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Never knowingly under-dressed
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| thirty thirty thirty |
[Mar. 18th, 2007|01:14 pm] |
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I like it. I like being at the bottom of a decade again. I like being a flakey piscean. I like feeling comfortable with who I am and what I do. I like being able to say "no" to people. I like the fact that people don't walk over me at work or in my personal life. |
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| inspiration needed |
[Feb. 24th, 2007|12:52 pm] |
This is a bit of a cry for help. I'm writing two articles on relationships, one of which is on first and last moments in relationships - you know, how the things you found really endearing and charming about someone at first suddenly become the things that make you want to jump out of a window (or push them out of a window).
So, (and I'm not anticipating a gargantuan response, but it's always worth asking) anyone want to share some anecdotes that I can use? All names will be changed, full confidentiality guaranteed etc.. If so, drop me an e-mail. If you don't have my address, comment telling me you're interested and I'll get in touch.
Thanks |
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| From a bus window, on a rainy day... |
[Feb. 14th, 2007|03:48 pm] |
...I saw this, scrawled in green spray paint on one of those baroque monster buildings between Moorgate and Monument:
SIT ON MYSPACE
It's the best Valentine I've ever had. |
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| Reading the small print |
[Feb. 12th, 2007|09:05 pm] |
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My goodness. Wearing specs is changing my life. I knew I was long-sighted, but I had absolutely no idea how much effort I was making to read small print or stare at a computer screen. I've been reading the index in my A-Z just for kicks. |
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| new adventure in accessorising |
[Feb. 9th, 2007|11:14 am] |
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Went to the opticians for the first time in eight years. I'm quite long-sighted, and he's recommended I wear glasses when working at my PC, as I've been experiencing eye strain. Fortunately, work legally obliged to fork out half the cost. But I had absolutely no idea that glasses and lenses were so expensive! |
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| Middle of the road, anyone? |
[Feb. 7th, 2007|04:41 pm] |
What a week. Do you know what? I'd really like to be one of those people who sort of coast along at medium temperature, steady 30mph pace. But no, with me, it's either manic euphoria or off to put rocks in my pockets and jump in the Thames. Or why couldn't I have been born as a twin set wearing, Express reading type? I'd be living in semi-detached house Berkshire with a boring husband and a climate-destroying 4 wheel drive vehicle visible on the front drive.
This is all ridiculous, of course, and probably very snobbish. Put it down to fatigue and the beginnings of my first cold for over twelve months. Wrote the equivalent of masters thesis for she who must be written for last week, went on the road with her on Monday, and she was positively beaming with praise for me. Crashed yesterday when I had to rewrite another speech twice in one day. Still, recess fast approaching, so a bit of a break coming up, thank the Lord. Who knows, I might get to finish some poems.
I have seen my beautiful niece. I'm absolutely besotted with her. More photos (and video footage, no less) here
Other recent highlights? Saw Frost and Nixon on Friday night, which is excellent, and (well it was until today) pertinent in the light of all the cash for honours stuff. Finished Claire Tomalin's Thomas Hardy biography. And of course, Battlestar Galactica. |
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| things that make me needlessly cross |
[Jan. 29th, 2007|10:56 pm] |
Ok, so there are things in this world that make me quite inexplicably and irrationally angry. And, in the spirit of getting to know myself a little better, I've decided to put some of these things under the spotlight. Today's bug bear is people who leave comments on the comment page of the Guardian website. I can't quite explain why, but they all make me want to take a sledgehammer to my computer and then march up to Farringdon and pelt shards of glass and hard drive at unsuspecting left of centre journalists.
Why? Why? Why? They're all so fucking sanctimonious and predictable. They refer to the journalists by their first names "Nice article, Polly. I wonder what care for the elderly's like in Sweden?" If you really give a shit, why not do a little bit of research by yourself?
Or "Yet another brilliant example of how Blair betrayed us ALL, John." Fuck off. I've heard it all before, and it was boring and politically illiterate the first time.
It's like they live in this secret little Guardian clique, circa 1977, where anything that isn't a complete fit with their world view can be ignored or booed at with about as much intellectual bravura as the typical audience response to a drag queen at a pantomime.
And I bet they're the kind of people that whenever the Guardian does step out of its (actually pretty narrow) political comfort zone, treat it as some kind of personal betrayal. "I can't think what the Guardian is doing interviewing this scientist who supports animal testing." Surprise surprise! It's part of the free press, not some Laura Ashley era Pravda.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Guardian and I read it, although not to the exclusion of all other newspapers. But any misconceptions that it's the holy grail of investigative journalism and the voice of all reason should be mocked and spat at.
I could, of course, just not read the comments pages, but...oh there's another story. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 23rd, 2007|11:01 pm] |
Did I forget to tell you all about THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING TO HAPPEN THIS YEAR SO FAR?
On New Year's Day, my younger sister, who regularly makes me weep with pride, gave birth to a baby girl. You can see pictures (oh for goodness sake, have I been away this long? I can't even find the LJ tags guide on the help page, let alone remember them). So the link is below in cut and paste. Still a luddite.
www.projectcolo.org.uk/~malky/sarah/ |
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| Grumpy and grown up |
[Jan. 17th, 2007|11:17 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  grumpy | ] |
I hate being a grown up. I hate being the one who remembers to put the recycling out on Wednesday nights, the one who empties and cleans out the compost bin or cleans the fridge, the one who calls up Telewest, remembers that the heating's still on at 11pm.
A friend of my flatmate saw me bumming around in my tracksuit bottoms the other day on a kettle run from my laptop and asked: "When do you go back to work?"
"I've been back at work since 3rd January."
"Oh, I thought you were, like, freelance or something."
"No, I work a sixty hour week for a politician and on top of that, I do some freelance writing when I can get it."
"Oh. Cool."
Not cool, actually. More like embarrassing. This is how rent, bills, credit cards and loans get paid off when you live in London. Get used to it, trust fund girl.
There's a great scene in the Long Kiss Goodnight where Geena Davis's character, who's reverting to her government assassin persona screams at her daughter: "Life is hard. Life is pain." It's a sentiment that in my more grumpy, grown up(or rather, childish and resentful) moods that I wallow in somewhat. Then I remember the other scene in that movie where she's driving a juggernaut screaming "Suck my dick!" And this cheers me up for a while. |
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| Drop those umbrellas, she's back |
[Jan. 16th, 2007|12:09 pm] |
Fuck a duck, I'm back. One home internet connection later and a day of ahem, "working from home" and I'm sliding gently into cyberspace like a, well, let's just leave that simile be, shall we?
I'll keep the explanation of my absence brief. New scary job as a speech writer. No fucking home internet and countless telewest related debacles (waiting for someone to fix the phone as I write). And I guess I haven't been feeling much like reaching out...difficult times, but then I'm not the only one.
Anyway, I'm back now. And to convince you (if any of you indeed still have me on your friends list after six months of silence) of my seriousness, I've even uploaded a userpic.
Now back to writing about childcare and the nanny state x |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 2nd, 2006|04:22 pm] |
It’s a meme thing for fellow linguaphiles. Pick three words you hate and explain why:
Facilitate
I don’t mind it in a “facilitate a workshop.” But I can’t bear it when people use it in a “facilitating business with government” type way. This is a just a nasty word. What’s wrong with “make easier,” or “do,” both of which it can mean and both of which are distinct.
Utilise
Same as above. It’s a posh way of saying “use” that implies an unnecessary level of (usually faux scientific) seriousness to absolutely everything. “You better utilise the washing-up gloves.” Suddenly, washing-up is something you need a degree in chemical engineering to attempt. “Utilise their skills in order to maximise their potential.” Or “utilize the trans-metabolic scalpel to slice through the inner coliopospic metatranceiver.” You already put lots of big, made-up words in that sentence to be absolutely sure us folks at home know that whatever’s happening is Very Serious Indeed. So “utilise” is really superfluous. Utilise use, please.
Businesswear
I kid you not. Relatively new entry that appeared on the DTI website this morning to describe recommended dress for a conference. Tear yourself away from the obvious Monty Python leap: “Business? Where??” and consider some of the practical implications. What on earth would you wear on a corporate away-day if you were told to wear businesswear (note alloneword) and how would you distinguish this from “smart” or business casual? I see a catwalk with hats made from recycled brief cases, skirts moulded from ancient amstrads, Gucci photocopiers…
Tagging ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pollitesss, charleston, moleintheground, charlottecooper |
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| Nudged |
[Jun. 2nd, 2006|01:36 pm] |
So I was nudged and here I am, back on the blogging trail. I’ll save you the boredom of wading through any listless explanations of my absence from cyber space by not saying much about it at all. At least for now.
The big news is that I am moving house. After six long years in Brixton, I’m lassoing my towel round the clock tower of Lambeth town hall and wire-sliding across the Thames to the leafy burbs of Stoke Newington (well, outskirts of Hackney, really, but I don’t want to upset my new flatmates by letting on that I know).
Nothing’s pushing me. It’s just time for a change. Living in the most densely populated borough of the UK (which, incidently, has the highest number of people diagnosed with mental health problems per capita) can only be “happening,” and “chilled out” and “colourful” (my personal favourite out of all the euphemisms white people use when they don’t want to mention there’s a lot of black people living here) for so long. So it’s goodbye Brockwell Park, hello Clissold Park. Goodbye Brixton Recreation Centre, hello the Castle Climbing Centre. Goodbye, Brixton market, hello Ridley Road. Goodbye, the Ritzy, hello Screen on the Green. Goodbye militant vegetarian flatmate, hello half-French fellow carnivore.
I move out on 1 July. I put up shelves in my new bedroom on 30 June. No more books on the floor for me now I’m north of the river.
And twenty minutes’ walk from the Round the World Train. Are you on my axis of evil? If so, expect a visit… |
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| Anyone know of any rooms going? |
[Feb. 15th, 2006|09:56 am] |
Hi All
A good friend of mine (male) is looking for a house share pretty sharpish. Anyone know of any rooms going? He's eminently respectable - gainfully employed as a teaching assistant - and a musician to boot as well.
thanks guys |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 9th, 2006|09:47 pm] |
My kind of meme. Tagged by jinty
1. Culinary
So many. Very rare steak with pommes-frites and sauce bearnaise. Anything involving the words lamb, rack and of. Dark chocolate. Pralines. Peanut butter. Yoghurt, sour cream and cottage cheese. Relishes and sauces, especially indian pickles. Fresh chillies. Big tiger prawns. Malt Whiskey. Coffee
2. Literary
Tamora Pearce. Anything else that involves girls fighting evil. Gossip magazines. Reading Daily Mail headlines over people's shoulders on the tube
3. Audiovisual
Battlestar Gallactica. Watching repeats of Sex and the City, trashy American sitcoms like Will and Grace and Scrubs. And anything involving girls fighting evil (Buffy).
4. Musical
Folk music. Evita (oh Lord, I know not what I do). And, ahem, Madonna
5. Celebrity
Anjelina Jolie. I just LOVE her
tagging the_beanio, mzdt, charleston |
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| Those Cartoons |
[Feb. 8th, 2006|11:35 am] |
Is it just me, or is it impossible to say anything remotely sensible about those cartoons? If you protest the right to freedom of speech, then you are immediately pigeon-holed (particularly by the blairites, who, we’d do well to remember aren’t all that keen on freedom of speech these days) as an Islamaphobe. But if you complain that they are offensive (not to mention a bit crap) then you’re assaulting one of the fundamental principals of Western democracy (you know, the one we’re currently trying to legislate out of existence). I have never felt so bereft of a sensible political vocabulary.
I have looked at the cartoons in question. And some of them are indeed offensive. And any newspaper with any sense would have known that publishing them could be inflammatory, though I would argue that this is not a reason not to publish them (pardon the double negative). But the thing that struck me most about them is that they’re not very good. Offensive can be funny. Offensive can be clever. These cartoons are neither. In fact, their crassness is such that they deserve about as much attention as the doodles I used to draw on my A level notes files. Which is a shame really, considering how many great cartoonists there are who don’t get published in newspapers, let alone reproduced a million times over on the internet and in newspapers and magazines across the world. |
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| Full Stop |
[Feb. 6th, 2006|02:39 pm] |
Many of you will have seen the advert by now. Thousands of women marching out of their offices, factories, supermarkets, homes, united in protest. What is this? Is feminism finally making a mainstream comeback? Perhaps these sisters are campaigning about the pay gap (still over 18% in this country last time I looked), or on rape (one in every six women last time I looked) or on domestic violence (one in three women last time I looked)? But no. These women are outraged because one in five of them are apparently let down by their sanitary towels every month. According to leading manufacturer Always (parent company: Procter & Gamble, net earnings worldwide for 2005 in excess of $7 billion).( Read more... )
More information at www.mooncup.co.uk and www.menses.co.uk on keepers and menstrual cups
For re-usable sanitary towels try www.lunarpads.com
Full list and further information at http://www.wen.org.uk/sanpro/Suppliers.htm |
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| Not quite an omlette and a glass of wine |
[Jan. 26th, 2006|09:00 pm] |
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A day of minor irritations. Was so engrossed in my book, nearly missed my stop at Victoria this morning. In the subsequent fumblings to get off in time, lost a glove. A brand new stripey glove. Then, as it's Thursday, I popped in at the off licence to get myself my Thursday night bottle of wine (it's my new treat - two glasses of good wine on a Thursday night, the rest left to my flatmate)on my way home. Debit card rejected because I have no money in my account until pay day on Tuesday. No matter, use my credit card. Indulgent, maybe but it hasn't been a great day, so never mind. Get home and open my £8 bottle of wine only to discover it's corked. And just to add insult to injury, foolishly decided to cook my omlette in my new non-stick frying pan instead of my trusty cast iron number. And it stuck. I just hope I get my period soon. One more trivial domestic incident (say, the telly going on the blink during ER?) and I'm a machete away from a maniac. |
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| Alison Bechdel talk - plug! |
[Jan. 11th, 2006|11:05 am] |
*Pleasures, Sorrows and Ironies: Cartooning the personal and the political*
A roundtable discussion with leading American strip-cartoonist Alison
Bechdel also featuring Kate Charlesworth, Jacky Fleming, Suzy Varty and
Kate Evans. With Carol Bennett of Knockabout Comics in the chair.
Jointly organised by The Cartoon Museum and the Centre for Law, Gender
and Sexuality at the University of Kent.
Date: 1st February 2006
Time: 6.30-8.00 pm
Venue: The University of Westminster, Fyvie Hall, 309 Regent Street,
London W1.
Nearest tube: Oxford Circus
For further information, and to book a place, please contact Emily Grabham on e.grabham@kent.ac.uk. Places are limited, so please book as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. |
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| Two questions |
[Jan. 8th, 2006|02:33 am] |
1) How fucking stupid are people to be running around like headless chickens about the non-event that is David Cameron? This is the guy that wrote the tory manifesto of the last election and directed the campaign. Remember? "It's not racist to talk about immigration limits even though we've whipped the daily mail reading public into a nazi-like fervour." However endearing he looks in his cagool riding on his bicycle into work, remember he's the guy that voted against almost every sound environmental policy ever. Now, if I can see these things, surely Labour and the Lib Dems can. Folks, for the sake of all that's good (or rather, all that's moderately better than the worse case scenario), lay off the self-destruct button.
2)How come all my ex-boyfriends, even (nay particularly) the really inappropriate ones, seem to be in long-term relationships? |
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| It's 2006 |
[Jan. 2nd, 2006|09:32 am] |
Because apparently you are more likely to make things happen if you write them down (oh, Andy-of-the-lists-and-diary, how you'd laugh to read this from me) these are my goals for 2006. I'm not going to call them resolutions because that always implies things you'll not do rather than things you will do.( Read more... )
These are all to some extent base on two of the major things I've learnt this year: life is short and people don't last for ever. Lots of people have said that after the horrific events of 2005, I deserve a good year. I probably do, but I don't have any right to have expectations of what will happen. All I can do is make the most of what's within my control and love and create accordingly.
Oh, and I did start the year off in style, dancing my little socks off (who am I kidding? gold ballet pumps and footless tights more like)until 7am in the morning.
Happy New Year everyone |
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