| Books 2010 #2 |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|11:53 pm] |
- "Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North" by Stuart Maconie
- "Girl Genius Omnibus Edition Volume 1" by Phil and Kaja Foglio
I bought this book to continue reading the Girl Genius stories. I read the first two printed books last year, and wanted to read the third - "Agatha Heterodyne and the Monster Engine" - but unlike the first two, the third book seems to be some sort of rarity, because the cheapest I've seen it for sale on eBay and Amazon is well in excess of a hundred quid!
Sod that.
I was pleased to find the Omnibus Edition contains the first three volumes, though, for a perfectly reasonable price. It's printed in black and white in a smaller format, which suits me because the colour pictures are a bit in-yer-face. Anyway, enough of that.
It all continues to be brilliant and very daft fun, and it's all enjoyable. It's a very involved and complex fictional universe, and I enjoy reading it. Looking forward to some more - thankfully book 4 is not a precious rarity, by the look of things. |
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| London, baby! |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|05:00 pm] |
So...yesterday we boarded a train and came to London, to see family and friends. This is after being away from London for about six weeks, and this is the longest I've been away for a very long time - possibly ever.
We're going back on Thursday. I already wish we'd made the trip longer, but I was concerned about how much it would cost. I don't have to be too concerned about this in future, though - we've been swamped with offers of free places to stay, some that sound quite luxurious, so that's great.
The train journey went pretty well, so that's good - East Coast seem to be working hard to fix the mess left behind by National Express, and we had good seats. First stop was my mum's place for tea. She and my nephew were really excited to see us, and we had a really nice time catching up.
Getting off the train at Raynes Park and walking to my mum's was an odd experience, because she lives opposite our old place and it seemed very strange that we couldn't pull out our keys and open the door to it. From my mum's flat you can see inside our old living room and bedrooms, and there were people in there decorating. Our old lampshades are still up.
The meal at mum's was really good and I enjoyed catching up. She seems well, and that's a relief. It was a big deal moving so far away from her and I was worried about that, but life goes on as usual, so it seems.
We're staying in a Travelodge in Kingston. Staying in a hotel in the town I grew up in is bizarre but it's a handy location.
This morning Abby met up with a few friends, so I took the children to my mum's again and we spent the day together. It was good again, although my nephew is an obnoxious brat sometimes and can be incredibly loud and rude. Most of the time he's alright, though, and he was excited to see his cousins for the first time in ages. Later on we went to the children's old school and saw lots of their old friends. They were greeted like heroes returning from a battle and it was lovely to see. Eddie has gone to have tea at his friend Yasmine's house, Tully is having tea at my mum's, and I'm off into town to see ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) midge3.
I really want to come for longer next time. There's so many other people I want to see.
Linlithgow is still covered in snow, but on our journey south I noticed it petered out somewhere around York. The weather forecasts are getting apocalyptic again though, and we may get lots of snow here tonight or tomorrow. Hmm...interesting! I hope we make it home safely on Thursday. East Coast trains were badly disrupted today.
Better be off for now as I have some socialising to do. |
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| 2009 films (link) |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|03:51 pm] |
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This will be a redirect to my summary of the year, if/when I get around to writing it. |
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| ...AWOL... |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|03:48 pm] |
Clearly I've not been writing for a while. Apologies to my loyal audience of approximately zero readers - there's been a lot of irritating small things going on in my life which have pushed writing here to a low priority, and once I'd stopped it was easier to not start again.
I'm going to try to start again soon. I may or may not try to clear the 100+ film review backlog I've accumulated in the interim! |
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| Books 2010 #1 |
[Jan. 4th, 2010|11:07 am] |
- "Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North" by Stuart Maconie
Welcome to a new year of book-reading. I was a little disappointed by not managing more books last year, so I will have to make up this time by squeezing in a few more.
I borrowed this first book of the year from the library a while ago. It caught my eye because Stuart Maconie is always worth watching/listening when he's on the TV and radio, and the subject matter looked interesting. After living in the south of England for some time, he wanted to explore the North and see what it's like these days.
Of course, the area he's talking about is now to the south of me, but it's north of where I come from, and although I'm very familiar with the south of England and Scotland, the north of England is bit of a mystery, so it was an interesting read. It's very humourous reading, but respectful as well, full of interesting bits of history, and lots about music, art and culture. It's a travelogue in a Bill Bryson stylee, and covers a very wide area. It's enough to make me want to visit a lot of them and explore, as it's clear there's a lot of fascinating things around that I haven't seen yet. Plenty of ideas for trips here, and well worth reading. |
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| Writer's Block: Baby, you can drive my car |
[Jan. 3rd, 2010|05:20 pm] |
No, I dream about things a bit more inspiring and interesting than cars, pollution-belching and generally disagreeable things that they are.
All the cars we've owned as a family have been secondhand and very cheap indeed (the first one was free), and they've been practical and reliable and absolutely fine. I think the scrappage scheme is absolutely scandalous - new cars may be less polluting, but the environmental damage of scrapping a perfectly reliable car and building a new one that's probably not even needed is massive and stupid.
I use public transport wherever possible, and I wish others would do so more often. It needs to be better for that, of course - I'm discovering for the first time in my life that it's considerably worse outside London, and generally more expensive. |
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| Free stuff |
[Jan. 3rd, 2010|12:31 am] |
This article appeared in Saturday's Guardian, and plugs a forthcoming book that looks really interesting. The whole subject of how much you can get for free in a chronically wasteful society is a fascinating one, and this article shows the chattering Guardianistas that not all freegan squatters are a bunch of drug-addled crusties. Some of them are, obviously, but hey. :)
My encounters with Da! a while ago opened my eyes to a lot of things, and it's interesting to see this kind of response to the banking crisis - a realisation that life can be very, very cheap and a hell of a lot more enjoyable than we often make it. It's also more or less impossible to starve or end up in a serious mess in this country, so life doesn't have to be a massive problem if everything suddenly goes wrong.
Her approach is a bit extreme in some ways, of course, and squatting in the way she did only really works for single people - it's not so good for families, though, or anyone who doesn't want an extremely transitory life. Also, the law is different in Scotland. Scottish law is generally a bit more generous and progressive than English and Welsh law in lots of areas, but there's no squatting culture in Scotland because it's illegal and a criminal offence, which can result in jail sentences. In England, it's a civil matter, and as long as squatters don't damage property or squat in a property that's not obviously empty, the worst that can happen is that they'll be evicted. So...I'm not about to squat anytime soon.
That said, the constructive use of waste, and the scandal of so much of it being produced in the first place, is thought-provoking and challenging. I like her approach of living with less stuff - I'm particularly aware of it over Christmas, where especially the children get deluged with cheap plastic crap that breaks within (literally) five minutes. Because when we moved we packed in bit of a hurry, I've come to realise that we've brought shedloads of stuff with us that we should have just dumped. I'd like to be a lot less attached to crap in future. To be honest, I could probably live without a huge amount of what I own, when push comes to shove - most of my really worldly goods go most places with me anyway, in my rucksack that I take everywhere.
I like some of the things she's done here, and I want to take them on. Learning skills and being self-sufficient is vitally important, and I'd love to feel confident enough to fix things when they need fixing. I also want to get to grips with regularly scoring free things and making constructive use of them, instead of throwing money at every perceived need I come across. There's so much we can opt out of and do differently if we really try - my sister-in-law works every hour God sends so she can pay off her mortgage early, which is threatening to send her to an early grave. Why the hell does she need to do this?
I hope this article, and the book that follows (which I really want to read) gets some debate going - effectively it's constructive and practical anarchy that sticks two fingers up at a useless and ineffectual government that will do bugger all for you when you really need it. It's good to see there's lots of voices coming out in favour of all of this stuff, following Tom Hodgkinson's lead with "How To Be Free". |
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| Skidmarks! |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|09:19 pm] |
I was out shopping with the family and then drove home and found myself driving on roads covered in snow and black, black ice. Treacherous. I tried to slow down at one point and skidded all over the road. Thank God for a safe stopping distance, in front of me and behind me. Thank God nobody was trying to pass. I drove the rest of the eight miles at about 12 miles an hour, my body flooded with adrenaline that had nowhere to go, and freaking out every five seconds or so. Some cars tried to pass in the right hand lane- twats! We saw a couple of skidded cars, and some emergency lights flashing, nothing worse. Worst part was coming into my town where cars were rounding a bend towards me, I thought, if they skid they would have nowhere to go but into my car.
It's true what they say - is your journey really necessary? I'm not going to go overboard with driving practise at the moment and if I have to delay my training for a while then so be it. I may be a thrillseeker but not in the driving department. |
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| This isn't just a game, it's horrifying reality! |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|11:18 am] |
Every year, Abby and I dig out the Viz annual from a few years ago and enjoy playing the Family Christmas Game, which I present here for your entertainment. Be sure to view this at full size and give the whole thing a good read, because it's seriously funny and absolutely spot-on, like most things in Viz.
Anyway, it's of supreme relevance because yesterday we went to Abby's aunt and uncle's place for a family new year gathering. It was pretty good, apart from one thing that managed to ruin the whole thing - my brother-in-law and his excessive twattishness. Abby's sister reckons he's the life and soul of the party, and he fancies himself as a witty raconteur who entertains everyone with entertaining anecdotes, while making devastatingly funny comments. The reality is, unfortunately, somewhat different - he's a lazy slob who has no friends, who has an insulting and derogatory sense of humour and a massive over-estimation of himself. He'll hold forth for ages like he's an expert on everything, and was bragging about the cakes he'd made for the party like he was some sort of celebrity chef. He lives in an absolute pigsty - having seen his kitchen, I steered well clear of his cakes and stuck to the things Abby had made.
Normally I can cope with people like this, but his aggressive need to dominate conversation and make out how great and interesting he is brings out a nasty streak in me. I'm one of the most un-competitive people on the planet but he makes me determined to try and prove I'm better, and I hate myself for it. It's better just to shut up, really - he usually makes a twat of himself sooner or later, and managed to do it often enough yesterday. He said some things about his wife that were supposedly endearing, but if I said such things about Abby in mixed company, she'd (quite rightly) go ballistic and send me to Mantanamo Bay* for ages. His wife just takes it - she listens to him make her sound like a pathetic little kid, although to some extent both of them are. He seems to have no idea at all that you should be extremely loyal to your partner if you've got any sense at all.
He also makes lots of snide derogatory comments towards Abby's dad, which results in serious anger at times. I can't believe how tactless and crass he is, but his wife fails to notice and thinks he's quite the wit. Yet I noticed that she had a look of miserable angst on her face for much of the day yesterday - I think I would as well if I was in her position, but she genuinely loves her husband and probably just looks that way because she has no idea how to be happy and thinks it's her lot in life to suffer. She must suffer a hell of a lot being married to such an infantile, crass, tactless and slobbish man. I can cope with boasting and bragging from successful people, but he's totally not one of them, and if he'd not been there, the afternoon would have been so much more enjoyable.
Still, at least we had a lot to laugh about on the way home.
* a place where you've no idea what you've done and how long you'll be there, where you're subjected to repeated and incessant questioning at all hours of day and night. |
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| Annual brother in law encounter |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|09:49 am] |
Why do I find brother in law so repellent??? Let's call him Augustus. (Not his real name).
Here's the sort of thing that grinds my gears.
-He talks as if "among friends" and this includes rude or sarcastic remarks about organised religion. And I feel like saying, Hello Augustus, see that woman sitting next to you, your wife? A Christian. See your brother- and sister-in-law? Also Christians. I would never say anything rude or sarcastic about atheists.
-He resents small children getting attention. My three year old cousin ran into the room with a stuffed toy and Augustus said "We came prepared" and waved about a toy Viking puppet, a "gift from Dad" for Christmas. WTF? How old does his Dad think he is? (He's late thirties). Cousin was non-plussed by Viking puppet, which Augustus took no effort to show to him... so what did he mean by "we came prepared" - which surely implies Augustus meant to share this child's toy with a child? Or was it just his attempt to say "That child gets attention with his toy - BUT HERE'S MY TOY! I'M BETTER THAN A THREE YEAR OLD, LOOK AT MEEEEEEEE LOOK AT MEEEEEE!"
-His strategy is to put everyone down around him until they are ridiculed into silence so that he can hold forth for about twenty minutes waxing lyrical about the joys of Nintendo Wiis. So if you tell a whimsical story about something you've done he will say something like "It must be fun round at your place!" sneer sneer. But if he tells whimsical stories in which he celebrates his own childlike obsession with Star Wars Lego he expects adulation from the massed throng.
-He puts my Dad down all the time with a simulacrum of a happy, jolly, joshing-about relationship with him that HE DOESN'T HAVE. This is what is most bizarre. I wonder if my aunts and uncles are fooled into thinking here's a jolly father/son in law relationship a la the joshing blokes off "Top Gear"? Because in real life brother in law and my Dad can't stand each other and see each other probably once a year at this round the dinner table encounter at my uncle's. The rest of the time Dad sees my sister on her own. Augustus HATES people and lives in his own little foul world, computer surrounded by coffee cups with mould growing on them in an epic twelve-year battle of wills about whose turn it is to do the washing up. (Clue, both think it's the other's turn). He has 136 "friends" on Facebook but no real friends. I said that I'd seen him talking about cheesecake on Facebook and he replied "Well if you will keep on defriending me!" (So - he GUESSED at what I meant rather than knowing and he guessed I was saying I was "annoyed I couldn't see more about him on there" - I don't want to know more!!! I don't!!!! I am very deliberate in my desire NOT to have him on my Friend list. This is because for one thing, I only added him so my sister could see my photos over his shoulder (she doesn't DO computer at home ever) but for whatever reason that didn't work, and also sister sent me some snotty article about how Facebook is ruining people's social lives and I thought, fine, I'll defriend your husband and then you won't know what I'm doing on there). Anyway. Augustus assumed I meant I wanted more of his news, I don't.
-He boasted for ages about his cakes he had made and resented the fact that I'd brought some ginger cake along. He and my sister boasted along the lines of "I made some practice cakes last week and wife didn't want to let me take them into work, she said "Mine! Want it! You're not taking it away!" - Augustus and my sister like to think it's cute to act like angry toddlers. ("Mine! Want it!" - that's not like adults, is it? You don't boast about acting like a toddler whose food is being taken away.) I think sister thinks this is socially acceptable because it's how the orange-haired alien in "The Fifth Element" acted, and she was Milla Jovovich and she's Russian and pretty so it must be okay to grunt like an animal.
-The sad thing is everyone else round the table is good company, but Augustus comes along and sucks all the fun out of the room. My aunt and uncle are great (their house), and my other aunt and uncle, a childless couple, are lovely too, but they don't talk much and then I don't talk cos Augustus puts me down so much I just think it's safer to sit and listen.
My Dad was there and his anecdotes and terrible un-PC observations about the world "All Chinese people are short sighted and are rubbish at fighting" - "All foreigners are lying cheating thieves" etc (in front of my BURMESE aunt) - would normally make me cringe but in comparison to Augustus's snarky rubbish my Dad is a welcome distraction! And then Augustus holds forth. In discussing him with my sister, she thinks he is "the life and soul of the party" and she's "jealous of his amazing ability to put everyone else at their ease and make people laugh."
-THE POWER OF DENIAL DOES MY HEAD IN!!!!!! Can she not SEE what he does? Is she not offended by all his swipes at religion? His utter sneering sarcastic response to the world around him? It would make a difference if he were successful in some way, like if he could set out a stall for some area of his life that boasts excellence and accomplishment but he's got nothing. He really has nothing to boast about.
-My sister says weird a-propos of nothing things every now and then like "I love the way Augustus talks". Is this to bolster his ego? Bolstering his ego would be like putting some pillows on top of the Empire State Building to make it a bit taller.
-He is a devil's advocate type person so if you dare to stand up to his bullshit you end up giving him what he wants, a skirmish where he will take whatever the contrary position is (however daft). So you just have to sit there smiling while thinking "For fuck's sake!"
Still - you can't choose your relations, can you? I did eat his cheesecake and lived to tell the tale. It was tasty. It wasn't an orgiastic taste sensation on the tongue that my sister and brother in law built it up to be, but it was adequate given the form. He was nice about my cake. If you get him talking about something he knows about (the Vikings) you can overlook his awfulness and learn something new for a minute or two. My sister thinks he's chopped liver, so that's nice. And with any luck I won't see him again for at least a year.
They deliberately have no friends - they don't even try. They have work colleagues and they have Viking colleagues and sister has loads of church acquaintances, but they don't invite people in to their flat (because I think it may not be possible to get in the front door for all the piles of junk about the place). I wish I was more like that sometimes - in not needing friends. I feel like such a pathetic and needy creature sometimes and if friends are thoughtless it tends to impact on me dramatically. Perhaps sister married this man in the same way that some people buy huge attack-dogs - in order to keep people at bay. It's impossible to make friends with Augustus. And that's just how they like it. How great must it be not to need friends???
I was supposed to ask people yesterday about sales. I got nowhere. I didn't have a chance. On the up side, I made a tasty dish using some of my kitchenware and everyone liked it a lot. So hopefully I've planted an idea in their heads that I'm a good cook and I don't endlessly bang on about it like some people. |
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| Brother in law... |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|09:20 pm] |
I don't have my brother in law on Facebook but my mum has him on her list so if she comments on his status messages, I can then see them. Brother in law and sister are going to the same party I am, and we have all been asked to bring food. This is in our aunt's house (not brother in law's filthy flat). Note. NOT his house, and his status message says,...
baking for tomorrow, 2 cakes down, one to go. The dessert menu will be Italian Hazelnut cake, Pineapple upside down cake and a Mint cheesecake/flan thing
So..... he gets to decide "The dessert menu"!!!!
He also appropriates the children in order to be socially smarmy, I've noticed. He doesn't have children but when we've all been together in restaurants and if a waiter says "You've got your hands full there!" or whatever, (wrongly seeing brother in law with my children and thinking he's the daddy) he will say something like "Oh yes, the kids are quite a handful!" and I sit in the background thinking, oh aye! You see my children like once a year and suddenly you're playing the role of put upon hands-on dad! I don't think so!!
He does NOT get to decide the menu. And I don't care how pretty the cheesecake is, I'm not eating it. Brother in law regularly gives my sister food poisoning due to keeping the kitchen as cockroach-friendly as its possible to be. Ugh ugh ugh.
Dontcha just love family parties? Now I'm in a sales job involving kitchen things, I've morphed into this scary Alpha female with my chocolate brownies and ginger cake and pinny. When I see brother in law and his Lysteria Cheesecake I'm gonna be all "Bring it, bitch!"
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| End of a decade |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|06:45 pm] |
It seems incredible that all the Millennial hype was ten years ago. It seems like yesterday.
Still, I'm glad this decade is over, because the name it's been given - "the noughties" - is utterly stupid and annoys me enormously every time I hear some media twat say it. |
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| Crazy horses! |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|10:09 pm] |
I went out with the children to Dunblane today, which is a short train ride from here. It's a charming and pretty little town, which of course everyone has heard of. Walking up the quiet streets, it's incredibly hard to imagine how this could have happened here - it's the sort of thing you associate with deprived inner cities. It's blighted an entire generation and it's hard to forget it as you walk around - the suffering it has caused is enormous and I doubt the town will ever recover.
Putting that aside, if you can, the town has a river running through it, some narrow hilly streets that are classic historic village material, and also there's a beautiful cathedral that seems seriously big for such a small place. There's a memorial to the massacre in there, of course, but on a more positive note, the cathedral is vast and makes you feel quite small and over-awed. A very nice man from Historic Scotland told us all about the place and we enjoyed looking around.
I'd have stayed longer but the snow and the icy wind made it a bit much to stay out, so we headed home earlier than I'd have liked. It's certainly a place for a return visit. I first went to Dunblane a couple of years ago when we started looking at potential places to live in Scotland - I liked it, but felt I couldn't live under the cloud that covers the town. I'd always feel like an intruder on someone's private grief.
When we got back to Linlithgow, we pretty much slid home. The station is at the top of a fairly steep slope and in the week or so of snow and ice CHROS we've had, no-one has seen fit to grit either the road or the footpath. It's lethal there - I suspect that Network Rail, ScotRail and West Lothian Council are all too busy arguing over who's responsibility it is. I hope they decide quickly when it comes to paying compensation for the broken limbs that could result.
We watched James May's Toy Stories at tea time, in which he built a life-size Lego house. This follows on from the last episode, where he built a Hornby model railway ten miles long. He has the best job in the world! These feats are truly stunning. The Lego house was amazing - it took some effort to design a structure that could bear the weight of a person. He lived in it for 24 hours - very, very cool.
Sadly, it ended up being demolished - it's a real shame it couldn't have been saved and exhibited somewhere. Still, what a brilliant project - I love crazy things that are done just because they can be. |
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| Writer's Block: Promises, promises |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|09:33 am] |
I don't do new year's resolutions. I can understand why people like the idea, but it seems completely arbitrary to do them, and loads of people do it just because everyone else does and they feel that they should. In my case - and I'm sure lots of others - they just become sticks to beat ourselves with, and make us feel like massive failures for not lasting beyond about January 10th without breaking them. I can live without that sort of disappointment and self-defeat.
There's a lot of positive things I'd like to do this year, but I'm not making new year's resolutions for them. I maintain a dated to-do list to remind me of what I need to do, and that works fine for me. |
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| Bröllop! |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|12:25 am] |
I've never been a great fan of the week between Christmas and New Year - I never know quite what to do with myself in it, and I want normality to return so I can get on with the tasks in hand. High on the priority list has to be getting a job, mainly so I can establish some sort of routine. I've developed the classic habit of the unemployed person - staying in bed late and letting the day run away from me without getting much done. I need to organise myself better.
Well, all that aside, I can't complain really. Yesterday we went to Kinghorn, a little seaside town in Fife where Abby lived when she was little. It was absolutely brass monkeys (there's still snow everywhere) but we were brave enough to play on the beach for a while, which looked beautiful in hazy sunshine. There was even a ramshackle beach cafe and shop which was rather miraculously open, and even more miraculously serving hot food, on a bank holiday just after Christmas. The man who was running it looked a bit scary, though. I'm sure he probably had a gun hidden away somewhere.
I took a load of panoramic photos with the Pronea S camera, but when we got a previous film from it developed later in the day, I discovered that the print captions settings on the camera were all wrong, and some of the photos came back with the word "Bröllop" written on the front. APS is annoying sometimes - I hope when I get this film developed I can ask for caption printing to be disabled.
What does "Bröllop" mean, anyway?
Kinghorn struck me as a rather charming place, so I'm sure I'll go there again, when it's warm enough not to have a thick layer of ice on the rocks.
We stopped off in Edinburgh on the way home, where I got photos done and Abby bought some piano music for our new keyboard. A pretty good day out, really.
I went to Alloa today, on the train. I've applied for a job there, so it might become a frequent journey. The station is brand new, and has only been there for a few months. The town seemed pretty average to me, but bits of it were nice, and I found two caches while I was there. I tried a couple of others, but it looked like they were under snow, so I couldn't get at them.
We watched the remake of "Day of the Triffids" yesterday and today, and it was pretty good. I'm a sucker for anything apocalyptic, so I was pleased to see that "Survivors" returns for a new series on 12th January.
Other than that...the third issue of my zine is taking shape, and I'm selling a few copies of the first two issues, so that's good. It's all Good Clean Fun.
Finally, London people - I'm back in town from 4th to 7th January. What shall we do? Who wants to meet up? |
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| Retrospective of the noughties.... |
[Dec. 29th, 2009|03:06 pm] |
I spent most of this decade wondering what it was going to be called. The media have decided the "noughties", even though it sounds like "naughty" and there was nothing much naughty about it.
Here's my retrospective.
On New Years Day 2000 I was in church, medium-sized with child, and walked there from my flat. I remember walking up a street full of huge houses and hearing sounds of merriment from the gardens, and people saying "Anybody need another drink?" My husband was on the night shift. That was a New Year's Eve party at church so I walked home in the small hours. It was okay I guess. The rest of the year - I was big with child and then gave birth to the lovely boy, we like him, we're probably going to keep him. I moved house to another flat.
2001 - Husband got a better job, I think that year anyway, I got big with child once again, I went on holiday to South Uist with husband and dad and toddler. It was a good holiday. It came soon after 9/11, so I spent a lot of time reading the papers and thinking we're all gonna die, cos you don't mess with the US of A.
2002 - I was big with child, and big generally, and then had a girl in February, another very delightful addition to the clan, and we're keeping her as well. I managed to diet with Weightwatchers and looked fantastically stick thin for a while, and my Mum and her lesbian partner cooed over my lost weight making me think "Eurgh!" and rapidly put it all back on again. No, I ate all the pies. But you don't want to be surrounded by lady lesbians lusting after your thin form, not if you're straight like me. It doesn't do anything for me. Honestly. That probably makes me a bad person, everybody look at the bad person, anyway, moving on. I made friends with a one armed Asian woman who had a mixed race son, and I got nowhere in my friendship with a woman the same age as me, from a church background and in the same size flat as me, going to show that being similar on paper leads nowhere in friendships. But the Asian woman moved to Battle and I never saw her again.
2003 - Son went to a hoity toity private nursery for a while, I pushed around this gargantuan double buggy that made me feel like Sisyphus and his rock, but it was less wieldy and I bet Sisyphus didn't have the 57 bus to contend with. Where the buggy falls over and the bus driver shouts at you for not holding on to it, preemptively and aggressively when you were feeling embarrassed enough already. And the amount of times I phoned the police to report the 200 bus drivers for smelling strongly of cannabis! Well at least once. Riding on buses is the new thrillseeker sport of the suburban mothers, in my area. I sent son to state school nursery, made friends with a very neurotic mum who ended up moving to a sixteen bedroom castle in rural Lovelyshire with her two kids named after the Tweenies. Making and keeping friends in those days was like trying to hold water in your hands. Nursery teacher said son had Asperger's, and I had panic attacks going to school.
2004 - I got a job in the nextdoor care home and learnt a lot about dementia. Quite enjoyed my job despite the paranoia of a boss who seemed to think I was going to nick her job. Bought Henry Hoover that year with all our filthy lucre from having dual income. My Mum decided to send a letter to me resigning as a mother, and this brought about a crisis between us that has never mended, imagine a happy relationship , then imagine throwing a nuclear bomb at it, it never recovers. Never ever. And for it to recover you would need willingness from both partners but you don't get that with Mum. All the self help books suggest sitting down and talking it through, the self help books say nothing about the person dropping a bomb on you and then moving to Portugal. So you're never really just neutrally in the same place and able to chat and work things out. We now exist on a steady diet of denial and superficial bullshit, hey it works for her! Not that I'm bitter.
2005 - Daughter started nursery, and son had teachers pushing for an Asperger's diagnosis. Sat in waiting rooms waiting to speak to paediatricians. At the end of the year, made friends with the TC Clan, which was a big mistake. Spent my day times writing my novel.
2006 - More novel writing. Friends with the Tuna Tacos. A difficult friendship that caused nothing but angst and misery. Went to Berlin on holiday. Husband interested in Communism, I was interested in Nazism. I wouldn't be interested in the Allied side at all. (Only joking). I remember the Technical Museum with the original cattle trucks that had taken the Jews to their doom, and telling my daughter somewhat superstitiously to "stay out!!" thinking of the fate of all those other children who had taken a ride in there (shudder). Suddenly it seems such a haphazard thing that my children happened to be born in one country sixty years on and so weren't at risk from genocide. I think of this year as the year full of folly, being stupid, making friends with the wrong people and worrying about the wrong things, getting distracted and angst ridden.
2007 - It was the end of the Tuna Taco friendship (TC Clan) and the beginning of a new one with the people who ran a pub - friendly and easy and no angst from the start, a vast improvement. I did a course on novel writing at adult education college which killed all my inspiration and motivation stone dead thanks to the utter indifference of the teacher, and her unwillingness to understand the first thing about church culture. I haven't given up, I write no more but I still dream! I'm going to start again with a new novel, not try and edit the one I wrote, it's too long and unwieldy.
2008 - Lots of holidays. We had a trip to Wales with four friends, a trip to South Uist with 50 plus members of my family, a weekend in Boulogne, a great time in Cornwall with friend and her children and husband, and a trip to Scotland on my own with the children. It makes up for having no holidays at all in 2009. Signed up to becoming a driving instructor. Spent a lot of time being a Bible study leader. Also sought therapy for my problems with being touched or hugged by people.
2009 - Spent the year trying to move to Scotland, signed up for a self employed business, moved to Scotland. A school gate Mum I knew died of cancer. She was the only other Scottish school gate mum in my school in London, that I knew, so I felt afraid the grim reaper was after the Scottish mums, so now at the new school gate I have strength in numbers. The woman who died, I didn't know was dying because I exist in a state of splendid isolation cos I don't gossip. Sometimes gossip is a good thing, it means bad things don't sneak up on you like a bastard. Her husband left the school and sent his children to a Catholic school, the better to get them into a Catholic high school. I moved away from the Tuna Tacos just as the man of the couple is about to publish his first children's novel. Such a blessed relief not to have THAT rubbed in my face day in day out at the school gate. (We used to talk about writing when we were still talking to one another). 2009 was the year I discovered Derren Brown and liked his shows, at first as a welcome mental distraction from the anguish of my mum's visit and later as an excuse to visit friend nr Plymouth to see a show of his. I wasn't impressed, the ones on the telly looked much more magical. Still it was a great night out and I got his autograph and a photo of him and me which is still there as my mobile phone wallpaper.
I could say more but I won't.
So it's been a steady diet of getting nowhere with any of my life plans!
Here's hoping the 2010s are better. Life begins at forty, that was a sitcom from the seventies I remember well, and it's a mantra I believe in. It must be better being in your forties, it must be, it stands to reason. I'll be the parent of teenagers. That should be great fun. Hopefully at least one or two of my life ambitions will come to something. I've stopped telling people what I want to do with my life cos my plans keep on dashing against the walls. I've talked myself into such a downer now. It's snowing outside and I have no idea how to entertain the children whose default setting is to be plugged into the computer or Playstation with deadened eyes. I've been teaching myself "Air on a G String" by Bach. I bought piano music yesterday. It's brilliant learning new music. Perhaps this will be the decade of being a musician. I've spent years pining to own a keyboard or piano and now I have a keyboard I can finally put some time into this hobby and teach myself a few songs. |
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| IT FAIL |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|11:27 pm] |
Much as I love my little Asus Eee, I've been tempted to throw the thing across the room in annoyance over the last few days. I've come to realise that the Linux OS that it ships with is actually crap. Much as I love the idea of Linux - a free OS that doesn't line Bill Gates' pockets - the execution is often far from brilliant. While the Eee is simple to use out of the box and comes with what most people need for their everyday computing, the thing is an utter bastard when it comes to customisation or configuration of any kind at all.
The Eee has perfectly good wifi on board that has never given me any trouble, but now that I'm reliant on mobile broadband for my internet connection (we have no landline in the house) the Eee has turned into a doorstop. I have a USB dongle, and also my phone can be used as a modem. On my Windows desktop, you plug them in and they work. No problem.
On the Linux-powered Eee, neither of them are recognised at all, and no drivers are available. Gaaah!
Sod it. Much as I loathe Bill Gates, and much as I hate Windows for being a massive steaming pile of clunky bloatware, I want my Eee to actually work properly. As soon as I can come across an OEM install disk for Windows XP (it won't run Vista and I don't think it'll run 7 either), it's going on, so stuff actually works.
Anyone got an XP disk knocking about? |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|11:10 pm] |
- "Keep The Aspidistra Flying" by George Orwell
- "Bollocks to Alton Towers: Uncommonly British Days Out" by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris and Joel Morris
- "Silverland" by Dervla Murphy
- "Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way" by Gary Chapman
- "Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline" by Charlie Brooker
- "Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea" by Guy Delisle
- "The Dark Crystal" by A.C.H. Smith
- "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
- "Protect and Survive: Civil Defence Manual of Basic Training" (HMSO, 1950)
- "Can Any Mother Help Me?" by Jenna Bailey
- "Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell
- "Holly The Christmas Fairy" by Daisy Meadows (read to the children at bedtime)
- "Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway Accident" by Anthony Hidden QC
- "Time of Death" by Jessica Snyder Sachs
- "Viz: The Big Hairy Almanackers 2009"
- "Little Children" by Tom Perrotta
- "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
- "Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy" by Julie Burchill and Chas Newkey-Burden
- "The Devil's Alternative" by Frederick Forsyth
- "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer
- "Girl Genius Volume 1: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank" by Phil and Kaja Foglio
- "How Not To Write A Novel" by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark
- "Girl Genius Volume 2: Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City" by Phil and Kaja Foglio
- "Working Hard(ly) - The Overachiveing Underperformer's Guide to Doing as Little as Possible in the Office" by Chris Morran (on company time, apparently)
- "Incendiary" by Chris Cleave
- "Live Generously: 50 Small Acts That Make a Big Difference" by the Live Generously Project and Julie Van Pelt (ed)
- "The Dawkins Delusion" by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath
- "Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn"
- "Notes From A Small Island" by Bill Bryson
- "The Surrey Hills" by W. A. Poucher
- Da Vinci Inventions Official Programme
- "The Early Years of London Diesels" by Michael Welch
- "Me:Moir Volume 1" by Vic Reeves
- "Reasons to be Cheerful" by Mark Steel
- "No Contest: The Case Against Competition" by Alfie Kohn
- "Steam In The Scottish Landscape" by Michael Welch
- "Signspotting 2" compiled by Doug Lansky
- "Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction" by Sue Townsend
- "Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years" by Sue Townsend
- "The Idle Parent" by Tom Hodgkinson
Yes, that's Tom Hodgkinson of How to be Free/Idle fame, and he's got to be one of the best authors I've read. This wasn't as good as his previous pair of books in my opinion, but it was still an excellent read, and a great breath of fresh air. I love his minimal-effort, ultra-simple, cheap approach to life, and applied to child-rearing, it's an attractive philosophy. All the angst and interventionism of middle-class parenting is effectively bollocks - read this, sit back and enjoy, basically. Well worth reading, digesting and taking on board if you've got kids and plan not to screw them up too badly. :)
I've made rather poor progress on reading books this year. Must do better in 2010. |
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| Review |
[Dec. 27th, 2009|11:46 pm] |
In this evening, with the cold drawing in and a blanket in my lap I espied a television-drama that looked somewhat intriguing: it's name was Cranford. It was a sumptuous drama by the British Broadcasting Corporation, in which not a single actress was without a bonnet or kerchief, and many were titled ladies such as Dame Judi Dench. And many other talented actors of our age. Well! Imagine my discomfort when it slowly dawned on me that to espy this drama would steal an entire hour-and-a-half of my evening! An evening I could have spent better employed, perhaps with a little sewing or playing at the piano. (Myself and my husband recently purchased as a gift for our children, a Yamaha keyboard, it is a most accomplished instrument boasting five good octaves). No matter!- I continued in my viewing and was rewarded with a highly enjoyable televisual play involving good men and scoundrels, and ladies with smelling salts and poor orphan-boys getting up to mischief and allowing the cow on the common land to derail a locomotive, with tragic consequences! - But I shall not tarry on these trifles for I know not if any of my fair readers might plan already to watch this televisual play and will have their enjoyment spoiled while I prattle on - if this is the case do forgive me! Alas, the drama ended all too soon, and then I found myself in a most uncomfortable position of having to watch the subsequent televisual play which was a situation comedy called "Outnumbered".
Annnnnd we're back in the room.
Anyway - "Outnumbered", what a steaming pile of shit that was. You could practically smell it from over the other side of the room. It is a comedy with that tall one out of Punt and Dennis, (the short one used to go to the same coffee house in Wimbledon that I did but that's neither here nor there)and his wife, some identikit thin-pretty-neurotic sitcom-wife by-the-numbers. And they have three lovely children, the eldest one the idiot son out of "Armstrong and Miller" in the single dad sketch, and he wasn't too bad, and then two other kids, one fat and curly haired, and his "shtick" is liking guns, and a bratty little girl with the most annoying RP accent ever. Perhaps since I've gone all Scotch recently I haven't got the stomach for this sort of thing any more - cute old sitcom grandad comes round for dinner with the family and brings with him some old Scottish codger and the little girl (who is about seven) keeps saying "I can't understand a word you're saying!" in that imperious way that the titled landed and ruling classes of England have been saying about Scots since time immemorial. I wish the old codger had said "Shut your face you patronising little bitch!" just for once. Just for once, just one time. He could have been excused for being demented at least? But oh no. No, noone answers back because it's supposed to be cute. And then there was the neurotic friend of the mum, who had bought a goat for someone's Christmas, and it's a goat in Africa, and the horrible little brat spends ages whining about it. Bring back National Service for sitcom brats. Bring back hanging. Bring back burning sitcom brats at the stake. And when the credits rolled, I found out that the fat curly brat was called "Tyger Drew-Honey" oh what fresh hell is this!!!!! It's up there with Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, what the hell are people doing naming their children like this??? Boil up the oil now for that kid's name alone, never mind his precocious bratty acting.
I won't watch it again, my blood pressure couldn't take it.
Other reviews - I'm reading "Dawkins Delusion" by Mr and Mrs McGrath. It's all a bit "No shit Sherlock", but I'll keep reading.
Other news - I went to Edinburgh in the evening in the hope of attending church. The church was closed. It had a sign on the door saying "Services at 11.00 and 6.30" but they were LYING!!!! And there was nothing about it on their website. There will be a stiffly worded email about this to the website, you mark my words, seethe seethe.
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