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!)

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…

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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!

Books still not here! Suck!

Right now I'm at my desk eating the yummiest veggie food I've had in a loooong time... it's herby rice with spinach and chick peas, and spicy tomato-y potatoes. All mine for £2.99 from one of the fast food stalls in Jubilee Market.

The end of last week was a blur of dancing, booze and aching feet. Thursday night the Actionettes performed at Offline in Brixton, which was fun and I got to wear a sparkly new dress and drink cava for free. Balconette created, decorated and staffed her legendary Human Fruit Machine, and people were queuing up to play... particularly as they were guaranteed to win!

Friday we danced for maybe our biggest audience yet (definitely our most diverse - we don't normally get eight-year-olds at our shows), at the V&A masked ball. There was a rider, too, which was a novelty: chocolate, fruit, crisps and beer. Hurrah! Only two things annoyed me: the fact that there was no booze allowed in the main room (and there was a half-hour wait to get to the bar for those buying), and that the backstage manager (dunno if she was, but she spent all her time sitting backstage looking stern) was eyeballing me all night in a 'you're dodgy and you're going to try and hide an African mask up your dress' way, and was snotty when I tried to take Steve backstage. All the other ladies had been entertaining their fellas there, so this pissed me off... other than that, a great night. Made even better by eating potato pancakes at Daquise!

I just filled in a questionnaire to take part in a focus group about feminism. This is my idea of a good time: what’s not to like about focus groups? You sit in a room with a bunch of fairly like-minded people, eating sarnies, drinking wine, and chatting. Then, after two hours, you leave, collecting an envelope filled with money on your way out. My sister hooked me up with focus groups about five years ago, when we were both students and sharing a flat in Whitechapel. As participants in a focus group aren’t supposed to know each other, we’d show up five minutes apart and try not to crack each other up during proceedings. However, I blew things for both of us. The jig was up when, signing for my envelope of cash (my mind was probably elsewhere, dizzy with the thought of all the frivolities I would spend my easy money on – groceries, gas bill, travelcard), I put down my real name instead of the agreed pseudonym of I. Malkmus (shut up). We were both given as good a telling-off as two grown women can be given, and after that there were no more focus groups for either of us. We had been struck off the focus group register. UNTIL NOW!

An American publisher sent me a few books last Monday. I’d assume these would reach me via the usual channels, but now I am beginning to think they strapped them to a donkey, turned it towards California and gave it a slap on the ass. No books yet, and I want something to read!

Rules for selling your home

Paint everything beige. Walls, furniture, pictures, pets.
Get rid of anything you like which could be considered vaguely kitsch, quirky, or cool. If your mother would hate it, pack it away.
Clean everything. Then clean it again, just to be sure.
Make your home look like no one lives there.

I am hating this, and we’ve barely started. Think I am the only person in my block who over the past two years has managed to lose money on their property. OK, so my kitchen is possibly as old as I am, and the bathroom could do with freshening*, but if the maxim ‘location, location, location’ is true, then I should be living in a goldmine. I can see Big Ben from my front door, and hear it chiming when I’m lying in bed. I am within walking distance of two underground and two mainline stations (Kennington, Lambeth North, Vauxhall and Waterloo), and a ten-minute stroll from the Thames. Plus, I like my flat, and I think it looks cute, but estate agents seem to think otherwise.

I definitely need to develop a really thick skin when it comes to this property lark.

What’s schadenfreude in English?

I read the reviews for this book with some glee, as they were mostly stinkers. The blog was (is? Haven’t looked at it in a year) OK, but I never thought there was enough in there to make a decent book. And seeing as the company I work for turned down a blogger’s book I proposed two years ago, which was subsequently bought by HarperCollins (yes, I am still harping on about that; no I’ll never let it lie), I am keen to see what sort of reception the bandwagon-jumpers receive. Bitter, moi?

*ripping out and replacing

This morning I was late for work. This happens about twice a week, usually because I hear my alarm, pretend it’s my mobile phone ringing, and sleep through it. Same happened today, but in addition I got lost. How long have I lived in this city? A total of 28 years. But today I got on a bendy bus (or a ‘free bus’ as they’re known to everyone, including the goons at City Hall who bought them), thinking it would take me across Waterloo Bridge and drop me off outside my building. I gasped audibly as instead it veered across two lanes of traffic and ducked into the Strand Underpass, emerging a minute later by Holborn station. Crap. Well, at least it was a lovely sunny morning.

I’m reading Do Not Pass Go at the moment. It’s a history of London masquerading as a history of Monopoly, and it’s bloody fantastic. There are lots of bizarre facts in there, few more bizarre than the information that a London wine bar, El Vino, refused to serve women until legally forced to do so in 1982. (And until more recently, they couldn’t be wearing trousers.) I really can’t get my head around that. Would any establishment get away with refusing to serve black people, or Asians, for so long? They’d be shut down, and rightly so. I have always viewed all-male institutions with suspicion: what reason can men have for wanting to ‘get away’ from half the population? Doesn’t it just smack of misogyny? I think the men who want to have a private, all-male enclave to retreat to are the same guys who kick up a stink when a report shows that women now make up 3% of company directors, claiming this proves women are now ‘running the world’. Get a grip, lads. We all have to rub along together. When women have all-female places to meet, it’s usually for a good reason: after attending the Capitalwoman conference earlier this year, where a lone nutter disrupted a talk, I think there should be more.

Today is one of those rare, lovely London days when the sky is cornflower blue and the sun is shining. So at lunchtime I went for a long walk around the Inns of Court. Took a left off the Strand down Bell Court, and suddenly I was in an Elizabethan/Georgian (I really need to research different periods in architecture…) maze of streets, and squares with odd names like Old Square, New Buildings etc… I was dazzled. The area looks like someone has picked up Cambridge University and dropped it behind one of London’s busiest streets. There was even a chapel, empty but for a peevish keeper, who looked pained when I spoke to him. If you’re in central London and fancy a trip back in time, I highly recommend it.