Grasping the bottom rung

An ambiguous blog title but an unambiguous excitement - I have been given a provisional mortgage offer and am ready to start house hunting. I couldn't sleep last night: I feel elated and nervous and under-confident and fool-hardy. Today I have been looking online in earnest. It's a strange sensation - something I always envisaged I would do eventually is actually happening. Now. It's nothing like I imagined: I'm looking on my own to buy on my own, funding it on my own and, amazingly, it feels absolutely fanfuckingtastic.

Better still, after a wait of several months, I'm going to the Hammersmith Apollo tonight to see the god of modernity, Rufus Wainwright, strut his funky gay stuff. Emily C-A and I are sitting in row 7 of the circle but have convinced ourselves that we might be able to turn him if we are glamorous enough and the spotlight comes our way. Wish me luck.

Modern life is rubbish

After yesterday's serious entry, I'm sure today is a good time for light relief. So it is apt that I have some major feminist campaigning to do - always a barrel jam-packed with laughs.

The gap between women's and men's pay is still fairly hideous - on average, full time working women are paid 17% less an hour, or around £4000 per year less than men. That's equivalent to men being paid for 365 days' work while women work for free from today, 30 October, until the end of the year. With stats like that, it's depressing that so many women seem content to put up with this continued inequality. I've written to my MP and my local paper - please click this link if you feel inspired to do something too.

While the mood is sombre, I'll mention that I saw an excellent film about Nazi concentration camps last night. On the way in, the box office attendant asked us if we were aware that The Counterfeiters was a German film. We were. I asked if he had to ask that about all subtitled movies or just German ones. He laughed politely. There's not much new stuff that can be done with concentration camp films - the horror has been recorded extremely well many times before - but it doesn't really matter. We forget so quickly and need to be reminded as often as possible. This was an intelligent and political film made by Germans and I recommend it.

What's genuinely funny? Not the fact that our Royal Family are rewarding Saudi Arabia's appalling behaviour with lavish parties. And not the news that the talented journalist, Dina Ravinovitch, has died from breast cancer aged 44. It's all a bit rough.

What was fractionally embarrassing was being too hot for make-up after doing sprints at the gym with Laura yesterday afternoon and so deciding to go without until I'd stopped 'glowing' - and then accidentally leaving my make-up bag at work and having to meet my ex sans foundation, eyeliner or - crucially - bronzer. Not that I was trying to impress Luke but it would have been nice to turn up looking alright rather than like a pasty, washed out 30 year old with semi-washed-off green eyeliner smeared into my burgeoning crows' feet.

Female inequality at work, the Holocaust, Saudi Arabia's human rights record, breast cancer and an absurdly self-absorbed anecdote about cosmetics. Where else can you get such an inappropriate and unrepresentative cross-section of contemporary existence? Until next time...

A Few Lessons

Management-speak seems to find that the noun ‘lesson’ is inadequate and has replaced it with a new bastardisation of the verb ‘to learn’, as in ‘What learnings can we take from this meeting?’ It drives me mental and I have previously felt very superior to such office gimps – but then I caught myself almost titling this blog ‘A Few Learnings’ and then felt suicidal. How quickly it seeps in…

I’ve had an interesting few days and feel like I’m on a strange new path. In a good way. On Saturday I went to The Institute of Ideas’ third annual Battle of Ideas – a weekend of talks with a broadly liberal theme. Assuming you didn’t fork out £45 to attend, I’ll give you the choicest nuggets from each of the four talks I attended.

Talk 1 was ‘Demonising Parents’ about how mummy and daddy are on the receiving end of a lot of blame, from lunchbox contents to story time, and how crippling this can be. My favourite comment from this session was on a grammatical issue when one speaker pointed out that ‘parent’ is a noun. The verb form (ie. ‘parenting’) is a relatively recent development; the verb used to be ‘child-rearing’ and the speaker made the point that the focus has largely shifted from the child to the parent – a lexical example of how language echoes our culture. Gripping?

Talk 2 was Eat, Drink and Be Merry: Banned, all about how everything is too regulated and we’re victims of a nanny state who won’t let us smoke or have any fun. The arguments usually run that healthy, clean living types shouldn’t have to pay their taxes so that irresponsible libertines can go to the NHS to have their problems solved. But really, where do you draw the line between self-inflicted illness and the other? The ‘learning’ here was that, before any new legislation is passed, we need to ask ourselves, ‘Is this law worth the loss of freedom that will occur as a result?’ – the implicit answer being, of course, ‘No.’ What was interesting was looking throughout British history and seeing that there were clearly defined periods of libertinism versus periods of dramatic self-flagellation and we’re obviously firmly in one of the latter. Can’t wait for the tide to turn – hopefully I’ll still be able to walk.

Talk 3 was The Resurrection of Religion: Moving Beyond Secularism or Losing Faith in Politics? And weirdly, even though this is probably more my ‘area’, I slightly flagged at this point. I think the highlight for me was the discussion of faith schools – one speaker made the point that if one were to insert the word ‘politics’ in place of ‘faith’ and imagine an institution where one political leaning was espoused and all others were demonised at worst, barely tolerated at best and where certain texts were banned while others were held up as unassailably true – well, we’d never allow it. Religious followers on the panel held that religion and politics could not be equated but I’m not so sure… Ooh, the other gripping thing was that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in blood transfusions – and don’t allow their children to have them. As a liberal atheist, that’s pretty hard to take – but should we step in or is it their right to make such decisions on the part of their children? Surely the latter – if only because legislating on such an issue would open a vast can of worms that could only end in Big Brother disaster.

Talk 4 was my favourite. Rethinking Immigration: The Unheard Debate covered a huge and persuasive area – kicking off with a statistic that surprised me: apparently only 3% of the world’s population live outside their birth country. One of the speakers put a convincing case for opening all borders and allowing totally free immigration worldwide, something that, in my ignorance, I’d never even considered before. They also argued comprehensively against using a points system to predict who will be a useful addition to a country, citing the examples that Barack Obama’s father was a goatherd and that Sergei Brin, the founder of Google, was a first generation migrant to the US from Russia.

As a bonus, I also caught the tail end of Age of the Metropolis: What is the Future of Cities? and heard this gem: ‘If you would dare to know, live in a city. If you would rather be known, but not know, live in a village.’ Brilliant.

I had planned to go to a triple bill of French films at Riverside Studios last night but felt so virtuous after Saturday’s knowledge-fest that I ended up watching a video of the X Factor and eating Skippy peanut butter off a knife. You win some, you lose some.

An unexpected letter

Dear Miss M,

Thank you for your letter. I was very sorry that your father had hurt his tooth on a stone found in his Tesco Sultanas. I know how upsetting this must have been.

I'd like to assure you that we take health and well being of our customers very seriously. We've procedures in place to prevent anything getting into our products that shouldn't be there. I don't know why this happened, however, I've now told our suppliers about this.

I'm very sorry this has happened and have enclosed a £20.00 Tesco Moneycard with my compliments.

Thank you for letting us know about this.

Yours sincerely,
Elaine Macdonald

My father says he is disappointed by Tesco's offering but I have pointed out that if he'd really wanted several hundred pounds, he should have written the complaint letter himself.

My reaction upon reading the missive was to feel intense guilt and pity for Elaine. Then I remembered that I spent yesterday morning telephoning a European Hilton, where my boss had recently stayed, and asking the housekeeping department whether they had found a protein shake in the minibar which had been accidentally left there. I felt exceptionally lucky to be able to approach this situation with the superior experience I have gained through both of my degrees. Miraculously, when I phoned back Pilar from the housekeeping department a few hours later, I found that they had indeed managed to retrieve the shake and that they are keeping it cool until my boss next returns to the hotel. When I reflect on this and the other crucial events that make up my day, suddenly Elaine and I don't seem so many worlds apart.

Ummm.

I'm stuck. I'm almost lost for words - but it's not that dramatic. I just have nothing of interest to write. I've looked at the news and although the stories are important, I'm not fuming about any of them. Last night I tutored a small and adorable kid in English - that was fun but not much to write home about there. No major public transport incidents to report - although this morning I did sit next to a woman who coughed solidly for the entire thirty minute journey from Hammersmith to King's Cross. I wrapped my scarf around my face, turned my face away from her and tried to breathe shallowly to minimise inhalation but if I don't catch something I'll eat my hat, scarf and treasured striped Benetton wristwarmers. People like that should be quarantined/imprisoned on a more permanent basis. It's so unbelievably selfish - I was almost at the point where I felt the onset of hatred. But really, overall, nothing to report, nothing rantworthy, nothing of note. Maybe it's because I'm in a good mood - perhaps I'm only inspired by vitriol. That's certainly something to discuss in therapy...

Inheritance lax

Last night I stepped onto the Piccadilly Line train and saw that some nice traveller had purchased a bag or box of chicken wings, eaten them in transit, and kindly left a pile of greasy bones on the floor in the corner of the carriage. Charming. The diversity of London is the source of its magic and I am prepared to take the rough with the smooth – but this was pretty rough.

Today I am very excited about Nick Clegg. To counter that excitement, I am very nervous about Turkey and Iraq. On both counts, I’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m sure all individuals have wondered how it is possible that, given all their many differences, they are related to their parents. Despite fairly conclusive photographic evidence to the contrary, I myself wonder about my origins. My father doubted the facts of our relationship only last weekend, when I clarified that my lack of interest in the rugby World Cup final was not due to a specific problem with rugby but merely a mild disdain for all sporting events that presumably arises from the fact that I am not remotely competitive, finding losing deeply unfun and winning awkward and embarrassing. ‘How can you say such a thing?!’ he admonished with disbelief. ‘Life is about winning! You’ve got to kill to live! Living is killing!’ The irony of this oxymoron was lost on him. Oxymorons – they’re like buses. You don’t get one for ages and then two come along at once…

At the other end of the spectrum, one only need glance at our kitchen to question how my mother and I are connected. Where my CDs are alphabetised and sectioned with purpose-bought dividers, our kitchen is arranged in an hilarious chaos. We have two fridges – one large and one small, the latter inherited with the house. The small fridge, you might think, would perhaps be a good drinks fridge or similar themed area. But no. In the small fridge we have: lunch items such as cottage cheese and olives; lunch meats e.g. chorizo; current milk; orange juice with bits; eggs; lemons (but no other fruit); salad vegetables and catfood. In the large fridge, we have: other dairy such as yoghurt and cream; jams and condiments; smooth orange juice and other juices; spare milk; wine; sun-dried tomatoes; coffee; vegetables that aren’t salad vegetables eg. carrots; apples (but no other fruit) and meat that is not lunch meat e.g. chicken breasts. In my mother’s defence, she has stuck fairly rigidly to this crazy system since the two fridge dilemma arose and now the three of us can navigate between the areas with relative ease.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could pick which bits of your parents you inherited? I’d have my mum’s figure and hair circa 1967, my dad’s vocabulary and mental arithmetic skills, his dexterity and DIY talents, my mum’s c’est la vie attitude, her accepting nature which takes people as they are and my dad’s asbestos hands. In return, I’d gladly relinquish the rickety knees, varicose vein potential and the snoring. And I’d like to keep my own teeth.

Blog-writer Jane in acerbic anti-celeb culture rant

Really, I should probably accept that I hate the existing free London papers and stop going on about them. But last night, the front page of ‘thelondonpaper’ took my breath away. And not in a good way.

The principal headline is probably excusable, although I could take issue with it if required. In truth, the area to which I wanted to draw attention was the banner above the headline. Two stories are flagged up with a blue background, one with red. The red story concerns sport, while the two blue stories are purportedly news. And in the opinion of the paper’s editor, what are the two most attention-grabbing stories in the entire paper, after those on the front page? Well, we have the revelation that sunglasses are ‘Hot, even in winter’, illustrated by a picture of Nicole Ritchie sporting a pair of oversized frames that look like remedial ones Harry Potter might wear if he had conjunctivitis. We are informed that we can read more about this gripping story on page eight, but effectively, it seems that the breaking news is: celebrities wear sunglasses all year round! Allow me to catch my breath.

But even that nugget wasn’t the most jaw-dropping page element. What made me really squirm was the story on the left-hand side of the banner. It reads: ‘BB’s Charley in amazing club brawl’ and even typing it makes me feel nauseated. Firstly, if you have to preface a supposed celeb with their origin, they’re not famous enough for the front page. Headlines featuring real celebs don’t read ‘The Royal Family’s Queen in Corgi chaos’, ‘Popstar Britney watches Corrie’ or ‘Football’s David Beckham spells word correctly’. These people don’t need explanations; but one of the ‘characters’ from this summer’s series of Big Brother, Charley, absolutely does – and for this reason, she shouldn’t be flagged up on page one in the first place.

However, I might forgive this editorial error if Charley’s news had been of remote importance or interest to the wider public. Clearly, it is no small task to make a value judgement about what the public view – or should view – as important or of interest. But this is the job of an editor. And the editor of thelondonpaper has decided that a young girl having a fight outside a nightclub is not only newsworthy, not only front-page news, but should be described using the word ‘amazing’ – a word meaning ‘surprising greatly; inspiring awe or admiration or wonder’. Does the editor seriously want to imply that bitch fighting is worthy of awe? I have a big problem with that use of adjective.

I also have a big problem with celebrity journalism but as long as it’s treated as vapid rubbish, I can swallow my rage. It’s when it is dressed up as news that I get worried. If you believe that the papers are merely reporting what people want to read, then you believe the editor is blamelessly doing his job. But I believe that the media – and perhaps the free press in particular – have more of a duty to their readers than that. I know there will always be celebs and there will always be people who are interested in their lives. But celeb culture is only one way of living and if London’s free press choose to promote BB’s Charley and sunglasses instead of, for example, the scary situation between the Turks and the Kurds or the search for a new LibDem leader then, not for the first time, I fear for future generations. Blimey, it’s exhausting being serious.

Chair today, gone tomorrow?

Sigh. Back again for another Monday. Goodness this cycle feels repetitive. Note to self: book some time in the sun as a matter of some urgency. And start house hunting.

After work on Friday I went out for a couple of drinks with Laura and some oxymoronic nice bankers. One of them casually mentioned that someone might be quitting our office and I seized this opportunity to enquire about stealing the leaver’s Aeron chair. Aeron chairs are debatably the most comfortable office seat on earth. I first became aware of them when I read about their evolution in The Wisdom of Crowds (recommended) and first saw one in the flesh/webbing when I started working here in March. There are a few Aerons smattered around the trading floor but supply is limited to around 50%. The rest of us are forced to make do with Eighties chairs with limited lumbar support that cause me to slouch down into a semi-reclined state, making me look both permanently hungover and fat. Not a look I want to cultivate.

There followed a lengthy discussion about the best procedure for bagging oneself an Aeron. Naturally, the simplest method would be to order one from the catalogue but things are never simple and due to current internal cost-cutting attempts, such profligacy is inadvisable. The only solution is to keep one’s ear to the ground and, the moment someone quits or is forced to leave, politely pounce upon their chair before their buttock indentations have faded.

Complex Aeron-related sagas are the cause of much office bitterness. My companions had a wealth of stories to tell about their own Aeron grabs – in one case, precise dates and times from 2005 were provided when someone went on three months’ leave and their chair was stolen while they were away. Another gentleman on his way out was packing a few belongings into a box when a colleague brazenly wheeled away his chair and then returned a few moments later to drag out the five foot pot plant that had been sitting in the corner by his desk. With such hard-nosed tacticians surrounding me, something tells me my wait for an Aeron may be a long one.

Following post-work drinks on Friday I met my friend, Nick, at the National Portrait Gallery, where we felt uncomfortable among those enjoying brightly-lit end-of-week jazz in the ticket foyer and then improved our minds in an exhibition of twentieth century British press photography (also recommended).

Over dinner later on, Nick reminded me that I had once interviewed the ex-pop group, A1, and had asked the band’s alleged hunk, Ben, whether he would genetically modify kittens and puppies to stay baby sized if he could. I had completely forgotten ever writing or asking this insightful question but I wasn’t surprised: it is clearly a recurring theme for me as it’s an issue that still troubles me today.

Of course, on a practical level, I would go mental if someone tampered with nature in that way, but I do feel strongly that, given that around 98% of the motivation for acquiring a cat or dog is that they start off as a kitten or a puppy, and given also that the ratio of kitten/puppyhood to grown cat/doghood, over the course of a lifetime, is approximately 1:16 in cats and about 1:18 in dogs, it would arguably be for the greater good if they could stay small and fluffy for a bit longer. Surely this isn’t beyond the reaches of modern science? It would certainly slow the incidences of pets abandoned after a few months. The slogan isn’t ‘A puppy’s for life, not just for Christmas’ because no sane person abandons puppies. But the moment their legs lengthen, the little tail wags less, the head to body ratio shrinks and the skin fits the body, we lose interest. Which is sad – yet maybe it will be the catalyst for something really wonderful. Perhaps those scientists could use their knowledge for good, just this once. Forget working on disease cures that are clearly pipe dreams and put their time to the modification of domestic pets into a permanently juvenile state. Now that would be time well spent – and, in a major PR coup, I already have the backing of Ben from A1. Who’s with us?

Cults, coughs, comedy and the countdown

Not that Laura’s drama wasn’t electrifying, but I’ve just remembered what I meant to write about yesterday: on Wednesday evening I bumped into a guy I used to be friends with at Bristol. That’s not the story – bear with me. It had been around a decade since I’d last seen him and we had rather an awkward, red-faced reunion while we were waiting for a Piccadilly Line train at King’s Cross and had to calculate whether we were just going to say hello quickly, reinsert our earphones and move on, or stay with each other for the duration of our onward journey. Just then, London Transport made our decision – the train arrived and we were committed.

Taking seats opposite each other in the commuter-filled carriage, we tried to catch up without sounding too stabbable to the surrounding audience. It was a little tense until Luke mentioned he was sworn off marriage to life, after his ‘nightmare’. I had heard talk of this but never knew the details. His wife of a couple of years had, apparently, been swept away by a cult, a group loosely affiliated to Scientology. Pah, I don’t know why they deserve a capital letter… loosely affiliated to scientology. Her family is rich and famous and her parents believe that she was targeted for her wealth. The first time she disappeared, she was found in Miami after a three week international manhunt. She returned home for six months and then evaporated again – and hasn’t been seen since. Apparently the marriage was on the rocks anyway so my friend didn’t seem too distraught but the story in itself is gripping and ripe for a full-length retelling. Bagsy.

What else is news? Everyone, but everyone seems to be revoltingly ill. So far I have only felt like I was on the threshold of developing a cold and haven’t yet succumbed to an actual illness. But it can only be a matter of hours before one of the billions of uncovered coughs and sneezes I must have inadvertently inhaled over the past few weeks does its job.

Last night I went with Katherine and others to the BBC to watch my old university ‘pal’ (and when I say ‘pal’, in truth I mean ‘person who might, with assistance, recall that he used to know me vaguely a long time ago, but I wouldn’t hold your breath’) Marcus Brigstocke presenting his weekly show, The Late Edition, which goes out live at 10:30pm on BBC4 to an audience of eight. I fully expected to seethe with the combination of disgust and envy that I exhibit so frequently but in fact he was skilled and impressive and I couldn’t have done it. He did, though, use a joke which he used in his stand-up set at Bristol which inexplicably made me feel a bit superior.

Not long now 'til the weekend and two consecutive days of relaxation and sleep debt consolidation. TGIF.

Elf Harm

There I was, complaining about having nothing to do, and suddenly I’m in a whirlwind with muchos office work to do (still unexciting, but in a much larger quantity) plus carefully worded and brilliant emails to construct and send to fun non-work people. It’s good because the day has neutrally flown by but it’s bad because I have empathised with the nagging sense of abandonment that you, my Faithful, must have been experiencing.

Rest assured, you’ve missed very little. In fact, I was struggling to think of a topic until Laura thanked me for not yet mentioning the fact that she got her pants rolled up into her tights in the loo the other day and almost had to rip her way out of them. After a few minutes she was in a state of some panic and sent me back to her desk drawer to find her spare pair, but by the time I returned she’d managed to disentangle herself. This incident may sound remarkable to any male readers and, in fact, even I struggle to imagine how it happens – but happen it does. Laura is not the first victim. I think it’s the underwear equivalent of the Headphone Wire Elf, who, as we all know, lives in our bag or pocket and, the minute we put our iPod or Walkman away, out of sight, he emerges to weave the headphones into a complex and impregnable knot that takes at least 45 minutes to unpick. The elf’s motives are unknown but his existence is unquestionable. Perhaps there is a similar elf in Laura’s pants. On that bombshell, I’m going back to work.

Walk or web?

It is possibly slightly shameful that, when I dropped my laptop onto my bare right foot yesterday morning before work, I was more concerned about whether or not I’d broken my computer than whether or not I would be able to walk without crutches. The pain was excruciating but my priorities lay elsewhere. A brief incident, admittedly, but a frank symbol of my continued internet slavishness.

News just online is that 49% of secondary schools in the UK are rated ‘satisfactory’ or below, with ‘satisfactory’ roughly equal to ‘not good enough’. This raises several hundred questions but the one rattling loudest around my almost-empty skull involves the concept of ‘good’ when it comes to schooling. I have no doubt that my (expensive) education would have fallen into the ‘excellent’ category. In the year that I took my A Levels, we were top of the small schools league table, with something like 98% A-C grades. In addition to the academic sphere, we had excellent drama and music facilities, relatively pleasant surroundings, myriad opportunities and I made several friendships there that may last a lifetime.

But in conversations over the past few years with some schoolmates, we have admitted that our education was not all it was cracked up to be. Yes – most of us left at 18 with top grades and flew into excellent universities. Like racehorses, we had been trained how to pass exams but, when released into the wild, had about as many survival skills as Red Rum in the New Forest. Our general knowledge sucked big time – mine is still a source of almost daily embarrassment. It was only when I took my MA in 05/06 that I learned anything about major political and ideological concepts. Our geography is, almost without exception, appalling. Our historical knowledge concentrated on particular periods defined by the exam syllabi – outside the Second World War and the Trades Union Act I had huge swathes of murky half-knowledge that, over a decade later, is only just starting to brighten. Politically, we had no clue, although it’s possible to argue that we weren’t missing much.

My point, and I’m fully aware that it’s not a new one, is that good grades do not equal a good education. I fear that we suffered because we were girls – because, both at school and at home with our families, we were not expected to have opinions and knowledge in the same way that boys were. This may be massively over-simplistic, but I’m not alone in having these suspicions. Exams should remain a part of education, of course: I’m fully up for the International Baccalaureate which pushes six or seven subjects at 18 rather than three or four – this would help provide a bit more breadth to young adults. But there’s a lot more to life than exams – and until the league tables take other things into account other than grades, the system of judging education will be unhelpful and ultimately negative, breeding more generations of miserable failures versus swots who’ve cribbed exam essay titles to regurgitate at speed – but who couldn’t name the leaders of the three major political parties, or tell you whether Elizabeth I was alive at the same time as Shakespeare without watching a Tom Stoppard film. Which is how I worked it out.

Low ebb

It is no secret that I'm a fraction under-stimulated at work. But last night, when my parents asked me to write a letter for them during my inevitable downtime, I knew I'd reached new lows. In my heart of hearts, I hoped that today would throw up some kind of distraction and that I would be too busy to sink to this - but no. It's not even lunchtime and I have already had so little to do that the parental chore was unavoidable. I hope you, The Faithful, will feel my pain:

Tesco Customer Service
PO Box 73
Baird Avenue
Dryburgh Industrial Estate
Dundee
DD1 9NF

16 October 2007

Dear Sir / Madam,

Please find enclosed an empty packet of Tesco sultanas and the rock / pebble that my father found within it last night. Sadly he did not spot the offending pebble on its way to his mouth, but only became aware of its presence among the sultanas when he crunched down on it, very nearly breaking one or more of his teeth.

In your defence, the offending stone does very closely resemble a sultana in appearance – but rest assured, in texture and solidity, the two items are most certainly poles apart.

As you will understand, this was an unpleasant moment for my father and he is keen that your system of sultana collection is perhaps revisited so that this situation will be less likely to occur in future.

In the meantime, I’m sure you will understand if we are slightly reticent to purchase sultanas, or indeed any other dried fruit produce, from Tesco’s in the near future.

Kind regards...
Enc.

Monday update

Sigh… another week… A slightly heavier weekend than I’ve experienced for a wee while and the addition of my winter, 13.5 tog duvet and clean sheets to my bed meant that dragging myself from under the increased weighty warmth was even more of a repellent prospect this morning.

Still, miraculously I made it – and managed to reach my office without significant incident. Last Friday I spent the entire journey from Hammersmith to work on the tube sitting next to a large(ish) spider which was absolutely paralysing – I couldn’t pick it up and was too embarrassed to ask anyone else to move it, and it just sat there cleaning its legs and not walking very far for approximately forty minutes. Every now and then it made a start as if setting off on an expedition, at which point I would try to shuffle away from it a tad, while trying to maintain a commuter-friendly distance from the passenger to my right, but mostly it just sat there, while I sat looking at it, listening to my iPod and convinced that if I even looked away for a nano-second it would run up the sleeve of my coat and I would have a heart attack and die.

I had a delightful weekend – a few drinks post-work with Laura and a couple of others on Friday to carry on the birthday festivities, and then an evening of love on Saturday to celebrate Suzannah’s engagement to Jack. A few of us from our choir went along to croon a selection of cheesy numbers and get the party in the mood but pre-performance sight-reading is never too good for my singing ego and personally I think we might have benefited from a fraction more rehearsal. Ultimately, however, no one was really listening as they were all waiting for the rugby to start and panicking that we were going to start singing Mozart’s C Minor Mass and force them to stand up interminably.

After our songs had been sung, the choir contingent visibly relaxed, arranged ourselves by the canapé release area for the richest pickings, drank more than our fair share of Champagne and sang along noisily and (unbearably) in harmony to Uptown Girl – so strange how that always seems so funny when I’m with choir people and yet, just hours later, can send me into paroxysms of shame and regret.

After the party, I trotted back to Hammersmith to catch the last bus home but, despite my inebriation, was still stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of the station’s newest artery fattenerr. Words fail me when I look at their sign. Oven & Grilled Snack Bar? Is that like a roasted Tracker? Or have they put the entire eaterie under the grill? Or does the ‘Oven & Grilled’ not refer to the snack bar? In which case, to what is it referring? Not the coffee? Do they grill coffee now? I know I shouldn’t care. I know that I especially shouldn’t care after midnight and many glasses of Champagne. But I did, and I do, and that’s the way it is.

Yesterday I remembered what it was like to wake up the morning after drinking way, way too much alcohol. I had a very gentle day featuring a lovely lunch at Katherine’s flat and then fell asleep watching a Bob Dylan documentary on BBC4. Perfect.

Fragment: consider revising

Lots to say today, especially given that I’ve recently returned from a delightful and festive birthday lunch for Laura. I am now back at my desk, very chatty and slightly redder of cheek – and hopefully working slash blogging capably and without (noticeable) error.

In general, I’m not a fan of The Times newspaper, but this dislike is largely to do with vague, indiscriminate political issues rather than any precise gripe. However, through my morning haze on the tube this morning, I noticed a front page headline that sparked a specific degree of irritation. The headline read as follows: ‘Children who can’t write their own name’. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but this isn’t news. Strictly speaking, it isn’t even a sentence. When typed into Microsoft Word, it is underlined in green and the right mouse-click reveals the beloved grammar hint, ‘Fragment: consider revising’. Children who can’t write their own name what? Should be culled? Are well thick innit? Exist in their thousands south of the equator? I know I’m being pedantic but if you can’t get news from a front page headline on one of the UK’s most popular papers, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

The story to which The Times ‘journalist’ was referring was that young children today are, apparently, woefully ill-educated – while The Guardian and this morning’s Today programme were covering the news that primary age children are stressed to the point of severe anxiety by the sheer quantity of exams they have to sit in addition to the daily threats of terrorism and local crime. Which is it to be, lads? Are they overworked or under-taught? Or both? In a shocking revelation, some pupils, reported a Guardian journalist, “said the tests were ‘scary’ and made them nervous”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not into terrorising six year olds, but surely an element of school must be about attaining goals. If parents want their kids to spend their formative years wafting around making collages out of leaves or creating wonky music using bongo drums and those miniature cymbals that everyone always coveted at junior school, then that’s fine as long as they’re then prepared to accept ‘children who can’t write their own name’ – and, presumably, sub-editors who can’t formulate a grammatical headline. Or maybe there's some middle ground. Meh, I knew I should have watched BBC Breakfast - they would have been seated firmly on the fence.

In actual news, Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his film, An Inconvenient Truth, less than a day after a British high court judge ruled that it could only be taught in schools as long as there were written guidance notes to accompany it that represented the other viewpoints. What was really adorable was this note that was written at the bottom of The Grauniad’s online coverage: “Friday October 12 2007. A panel in the article above listing the significant errors found by a high court judge in Al Gore's documentary on global warming was labelled The nine points, but contained only eight. The point we omitted was that the film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist". The missing point has been added.” Of course, it’s pure hypocrisy for me to find errors in The Guardian adorable and lynch The Times for theirs, but c’est la vie.

Finally, I note that there has been some unexpectedly good news for the hospital chief responsible for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells hospitals, the trust that was recently accused of causing the deaths of more than 90 patients over a two year period: she was given a quarter of a million pounds to quit. I’m going to kill 90 bankers and see if they offer me £250k to resign. Whaddya reckon? Fingers crossed that some mentalist doesn’t actually go on a shooting spree in the next week as this entry might make me a suspect. I didn’t do it, honest guv’nor. Happy weekend.

Double entry blog-keeping

Apologies to the weeping masses who briefly interrupted yesterday's Facebook session to investigate my most recent musings only to find me temporarily absent from the online vicinity. I took a last-minute day off work and somehow going on the internet and being funny wasn’t quite so appealing when I wasn’t bored to near-death in a small glass box but instead had a large double bed in which to loaf, crisp Egyptian cotton sheets and a goose down duvet under which to slumber and a frisky black and white cat with whom to chat.

Sadly I am still slightly insane with sleep deprivation today, but more of that later.

For now, I would like to discuss an incident that occurred last eve. I had planned to go to dinner with Astrid, my friend from choir. We were going to have a long-overdue catch-up and rehearse the music that we will be singing at an engagement party on Saturday night. Helpfully, Astrid emailed me details of her address in advance of my departure from home, to assist me in finding her abode within Greater London’s labyrinthine sprawl. As I chatted to my mum before I left home, I went online and carefully transcribed Astrid’s address onto a small piece of scrap paper. Five or ten minutes later, as I was driving across Hammersmith Bridge, I knew with a rare level of certainty that I had left the scrap of paper on the sofa.

This is unlike me – but not unprecedented. What was really quite unfortunate was the realisation that came to me instantly following the scrap of paper realisation: that I had also left my mobile phone on my bed.

I was pretty sure that I could remember Astrid’s address as Flat 11, building number 5. I knew the street name. Fine, I thought. But on arrival at her road, building 5 only had eight flats. I was stumped. I didn’t know Astrid’s phone number. The only course of action was to walk to a payphone, call my mother and ask her to read the details down the phone: one of those not-so-rare times that living with parents is unbelievably handy.

I confidently trotted down Notting Hill Gate towards the distant payphone, trying to remember when I’d last used one and reflecting nostalgically upon boarding school weekends spent sitting queuing in a badly-decorated corridor to phone some spotty and doubtless unworthy toff at another school in another county. Last night, the phonebox was largely as I remembered them to be, but the phone itself was rather more high-tech, offering facilities to send emails, texts, and pay for calls by card or coin. Allegedly. The coin slot was jammed and the card slot didn’t register the insertion of either of my offerings. Sighing, I pushed open the door and went into the adjacent booth – but the myriad red and black wires issuing from the handset were a fairly clear indication that something was perhaps awry, and sure enough, using both hands to lift the collection of black plastic fragments to my ear, a dialling tone was nowhere to be heard.

Now things were looking tricky. I considered hailing a passer-by and offering them a pound to use their phone. As a last resort prior to this potentially awkward solution, I went back into the first phone box and tried to fix the blocked coin slot but quickly realised this was a no go. Dejected, I left the cubicle and surveyed my options – when, like the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, Astrid appeared. I’ll admit that there are a few factual difficulties with that simile but let’s run with it.

On a bustling London street, in the dark, while carrying the evening meal and a new pair of glittery gold shoes, and walking at high speed as she was five minutes late having stopped en route to buy the shoes, it was unlikely in the extreme that Astrid should have spotted me. Her look of astonishment and confusion on seeing me emerge from a phone booth was a fitting image to accompany the terrific speed of recent developments in modern technology but she managed to understand my desperate gabbling and guided me towards her wonderful flat (number 11, building 15, pesky forgotten 1…) for an evening of music and joy (but not joyous music. We need some more practice). Nineteen hours later, I still think her serendipitous appearance is worth noting. I can be forgetful and stupid, but out of the darkness, light can shine. Sometimes.

And now, as pledged previously in this bumper entry, onto my insomnia. Actually, I don’t want to talk much about the insomnia itself, as other people’s sleeplessness rates up there with other people’s dreams and other people’s pets as topics that should be filtered out well before they are uttered aloud. What I wanted to talk about was my method for conquering said sleeplessness. Based on the childhood game, ‘I went on holiday and I took…’, each night as I toss and turn, I set myself a new list to compile and start off, adding one alphabetical item each time until I doze off, usually somewhere around the LMNOP area. Previous hot topics have included Seventies popstars (ABBA, Bowie, Cat Stevens, Donovan etc.), films with one word titles (Arachnophobia, Babe, Casino, Dogma…) and single word bands or solo singers (Dubstar, Eminem, Feeder, Goldfrapp).

The trickier the category, the longer I tend to spend thinking of each letter and the more likely I am to get back to the beginning and find I’ve forgotten the ones I’ve already done. Last night, to make things move along at a brisk pace, I chose a new category: random nouns. My self-imposed rule was, I had to accept the first noun I thought of – and this is where it got a little peculiar. As I recall it, my list was as follows: abacus, blister, cats, dogs, elephants, Fargo, guillotine, hostel, igloo, jester, kola kubes, locket, marmalade, nipple, oasis, perspex, Ramadan, sari, Taiwan, ukulele, velvet… and there I drifted off. I don’t know what this says about the inner workings of my brain, but I’m sure there’s a message in there somewhere. All suggestions welcome.

And although I have even more to say – including the repellent breath of the guy I had to have a meeting with this morning and the unbelievably swanky offices at Bloomberg – I think that is enough for today. Over and out.

Oh! The shame...

In the grammar and vocabulary stakes, I award myself a B+. I have taught English to many young people and still take pleasure in explaining away an errant apostrophe to willing students of any age - and will merrily trap unwilling students with a complicated and trademarked Superglue manoeuvre. I know the basics like I know the back of my large, yet perfectly proportioned, hand.

However, I will reluctantly concede that there are substantial gaps in my knowledge, hence my decision to deny myself the coveted A-. I still struggle with fewer vs. less and I've only recently worked out how to remember the difference between stationery and stationary. One of my proudest moments was beating an 11 year old at Scrabble by using all my tiles to play the word 'quixotic' on a triple word score. Fortunately my opponent didn't believe the word existed, so I was able to look it up in the dictionary for her, cleverly disguising the fact that I didn't know what it meant. Just this morning I was compelled to research 'febrile' and found its definition to be utterly different than I'd expected.

The blush this raised, however, was as nothing to the flush of humiliation I experienced yesterday when I found a magnificient website that details hundreds of common grammar and spelling confusions. At first glance, it was a Mecca of smugness for me as I ticked off the ones I knew already. But it wasn't long before I spied a phrase that sent a shiver of horror through my marrow: bated breath. I have spent the past few years thinking this was spelled baited breath and wondering if there were a more repellent combination of adjective and noun in our beloved language. I made just that point in an email only last week, commenting on the fact that the two words, when employed consecutively, conjure up images of maggots and tongues and should be avoided on this basis. However, as soon as I saw 'bated breath', sans 'i', on the aforelinked website, I knew I'd made an error. And sure enough, one click took me to a new page where my mistake was verified: "Although the odor of the chocolate truffle you just ate may be irresistible bait to your beloved, the proper expression is 'bated breath.' 'Bated' here means 'held, abated.' You do something with bated breath when you’re so tense you’re holding your breath."

I've tried to make myself feel better by focussing on the fact that the inverted commas at the end of the first and second quoted sentences should be within the full stops, but it's no use: I have made an humiliating error and I shall not forgive myself until lunchtime tomorrow at the absolute earliest.

Monday musings

If I didn’t know that my readers prefer me to be light-hearted, I would want to discuss a story that I saw in the newspaper this morning about a mother who is requesting that her 15 year old daughter, who has severe cerebral palsy, has a hysterectomy to ‘spare her the monthly discomfort of menstruating’. This situation, where parents apply for the operation on behalf of their disabled daughters, has apparently also happened in the US – and provoked worldwide criticism as a result.

I spent a long time tutoring a teenage girl with cerebral palsy and although I can kind of see the parents’ point, the lengths to which this medical decision could be taken in future must be seen as sinister. It certainly must have a knock-on effect on the debate surrounding the rights of the disabled to have children. What I found more disturbing was the fact that the American teenager also ‘had her breast buds surgically removed’ – apparently her breasts made the huge amount of unavoidable lifting and carrying of the young girl even more difficult. Why not just cut her legs off as well? That’d make her even lighter. I shouldn’t be flippant; I’m really not too sure about any of this – I’m pretty convinced that I think it’s wrong but I guess as an outsider I don’t have a right to comment. Just thought it was interesting. Sorry it’s not at all funny.

What IS funny, however, is OzBus. For the uninitiated, this is a new coach trip taking 39 passengers from London to Sydney, crossing Europe and the Middle East, then India, China and Thailand via Mount Everest and several other unforgettable landmarks that I’ve forgotten. When I heard about this new venture a month or so ago, I was consumed with desire and started thinking wistfully about jacking in my job and heading off to Oz on the next trip. I’m feeling less unhappy to have missed my place on the bus now, though, as the inaugural outing has met with some minor difficulties including broken air-con, deafening snoring from fellow passengers, pauses for food supplies at petrol stations only, a speeding fine and a changed itinerary that has removed China, Laos, Darwin and Everest from the list. Now the bus has broken down in Iran and the passengers are allegedly on the verge of mutiny.

I wish I could claim that this catalogue of disasters has made me smug to be at work, but I can honestly say I’d rather be waiting by a conked out coach in Iran than sitting here earning my crust. I need a holiday. Anyone coming to Vegas?

Lost Looking For Fish: 100 today!

Not in that I've been writing my thoughts on the internet for ten decades - but that these words, the ones I'm typing now, are making up what will become my 100th post. Sadly, despite the buzz of celebration I feel within me and the unmistakeable crackle of excitement that I can sense throughout the online community, I have nothing of value or note to say. For several reasons (well, one), today has been something of a write-off, but I hope that this photograph can go some way towards alleviating your sense of loss. If it's not a visual indication of everything that's wrong with the world, I don't know what is. Happy birthday.

Sweating: the new glowing

Had you walked past me while I was cruising on the cross trainer this morning, you would have been forgiven for thinking that I was competing in some sort of personal indoor triathlon and had recently finished the swimming portion of the event, only to run, fully clothed and drenched, onto the next part of the circuit.

Fans of this blog will have had to come to terms with the fact that my epidermis has never been content with merely perspiring in a gentle and ladylike fashion. But although I am well aware that sweating isn’t high up on the list of things men find attractive in the opposite sex, I also know that the action in itself is valuable, detoxifying and vitally, that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. So, gradually I’ve learned to live with it.

Some might say I am now over-comfortable with it, however. At an evening gathering not too long ago, I was standing in a group of several individuals, one of whom mentioned that he tended to sweat profusely when exercising. Of course, my immediate reaction was to retch and thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t standing any closer to him. But after a couple of seconds, I admonished myself for such a selfish reflex and tried to empathise – after all, as another of life’s sweaters, I know how he feels. A few minutes later, the conversation turned to climbing walls and, spotting an opportunity to make our damp friend feel more at ease with his own moisture, I mentioned that I would always be worried that, since I too have been known to sweat, especially when nervous, my hands would be slippery and I’d fall. Expecting a look of gratitude and a feeling that we were now kindred spirits, I was shocked when he said,
“Gross, that’s not very feminine is it, talking about sweating?” as he looked around for confirmation from the group’s other lads. Livid that my attempts to support him had been so brutally rebuffed, I looked him in the eye and said,
“Believe me, if I had the slightest interest in impressing you, I wouldn’t have said it.” Which shut him up and created a slightly awkward moment among the rest of our assembled number. It was worth it though. And who still says ‘gross’ anyway?

Political impasse

I care about politics, I really do. I watch the news, I read the papers, check in online, keep up to date with the issues and sincerely and passionately believe in certain causes. But after another uninspiring party conference speech from a man trying to persuade us to let him dominate our lives, affect our bank balances, our health service, the education of our children and those who surround us – well, it’s enough to make me return to the old days, when things were simpler and I amused myself by timing myself to complete the Heat crossword and worried about whether my jeans were low-rise or merely hipster.

Admittedly, I have been reading a live feed of David Cameron’s conference speech this afternoon on the Guardian website, which probably wasn’t the most objective of arenas, but a) if people can’t sift through a bit of left- or right-wing bias in a newspaper, they need to wake up and smell the propaganda, and b) who needs objectivity in the current political climate? Let’s face it: there’s a fundamental dichotomy between what will win an election and what needs to happen in this country (and much of the Western world). Any policies that could improve anything will be massively unpopular. To impact upon anything, we need to plough money into several areas. Drench schools with cash, get the crème de la crème as teachers. But to raise more wonga, the government would have to a) deprive other areas that are currently receiving government funding or b) raise taxes. And no-one serious about winning an election can do either.

It’s a Catch 22 and both major parties have hit on the same non-solution – spend a similar amount of money as before in slightly different ways. It’s half-arsed, half-baked and it won’t work. Now it looks like we’re going to have to watch this bunch of yes-men spend millions of pounds of our tax cash fighting an election by telling us things will change – when they can’t. Pah. I’m already knee-deep in election languor and the date hasn’t even been set. And if they can’t keep my interest – someone who claims they genuinely care about politics – what hope have they in persuading the 40% of non-voters in Britain to walk to the polling station? Call this a democracy? What a joke. I’m going to conserve my energy for celeb spotting and important events that might actually affect me, like the launch of the delicious new DKNY perfume that Laura has informed me is called “Something mist or mist something.” I recommend you give it a sniff.

Subtotal Recall

I am always saddened by my complete inability to remember the following useful information:
- Gripping statistics;
- Historical dates and facts;
- Plots of books I’ve read and loved;
- Funny jokes;
- News articles I’ve read within the past few hours;
- The names of people’s family members;
- Birthdays other than my own and, randomly, Keanu Reeves’ (2 September);
- Quotations by worthy writers (one odd exception: the first two lines of Hamlet’s first soliloquy: ‘O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw and resolve itself into a dew…’ Of all the quotations that one might remember, that one must be among the more ditchable).

I do, however, appear to have a limitless capacity for recalling:
- Irrelevant statistics;
- Unfunny jokes;
- Obscure Simpsons characters;
- What I had to eat in almost every restaurant I’ve been to in the past five years;
- Eighties and nineties pop and rap lyrics (and by rap I mean Partners in Kryme’s Turtle Power and Boom (Shake The Room) by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, not Straight Outta Compton).

Disappointingly, after five pitiful entries, I am already struggling with the second list. And despite my absolute failure to remember a single beautiful quotation from any book or play I’ve read or studied, there are a few phrases that always come back to me. Exhibit A was proffered by my friend, Donald, who claimed: “A good driver would never be found at the front of a queue of cars waiting at a red light.” The implication here is that one should always have raced through the previous green/amber light rather than pulling to a halt. Exhibit B was spoken by my friend, Charlie, circa 1994. For some reason, he was sucking up to a cab driver and said, “They may not be the fastest cars, but black cabs will always be the first car off the red light.” And earlier this year, my friend, Duncan, claimed of himself: “Never knowingly overtaken while walking.”

All three of these comments are, arguably, slightly pointless and facile. But despite thousands, nay, millions of other pieces of superior knowledge jostling for brain space within my skull, these three nuggets pop up with disturbing regularity, Duncan’s almost twice daily as I’m beating a path through sluggish pedestrians on the 60 metre dash between the bus stop and the tube.

It’d be so much easier if we could choose the contents of our own brains. Blimey, there’s a concept… I can see that spiralling into a Strange Days style futuristic horror movie where people greedily hoard knowledge, discarding ‘useless’ emotional memories and a world full of detached, heartless monsters is born… I don’t want to write it, but if anyone else does, I’ll sue.

PS. Jason Donovan wakes up in hospital. He turns to the nurse and says, 'Nurse, was I brought here to die?' and she says, 'No, you were brought here yesterday.' Smash Hits magazine, c.1991.