of the founders of Soho House. The conversation with him was even more surreal – at one point he asked me if I’d ever been to the New York branch of Soho House and if I went to Cannes and I wanted to have a quiet word and tell him that he had me confused with someone else. We’d both be pretty embarrassed when he realised I was a freelance editor, lived in an unhip part of south-east London and wasn’t a member of any exclusive clubs. At 4am giant trays of food were brought out – scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, hash browns, mushrooms, fried bread, tomatoes, smoked salmon – and there was a scrum for the buffet. Anna and I stayed till the bitter end (about 5.30), staggered out into the freezing darkness, and went to wait for the 176 bus which rather conveniently runs all night.

Update: it took me about 3 days to recover from this all-night shindig. I'm not as young as I used to be...

2007-02-20T14:10:00.000Z

I really have no excuse for posting so infrequently. Lord knows it's not like I'm snowed under with work at the moment - I've spent about four days this month earning money. But I figure as January was a hellishly busy (and therefore profitable) month, I can slack off a bit now. Mostly I've been:

* making soup: faves are spicy roast squash, honeyed parsnip and onion, and tomorrow I'm trying to make artichoke and carrot. We got a bag of artichokes in our veggie box delivery and panicked a bit, as neither of us has ever cooked them.
* spending money on cheap clothing. Primark is the devil, and here's why. The clothing is lovely. Flattering, cool, puff-sleeved little tunics and jackets and 60s dresses and Marc Jacobs-esque handbags. And it's also dirt cheap, so it seems stupid not to stock up whenever I find myself passing (via a 20-minute bus ride from my house). Today I got a black sleeveless tunic, a black cropped jacket with big buttons and a big round collar, an orange bag for T, a wallet for me, and a change purse for J, all for £31.
* Doing laundry. Feels like I do laundry every day.
* Getting a bit bored, to be honest. I'm not quite ready to go back to working in an office and the myriad horrors (admin, meetings, commuting, expensive store-bought lunches, getting up at 7am) that involves, but I do need more company, and more money.

Note to the lady on the end of the phone at the local berevement counselling service:
When I call you to discuss getting counselling, please realise it took me weeks to get the courage to pick up the phone. Don't therefore, say 'OK, your half-sister', when I tell you my half-sister died. When I tell you my dad died 6 years ago, don't, after a pause, say 'OK, anyone else?' Isn't two people enough? When you ask me whether I drink and I admit that I drink most nights of the week (a glass of wine with dinner), don't pause for ages and then go 'Riiight.' Don't express disaproval at the mention of antidepressants. And don't then be surprised when I get upset, make excuses and hang up the phone.

2007-02-02T18:14:00.000Z

It’s been a busy old month. We went to Barcelona at the beginning of January, where we walked around in T-shirts, drank cava at lunchtime (and teatime, and dinnertime), stuffed ourselves with delicious tapas, did an open-top bus tour of the city, wandered the mosaic-covered plazas of Parc Guell, and more. Our hotel, L’Antic Espai, was fantastic. Full of baroque 1950s furniture, run by a sweet gay couple who welcomed us with cold cava served in antique glasses on a little marble tray. Our room had a sunroom attached to it, a high, ornate ceiling with a giant chandelier, and it was 5 minutes’ walk from all the action.

If you do one thing
Drink a cocktail at Boadas. It’s a gorgeous little cocktail bar, really smoky, small, bartenders (who wear white shirts and bowties) don’t speak English, and it doesn’t serve wine or beer, just cocktails. In proper glasses. I wanted something in an old-style champagne glass, one of those wide, shallow ones, so the bartender made me a champagne cocktail. Steve had some kind of amazing rum daiquiri and we nearly had a run-in with another couple. We’d been standing at the bar waiting for a couple of seats to become free, and when they did I saw a couple heading for them (and, right, we were nearer, and we’d been waiting longer) so I hissed loudly (drunkenly) to Steve, “Get them! They’re going to grab our seats!” Steve said the woman looked daggers at me as I leapt across the room and flung myself onto a stool, but it had the desired effect: they retreated, and victory was ours. Apparently she kept glaring at me and after a while I just started laughing…

2007-01-17T14:49:00.000Z

I’m back at my old job. BUT it’s just for January, only three days a week, and I’m getting a day rate that’s about 40% more than my salary was. Freelancing is great, but the downside is not working for a week or more at a time (and of course, no work = no pay). So I have been making my own fun: sewing, baking, cooking yum dinners, and decluttering the house (a never-ending project). Bit of a disaster yesterday when I tried to log in to Hotmail and couldn’t. Password would not work. Security question would not work. No contact details for MSN or Hotmail anywhere on the site, except a crappy form you can fill in and email to them which they can then ignore. Whoever stole my Hotmail also hacked into my eBay account. EBay were very helpful in that they confirmed that someone had changed my password and tried to use my account, and very unhelpful in that they wouldn’t tell me who that person was, or what they tried to do. But I have a clue… my eBay addresses page had the name changed to Rose Lawrence. Address was the same, but dopey Rose didn’t think to hide her name… Any advice on dealing with evil hackers, and getting back 5+ years’ worth of email, much appreciated…

2006-11-22T10:13:00.000Z

We have the internet! Yes, Steve and I have finally joined the late-20th century (I may have made that joke already)! I feel much less isolated, and also by 10am I am usually working but today am playing on the web instead... oops. Thanks for comments people have tried to post: not sure what I've done to my settings but basically comments get sent to my hotmail for approval, but when I approve them they link back to blogger and I get a 'post not found' message. Suck! I think I did something to accidentally ban all comments except those from Rachel.

So, a typical day in slackerville goes something like this...
8.30 get up, shower, dress, make the bed, put on makeup, make porrige and coffee
9.30 sit down at kitchen table (desk not yet bought...) to work
1.30 break for lunch, half an hour or so
afternoon: more work, maybe a nap, or a long walk to Sainsbury's or Dulwich

It's fine, but I think I need to go into central London more, as my world is slowly shrinking to a few square miles, and I can see how people who rarely leave the house start wanting to never leave the house...

2006-11-03T16:42:00.000Z

Last day! And it’s probably the nicest day I’ve had here since joining the company. Whether that’s cos people are being kind or because I’m leaving and so am naturally happy, I don’t know. Less than two hours left and it feels like Christmas, my birthday, and the day before a holiday, all rolled into one.

Last night Steve and I celebrated our one-year cohabiting anniversary with a nice dinner at Konstam and an argument about laundry. Ahh, domestic bliss. Konstam sources all its food from within the M25, but the thought of eating a London pigeon in London was a bit too disgusting so instead I had a roast artichoke salad and pork belly, and a delicious glass of English white wine. A few hours later I sullied my palate with a couple of glasses of vile Italian Pinot Grigio, which tasted like fruity paint stripper, its only redeeming features being that it was icy-cold and would get me tipsy, which I needed to be in order to dance on a stage in front of 100 art-school hipsters. The Actionettes had a gig at Legal Tender, a club night at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in East London, and we were the first act on stage. It was a breeze compared to the earlier run-through, when all the bands and their trendy mates were sitting around, and we had to dance on the floor, sober, in work clothes, with bright overhead lights. Imagine dancing in front of a group of strangers, on command, and they’re all watching you. Yeah, exactly. My left leg kept shaking and I was scared everyone would notice. But the band tuning up behind us joined in on Have Love Will Travel, and there was a mildly enthusiastic round of applause when we were done.

2006-11-02T17:44:00.000Z

Less than two days to go

I will sort of miss one or two of my colleagues, but on the whole I am glad to see the back of a few of them, and the feeling’s probably mutual. The irony is that I like the people I’m working with now more than the ones I was working with for the first five months at this company, before I was moved over to another imprint. The first imprint was chaotic, bitchy, backstabbing, and ruled by (but not run by) a bullying, egomaniac workaholic. My boss, a quiet, slightly awkward, woman, was out of her depth and knew it. She went home one day after a meeting and never came back. It was several weeks before we were told what had happened, with a brief announcement for both the company and the trade press, stating that she’d “left the company to pursue other interests”. In the meantime, egomaniac workaholic (EW), who was boss’s harshest critic, and had even gone as far as googling her and telling the entire office she’d been signing up to dating websites, got his own imprint to run. Thankfully he would be doing this at another location. So the “team” was split in two, with EW’s cronies moving to other offices, and the rest of the staff staying here, getting a new boss. New boss used to be commissioning editor at another imprint (are you still with me?), so when she was promoted to publisher there was a position to be filled. This is where I was moved. With two days’ notice and no choice. But seeing as I’d been miserable at the first imprint, I figured I’d give it a go. And although the people were helpful and pretty friendly, it was glaringly obvious to me that I just didn’t want to do this. I just didn’t care. Despite my job title, I was suddenly doing the job of an editorial assistant, and my self-esteem was non-existent. I was getting everything wrong, it was two weeks before the biggest book fair of the year, no one had time to train me, and I think I just sort of gave up. I wanted a break from 9-6 work, a break from commuting, a break from bosses, office politics, egos, filing, meetings.

Anyway, I’m just writing this now because I have nothing – literally, nothing – to do at work at the moment. Which of course makes the hours drag…

2006-11-01T16:18:00.000Z

Am counting the days until I leave work… only two to go, and each one is passing slower than the last. The hardest thing is feigning interest in what I’m doing. Mentally, I’ve already left, so it’s tough to pretend I care about stuff I won’t be working on.

I’m so excited about working from home. At the moment this feels like the best move I’ve ever made (ask me again in a few months), and here are my plans for week one…

Steve will be off work too (yay!) and we’ll be tarting up the mansion, so a trip to B&Q or Homebase is high on the list of priorities. We’re painting the office pale lilac (apparently this colour stimulates creativity. Whatever, I just like it and think it looks good with hot pink), and the bedroom will be very pale pink. The kitchen and dining room will be baby blue. If we actually get around to painting more than one room I will be amazed, but it’s OK to be ambitious.

Riding an open-air bus. Yes, I realise it’s November. But Jean got me two tickets for a hop-on hop-off bus ride, valid for 24 hours (so I’m planning a day ride and an evening ride), for my 30th birthday, and in a year and a half I still haven’t used them. For shame! We will don our warmest coats and hats, fill the hipflask with whiskey, and pretend we are in a giant double-decker convertible (well I will anyway).

Doing lots of work. My first official freelance proofreading job has landed – and it’s 1,000 pages long. I made a dent in it a few weeks ago when I was at home ill, but at an average rate of 17 pages per hour it’s going to take about 58 hours to plough through this bad boy.

Taking advantage of lunch specials. Mclean’s, a nice little café near us, has crazy specials with buy-one-get-one-free meals for £5.95. We’ve been there for breakfast and it was great. Also, a new tapas bar has just opened round the corner. I walked past last night on my way home and it was heaving. They had opening specials (doubles with a mixer for £2.50, cheap tapas) and I am very excited.

Sleeping a lot. And just lying in bed. Maybe having coffee and breakfast in bed. Maybe reading.

Decorating the office. Although it’s a shared room, who are we kidding, the office is mine. We’re visiting Ikea for a spending spree, to get a desk, shelf, desk chair, and lamp. I want to make a shade for the ceiling light, and wrap clean tins in paper or patterned fabric to make pencil holders. I want to get lovely patterned paper and use it to cover files and folders. I want to buy a plain blind for the glass door, which leads onto a small balcony, and decorate it.

Sewing. The next Actionettes club is a Monster Mash on November 11th, and I need to look scary. Found a black brocade minidress in Primark for £10, but it’s a bit plain. Needs a black-and-gold sparkly bib front, or pockets, or a collar.

2006-10-31T14:43:00.000Z

So, big news on the work front: I’m giving it up. Well, not entirely (a girl’s got to eat), but as of November 4 I will be freelance. Yippee! I’ve been toying with the idea for a couple of years but was always talked out of it by colleagues. Reasons given included “If you leave publishing you’ll never be able to get back in” (what? So all those women with children didn’t take maternity leave?); “It’ll look bad on your CV” (my A-levels looks pretty bad on my CV, but I’ve still been offered jobs); “You’ll starve” (maybe, but I could lose a few pounds anyway) etc.

So I am taking the plunge. After weighing up the pros and cons (pros: so many. A few are: not having to get up at 6.45am; not commuting on steamy, stinky trains; not having to go to Kings Cross every day; not sitting at my desk biting my own hand to stay awake; not having to smile and be nice to Bully Boss; being master of my own destiny. Cons include: no regular income. And that’s about it, really.) and discussing with Steve, I’ve decided to do it.

And now that it’s just under a week away I can’t wait. Am making all sorts of money-saving plans, ranging from the bloody obvious (stop buying so much cheap clothing, spend less on booze), to the so-frugal-I’ll-never-stick-to-them (wearing four layers in winter to avoid turning on the heating, having beans on toast for lunch every day), and last night we even had a House Meeting, with all residents in attendance. I took minutes, we agreed to start a kitty for groceries and basic toiletries, and today I changed our phone contract for a cheaper service. We still need to buy a computer – I want an iBook, Steve wants a PC notebook, but whatever we get it needs to be purchased pretty damn soon, as feeling unconnected and isolated makes me depressed. Part of my daily routine will be checking email, reading blogs, etc, each morning, so that even though I won’t be interacting with people physically at least I won’t go mad with loneliness.

2006-10-05T18:10:00.000+01:00

Am wearing skinny jeans. After a year of flirting with this most unflattering of trends, it has finally come to pass. But they were only £12 from Primark, which is just as well as I think I’m getting deep vein thrombosis. Seriously. They’re tucked into my black boots, and my calves are throbbing and hurting like crazy, but short of turning the jeans into cut-offs there’s not much I can do until I get home tonight. Oh dear. It had to happen sooner or later – the first death from DVT caused by too-tight jeans. (For the next Actionettes club night we each have to pick a gristly cause of death (it’s the Monster Mash/ Halloween special), and I think I’ve found mine…)

It's now a few days later (a combination of Blogger being uncooperative, my boss hovering over me constantly, and the run-up to the wretched Frankfurt Book Fair prevented me from posting) and today I am dressed as the Hamburglar. Wearing black trousers, a long-sleeved stripy black and white tee, and a black sweater vest. All I need is a black eye mask and I can begin my burger-stealing spree!

Tomorrow I fly to Frankfurt for the day. I am excited to be going (it's a free trip, I get spending money, I'm out of the office for a day) but not too excited at the prospect of getting a cab at 5am (I'm staying over at my Mum's, as she lives slightly nearer to Heathrow than I do), and then landing back in the UK at 10.30pm, just in time to catch the Vomit Express from London Bridge after midnight. I've been looking on the web for vintage stores in Frankfurt, with no luck. I fear it's such a business town that all the shops sell souvenirs/wine and smoked cheeses/designer clothing. I still, eight years on, think fondly of the amazing, tiny, cluttered vintage store I found in Budapest: Victorian dresses and petticoats hung from the ceiling, ballgowns were crammed onto rails. The elderly woman who ran it wanted me to give her my copy of Time Out Budapest, where the shop was listed. I had to explain that this book was the only thing preventing me from wandering in circles for several days while slowly starving to death, as I don't speak Hungarian and didn't know anyone in the city.

2006-09-22T17:28:00.000+01:00

New job is fine, but I’ve decided to get the earlier train every day. This means getting up at 6.50, and dressing and putting on makeup in near darkness to avoid waking Steve, who called me an old goat last week for stomping around and turning the radio on. We did discuss sleeping in separate rooms but the thought was too horrible to take seriously.

Three signs that I need more sleep

Had panicked dreams that I’d slept through my alarm, had to climb over a shaky, spider-covered fence to get into the office, and that I fainted on the train.

Approaching the ticket barriers at Kings Cross, I took my house keys out of my bag, instead of my train ticket. (Told Steve and apparently he does this all the time. He also tries to get into his office building with our house keys, and into our house with his work swipe card, on a weekly basis.)

Drinking coffee at my desk, I missed my mouth and hurled coffee all over my chin. It’s one way to wake up, I suppose.

Update: new job is still OK, but sometimes, like when I send something to print five times and it STILL DOES NOT PRINT, I want to cry and beat my fists against the printer/person standing near the printer/myself. I know I sound like I’m 85, but isn’t technology supposed to make our lives easier? Spending an hour transferring files, repeatedly, to an FTP site does not make my life easier. Think from now on I’ll work with a pencil and paper.

2006-09-15T17:59:00.000+01:00

So here’s an account of my stupid, tiresome commute. It’s making me want to kill myself (2 1/2 hours a day… what I could be doing with that extra time… that’s 12 1/2 hours a week!)

Leave house, trot to station. Cram onto platform with Annoying Sniffing Guy, Leather Jacket Sci-Fi Geek, and various others who all board the same door as me. If lucky, get seat on train (August was a dream. Everyone was on holiday).

Change at Blackfriars, spend 8 minutes waiting for next train (but they’re London Transport minutes, which (fact) are 90 seconds long rather than the accepted 60. Me and Steve once counted and it’s true). Train creaks along to Kings Cross, stopping for no reason (or none that the driver cares to share with us) between stations, in tunnels etc.

Race off train at Kings Cross, scuttle across two major intersections, and hoof it up Caledonian Road to bus stop. As bus stop comes into view, so does bus, pulling away.

Wait few minutes for next bus, get off 5 minutes later (right opposite the prison) at the heart of skanky Caledonian Road.

Make the last final sprint to the office, arriving ten minutes late. Repeat 5 times a week. (I usually try to break things up a little on the journey home, by taking a different route etc.)

In other news, I am changing jobs on Monday. I found this out on Wednesday. It’s still pretty hush-hush, and it’s just a parallel move within the company. Think I’ll like it there (and I can’t tell you where ‘there’ is).

2006-09-08T14:11:00.000+01:00

I’m back. It’s been months, no one even checks this blog anymore, you all gave up on me back in about May. And I don’t blame you. So, what’s been happening? Me and S are still living in cohabiting bliss, in our messy but spacious flat. We’re finally, only 10 months after moving in, getting some work done on the place. I can’t wait. It’s shameful that the bathroom walls and ceiling were peeling when we moved in, and we’ve still done nothing about it. But we’re getting quotes from a builder, and hopefully work will start soon. The study’s still a mess – no desk, just boxes of miscellaneous junk – and we haven’t painted a single wall.

Part of the reason I haven’t written in months is because my screen is visible to about 10 people. And I can’t just blog after work – many of my colleagues stay till 6.30 or 7 every night, and work through lunch. Bah. So from now on I’ll try to snatch a moment every few days/weeks/months to write. If I’m still working here, that is.

2006-06-15T16:54:00.000+01:00

Work is all good, but I am finding that the naughty thrill I get from spending four hours browsing craft blogs wears off a bit when it’s part of my job description. The pressure to be creative is hard but also a fun challenge (ask me again tomorrow, after my meeting with the boss, when I show him my new book ideas and he slates every one) – words and phrases like ‘blue-sky thinking’, ‘brainstorming’ and ‘unique selling point’ are bandied about with a straight face.

Everyone has left the office to go to the pub - England are playing. The boss is going to be there. The boss's boss is going to be there. I should be there. But I am going to be at home, sitting in Steve's giant leather swivel chair, eating sausages, painting my nails, and reading a book. At about 10pm (unless there's anything really good on telly), I'll turn in for the night. Bliss. Networking be damned... I need my sleep.

2006-06-08T13:26:00.000+01:00

I’m back! I was gone for nearly a month for several reasons:

I have a new job and my computer screen is very visible and I didn’t want to post from work (yet another reason to get a computer for home)
I forgot my blogger log-in name and password

And that’s about it, really. The job, at an illustrated publisher, is going well but the hours (9-6! What the?!) are killing me, as is my colleagues’ bizarre work ethic – they all stay late, every day, even though our boss is in the US for a month. I think this is due to the very damaging and wrong-headed attitude of ‘Oh my god I’m sooo busy [important] and stressed [hard-working] and I just care sooo much about my job that I’m willing to sacrifice my private life’. Well, I ain’t playing. I have a life. I spend 11 hours a day at work/commuting, and I’m not about to spend an extra few hours a week – unpaid – to look good. Frankly, if you’re working late every day then you’re not doing your job effectively.

Also, I hate hate hate one of the people I work with. He’s constantly negative. He thinks no one else in the office works as hard or as well as he does. He belches a lot. And, the worst part it, everyone else really likes him.

Just got distracted by the Darwin’s Deli man. Bastards. They hooked me in with the spicy Mexican wrap and promptly stopped making it, even though I have asked where it is. I don’t want egg and spinach or ‘Mediterranean Tuna’, whatever the hell that is.

2006-05-12T17:12:00.000+01:00

Last day at work! On Tuesday I start my new and very exciting commissioning job, and part of me is panicking and thinking ‘Why did they give this to me?! I am inexperienced!’ but another part is thinking ‘They saw I had potential and good ideas and if they didn’t think I could do it they would’ve hired someone else’. I hope the second part wins out, as publishers can smell fear.

My leaving party was last night. Started off in the boardroom with wine and snacks, and presents. I got a Routemaster clock (with a 159 on it!), Routemaster coasters, a Cath Kidston shower cap and bangle, lots of gummi sweets, some 1950s naked lady flick-books and a £50 Homebase gift voucher, which I had requested. Hurrah! A new BBQ for summer! Garden furniture! 1970s retro wallpaper! I managed not to cry during my boss’s speech (as it was brief and upbeat) but I did tear up when I opened the gift from him and his wife (my ex-boss). They got me a silver business card holder with my name engraved on it.

So today, like all the best days, has been lazy and food-based. Met Tom at Chequers this morning for a sausage, egg and bacon sandwich*, met Nihara for lunch at Livebait, and am shortly going for a coffee/exit interview with HR.

Countdown to the last hour of work… Think I’ve actually gone a bit mad with nerves caused by leaving the company I’ve been bitching and moaning about for the last four years. It feels like stepping off the edge of a cliff – what if the new place is horrible and run by sadists (their benefits package suggests this is the case)? What if all my new colleagues are humourless goons?

*when you order this sandwich the guy at the counter yells ‘fried egg!’ and three minutes later another guy runs up from the basement carrying a fried egg on a small silver platter

2006-05-03T16:21:00.000+01:00

A trip to H&M at lunchtime to cheer myself up (more on that later) proved fruitless. Loads of cute(sy) little tops and blouses with puff sleeves, smocking and Peter Pan collars look great on the hanger but bad on anyone with boobs, and besides, where am I supposed to wear them? To the office, where I need to look competent and confident rather than like a giant baby? So I got nothing.

Just found out that in a bizarre twist my new job will actually pay less than my current job. Yes, really. Over the weekend I found a letter telling me that in December 05 my salary had gone up by £800 (I should really remember this, right?) so my new job will actually only pay £700 more a year than my current one. And here’s the best bit: the hours at my new job are longer (9-6! Eek!) so my new salary won’t be any bigger at all.

Lessons learned: commit salary details to memory, or at least to diary, and, when offered a new job… negotiate.

2006-04-21T11:46:00.000+01:00

Where to start? The prospect of posting again after 5 or 6 weeks silence is pretty daunting. We’ve been in the US for three weeks: a proper holiday that I didn’t realise I needed so badly until about two days before we left. We flew to New York first and spent a few days walking around, eating, drinking, took the Staten Island Ferry, went to the top of the Empire State building (sucks! Avoid at all costs!) and to the Top of the Rock (viewing deck of Rockefeller centre – amazing! No queues, empty... tourist NY’s best-kept secret), had coffee in Bryant Park and peeked into the New York Public Library, walked around Wall Street.
We stayed here, in Chelsea, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone. Cheap (for NY), central, nice rooms, free breakfast and coffee, and the lovely old brownstone was a joy to return to each evening.
My favourite day in New York was our last before leaving for New Haven. We went to Zabar’s, a giant deli on the Upper West Side and spent $50 on a picnic feast of cheeses, salami, smoked salmon, bread, fruit salad, cheesecake, olives, garlic & onion jam and fizzy drinks. Then we found a sunny spot in Central Park and stuffed our faces.
On to New Haven, where we stayed with Rachel and Jason for a few nights. Lots of birdwatching, good food, board games and Rachel’s unofficial Yale walking tour. I loved this building - made of marble ¼ of an inch thick to filter light and remove the need for any windows. R&J also took us for the best Indian buffet I’ve ever had: a largely vegetarian feast including street food, fresh naan, chicken tikka and dosas at your table, and many amazing things I have never tried before. I’m craving it right now. We also had our first lobster roll (delicious but dripping with butter – I was glad we split one) and visited Foxwoods Casino, where I won $12.50 on a slot machine.
Back to NY for one night with Steve’s friends, and a night of burgers at Fanelli’s, drinks at Five Corners and Beauty Bar (http://www.beautybar.com/) and playing pool till the wee hours at a corner bar in Greenwich Village where we were the only customers.
Chicago was great – to list all the fun things we did there would take hours. Highlights include bowling, Cubs game (where they lost 9-2), chocolate buffet at the Peninsula hotel, dinner at Twin Anchors and going on a crawl of Bucktown boutiques with Therese, where every shop had free champagne and snacks. One of my best Chicago memories is hiring bikes and riding for miles along the coast of Lake Michigan, past the beach and up to Belmont Harbour. Steve and I visited the gorgeous Frank Lloyd Wright studio and house in swanky Oak Park and great, huge breakfasts were consumed at Ann Sather, Tre Kronor and the Breakfast Club, among others. Phew. Photos soon, or check Rachel's blog (link on the margin) for photos of the Connecticut part of the trip.

2006-03-06T16:45:00.000Z

Stupid Book Fair

Every year I feel guilty about not wanting to go to the London Book Fair. So every year I make myself go, look around, pick up tons of catalogues, hang around the Chronicle Books stand trying to steal stuff, and go home. But not this year. This year I will not go, and see what happens. Will I miss out? Will the world come to an end?

Weekend was spent proofreading, dancing, and sewing. Finished a big proofreading job, which will go towards paying for a laptop. Shortened a pair of curtains for the living room (yeah, only took us 4 months to get around to that), altered a silver & white 60s dress (think it was a wedding dress) to knee length to wear to a work dinner this week, and had dance rehearsal on Saturday and dance reality on Sunday. We’d been asked to perform at a plus-size beauty pageant at the Café de Paris in Leicester Square. The whole thing was being filmed for Channel 4 too, so unless we’re edited out we’ll be prancing across a screen near you in June or July. The Café de Paris is a pretty amazing venue, all red velvet and chandeliers (but nowhere near as nice as the Rivoli Ballroom), and the basement where we got ready had upholstered walls, giant velvet beds with mysterious white stains, and those mirrors with bulbs all around them. Oh, and cockroaches. As the audience wasn’t there to see us, and didn’t know who the hell we were, the applause when we were introduced was muted – OK it was nonexistent. The people sitting by the catwalk looked bored, and while this should have put me off it made me laugh. Also, we were all sober, as there was no rider, only a very expensive bar. We did get applause at the end, though, and I was out of there by 6.15 and home by 7.30. Doing it all again on Wednesday night at Goldsmiths, where those enterprising students are putting on a night of entertainment for International Women’s Day.

2006-02-13T17:36:00.000Z

A parental summit took place yesterday, with Steve’s parents and my mum coming over for lunch. It was the first time they’d met, and we hoped they’d get on. Steve cooked lunch, I removed potentially offensive magnets from the fridge (‘Oh shit – I turned into my mother’ and ‘You suck big time’ – both gifts, I’ll have you know), and made sure the bedroom had nothing in it to suggest that anything other than sleeping took place in it, ever. However, I neglected to remove two packs of cigarettes from on top of the TV (both purchased about a year ago and mostly unsmoked), and my copy of Cunt from the bookshelf. The same bookshelf Steve’s parents perused with interest.

2006-02-06T15:17:00.000Z

Four dresses and one c1960 Louis Feraud coat on eBay: £35
Haircut at little Japanese place in Covent Garden where they don’t speak much English and you look through a book of haircuts and pick one and they interpret it to suit you: £30 (a bargain in London)
Manicure: free, cos I do it myself at home
MAC lipstick in Lady Bug: £11
Feeling attractive and cute: priceless (or £76. Either way, I think that’s a bargain)

Last night we made a recipe from Saturday’s Guardian. It had three ingredients: frozen fish fingers, a tin of Heinz tomato soup, and grated cheese. It was absolutely delicious, despite being a violent orange colour, and we counteracted the salt & additives by serving it with broccoli and granary bread. And Miss Marple on the telly.

2006-01-26T17:01:00.000Z

Steve has synesthesia, which is apparently quite unusual in a) men and b) right-handers. It’s inherited, too, so maybe our kids will be able to taste shapes and smell music. Steve sees people and days of the week (among other things?) as colours. Apparently I am a rich purply shade. Damn right.

2006-01-25T16:08:00.000Z

The first post of 2006 is about food. I’m thinking of taking up smoking, as apparently it’s a marvelous appetite suppressant, but sadly after about two drags on a cigarette I get really woozy and start stumbling into traffic (as nearly happened this afternoon outside the office), so I may need a plan b. Not wanting to ruin my day of healthy eating (fruit & fibre cereal, green tea, sushi) I just went to Tesco for carrot sticks and houmous. Yay me. The photo is what I had for lunch yesterday: McDonald’s.

We have a slight mouse problem. We found a dead one, curled up next to a Quality Street wrapper (they do love sweets, bless ‘em) when we moved in, and one ran into the bathroom when Steve was in there. A few days ago we left a loaf of seeded bread, in its wrapper, on the kitchen counter, and when I picked it up the next morning there was a giant, chewed hole in the wrapper, a chunk of bread missing, and lots of crumbs. Oh dear.

2005-12-21T17:24:00.000Z

Jingle all the way...

Last post of 2005, as we still don't have a computer at home, and I'm off for the next 2 weeks. Huzzah! In no order, this is what I'll be doing:

reading the 15 or so books I bought/was given over the past year and haven't even opened
baking ginger and white chocolate cookies for Emerald's party
sewing curtains for our living room
watching films
drinking in the afternoon (let's be honest, in the morning too. As Steve and I are spending Christmas with our respective families, we're going to have a separate Christmas day, complete with champagne breakfast and presents)
painting the walls, hanging pictures
going to Ikea (urrrggh)
going wedding dress shopping with my recently engaged big sister
taking long walks in the parks near my house

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-14T17:02:00.000Z

London’s a small city, despite the 8million people.

Over the summer I used to see a woman on my bus to work. She was very heavily pregnant, with glasses, long dark hair, always reading a book, and wore flip-flops. Today I saw her crossing the street with her partner, pushing a pram. Not sure why, but it made me happy.

Work Christmas party tonight, and although I want to go (free food, free booze, look at colleagues all dressed up and flirting), I also really want a night (OK, a week) at home reading and snoozing. Have decided to stay for a couple of hours (until the food runs out), then head home for an early night. Best of both worlds.

2005-12-09T16:27:00.000Z

When I started writing this blog, over two years ago, there were over 20 bus routes in London served by Routemasters. Now there are none. My fondest memories are of the 15 (when I lived in Whitechapel I'd take this to work), and of the last route to go, the 159, which took me from Kennington to work, and took me and Steve to each other's houses. Feel like an ass cos I missed the last 159 today: I thought the last one was at midnight - in fact it was at noon. Very sad.

2005-12-08T16:23:00.000Z

And even more...

2005-12-08T16:18:00.000Z

More bus pics, if Blogger will cooperate...

2005-12-08T15:58:00.000Z

It's really the end. As of tomorrow, the Routemaster will be no more. Sure, there are the crappy heritage routes, which don't go anywhere a Londoner would need to go, but the last real route, the 159, makes its last journey (from Marble Arch to Streatham, via Trafalgar Sq, Lambeth North, Kennington Oval and Brixton) just after midnight tomorrow. Judging by the crowds lining the route this afternoon, the final journey will see more people on the streets than Chas & Di's wedding. The 159 was my route when I lived in Kennington, and it may sounds stupid to have such fond memories of a bus, but I do. So today I rode from Oxford Street to my old stop in Kennington, then crossed the road and came back. Hundreds of people took photos of the buses. Not just bus enthusiasts, either: tourists, young people with cameraphones, kids, businessmen, police. I took photos, too: the quality's a bit crappy, as they were taken with a phone, but here they are.

2005-12-06T16:58:00.000Z

You know those pics I allegedly posted last week? They never showed up, did they? Let's hope this works...

Yessss! Steve on Hungerford Bridge on a very cold and foggy Sunday in November.

And me and T ice-skating!

If only I could make the pics go in order it would be perfect...

2005-11-24T16:23:00.000Z

What a shitty week to be a woman. The papers are full of articles reporting the Amnesty International survey which found that 1/3 of people think that if a woman flirts/dresses provocatively (whatever that means) or is drunk she is at least partially responsible should she be raped. Nice. Maybe it was naïve to think that this attitude died out several decades ago, what with the conviction rate for rape standing at under 6% and police estimates that only 15% of rapes are reported to them. But it’s the tone of the newspaper articles I hate: the headlines all say things like ‘drunk women more likely to be raped’. Why not ‘rapists target drunk women’? Why is the onus on women to behave, to not drink, not flirt, not wear short skirts, in other words, to do everything we can to protect ourselves from it? So unless I go out wearing jeans and a baggy sweater, don’t drink, and don’t make eye contact with a man (could be construed as flirting!), I am asking for trouble. Why is the problem of male violence women’s responsibility and not men’s?

Also making the front page is binge drinking. Despite the statistics showing that men are more likely to binge drink than women, and more men are alcoholics than women, articles about binge drinking are always, and I mean always, illustrated by a group of pretty twentysomethings in strappy tops clutching goblets of chardonnay. Give me a fucking break. This always reminds me of the brilliant and oft-repeated (usually by her) Julie Burchill quote that there are men out there who cannot bear the thought that somewhere, at some time, a woman is having fun and getting away with it.

OK, some happy things now. The lovely Therese and Dan are staying with us for a couple of weeks, and it’s a pleasure to have them here. Not only are they cooking up a Thanksgiving feast tonight, but they’re going to do some DIY too! Yes, they are earning their keep. Last night we went ice-skating at the Natural History Museum (see pics), followed by stuff-your-face Japanese in Catford. I am proud (ashamed?) to say that we got through 20 dishes between the four of us.

2005-11-18T14:37:00.000Z

I love Polly Toynbee.

2005-11-10T17:34:00.000Z

Just had soup for lunch. Like so many of the new Covent Garden Soup Co. offerings it was pretty bad. Will I never learn to stick to mushroom or broccoli and stilton? It was citrus chicken and sage, and just tasted like creamy orange drink with bits of chicken in it. I still ate two bowls, despite the chest pains caused by salty badness. I asked my colleague if he wanted some, and told him to get a mug. He came back with a glass, and I don’t know why but watching someone drink a glass of soup is right up there as a Horrible Thing to See.

Catford isn’t famous for much (I think they have a dogtrack and a market), but it is famous for having the best all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant in London. And it’s no ordinary buffet: the food doesn’t stand there all day, and it’s not MSG-tastic. You go in, sit, and are given a menu of 8 starters, 8 sushi, 8 mains, and 8 specials, and you pick, for the table, 8 items. They’re made to order, so the prawn tempura roll is crispy and the batter is still warm. The gyoza are porky and spicy and fat. You eat it all, then you order another 8 items. Then another, until you a) die b) are asked to leave (rather wisely, the menu states in bold that dining time is 2 hours). All this for £10.90 per person. Last night me and Steve shared 8 dishes and were fit to burst, and the thought that we could have had 8 more was both frightening and exhilarating. We will be back.

Food eaten today
2 slices sunflower bread with cheddar
I Krispy Kreme glazed donut
1 small treacle flapjack
2 bowls chicken soup (see above), 1 slice of bread
Slice of frosted carrot cake

2005-10-27T10:21:00.000+01:00

On Monday I got a call at work from the Evening Standard. They asked me if I had any thoughts about ad exec Neil French’s comments about women being crap employees etc. etc. Basically they were asking me to write an angry letter, and the fact they had to ask indicates that women weren’t filling the ES mailbag with furious screeds, but were instead just rolling their eyes and getting on with their lives. I obliged, and they published my letter, and thankfully I wasn’t fired when I got to work the next day. I criticised the publishing industry for the lack of women at the top, despite editorial assistants being 95% female. By the time editors reach the stage where they’re commissioning, somehow 60% are men. By the time employees reach the board of directors, about 90% are male. Where do all the women go? And where do all the men come from? (My ex-boss, a female editorial director, emailed me to say ‘they mostly come from bookshops’. So I never should’ve left Borders after all…)

Last night I went to the House of Lords. I’ve always wanted to see the place, and it is beautiful inside. Really breathtaking. I was there for a talk organised by Abortion Rights UK, with speakers including several Labour MPs, Diane Holland, a trades unions representative; Jo Salmon, Women’s Officer for the NUS; Guardian columnist Zoe Williams and several others, including a woman from NOW. The venue was packed and we moved to a bigger room, which quickly became full and about half those attending had to stand for the full two hours. The meeting had been called to discuss the attempts being made by right-wing politicians to reduce the time limit on abortion, ostensibly to do away with ‘late term’ abortions (which receive a disproportionately high number of column inches despite accounting for 1-2% of all abortions performed). The speakers were inspiring, impassioned and articulate. Zoe Williams spoke about how the media represent abortion: as a tragedy, never as a reasonable option. No one on TV has abortions, unless it’s in a period drama and they go to a backstreet abortionist. No celebrity comes out and admits to having had one, although as 1 in 3 British women have terminated a pregnancy, we all know people who have. She mentioned in passing her own abortion, and a middle-aged Camilla Parker-Bowles doppelganger with pearl earrings spoke up cheerfully: ‘I’m the co-chair of Abortion Rights UK, and I had three abortions before the law came into force.’ There were women (and a few men) in their 60s and 70s, who had fought for the law to be changed in 1967, and defended it in the 1980s when it was under attack, and who expressed sadness to be here again, fighting again, when we shouldn’t have to.

Worldwide, over 80,000 women a year die as a direct result of backstreet abortions.

2005-10-25T13:58:00.000+01:00

YUM: Curried parsnip soup.

I caved in, and I bought a pair of skinny jeans. I have bad association with any trouser that tapers at the ankle, as my first pair of jeans (circa 1987) were from Bhs with hems so narrow my mum had to buy a size larger so I could get my foot through. I looked like a turkey in them, and ever since then I, like so many women, have embraced the boot cut. But, feeling all 30 of my years, and dressed like a businesswoman/undertaker (black boot-cut trousers, long black coat, sensible flat shoes), I decided to try the trend all these hip young things (Kara, Kyle, most London gals) are wearing. So I went to Gap. Not the first place you go to for cutting edge design but, dang, they really do have nice stuff. Plus, they boast that their skinny jeans make you drop a dress size as soon as you put them on. So I took a few pairs into the fitting room, along with a pair of city shorts, which made me look like this dude. But the jeans… they were a revelation. Suddenly I saw what all the fuss was about. I looked younger, thinner, I suddenly had a new wardrobe staple to wear with boots (forgive me Father, but I will tuck them in), flats, dressy tops, casual tops. I cackled to myself and I bought them.

2005-10-24T11:14:00.000+01:00

I am getting heartily sick of the media circus around men saying dumb things. An ad exec claims that the reason women don’t get to the top in advertising is because they’re crap and don’t deserve to. He then went on to say ‘they all go off and suckle something’. What a prince, eh? Rightly, he lost his job, all the while insisting that he’s not sexist, he’s just telling it like it is. I’m sure the latter is the case: while many men in senior management think women are crap, few of them are stupid enough to say it. What is stupid is that TV and radio latched onto this, with Vanessa Feltz doing a call-in on the subject. That’s right: so, are women really crap? Call in and have your say! Today there’s another furore, this time over Gordon Ramsay’s comment that women can’t cook. Bigmouth Gordon will be sleeping on the couch tonight: his wife, Tana, is Grazia magazine’s cookery writer. Oops. But, once again, women have to drop everything and rush to refute this boring, clichéd, brainless accusation. Why do we bother? Seriously, why? Some of us can cook, some of us can’t. So what? Are the ones who do practice the domestic arts so insecure that they have to speak up when some idiot makes a throwaway comment? What does it matter whether we choose to make dinner from scratch using 23 ingredients, or throw a Chicago Town pizza in the microwave? The argument is so old (for years men have been gloatingly pointing out that all the top chefs are male, while their partner is doing all the grocery shopping and cooking a meal after a day at work), and so stupid, that the more I write about it the more riled I’m getting. OK, enough.

2005-10-21T17:41:00.000+01:00

Just spent a couple of house riding the 13 bus, as this is the last day the route will be served by Routemaster buses. There were bus enthusiasts galore lining the route (that’s quite a lot of people – it runs from Aldwych to Golders Green), standing on traffic islands and at junctions, taking photos of the bus, and the bus itself was packed with middle-aged men enjoying the ride. The atmosphere on the bus was cheerful but slightly melancholy, and the men (I saw one woman) taking photos looked sad as the bus passed.

I fucking hate eBay. They are being bastards, and have removed two of my listings, claiming I was using keywords to get interest. I listed a trench coat as 'not Burberry' - so obviously I am not trying to pass it off as a genuine item, although yes, I am hoping that people using Burberry as a keyword will see my coat. What really pisses me off is that their policy is totally inconsistent. Look on eBay.co.uk and search using Marc. The vintage section has over a dozen items with Marc in the title, even though they're not Marc Jacobs. Same with Miu Miu. So why the hell aren't eBay upbraiding those sellers? Am hopping mad. Must go drink.

2005-10-19T16:38:00.000+01:00

Links galore!

Not sure if T’s getting my email (either her IT dept or mine seem to have twigged that the content of the dozens of emails flying back and forth each day is not remotely work-related, unless you count bitching about evil bosses). So here’s a list I made for her (and any other non-UK pals who are coming to stay!), listing lots of fun, cheap ways to spend a day.

Train to London Bridge, lunch at Borough Market. Get RV1 bus, which goes past the Tate Modern, London Eye and across Waterloo Bridge to Covent Garden.

A walk in one of the parks: Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, St James’s Park are all nice, as is Regents Park.

Marylebone High Street! Lovely, pretty shopping street near Selfridges, with nice cafes, a great book shop, lots of swanky clothes/homewares shops. Good place for Xmas gifts.

Dennis Severs House, and the Sir John Soane’s Museum. Follow a visit to the latter with a warming shot of vodka at Na Zdrowie, which is around the corner.

V&A Museum, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Tate Britain. Good way to spend a few hours on a rainy afternoon.

Geffrye Museum in Bethnal Green, followed by Vietnamese food in one of the many amazing, cheap restaurants on Kingsland Road.

Shopping in East Dulwich, a walk in Dulwich Village (tres posh), and a drink in the really good bar on the main road in East Dulwich, which does great sausage sandwiches and has tons of different beers.

Indian food in Whitechapel, near Ilona & Ewa’s old flat. BYOB, and super cheap.

Girly thing: treatment at the Aveda spa, drinks at Claridge’s, afternoon tea at Liberty.

Fish and chips. Olley’s in Norwood is one of the best in London, or Rock & Sole Plaice in Cov Garden, or Sea Cow in East Dulwich.

Walk the Thames Path! Not the whole thing, but a few miles. Visit Hays Galleria near Tower Bridge.

Greenwich market and the Royal Observatory, lunch in a nice pub.

Cake and coffee at Paul, and a browse in the Office Shoes sale shop down the street.

2005-10-06T15:51:00.000+01:00

Photos from the first Crafternoon baking session... We spent about 6 hours shopping, cooking, and drinking Bellinis. And eating all the cakes we made. Next one is at the end of October, at Amy's house, with pumpkin pie and other autumnal baked treats...

Also, jacket potato for lunch = comatose by 3pm.

2005-10-03T14:20:00.000+01:00

Managed to see almost my entire UK-based family over the past weekend. Went to big sister’s housewarming/engagement party on Saturday, and little sister was there too. On Sunday half-sister’s kids had a birthday party, and I saw aunt, cousin with his wife and two children, other cousin’s wife with their three kids, and after all that I went to see my mum. Phew. At the birthday party we were discussing my sister’s engagement, and my aunt picked up my left hand, looked sadly at my ring finger, and sighed. I feel that my inability to extract a proposal from Steve is a sign of my failure as a woman. Ah well.

Ten years to the day since the OJ verdict. I heard the verdict in the parking lot of the 7-11 across the street from my flat on Halsted Street in Chicago. As it was early afternoon, I was either on a day off or working a late shift, and was nipping to the 7-11 for lunch (probably a Snickers and giant coffee… my diet sucked when I was 20), when a newspaper truck pulled in and the driver started unloading papers. I couldn’t believe the verdict back then – and the way it divided America. There’s a really good article by Gary Younge here.

2005-09-28T14:35:00.000+01:00

Went out to get a winter coat, came back with a polo-neck, long-sleeved, empire line, peacock feather-printed mini dress. It is practical! I can wear it to work, out for swanky do’s, to visit family… plus is looks very 60s so it’ll never go out of style (for me anyway).

Question: if the only cords I own are straight leg/boot cut, and in order to look cool I try to cuff the hems in that 80s fold-and-roll style, will I look like a turkey wearing knickerbockers?
Answer: sadly yes.

2005-09-23T14:31:00.000+01:00

More crazy dreams last night. After reading a review of Stephen Malkmus’s solo gig, I dreamed he came to the Actionettes dorm room (sorority house?) where he left his bag before going to the recording studio on the corner (in real life a Tesco Metro). We all pawed through his bag (full of sticks of gum and girly Hello Kitty items, and scraps of paper), and when he returned I seduced him. But when he was getting nekkid I was a bit turned off by his extreme pallor and 26” chest. Plus there was a small dead mouse in the room, which kind of put a damper on things.

Still no news on our new home. It’s taken nearly a whole year to sell my place and buy another one. I never want to move again. Maybe once more, and then I’m staying put.

2005-09-13T16:28:00.000+01:00

This needs no words. Except: marrow bodies, garlic (?) ears, and asparagus legs. This lil beaut won a prize at the Lambeth County Fair, and I for one am not surprised.

2005-09-13T13:26:00.000+01:00

Picture post today, as I've finally figured out how to email photos from my phone to my computer! But sadly have not figured out how to make it look good on a page...

(Bottom) 30th birthday champagne tea at Liberty...

(Top) and the nervous man picking up the tab... wisely he stuck to a pot of tea.

2005-09-07T14:35:00.000+01:00

Last night I dreamed that the police were after me, but I didn’t know why. I was in hiding and told Steve I was going to go turn myself in, but then the search had died down and I figured maybe they’d forgotten. Also, as none of my friends or family members had shopped me, I figured the price on my head wasn’t that high.

A few days ago I work up and Steve was reaching over me to turn off the alarm clock. His hair was tufty and he looked like an owl. We’d been looking at a bird book the previous night, and then the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a looming boyfriend/barn owl.

2005-09-02T14:26:00.000+01:00

Been reminiscing about my dire first full-time job in publishing, at Plexus (I can’t be bothered to hide their name. Look, here’s their website, too! http://www.plexusbooks.com/ They were doing Tupac books back when I worked there!). One of my clearest memories of that time – other than sobbing in the toilet and wondering how badly my future career would be damaged if I quit my first job after two months – was of my boss dictating emails to me, which I would write on a note pad, and type later. We only had email on one computer, you see (well it was 2001), and I only had access to it for about an hour a day. I remember asking her ‘Do you want me to pp it?’ Meaning, do you want me to sign your name and write pp next to it, indicating that although you didn’t sign it, you gave me permission to? She, harassed and impatient as always, barked back ‘No, I don’t want you to pp it. There will be no pee-peeing.’

I just thought of it now, cos I was on my way to the loo when my boss intercepted me for a holiday form. My pee-peeing was delayed by a few minutes.

2005-08-31T11:34:00.000+01:00

I’m losing a lot of hair, well, enough to notice it. Yesterday I counted how many hairs I lost, and it was over 200. Any advice (causes, cures) will be much appreciated.

Co-worker is picking his nose. And as I sit opposite him, it’s kind of hard not to notice.

2005-08-25T15:32:00.000+01:00

Summer holiday

It’s a cliché to say that there’s something magical and timeless about the New Forest, but that’s only because it’s so true. We left London on Thursday morning, frazzled by six weeks of non-stop police sirens and terror alerts, and as the train pulled out of Waterloo and sped through the countryside and we cracked open the picnic, it began to really feel like a holiday.

We alighted at Brockenhurst and walked to the guest house, a large detached building at the end of a gravel drive. It had only two guest rooms: ours was lovely, with mahogany antique furnishings and a giant bed, and curtains printed with kissing parrots. The bathroom was big and our hosts had provided large bottles of shampoo and body lotion, cotton buds, lots of towels and a big bar of soap. So different from all the miniatures you usually get in a B&B. We unpacked all our clothing (to make it feel like we lived there), and went to pick up our bikes. Rather than gangs of hoodie-wearing youths, Brockenhurst has groups of wild ponies hanging around on street corners or loitering by the post box. And like hooded youths, you need to give them a wide berth as they’re unpredictable and can be violent.

We decided to do a 14.5 mile ride, which was a bit optimistic seeing as neither of us had cycled since we were kids. The route was mostly off-road (at our request), and took in dark, dense forests, a pond surrounded by ponies and donkeys having a paddle, and a pub. Standing on a rough path, under a canopy of giant conifers, we could have been in the 11th century, when the forest was founded by William the Conqueror. We stopped and let the silence wash over us, the forest quiet save for the twitter and rustle of its thousands of inhabitants. The ride was free of mishaps, but I did get a bit anxious riding along a winding country lane with trucks overtaking us. As we’d burned off a lot of calories with all that exercise, we went for dinner at the Rose & Crown, a pub with a huge, lush garden, where we ate burgers that appeared to have been deep fried, bun and all, and were all the more delicious for it. Then we went back to the hotel and I fell into a deep, fatty sleep.

Friday we’d reserved a couple of horses, and sloped off to the stables after a fry-up consisting of egg, bacon, sausages, hash brown, tomatoes, beans, mushrooms, and toast, preceded by a big bowl of fruit (for health). We had to borrow coats from the stables, and the barn they were kept in was full of spiders, and a giant rat. We dusted down a couple of cobwebby jackets and mounted our steeds: Freckles (Steve’s fearsome beast) and Pie (my aptly-named mount). Pie was a lazy old thing, requiring a jab with my heels just to stay moving. We walked across heath and went into the forest, and when we trotted S realized why he was the only male on the ten-person ride. Saddle-sore, we waddled off to the Buttery, an olde worlde café, for some lunch: broccoli and stilton soup, and home-made cakes to take back to our room. I don’t know what the Buttery put in those cakes, but I think it was Mogadon. We ate them and the next thing I remember was fuzzily waking up on a drool-covered pillow several hours later, S snoring next to me. He went for a walk to clear his head (and cos he likes to have ‘alone time’ on every holiday we take – I do too, but it usually involves shoe shopping), while I watched a programme about the very lovely Dr Mo Mowlam. I’d arranged to meet Steve at the Rainbow Fish Bar for a spot of dinner, and, for the third time that day, as soon as I set foot outdoors, it started to rain. Luckily he had an umbrella, and I’m sure we provided amusement for tourists and locals alike as we shared a fish supper on a bench, huddled under a National Trust golf umbrella.

On Saturday we took a heritage train (basically an old slam-door train painted dark green) to Lymington, a freakishly quaint town on the Solent, just across the bay from the Isle of Wight. It was market day, so we inched along behind senior citizens before heading off to the harbour and taking the one hour ‘cruise’. I’m still bitter about this (and I think Steve will take his anger to the grave). The ‘cruise’ entailed going to the Isle of Wight, dropping off some passengers, and coming back. We were going to ask for a refund, but on reading the board again it did say that the trip ‘provides good views of the Needles and Hurst Castle in the distance’. It’s only the last three words that count: the Needles and the castle were specks on the horizon. And I would argue that the views were not ‘good’. Disgruntled, we cheered ourselves with sandwiches made with fresh crab, and a Cornish pasty we nearly came to blows over (it wasn’t even nice – Steve just gets really, really mad when I take giant bites).

In the afternoon we saw Steve’s family, and went for a walk in the forest before getting a lift to Lyndhurst to look at St Michael and All Angels, after which we had one of the worst, slowest meals I’ve ever eaten. Did you know bruschetta and a pizza takes an hour and a half to make?

On our last day we hired bikes again, this time following the ‘Tall Trees and Deer’ route, and taking a picnic. We did indeed see deer, and used Steve’s new binoculars to watch some buzzards and spy on other cyclists. Again, no major accidents, except for when, after a pint of bitter shandy, I veered into a ditch and got horseshit on my jeans. We stopped in a field and lunched on quiche, crisps, a sausage roll, raspberries, cereal bars and ginger beer. It was a lovely holiday; I only wish we’d been there for a week.

2005-08-23T17:10:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I really like my job

This afternoon we had a shandy taste-test to decide which beverage the Victorians would have drunk, as shandy will be served at Thursday's launch of a book about Brunel. Lager + ginger beer or ale + ginger beer? The ale one was much nicer.

Also, one of my colleagues has become something of a tea connoisseur, and I now get to sample all his teas.

2005-08-17T11:15:00.000+01:00

I realise there’s nothing more boring than strangers’ dreams, but this one was so bizarre I had to share. I dreamed I had a baby. The newborn had the face (and shoulder-length hair) of my niece, Sabrina. But it was the size of a hamster and about as active, running over my hands and sitting up unaided. Also, in the dream I felt fine about an hour after giving birth (think I also rang Steve after the baby’d popped out, and he was going to try and drop by later to see us), and went to Starbucks with the baby. While glugging my latte it struck me that I hadn’t read any parenting books, and had absolutely no idea how to look after my little bundle of joy.

Also, in the dream Therese and Anna Wintour were in a swimming race in a lake. And no, I didn’t get to find out who won.

The giant Chinese restaurant near Lambeth North station is pulling out all the stops in a bid to get people to eat there. A sign boasting ‘All you can eat, £12.99’ has the subtitle ‘126 DISHES!’ and ‘children under 5 feet, £4.99’.

2005-08-10T15:21:00.000+01:00

Somebody stop me
Or, How I spent £55 in my lunch hour

1 rushed, badly-done bikini wax, which took 5 minutes, ruined a nice pair of pants, and cost £12.50. Don’t lawyers charge less?

1 pale green racer-back cotton vest, £9

1 hot pink polka dot racer back bra/tank top thing, £10

1 white top with ribbon trim, for a present, £10

Raspberries, blueberries and a yogurt in Tesco, £4

That adds up to £45, true, but I also got a tenner cashback in Tesco, which counts.

2005-08-04T10:24:00.000+01:00

One of the funniest things I saw last night was on the 10 o’ clock news. There was a piece about Iran wanting nuclear power and the reporter was speculating as to why they’d want it, when they already have so much oil and gas. As he was talking, footage of a lorry bearing the words WE WILL TRAMPLE AMERICA BENEATH OUR FEET rumbling down a dusty road was shown. Me and Steve laughed a lot, in a slightly terrified way.

Speaking of terror (a word I can never think of without hearing George W Bush’s pronunciation of it: ‘teer’), I am jumpy these days. Armed police on the streets ain’t helping things. On the bus this morning, as we drove up Whitehall, I looked out of the window to see two police, cradling machine guns, squinting up at the top deck of the bus. At every station there are at least two police in high-visibility jackets, usually carrying guns, scrutinising everyone entering and exiting. I know that the heightened police presence is supposed to reassure Londoners, but it just makes me more scared. I’m not sure why. Maybe because if I didn’t see police every time I stepped outside, the ‘terrorist threat’ wouldn’t be at the forefront of my mind. But I do, and so it is. And also the fact that the Met is taking it so seriously (rightly so), and has clearly stopped bothering trying to hide the gravity of the situation from us, makes me think oh shit this is real. And I should be scared. And OK, the terrorists haven’t ‘won’, in the sense that most people* are still taking the bus and the Tube, but also, on one level, if you count ‘keeping people in a constant state of low-level fear’ as ‘winning’, they have.

* I have spoken to several people, friends and family, who now refuse to travel on public transport, instead walking, taking cabs, or just staying at home.

2005-07-29T15:12:00.000+01:00

Tesco has long annoyed me with its ability to offer crap customer service whilst simultaneously making profits of about £5,000,000 per hour*. Today I went to the Tesco below my work (literally. We’re on the first floor, they’re on the ground floor) to get fruit. I had a coupon for 50 Clubcard points (which, for the benefit of foreign readers, you’d have to spend £50 to earn), redeemable against a punnet of blueberries. So I got my berries (and some pineapple, mmm) and stood in the always-long line. Got to the till and the dude scanned my coupon. Nothing. He tried again, looked at me and said ‘Um, you have to spend £5 to get this.’
Me: No. You don’t have to spend £5. You just have to buy some blueberries. Him: £2.73, please. [Scans coupon, again, nothing. Gives me my change.]
Me: That didn’t work, did it. And you knew, didn’t you.

OK, so it’s not that big a deal. But two things I hate are bad service, and people lying to me.

Do you ever look in your wardrobe and realise that all your clothing looks the same? And that the reason for this is that your clothing is pretty much all the same, or at least many items are a variation on your favourite items? The five styles I buy (and buy, and buy…) season after season, year after year, are:

Knee length, A-line skirts. There’s just something so right about them.

The perfect black T-shirt. I have some which are tight, some which are fitted but loose; plain ones, printed ones. Basically my style idol is Joan Didion in the author pic found on all her books: long bobbed hair, rock ‘n’ roll black tee, sunglasses, cigarette, gazing into the distance.

A good cardigan. I love a nice cardi, whether it’s crochet, v-neck, round neck, polyester or cashmere.

Jeans and denim skirts. Quest for the ideal denim skirt is now reaching mythical proportions, and is into its third year.

Sparkly knitted tank tops/cardigans/jumpers. Something about the combination of any fabric + lurex brings out the Bet Lynch in me.

*Tesco redeemed itself somewhat when yesterday my purchases were rung up by a nice young man whose name badge identified him as ‘Monki’.

2005-07-25T16:31:00.000+01:00

There is a guy I work with who drives me fucking nuts. He cannot walk down the corridor to the kitchen without accompanying his journey with an assortment of whistling, doo-da-doo-da-ing, finger clicking and general relentlessly cheery noise. I hate him.

Another bizarre noise heard recently was my niece laughing. She’s nearly four and has, after too much telly, cultivated a crazy guffaw. She unleashed it on the bus, and it goes something like HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK, very loudly, with each HYUCK enunciated clearly and deliberately. I am all for encouraging children to express themselves and be individuals, but, my dear, there are limits.

The scene of the crime, above

I lost about half a stone on the Bilbao Salmonella Diet, and have put it all back on, now that I have rediscovered the joys of stuffing my face. On Saturday night I made a picnic for me and Steve, but as it was grey and muggy outside and there was a threat of flying ants, we ate indoors. Read the menu and drool.

Thin slices of salty Parma ham wrapped around chunks of melon

A Polish tomato salad, made from ripe vine tomatoes, finely chopped onion, olive oil and black pepper, mixed together in a bowl

Mags’ potato salad, which I adapted to suit my lazy cooking style. New potatoes, finely chopped gherkins, mayonnaise and a little bit of Dijon mustard. If you want to be healthy and/or fancy, use 2/3 mayo and 1/3 natural yoghurt, and add a chopped Golden Delicious apple.

Creamy, pungent Roquefort and crumbly Double Gloucester with caramelised onion, French bread and Hovis crackers

Mini pork and pickle pies. It’s not a picnic without them, as I keep telling my cardiologist

Bottle of crisp, cold white wine

Pudding was vaguely healthy, but actually not at all. I made a variation of Eton Mess, substituting blueberries for strawberries. And as I don’t own a whisk, I used double cream, which you could literally stand a spoon in.

Sunday morning we had tea and shortbread while discussing our mortgage. I realise that sentence manages to make us seem simultaneously bourgeois, twee and adult, but in fact the conversation went something like this.
‘Which one shall we get?’
‘Dunno. What’s the difference between them again?’
‘Dunno.’

Tomorrow is softball night, but I will not be attending this week. I did go to last Tuesday’s game, to sit and watch, and it was freezing, and I had just bought a coat, so I put it on and people made fun of me. The coat was billowy and smock-like (I returned it the next day), and on windswept Primrose Hill I looked like a shivering Pablo Picasso clutching a beer in one hand and trying to keep my bag from blowing away with the other.

2005-07-20T15:07:00.000+01:00

Finally, some good news.

I might be living in a new home by September. Or October, as these things often overrun. We’re buying a flat in south-east London (leafy, hilly, nice cafes, restaurants and bars, affordable), a five-minute walk from the station, and a ten-minute train ride to London Bridge. While this makes me very happy, it’s also making me freak out a little bit. Not cos I’m scared of buying a place with my boyfriend when we’ve never lived together (although I am, but only a tiny bit), or because we’ll be in debt for 25 years, but because I get really, really, really attached to where I live. And my current home has, for two years, been a happy batchelorette pad, all mine. So I guess really I’m scared of two things: change, and sharing. Which I actually knew already…

But for our sisters Stateside, some bad.

This sucks. Can I write and object to this appointment, even though I don’t live in the US?

2005-07-15T12:34:00.000+01:00

Wow! Finally! I can add pics to my blog and I don't have to download some claiming-to-be-simple-actually-difficult program to do it!

This was taken about two years ago, on Southwold pier. We had a lovely weekend there, and only one major but hilarious bust-up, in the middle of a boating lake, over whose fault it was we were going in circles and running aground. Happy two-and-a-half years anniversary, Steve.

2005-07-15T12:30:00.000+01:00

Bean sprouts, avocado, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, capers, salami, cous cous, beans, sugar snap peas, mint, cucumber, walnuts, red onion. Admittedly, those are the ingredients for three salads and not one, but what salads they are… And the quiche! The quiche… Warm, buttery pastry, leek and stilton filling, made that morning. Sadly the two chefs and owners of Kastner & Ovens are women, or I’d be hanging around there in a low-cut top trying to get a date with one of them…

Yesterday I went to the vigil in Trafalgar Sq with a few friends. We expected it to be silent – or low key, at least. Instead it was more of a rally/2012 Olympics showcase. A poet whose name I didn’t catch read some bad poetry, and someone else read some bad poetry too. Mayor Ken’s speech deserved and got applause, and his voice was breaking as he spoke. He is genuine in his love for the city. Trevor MacDonald read a poem by Maya Angelou, which was lovely. But we all felt the vigil might have been better with less talking, more reflection, less mentions of the Olympics.

2005-07-11T14:33:00.000+01:00

Birthday weekend was great, but today I have major birthday come-down. Plus I forgot to brush my teeth this morning, which doesn’t help. Saturday Jean was here so we went to the V V Rouleaux playground fair, which was cute but really expensive. Then we went to the V V Rouleaux shop, where you really can spend £8 on five pieces of ribbon. We met Emerald for lunch and then went home to get ready. My birthday party was great fun, with a good mix of people and three cakes (well, four, if you count a box of Krispy Kremes). Steve bought me two cakes (and a third was hidden in the fridge at home), my sister baked a cake, and Mags provided the donuts. So really that’s five cakes. I’m on salads for the rest of the month.

Biggest surprise (and biggest, heaviest gift) was a sewing machine, a joint gift from Steve and Therese. Everyone I know is getting cushions and/or lavender bags for Christmas/birthdays from now on.

Sunday was a day of birthday surprises and a day of feasting. Brunch in bed listening to the new Sufjan Stevens album, afternoon tea at Liberty (with smoked salmon sandwiches, scone with cream and three types of jam, champagne, a pot of Earl Grey and lemon chiffon cake), and dinner at Inn the Park. When Steve booked the restaurant, which as the name suggests is in the middle of a park (St. James’s, to be exact), he didn’t realise that VJ Day celebrations would be taking place. So we sat on the terrace forking artichokes into our mouths as various regiments marched past. I wanted to wolf whistle the sailors but Steve wouldn’t let me, and when I made a comment about how, let’s be honest, most people join the military cos they want to kill people but don’t want to get in trouble for it, he asked me to keep my voice down. Hah.

2005-07-06T15:53:00.000+01:00

Yay, we got the Olympics. Hurrah. Cos I really don’t pay enough tax already, and would very much like to pay more. Also, London has too few tourists.

Is it too late to get a cheap, beachside villa in Croatia?

2005-06-28T13:02:00.000+01:00

I wanted to write something about Andy, whose funeral is this afternoon, but everything I have to say sounds weird and silly. Rachel said it well at Pamzine (see the link in the sidebar). I will say that his death – and the accident that caused it – was a horrible shock. He was a popular person, and I saw him at lots of events we both attended: gigs, clubs, book group, fundraisers. He was a passionate, curious, questioning, funny, principled man. The Pamzine ladies summed up exactly how I felt: that the world needs a lot more people like him. He will be very much missed.

2005-06-15T13:08:00.000+01:00

Tormentas!

That’s the weather forecast for Bilbao on Monday. Luckily the tormentas! (illustrated by a large grey cloud, fat raindrops and daggers of yellow lightning) should pass by Tuesday, when all should be scorchio! again.

On Friday night I went to see Salt of the Earth, a 1950s film made by blacklisted actors, writers and crew, at UCL. It’s about a miners’ strike in New Mexico, which the women take over and hold the picket line despite being repeatedly gassed and threatened. It’s based on real events, too. And for anyone who thinks (as I did) that feminism died in the 1920s and wasn’t resuscitated until the late 60s, this film comes as a pleasant surprise. The story behind it is fascinating, too: ultra conservatives such as Howard Hughes did everything they could to stop it being made, including banning labs from processing the film. Hence the final cut jumps around a bit, and the colour and sound varies from scene to scene, because the film was processed and edited in bits before being pieced together.

After the screening we wandered the halls of UCL, and took a peek at Jeremy Bentham. I did not know that Mr Bentham still attends all university meetings, despite the fact that he died in 1832. His cadaver, per his instructions, was dissected, embalmed, dressed, and placed in a chair, and to this day resides in a cabinet in a corridor of the main building of University College (from http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bentham.htm). Sadly Mr Bentham’s chamber does not have glass doors, so we didn’t get a look at him. But just knowing he’s there is scary enough.

We rounded the evening off with fat chips from Rock & Sole Plaice, and teacups of wine at Irene’s flat.

Dr Rachel L, where are you? Have you moved to New Haven yet?

2005-06-02T17:59:00.000+01:00

There’s a guy I work with who has a Dr Hibbert laugh. I mean, really a Dr Hibbert laugh. And he’s an old, big, bearded, upper-class white guy. He looks like Father Christmas, too.

Went to the Imperial War Museum photo archive today, and looked at over 6,000 pictures from WW1. The library assistant wasn’t exactly unhelpful, but she didn’t go out of her way to make my search easier, either. I was looking for something quite specific: a photo of two or three British soldiers, standing, and the pic had to have emotion, dirt, mud. The librarian suggested I start with the ‘civilians’ file, and after flicking through dozens of sepia images of soldiers picking grapes, flirting with local women, and milking cows, I realized I’d be better off looking for blood ‘n’ guts elsewhere – like in the files marked ‘battles’! Still, I came away with about twenty good shots. Hopefully Intense Author (who declared our original – and our revised – cover ‘awful; absolute shit’) will like one of them.

2005-05-26T17:06:00.000+01:00

£100 poorer

Yes. Last night I locked myself out, and two hours and £100 later I was back in. After kicking myself, I tried to look on the bright side. At least it wasn’t raining. At least the locksmith didn’t need to put in a new lock. At least I wasn’t in my underwear.

But then I kept thinking of all the stuff I could have spent £100 on. A flight to Poland, or Seville, or a trip to Bruges. A massage and/or a facial for my 30th birthday. Some new shoes and a dress. Solicitor’s fees and estate agents fees for when (if) we move. Fuck. This is really making me sad.

2005-05-19T13:44:00.000+01:00

I can’t afford to eat this well.

On Monday: a brown rice, lentil, roast aubergine salad with a garlic and oil dressing, and a new potato, baby asparagus, red onion and parmesan salad with a creamy hollandaise dip (which is so delicious I could drink it from a mug). And a bar of Green & Black’s organic dark chocolate.

Today: Kastner & Ovens stung me again. £4.15 for a small salad and an apricot and almond* slice.

* which I pronounce Al-mond, like in ‘You can call me Al’, rather than All-mond. Cos I don’t know any better.

Stressy co-worker is annoying me. He overreacts to everything. Lots of swearing. Heavy sighs. Animatedly throwing things around. Head in hands. Opening printer and slamming it shut. Happens every day, so I don’t bother asking what’s wrong. In fact, I really want to tell him to chill the fuck out.

As usual, Wednesday night sees me curled up on the couch watching DH. I was curious to see how the storyline of Gabrielle’s unwanted pregnancy would develop. For those of you who (gasp!) don’t watch, Gaby’s husband, the evil Carlos, has been tampering with her birth control pills. She has told him a number of times that she doesn’t want kids, ever, and has no desire to be a mum. They agreed on this when they married, and she’s perfectly happy with things as they are. So Carlos switches her pills to placebos, and voila, she’s up the duff. I wondered whether the writers and producers would use this opportunity for an abortion storyline. In my fantasy world, Gaby would, after she’d calmed down and stopped screaming at Carlos, decide that she really did not want this kid, and go to her doc, and have a termination. She and the other Housewives would sit around at their weekly poker game discussing her choice and why she made it, and even if they didn’t all agree with her decision, they would all respect it as hers to make.

Somehow I don’t think we’ll see this. Without checking out the upcoming episodes, I predict that Gabby will decide that, even though she admits she and Carlos would make lousy parents, she will have the baby (so far, in DH land, there seem to be no other options at all). Cue funny/cute plotlines about Gabby leaving Baby Solis in the Manolo Blahnik shop, or at the beauty salon, or spending a fortune on designer baby outfits.

Bitch. Ph.D.: Abortion Just read this today and it’s great. Bitch says it a million times better than I ever could.

2005-05-09T16:50:00.000+01:00

making the day go faster. I am totally hooked on this site . . . there are some real gems!

Very Scary Squaddie Author has emailed me implying that I have lost one of the photos he provided for the picture section of his book. He borrowed it from some tough guy, and, in a roundabout way, said that if the picture was lost there would be trouble for him and therefore for me also. So if I am found enjoying a quiet dip in the Thames wearing concrete boots, it’s not a new fitness regime or a fashion statement. Just so’s you know.

Danced on Saturday night at a highly swanky event. It was the Vintage Fashion Fair in Mayfair, and the sponsor was a classy champagne house, and much sparkly booze was flowing. The venue was done up in retrotastic 1960s style, and the stage we danced on was silver metal, eight foot across, and . . . round. So moving backwards or forwards was risky, and as there were large, low-hanging glass light fittings above the stage, arm movements were restricted. We did OK though. I think they even liked us (although Peaches Geldof, standing by the stage with her equally Nicole Richie-esque teen queen pal, both as blonde, tanned and thin as each other, rolled her eyes at us. I glared at her and she looked shocked. Ha!)

2005-05-06T15:35:00.000+01:00

Did you vote?

My mum tried to, but couldn’t. She got to the polling station and didn’t have her card with her, and the guy (before even asking whether she was registered) said ‘Only British citizens are allowed to vote.’ My mum said that she was a British citizen, showed him her passport and a utility bill, and said she’d voted before. He said ‘That was probably in local elections. It’s different with a general election.’ My mum explained that she’d lived in England for 33 years, and she had voted in many a general election. But he wouldn’t budge, and said she could vote in the next one. When my mum told me all of this, I was outraged, but she was totally unfazed. I guess if she got upset every time someone made a snide remark, she’d never get a damn thing done. And after 33 years, she’s sadly probably used to it. I’m just glad she doesn’t let the bastards get her down.

Did anyone else hear the very brief news story about a place in south Wales where all the candidates for the election were female, and this incensed a local guy so much that he stood for election? And won? I cannot believe that, after centuries of undoubtedly all-male candidates, the very thought of no men standing for election was so terrifying. And what, precisely, was his campaign built on? The fact that he has a penis, or the fact that he’s a big fucking misogynist? Who voted for this cock face? It’s men like this who drive me up the wall. Men who are so scared of women having just a little bit of power, that they will do anything – anything, even running for office when their only reason for doing so is to prevent a woman from getting in – to stop it.

Freaky local things yesterday

2.30pm, Kennington Road bus stop: man wearing jeans and T-shirt, riding a carthorse (no saddle), slowly heading towards Central London.

6.35pm, further up Kennington Road: walking back from Tesco, I saw a red estate car festooned with red balloons, pumping out Abba’s ‘I have a dream’, with a very embarrassed Kate Hoey in the front passenger seat. As the Hoeymobile cruised through Kennington and Vauxhall, the expressions on people’s faces ranged from horror to incredulity to pissing themselves laughing. However, of all the MPs standing in my constituency, Ms Hoey was the most visible (OK, her office/shopfront thing was around the corner from where I live, sandwiched between an estate agency and Kitsch & Curio, a secondhand store/florist). I didn't see the Lib Dem guy at all (although Champagne Charlie is regularly spied watering his front lawn or shopping in Tesco), and the Tory was pretty much invisible. Which is how I like 'em.

God I am really crabby today. I hate being at work when there is literally nothing for me to do. People keep coming up behind me while I’m searching eBay for kitchen doors, and I want to bat them away…

2005-05-04T15:41:00.000+01:00

Tired.

Last night I had a half-hour standoff with a spider in my bathroom. I was reluctant to kill it (only cos I’m squeamish), so I talked to it for twenty minutes before trapping it under a glass, stared at it for another five minutes, slid a phone bill under the glass and moved the whole shebang across the floor towards the lav (whimpering all the while), picked it up and dropped it, screamed and shook for a further five minutes, trapped the spider again, and finally tossed everything down the loo, flushed frantically, and wished there was a bottle of vodka in the freezer for me to swig from. I must say, the spider was cooperative throughout, standing in the middle of the floor, rubbing his legs together, as if daring me to do something about it.

Finally got to bed at midnight, and had to read for 30 minutes to calm down.

2005-05-03T17:03:00.000+01:00

Today, after 121 posts, I finally learned how to add links to my blog. But don’t click on Tim, as I messed that one up. Sorry!

Bank holiday weekends make spring my fave season (after summer and autumn). Sadly I didn’t get as much sleep as I’d have liked. All-night parties? Drunken shenanigans? Nope, just the heating in my block is still on, despite the fact that temperatures hit 25 degrees (what is that, 72 or something?) this weekend. Last night I woke at 2.30 a.m. and thought I was dying. Had to take a puff of my inhaler, drink some water, check the window was open (it was) and lie back down to sweat it out.

Went to a party at a colleague’s house yesterday. Most of my recent posts have been about property envy, and as soon as I sell up and move I promise this will stop. But damn Penny’s place is amazing. She lives in a lovely 3-bed Victorian terraced house in Camden, with a lovely little walled garden filled with plants and creeping ivy.

New recipe I am hooked on:

Heat olive oil in a pan, fry some (OK, lots of) garlic, then add chopped spring onions (mmm), a chopped up chilli, and then add roughly chopped pak choi. Serve on its own, or with noodles. Delicious, healthy, no added salt (and doesn’t need it), and cheeeeeep.

Also, a healthy* veggie side dish, which tastes like fries, is slices of courgettes in seasoned flour, fried in olive oil so the outside of each side disc is golden and crispy… drool!

*by my standards

2005-04-29T15:47:00.000+01:00

Got a reply from the Press Complaints Commission, and they addressed it to Iiona J… Esq, and then wrote 'Dear Mr J…' which got me hopping mad, I can tell you… How dare they assume my gender? If I'm in doubt as to whether someone is male or female I use their whole name. I thought that was standard practice. And I refuse to write (Ms) like that, in parentheses, after my name.

Guess who I saw last night? Yes, that’s right. Charles Kennedy, unloading his car in front of his house. He happens to live on a main road, by a bus stop, so had two dozen curious people staring at him.

So bored. So sleepy. Such a nice day and I am stuck at work with nothing – literally nothing – to do.

2005-04-27T13:19:00.000+01:00

The inaugural Crafternoon was a big success. Thank you to everyone who attended, bought our cakes, and told us they were having fun.

AL and I spent much of Saturday baking. After a trip to Waitrose (where I wept bitter tears, as my local Tesco is a pound shop in comparison), we went back to her flat and got cracking. Five hours and half a dozen Bellinis later, we were surrounded by cookies, muffins, pink-iced cupcakes and a sticky grapefruit and poppy seed cake. Oh, and a giant plate of brownies. I’m happy to report that all the cakes sold, as did the pineapple upside-down cake, and Naz’s chocolate cake. It was really nice to look out over a sea of chatting knitters scoffing cake and know that our hard work has paid off.

Incidentally, I am so envious of AL’s lifestyle. She lives in a gorgeous 1930s block in south west London, with blossoming trees outside her window and a pink writing desk in her bedroom, and she teaches college and has just had her first book published. And she drives a dove-grey fake 1960s Japanese car. Whereas I live in a slightly less gorgeous 1960s block, have a view of terrifying estates from most windows, and ride the bus. Sigh.

2005-04-22T15:29:00.000+01:00

Foxy and Crafty

Crafternoon makes its debut this Sunday at the Pleasure Unit on Bethnal Green Road. 2-6, and it's free, but bring money for cake! Here's a tentative cake list... now I'm not promising all of these babies (especially as me and A.L. are having a drinkin 'n' bakin day tomorrow, with an emphasis on the cocktails), but some or all of these goods may be on sale:

ginger and choc-chip cookies
brownies
blueberry muffins
carrot cake
pineapple upside down cake (Please Rachel, please!)

Fine DJs to include Sonik, Pam Savage (AKA pineapple upside down cake baker), DJ Slipstitch and the DJ With No Name (AKA Kyle)

2005-04-21T15:06:00.000+01:00

Now that it's not OK to hate Black and Asian Londoners, I guess the Evening Standard needs another target... Step forward the Eastern Europeans. Their right-wing reporting made me so mad I wrote a letter... (But complaining is one of my favorite things to do.)

Press Complaints Commission
1 Salisbury Square
London
EC4Y 8JB

21 April 2005

Dear sir or madam,

Breach of 12i and 12ii of the Code of Practice

I am writing to complain about a front-page article in the April 20 edition of the Evening Standard. The paper published a story with the headline Au Pair shook Baby to Death. The subheading is 10-month-old dies while in care of Polish teenager. This is discriminatory and racist: the relevant detail is that a child died in the care of an au pair, not that the au pair was Polish. I believe this is designed to incite racial hatred and animosity. As part of London's long established and growing Polish community, I found this headline highly offensive. Would the paper be allowed to print a subhead stating '10-month-old dies while in care of Asian teenager'? No, and with reason.

This case seems ironic given that the Evening Standard was so recently embroiled in a dispute with the Mayor of London over his alleged anti-Semitic remarks to an Evening Standard journalist. I await a reply.

2005-04-20T17:52:00.000+01:00

Went to a meeting after work yesterday, and on my way home I bought a bottle of wine. I was a bit overwhelmed by the choice in Thresher’s, so when the woman behind the counter asked if I needed any help I said I did. Told her I wanted a light, fruity red wine (Mad Dog 20/20?) for under a fiver. As I’m sure her corporate training dictates, she suggested one for £5.99: ‘A very refreshing Beaujolais, good lightly chilled, and it’s even got a screw-cap.’ (this last part said rather pointedly). I narrowed my eyes at her. Was she implying I was going to drink it on the way home? How dare she etc. etc. I only live a five-minute walk away and can wait that long.

2005-04-19T14:21:00.000+01:00

Saturday night the Actionettes danced at the Albany. Me and Miss Nymphette were the first to arrive (and she was there for over half an hour before I showed up) so we got stuck in to a bottle of Prosecco. Yum. I think I was drunker than I realised at the time… the show went well and I didn’t spot too many bemused faces in the crowd. Afterwards we all bopped around a bit, and I dipped my pony tail into someone’s pint. Thankfully he didn’t notice.

http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/ Been reading this today. Scroll down to ‘do you trust women?’ I spent a good hour or more reading all 141 of the comments… a fascinating discussion, and one as relevant to British women as to American women.

2005-04-08T17:20:00.000+01:00

I just received a letter about my company pension. I am due for retirement in 2038 (which I’m sure will come around in the blink of an eye), and, should I die in service (paper-cut to a major artery? OD’ing on printer fumes? Buried beneath an avalanche of hardbacks?), I get £95,000. Not that I’ll be around to use it. Steve could pay off our mortgage, and still have plenty left over for a hot young mail-order bride. Or to give me a kick-ass funeral. Margaritas and quesadillas all round.

OK discussing my own funeral is depressing me. Enough! Plans for this weekend: viewing flats tomorrow, then having someone round to see my place. Going to old friend’s wedding in Blackheath. I was going to wear a strapless satin dress and sheer lace jackety-thing (I don’t want to say bolero, cos that sounds so eighties… but it is cropped…), but as the forecast says 10 degrees C, this needs to be revised.

2005-04-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

It’s tasty, expensive, and the portions are small – but God I love Kastner & Ovens… I had a thick slice of chewy treacle tart on Monday, and a wedge of sticky ginger cake today: I’m trying to limit myself to two slices a week for the sake of my bank balance and my wardrobe. Plus, you know what they say – a cake a day keeps the boys away.

Last night I went to see Emerald’s work in a group show at Cide on Lower Marsh… Poor Miss Kitschenette was feeling under the weather but managed to work the crowd a little bit and keep upright. Her felt bird pictures were a highlight of the show, and I want to save up to get 3, 4, or 5 of them hanging in a row. After my mini bottle of Chardonnay (purchased in M&S, as I knew the private view would have warm beer), I hopped on a 159 for a free lift home. I will mourn the loss of the Routemaster for many reasons, not just the joy of jumping on and jumping off before the conductor has asked to see your ticket.

2005-03-31T14:24:00.000+01:00

I know they’re fresh

Just got a delicious hummus salad from Pret a Manger. What a great deal, I though: you get, like, a bag of mixed salad, a giant ice-cream scoop of hummus (OK, only one tiny pita bread), feta cheese, tiny plum tomatoes… and one spider. OH MY GOD. My fork was headed for a choice bundle of beetroot leaves, rocket and red onion, when I noticed the little fella sat right there. The fork clattered* on to my desk and after much screeching I looked again – and he’d gone. After poking through the foliage for a while he reappeared. Shaken, I put on my coat and marched across the street to the guilty branch of Pret and spoke to the manager, who offered me a sandwich or soup or coffee, but sadly my appetite was well and truly lost. Did get a voucher for a free sandwich and coffee. Oh, and my money back.

So I’ve had it with nature and trying to be healthy. After the salad fiasco, lunch today was a white chocolate Magnum ice-cream bar, two slices of Saren malt loaf and an orange. A perfectly balanced meal: fat, carbs, and fresh fruit!

I wrote the above about two weeks ago, but have not had the time/inclination to post it… very lame. On Sunday night we danced at Le Beat Bespoke. It was fun and went really well: a crowd of five- or six hundred, and very few of them looked bored. Always a good sign. We were on right before Love, which was quite a coup, and I got to watch the gig from backstage. Gutted that my camera battery conked out before I was able to take a photo of Arthur Lee, especially as he was about ten feet away from me for most of the show.

Mods are a funny bunch, though. I was getting major hostile vibes from some dumb-haired gonk in the dressing room when we came off stage. I think certain men just hate the thought of a group of women having a great time and prancing about feeling like goddesses. It’s not ‘art’, but boy is it fun.

*silently. It was plastic

2005-03-02T14:09:00.000Z

She did it!

Rachel got in to Yale! They only have one internship per year for a doctoral candidate in child autism, and she got it!

I’m really proud of her. Ever since I’ve known Rachel (ten years) she has worked so hard for this. I can’t think of a more deserving person, or one more brilliant in her field. Congrats!

Plus, now I can dust down my varsity jacket and topsiders and visit her in Connecticut (less than 90 miles from NYC! Yay!). I expect it to look like ‘The Ice Storm’, but less 70s.

2005-02-24T16:31:00.000Z

Walked to work, as most of Kennington Road was closed off. There was a crash involving a cab and a police car at the junction by the Imperial War Museum, so the road was quiet and no traffic was allowed. Walked past Perdoni’s, the 60s café run by the most attractive family on earth. The two boys who work behind the counter are ridiculously good-looking*: one has the short, black, curly emo-hair, black-rimmed glasses, pale skin and white shirt with sleeves rolled up thing going on, and his brother looks like Adrien Brody. A bit of eye-candy on the way to work never hurt anyone…

I’ve discovered the perfect soundtrack to the grey, drizzly weather that is forever London. When the city looks like the set of Se7en, Television’s Marquee Moon fits perfectly. Don’t ask me why, it just does.

Fucking Thames Water

Got a water bill a few days ago. It was abnormally high – nearly £100 more than last year’s bill. When I called Thames Water they said that everyone’s bill had gone up this year, by between 20% and 40%. I am one of the lucky few (or lucky many) whose bill has leapt by over 40%. The reason?
Thames Water lady: ‘It’s to repair pipes damaged by floods’
Me: ‘But I live in central London: we don’t have floods’
TWL: ‘Hmm, but the Victorian pipes do need maintenance and servicing…’

*But not anywhere near as dishy as my boy, of course!

2005-02-23T17:05:00.000Z

Just been reading the Pam Savage blog (http://www.livejournal.com/users/pamsavage/) and it cheered me no end. When the world around you seems to make no sense (Belle de Jour’s The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl appearing in a WH Smith Valentine’s Day promotion? Huh?), they are the voice at the back of the room saying ‘What the fuck?’ Or something. Whatever, I love the blog.

It’s been snowing in London for the best part of a week, but you wouldn’t know it. The stuff doesn’t settle in urban areas, and I find the grit all over the streets far more of a nuisance than the snow it claims to protect us from. Gritty shoes are no fun.

Was going to see a film tonight, but I am lame so instead am getting wine and tasty food and cooking dinner with my boy. It’s been an odd day and I feel quite fragile, and the couch is looking mighty inviting.

Paris is calling…
We’re going to Paris for the weekend. We decided to do this for several reasons.
a) We can’t afford it AT ALL
b) We should be flat-hunting
c) I wanted to eat really good cheese and pastries, and found nothing in London of a high enough standard
d) We love the Eurostar and one of the best parts of any European jaunt is riding it while drinking smuggled-on Buck’s Fizz, eating croissants and reading the paper
e) Paris in February’s gotta be (slightly) nicer than London in February

A bientot!