Q&A

These questions were emailed to me this morning by my friend from the office, Laura, while I sat at my desk mere feet away from the sender. It being 09:12, I had naturally already finished my day's work, so I answered them for her. Then I thought maybe I could get away with posting my responses online in lieu of a proper blog entry. Let's see if it works.

Were you named after anyone?
Not to my knowledge.

When was the last time you cried?
Friday night and it gave me my first ever nosebleed. God I'm attractive.

Do you like your handwriting?
Depends on the pen. But yes, mostly. Though I wish I wrote with my right hand.

What is your favourite lunch meat?
What is a lunch meat? Are there meats you're not allowed to eat except at lunch time? How awful. I hate to be restricted.

Do you have kids?
Not to my knowledge.

If you were another person, would you be friends with you?
How ridiculous. It would depend on which other person I was. If I was shy, demure and nervous, then probably not.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?
Never.

Do you still have your tonsils?
Yes - but not my adenoids.

Would you bungee jump?
Fo sho mo fo - but I'd rather parachute. Am quietly hoping my boyfriend will get me a parachute jump for my 30th. By quietly I mean I've already told him that's what I wanted and he's told me he can no longer get it for me because I've ruined any element of surprise.

What is your favourite cereal?
I couldn't possibly choose just one. Frosties is up there - as is any oaty crunch involving raisins.

Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
Depends how I feel about the shoes. If they are valuable or beloved and on their last laces, then yes. If they're irrelevant, then no.

Do you think you are strong?
In some ways: freakishly. In other ways: pathetic.

What is your favourite ice cream?
Controversially, I'm not really a big fan of ice cream. That's not to say, however, that I couldn't eat it in vast quantities.

What is the first thing you notice about people?
Confidence.

What is your least favourite thing about yourself?
Tendency towards pessemism, insecurity and fattening foodstuffs.

What colour pants and shoes are you wearing?
Did an American write this quiz? If so, black. If not, red, white and black.

What was the last thing you ate?
Healthy cereal with raisins, skimmed milk, orange juice, 12 bitter apricot kernels, 2 Zen tablets for anxiety, 1 P5P complex for healthy blood and skin and mind, 1 Omega 3 fish oil capsule for my brain, 1 multivitamin and 1 Agnus Castus pill for PMT symptoms.

What are you listening to right now?
One trader explaining something about Moscow to another trader.

Favourite smells?
Simon's aftershave - Molton Brown Black Pepper something that I bought him in New York. Garlic and onions frying. Freshly mown lawns. The musty smell in libraries and on the tube. Stale catfood. Maybe not that last one.

Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?
An obsessive PA in Amsterdam, who at any given time is almost always the last person I talked to on the phone.

Favourite sports to watch?
I find it frustrating to watch any sport as I am constantly reminded about my own disappointing fitness levels and total absence of any competitive drive.

Favourite food?
Unanswerable due to insufficient space. Briefly: garlic bread, melted cheese, humous, chocolate, taramasalata, apple sauce, smoked mackerel pate.

Scary movies or happy endings?
Neither.

Last movie you watched?
Pan's Labyrinth.

What colour shirt are you wearing?
How presumptuous of the questioner to think I am definitely wearing a shirt. Although I am, unarguably, wearing a shirt. And it is red and white. (NB: despite both being red and white, I should clarify that my shirt doesn’t match my pants. That would be weird.)

Summer or winter?
What is this 'summer' of which you write? I am unfamiliar with that concept.

Hugs or kisses?
Depends on the person. From Simon: both. From a friend: hugs. From a manky old tramp and/or halitosis sufferer, neither.

Favourite dessert?
Again, so restrictive. I could eat Victoria sponge cakes or doughnuts competitively.

What is on your mouse pad?
My mouse. Idiot.

What did you watch on TV last night?
Twenty minutes of Victoria Beckham house-hunting.

The Rolling Stones or The Beatles?
Stones – I don’t like moss.

What is the farthest you've been from home?
Sydney.

Do you have a special talent?
I am laden with unique gifts.

Where were you born?
Wimbledon.

What book are you reading now?
Don't be absurd – even I can't multi-task that well. I'm not reading. I'm typing.

Choice

Facebook – it's a killer, really it is. I'm now one of thirty million members worldwide. I've uploaded photos, I've created and joined groups and I've rekindled friendships that had extinguished decades ago. All good – but my loyal blog-reader(s) have felt the void, so I'm back with more self-obsessed ramblings for your enjoyment.

In my last proper post I was in Holland. The following week I went to New York and worked in the office over there. I stayed in a hotel that looked better than it was, in Midtown, and caught up with an old school friend face to face for the first time in years, which was fantastic. On my last night I took a tourist bus around Manhattan and a tiny portion of Brooklyn. I took a lot of photos, most of which served to fuel my conviction that, if I had the inclination, I could execute a dramatic career turn and become a professional photographer.

I've now been back in London for a month and work has become fairly routine – I'm finally over the shock of a nine-to-five. But that's not to imply that I'm remotely happy about it. Not a day goes by when I don't plan what I'd rather be doing. Current hot favourites include:

• Moving to Paris
• Moving to the South of France
• Moving to San Francisco
• Moving to New York
• Moving to the English countryside
• Moving to the Scottish Highlands

You may notice a pattern emerging. Moving is high on my agenda. Yet despite these urges, I am simultaneously planning to buy a house in London. This might be called 'denial'. Or: 'confusion'.

I am not only befuddled on a macro level – I am often badgered by more minor choices involving the use of my time. In the past week, I have considered:

• Training to be a Master of Wine
• Becoming a professional photographer (again)
• Going back into journalism
• Running a farm
• Home schooling my unborn children
• Taking French refresher evening classes
• Taking evening classes in pottery
• Learning to sew and becoming a dressmaker / maker of quilts
• Setting up an eBay business specialising in vintage clothing
• Setting up a vintage clothing emporium somewhere unlikely eg. a small village

Last year I read a fantastic book called The Paradox of Choice. Its fundamental lessons were that the more choices you have in life, the less happy you will be with the choices you make and the longer you take mulling over various options, the less happy you will be with the outcome. One crucial piece of advice was that, to guarantee maximum contentment, we must limit our options by selecting the two most likely or most preferred options from any list – and completely discarding and forgetting the others. Then we should choose from those two alone. But although it should be liberating, the process of discarding eight tenths of my possible life directions would pain me.

Even at this time of gargantuan government, political correctness and CCTV, in the developed world we live largely without traditional limitations, and the never-ending plethora of options we have today is a recipe for discontentment. The protagonist in the book I'm reading at the moment said he would rather the certainty of experiencing a car crash than the eternity, the lack of boundaries, of a mountaintop at midnight. I'm not saying I'd rather die than have choices – but I know what he's saying.

Yet even if we accept that they're hurting us, we are still addicted to the choices we have – if they were taken away we'd mourn them like a lost limb. The freedom to become a Master of Wine or a professional photographer is mine, and I would hate to be without it. And perish the thought I should be denied the right to go online and see what my four friends and 134 acquaintances are doing with each of their days' 24 hours.

Facebook is a window into the lives of others – it's a continual update of available options. Dave's going to play bingo next Thursday – why don't you join him? Alison's watching Desperate Housewives – switch it on too. Tabitha's had a baby – aren't you feeling broody at the moment? Maybe you should focus on getting married and starting a family. But Adam's in LA and he's just bumped into Robin Williams – wouldn't that be fun? Emily's in the Pyrenees and her goat has just had kids. Doug's in Paris and can see the Eiffel Tower. Louise is on holiday in Sardinia. Look at everyone else and compare and contrast – it doesn't take long before the mundanities of your own existence seem unfavourable when viewed alongside the highlights of others.

Too much introspection is traditionally thought to be a dangerous thing, and I'd agree that in my past it has proved to be unhealthy. But what is also clear is that too little navel-gazing can be equally hazardous – a life spent looking outwards to other people and other options isn't much of a life at all. Better to revel in one's own navel every so often and see the gems that reside within – and accept that a little bit of healthy self-obsession isn't be such a bad thing after all.

The reason I haven't posted for a month

Apologies.

Holiday Innterment

Simon and I arrived back from Montenegro on Thursday night, leaving behind us the blisteringly hot sun that had doggedly refused to shine for four of the previous days and trying not to be too bitter. Friday was a day of washing and frantic administration. On Saturday we drove to Suffolk for Bee's wedding to James - it was beautiful and moving and reggae fuelled and we all had a wonderful time. Yesterday was Sunday - Simon and I left Suffolk in the morning, drove the three hours back to London, had a quick lunch and then I dusted off my passport after three days of unuse and headed off to Heathrow for my flight to Amsterdam.

Now I'm here in Ijmuiden, twenty minutes south of the Dutch capital, trapped in a Holiday Inn with twenty other people from the international offices of the company for which I labour. There are delegates from almost ten countries including Budapest, Poland and Russia but thankfully they are all practically fluent in English so even though I am the only native speaker of our entire group, I don't have to put in nearly so much effort to be understood. We are 'trained' from 8.30am until 6.00pm every day, Monday to Wednesday, with all our meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner taken in the hotel restaurant with the other course participants. Pretty full on. I've never been to Amsterdam and the fact that it is hovering in the near distance, less than half an hour away, is somewhat frustrating, but I've got as much chance of seeing the sights as I have of being mistaken for Paris Hilton.

Ijmuiden (pronouned I'm-ow-den) is a disappointing consolation: the view left from my balcony is fairly attractive, yachts in a packed harbour and the distant sea, thus:
But turn to the right and you'll find several steel plants belching 'steam' (allegedly) and a bizarre network of industrial cranes and a smattering of surely pointless wind turbines - an ecological locking of the stable door in 2007 after the horse bolted pre-WW2.

On the upside, the food is amazing and I've already gained thirty five pounds. I smugly brought only carry-on luggage with me but I fear that my own body may exceed the weight restrictions on the return journey and while my bag might be allowed on the flight, I may have to check myself into the hold. Watch this space.

Fading fast...

The weather god giveth, and the weather god taketh away... After several blissful days of heat and refreshing breezes, the past 48 hours have been oppressive, cloud-filled and, today, saturating. The torrential carwash through which we drove this afternoon would have any normal person battening down the hatches and settling in for the long haul with a good book, but following a cabin-fever induced downturn in my mental state of late (not helped by yesterday's power cut which rendered the DVD player useless in the middle of our Sunday afternoon screening of Guys and Dolls), we knew not just our relationship, but possibly our lives depended on us vacating our apartment today.

Thus it was that we drove approximately 130 kilometres (we're in Europe now, baby - it's got to be metric) - perhaps not immediately impressive as distances go, but given the downpour and the terrain, our circular route took us around five hours, past ancient towns marooned at the end of causeways, through cities destroyed countless times by wars and earthquakes, over a grey lake through which swims the Montenegrin/Albanian border - and back down to our village nestled in the hills of Kotor Bay, via a steep and many-cornered road that I might have described as driving down a small intestine would it not have followed that our destination and humble abode were thus a metaphorical anus.

The scenery throughout our tour was straight out of a/the Bond film: cloud-scraping mountains and lush meadows, hair-raising bends tight against jagged rock faces which suddenly open out onto a weather-beaten Adriatic and a misty horizon. And of course, as in all good Bonds, the driving was tense. Our guidebook warns that Montenegrins "drive fearlessly and with verve. It is best not to call their bluff." Tempted though I was to put our rented Fiesta through its paces, I had to consider my passenger, and instead rarely left second gear.

Tonight we're all dressed up and in Kotor Old Town for a night on the Unesco-protected tiles. Hopefully the sun will get its act together for tomorrow - we've only got two more full days left and there's a distinct possibility that we will return to London the same pale grey shade of two weeks ago. Somehow I doubt my travel insurance covers 'lack of tan'.

Seven days down, six to go...

Halfway through our trip and Simon and I are feeling very out of it - this is, apparently, the longest he has gone without checking his email - ever. We are staying in an apartment on Kotor bay, with beautiful views over the fjord and a nice interior. Unfortunately beneath our balcony, the alleged 'quiet road' is in fact a busy thoroughfare, with continual trucks, cars and motorbikes trying to squeeze through its narrowness. Instead of putting up with the traffic, we've braved the lethal local drivers and total lack of road markings and headed off to the beach most days - the weather god has been smiling on us thus far and we're both turning a pleasing shade of bronze. Today, however, we've come sightseeing in Kotor Old Town itself and dragged ourselves up the fortress walls - 1350 steps that separated the tourist wheat from the chaff. Now back to the apartment for more competitive reading as Simon hourly updates me on how many pages he's covered of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I'm gripped by The Blind Assassin - but would love a ten minute flick through a UK newspaper... Can't even find The Daily Mail. Pah.

Dubrovnik: Stunning, but too many fat people

All's well here on the Dalmatian Coast (as we now know it) - Simon and I arrived in Dubrovnik on Sunday and were slightly perturbed by the light smattering of rain that showered us as we walked from the plane to the terminal building. The weather since our arrival has been changeable but good for sightseeing - I don't miss the oh-so-sexy beads of sweat trickling down the back of my calves that were omnipresent in India.

Dubbers is architecturally stunning and has to be seen to be believed - the shining white marble streets look wet in the night-time lamplight and demand to be photographed. Yesterday we visited a Franciscan monastery complete with 1991 shell hole in its ancient exterior, and then took a walk around the city's 2km circumference walls, with the sea on one side and the gorgeous ramshackle rooves (is that the plural? Really? It looks seriously odd) on the other, satellite dishes pointing out to the horizon and the west coast of Italy. This morning we took a boat trip around the periphery, an overcast sky blighting my attempts at visual records on the Fuji Finepix although inevitably a frazzling sun broke through the clouds the instant we returned to the harbour - and now we're packing up and leaving this little walled miracle, finding our rented car and, all being well, crossing the border into Montenegro.

Despite its unquestionable beauty, two days here has been more than enough - the ratio of obese tourists to locals must be something like 47:1 and the food is not nearly as cheap nor as delicious as the guidebooks would have us believe. I'm looking forward to the next phase - nine days (count 'em) on a fjord, an optimistic number of books to get through - the iPod's fully charged, the sunhat's at the ready - let's just hope the Roger Farr who is renting us his Montenegrin apartment is not the Roger Farr that, according to www.timeshare.org.uk, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 1998 for defrauding 467 timeshare owners out of £1.5M. Reassuring...

How lucky we are...

I’m lacklustre, stuck in work mode, trapped by routine and completely unable to be remotely creative. What’s more, I’ve been haunted by this passage that I read on Radio 4’s PM blog and now everything else seems/is trite and irrelevant:

'On a serious note, I don't know if any of you were listening to Mike Thomson's report this morning on the Today programme from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He spoke to a young mother who was recently abducted, along with scores of people from her village, by a group of rebel soldiers. She says her captives, Hutu militia from
Rwanda known as the Interahamwe, then bayoneted fifty of them before forcing her to hang her own baby... We need to be constantly reminded, don't we, of what's going on there.'

Puts things into perspective a bit.

Growl

In the two months or so since I have been in my current job, I’ve probably been given around eight hours’ worth of work to do. One of the very few satisfying tasks I was assigned was to proof-read a document that would eventually be sent to thousands of company workers, informing them of radical changes to the business. I duly checked the pages for flaws, and identified several, including a grammatical error in the first line – a find which resulted in several consecutive moments of shaming self-congratulation and smuggery. I attempted to hide my glee as I returned the document back to its writer, anticipating praise and thanks.

Imagine my surprise and irritation, therefore, when this very afternoon, the finished document dropped into my inbox (and the inboxes of countless reams of other employees) complete with its original uncorrected errors and the same glaring syntax issue beaming out from the opening phrase.

It’s demoralising enough to have so little to do – but when what you do do is disregarded or lost, it’s really somewhat irksome. Still, the Bank Holiday beckons and I’m off to Suffolk on a hen weekend. All being well I’ll return in one piece next Tuesday.

Gym Dangers

On Monday, in what must have been a fairly comical moment in itself, I was on the cross-trainer in the gym. As usual, I had moved beyond the joys of perspiration and was firmly into the phase to which I refer fondly as ‘Drenched’. As Madonna’s Like A Prayer moved into its second verse, I became aware that my energy levels were flagging somewhat and, preferring to blame my sluggishness on the Queen of Pop rather than my own risible fitness levels, decided to fast forward the track. I reached down to the iPod which was nestled in the cross-trainer’s integral cup holder, but – horrors – instead of seamlessly spinning on to the next upbeat number, I managed to become manually tangled in my headphones wire, wrenching my white rectangular friend out of its holster and sending it clattering to the floor between the footrests, as I accelerated towards the angina-inducing peaks of Workout Level 24.

Breathless and pouring sweat in an Amazonian fashion, I cantered onto solid ground as quickly as I could and scooped up my iPod from its final resting place beneath the cross-trainer. Nervous about potential injuries following the not-insubstantial fall, I gingerly replugged in my headphones and was relieved to hear Madge warbling away as before. Resuming my position on the exercise machine, I recommenced my workout – but just a few moments later and without warning, Like A Prayer stopped, mid-middle eight, and no amount of frantic button pressing in any number of desperate combinations would coax it back into action.

Back at home, the hated grumpy file symbol had appeared on my screen and, following the instructions on the Apple website, I attempted to ‘restore’ my iPod. Sadly this option was forbidden to me: my computer informed me that it was experiencing Error 1418 and was unable to proceed. Feeling outwitted and guilty, I began the grieving process for my little aural wonder. And things looked no better when, on Tuesday night, Simon found a website called www.1418hell.com. This explained that my error message was a cumbersome problem suffered by thousands of iPod owners that mean old Apple was refusing to fix. Clearly, the time had come to start saving for a new pod.

But then, at 5am yesterday morning, my previously mute iPod began emitting a series of random beeps. When my consciousness finally came to me around an hour later, I took a look at the screen, realised the unit was low on battery and plugged it in to the mains. And immediately, miraculously, normality was restored. The music of the spheres tinkled merrily above me and as I commuted into work today, Bob Dylan warbling away in my ears, I felt unmistakeably lucky to have survived this example of my own carelessness without the need to fork out for a new machine and grateful to have been handed a(nother) splendid excuse to steer clear of the cross-trainer for the time being.

Welcome Matilda

My friends have had a baby. I went to see it yesterday with Emily and it was quite something. Matilda is very small and exceptionally sweet, with huge blue eyes that are spellbinding. Sometimes she crosses her eyes and screws up her mouth into a tiny O and then she seems like a possible emigrant from another galaxy. But most of the time she is the embodiment of perfection. She is even able to write her own blog.

What was really miraculous, however, was not so much Matilda herself, but her mother, whose body has been turned into a feeding machine overnight. Lucy seemed blissfully resigned to this four-day-old state of affairs. I was brimming with admiration for her and daddy Jake who danced a whimpering Matilda around the room with unexpected but touching patience.

As far as I can see, the best thing about being new parents must be the food – luxury biscuits and dips and exotic teas were coming out of the family’s every pore – and the new mum in particular has a newly-vacated abdominal space in which to put these tasty items. Her self-control in the face of cookies was inspiring. My weight graph has plateaued for the past three days despite frequent exercise and abstinence from almost everything fun except baby visits. Although there was that delicious prawn curry on Wednesday night. And the handful of self-brought Marks and Spencer’s chocolate éclairs that I scoffed while we were visiting Matilda, and the fact I didn’t make it to the gym yesterday and instead went shopping for miniscule clothing, which was far more fun but may have slimmed my bank balance more than my thighs. Hopefully my miserable lunch of emetic canteen bubble and squeak soup will bring the graph plummeting towards its pre-holiday goal. If not, I’ll be the one sunbathing in a full length dressing gown.

Uninspired

What does it say about a person when they sang, as part of a choir, in a charity fundraising event the previous evening, performing such classical hits as Taverner’s The Lamb and Handel’s Zadok The Priest to an audience who had paid up to £65 for their tickets, and, between their own performances, listened to readings by the actors Edward Fox and Dame Diana Rigg and a short speech by the Lord Mayor of London, and heard other pieces played by an incredible 18-year-old harmonica player and a fantastic brass quintet – and yet they find themselves unable to think of a single interesting thing to say about the entire event?

I think it might say that the person is over-stimulated in the rest of her life and thus has impossibly high standards. I would refute this conclusion however, as I know the real truth about this person’s daytime existence and I can assure you that she is not over-stimulated.

Perhaps there’s just nothing funny to write about choir concerts. But that’s not true either because once this person was performing in a concert and during a particularly moving moment, a large and enthusiastic Springer Spaniel ran full pelt into the glass doors at the far end of the church behind the audience. That was definitely funny.

Perhaps there’s just nothing funny or interesting to write about this choir concert. That must be it.

An Unforeseen Delay

With an hour or so to kill between the end of work last night and the start of choir, I deemed that this would be a good time to visit the in-house gymnasium for the commencement of my week’s fitness regime.

Strangely, although I spent exactly the same amount of time on each of the machines as usual, my workout took a fragment longer than expected, and I entered the changing rooms slightly behind schedule. As per my routine, I showered off, towelled myself with my highly-recommended sports towel (dries in seconds, weighs next to nothing even when wet) and then attempted to put on my skirt.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible that I was jumping the gun somewhat here. Perhaps I should have known to wait until my skin was perfectly arid rather than merely not-wet. But in the heat of the moment, I naively tried to get dressed – and it was here that I encountered a small hitch.

Still sweating from my vigorous workout, the skirt’s inexpensive lining stuck to my thighs like cement, locked in place and became impossible to pull either up or down. The outer layer of the skirt, attached to the lining with a few threads at the bottom hem, was consequently pulled underneath and up into the dark recesses, exposing the top of my popsocks. Reader, I have rarely looked more glamorous.

When another gym-goer breezed into the changing rooms, I was too humiliated to remain, and shuffled into the next door hand-washing and coiffuring zone. Pretending to blow-dry my hair, I put the hairdryer on its not-cold-enough setting and wafted it in the vicinity of my still-perspiring legs. But of course, in my panic I merely began to sweat even more and the situation did not improve. Eventually I realised that I would have to leave and hope that a few minutes outside the gym environment would assist my internal thermostat to kick into action. And gradually, as I returned to my desk to collect my choir music and various other items, my skirt rearranged itself into its proper place. There’s a lesson in this for all of us and I’m happy to share my wisdom in the most selfless of fashions: the convenience of synthetic fabrics cannot be denied, bar those few occasions when one is both damp and rushing. At those times, a pair of tights or a slip may be of use. Here endeth the lesson.

Lunch at The Whyvy

As a birthday surprise for my beloved, I booked a table at The Ivy, a restaurant whose reputation precedes it like a pair of large but well-supported breasts, the name as familiar to most Londoners as the name of their own mothers.

And really, I wasn’t much bothered whether I liked it – I just wanted to go. After years of hearing second and third hand reports, I fancied witnessing the truth for myself. And I’ll admit that the ringing endorsement on the restaurant’s website from the mouth-watering A.A. Gill did a fair bit to whet my appetite further. Any friend of Adrian’s is a friend of mine. Apart from his girlfriend/mother of his children. She can get stuffed.

Anyway, The Ivy. It was nice. The staff was friendly and unpatronising. We had a good table where we could see everyone coming in and Alistair Campbell going out although the birthday boy was frustrated to miss my sole celebrity spot. Our herb salad starter was delicious. The Sunday lunch was fine – the roast beef was a perfect specimen – but serve the veg on the plate instead of in a silver dish and the whole meal could easily have been prepared in an average gastropub. My rhubarb pudding bordered on sickly, although perhaps the fact that it was called ‘Lardy Cake’ should have been enough for me to consider myself forewarned.

There’s nothing much wrong with The Ivy but there’s not enough right with it to justify the hype. The necessity of booking weeks in advance for what is, in all, a pretty unextraordinary dining experience will be enough to put me off in future. Still glad I went though. And fortunately, Simon seemed to enjoy himself which, difficult though it is for a self-centred only child to admit, is really all that matters.

Camera Obscured

When Simon and I walked out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream last Wednesday, I became aware that I may be experiencing a gradual metamorphosis from Normal Person to Old Person. This was an unusual sensation: I put it gently to one side and hoped fervently that I had seen the back of it.

However, precisely a week later, the identical feeling reared its ugly head once more, enticing me with its practical views on getting enough rest and wearing enough layers.

Last night, Simon and I were at Koko in Camden to see a band called Camera Obscura, of whom we are fairly fond. Upon entering the venue, we found the railings around the sides of the theatre were crowded with merry punters, and since there was still some time to go before the band arrived onstage, we decided to find a quiet corner where we could sit and while away remaining minutes. To our great surprise, we located an inordinately comfortable black leather sofa area behind the bar, complete with flatscreen TVs to relay the onstage action back to us loungers. Brimming with undisguised smugness, we stationed ourselves in a sofa and watched the support acts on the screen, fully content that we would stand to see Camera Obscura in all their glory when they arrived on stage.

However, when the crucial moment occurred, somehow the full envelopment of the leather cushions prevented us from standing. The flatscreens gave us a prime view of the stage and, more persuasively, of the crowds vacuum-packed into the main audience area. In comparison, the uncrowded sofa zone was a calm utopia and despite being the antithesis of any self-respecting concert-goer, despite my best, most fervently-held intentions and the realisation that I was a stain on the face of modern music, a shameful example of all that is wrong with the youth of today, I was unable to lift myself into a vertical position for the vast majority of the gig.

Sadly, when I did stand, I realised my error – the feeling of watching a band live on stage, with your own eyes rather than through the screen of a television, is unquantifiably, indescribably different – and far superior. It was as though someone had cleaned my glasses – the heightened experience and the direct line of vision between me and the musicians meant that I had become an active part of the evening rather than a passive observer. Laziness overcame me last night, but I’ve learned my lesson and it won’t happen again. The metamorphosis into Old may have begun but I refuse to die without a fight.

Or maybe I’ll just have a cup of Horlicks and an early night.

Out of the frying pan...

Advantages for a daughter living at her parents' house: Last week, while I was at work, my dad heard a loud crash outside the house. He went into the street to find a man lifting my Vespa from its position lying on the ground, where he had knocked it over having reversed into it in his car. The man appeared to be happy to leave without paying for any damage, even though there were several scrapes and a big dent on the right hand side, and one of the mirrors had broken off. Thankfully, my ever-scrupulous father was able to take the man's details and he has now had to agree to pay for the damage. Had I been living alone, there would have been no-one to scamper out and identify the perpitrator: he would almost certainly have driven off and I'd have had to pay for the repairs myself.

Disadvantages for a father whose daughter lives in his house: My father deserves several hundred brownie points as a reward for his serendipitous act. Instead, this afternoon he accidentally reversed into my Vespa in the opposite direction and there are now further scratches and dents on the left hand side. Since it is arguable that, had I not been living at home, my Vespa would most likely have been parked elsewhere, this may contribute to the Get Her Out campaign. Which is unfortunate.

A Midspring Eve’s Confusion

Last night, Simon and I went to the newly reopened Roundhouse in Chalk Farm to see a much-hyped Indian/Sri Lankan production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The critics have been gushing about this to the point of flood risks and since both Simon and I have a) recently returned from India and b) degrees in English, I thought that the combo would make for an interesting evening.

Things started well when the seating attendant told us that two seats several rows forward of those we’d booked were available, so we shuffled into a far better position feeling very pleased with ourselves. Our smug smiles soon faded…

Perhaps our strenuous weekend had taken its toll, but despite our New Improved Seats, the play did not live up to the reviews. Certainly, from a post-colonial perspective, the idea of using six Indian languages as well as English in a production of Shakespeare was very interesting. And seeing such a free-spirited production was interesting in itself – such a highly charged performance, which featured scantily-clad girls in bra-tops writhing on the red mud stage with young men, was surely received very differently back in India. The staging, too, was memorable – touches of Cirque du Soleil and a brilliant scene involving huge swathes of elastic trapping young lovers in a web of confusion added some zest to our experience.

In truth, the Dash Theatre version of the play was great. What sucked was the script. In my excitement about the whole India/Shakespeare melange, I’d forgotten that I hate A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sure, there are a couple of memorable lines in it, but ultimately, it’s a bit crap. There are the fairies who blather on about nothing for far too long. There’s the completely unconvincing plotline of the four young lovers which reaches a climax of impossibility when one female character begs to be treated as her chosen hunk’s spaniel. And there are the Mechanicals: Peter Quince, Bottom et al., who – in a plot device so clunky it’s hard to believe it’s been accepted all these centuries – attempt to lighten the mood with a play within a play. At base, AMND is just three substandard plotlines woven together in an implausible and lazy fashion that no amount of Indian sexuality, gorgeous costumes, stirring drumbeats and heady acrobatics will ever be able to disguise.

Disgruntled, we left at the interval and were tucked up in bed before the second act finished. Oh what a glamorous London life we lead…

Two people, four days, fifty six miles

It was a triumph of Nurofen over unmarked paths and rude bar-staff. With dogged determination and regular ‘oaty pauses’, when my mother-bought health bars coaxed us through the next few fields, Simon and I managed to walk from the source of the Thames in Gloucestershire to the centre of Oxford over the four days of our secular Chocolate Egg Bank Holiday Weekend.

Both of us confessed to having severe nerves as the train pulled into Kemble on Thursday evening. Clutching our luggage – mine, a purpose-bought rucksack; Simon’s, a cumbersome laptop bag which he’d got free from work – we set off on the mile long walk to our first night’s stay. Our navigation of the short journey was not exactly confident but we made it in good time and enjoyed an early night in a faux-antique four poster that felt no sturdier than a paper anvil.

Four days later, on Monday afternoon, we crawled into Oxford town centre, sunburned, insect-eaten and smelling feintly of Tiger Balm. Over the past few days we had witnessed the Thames grow from this:



To something more like this:

We’d seen lots of these:

And witnessed the British spring at its best:

But we’d also trudged through countless badly-marked fields where horse hooves had packed previously muddy earth into a now-arid and perilous potholed terrain; we'd dragged ourselves onwards when the pub we’d earmarked as ‘lunch’ turned out to be fully booked and rammed with trendy country living types who glowered at our backpacks, mud-splattered tracksuit bottoms and sweaty upper lips; and we had to put up with the fact that several stretches of the Thames path were around a mile from the actual Thames and, at one (thankfully rare) point, along an A road, thus:

For all the flippancy and moaning, however, there’s no doubt that the trek was worthwhile: a real test of our mental strength and ultimately more satisfying than an ice-cold beer at a Lanzarote lunchtime. It’s now two days later and my calves are still aching but there are no regrets other than one particularly flaccid portion of fish pie at The Rose Revived, Newbridge. Plans to complete the next leg, from Oxford to Windsor, are afoot for 2008 – although it seems more likely that we will enjoy the route from the comfort of a barge or similar floating vessel. Given that I managed to walk nearly sixty miles and still gain four pounds, the merits of making the epic journey on foot seem to have waned somewhat.

Role reversal

It's Tuesday afternoon and I’m sitting in a classroom with an Excel spreadsheet on the OHP in front of me. Around me are seven other adult learners. We’re all here to improve our Excel level from beginner to intermediate. Last week I studied intermediate PowerPoint. Tomorrow I will be doing Excel advanced. And, geek that I am, I'm loving it.

But it’s not just me and my fellow spreadsheeting friends who want to learn. All around me on the tube this morning were people reading – and they were not buried into the large-fonted, escapist fiction as were the commuters I remember from yore. These happy travelers were blocking out the sweat and cough particles by engrossing themselves in non-fiction titles such as Freakonomics and How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World. I was reading a book about cultural theory. Those who weren’t reading books were buried in papers. In fact, the only people who weren’t challenging their minds were a group of betracksuited teens playing tinny Parental Advisory hip-hop on their mobile phone for the carriage’s enjoyment.

All these urges to learn, to improve one’s mind – where were they when we were at school? With a flash of inspiration uncommon to a creature of habit such as myself, it occurred to me that the system's got it all wrong. The whole ‘youth is wasted on the young’ idea is all too true – and the solution is all around us already. Child labour.

Sure it's 'illegal' now - but who's to say it should stay that way? Not me! Imagine a world where from primary school age, you are sent to work for most of the day, and educated in the evenings. Admit it: it makes sense – children are much more resilient than adults and surely wouldn’t mind the longer hours. They’d work for almost no wages of course, and the (adult) managers could consequently sell the goods at vastly reduced prices, to allow the adults to go to school for 80% of their time and still be able to afford to buy what they needed.

Everyone’s a winner. We’d work almost full time until we were 25, with just education in basic literacy and mathematics in the evenings. Then when we were desperate to learn more, we’d go back to school and university. The whole syllabus could be covered far quicker given our hunger for the subjects and there’d be no discipline problems because we’d all want to be there. After we left university in our mid-thirties, we could go on and pursue management jobs – or retire. Let the Child Labour Party take over at the next election: you know it makes sense.

Legoland: A Brief Retrospective

Having been warned in advance of our visit that Legoland is 'shit', we weren't expecting much. Which, all things considered, was lucky. Like Tom Cruise films, limited edition chocolate bars and Jilly Cooper novels post-Polo, Legoland certainly falls into the category of 'Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed', which, for a family attraction, is possibly not the category for which the land's creators were hoping. Even the name itself is a dramatic overstatement: Legohamlet would probably have been a more accurate moniker. Despite this, Mr Legoland's astonishing bravery as regards ticket prices would not suggest a company worried about disappointing their punters - or perhaps they just aren't expecting any return business. Either way, we went, clutching our print-out discount voucher and anticipating a mediocre Sunday morning near Windsor.

And that, unusually, is precisely what we got. Legoland has good points: a nifty line in branded keyrings in the shop and the faded glories of Miniworld, where cars and buses run without tracks through some sort of magnetic wizardry, where Eurostar streaks between Paris and London, where some crucial integral walls in Sacre Coeur have collapsed to one side, where America is represented only by NASA, where the old Wembley hasn't been replaced by the new one and where ABBA play eternally to a group of Swedish fans and an empty pushchair.

Despite wonderful attention to detail, the park is looking tired and none of the rides justified more than a thirty second queue - even the most 'scary' attraction, the Dragon Coaster, proved to be depressingly tame when Simon managed to take a cup of coffee on board by accident and survive without spilling a drop. He later admitted, however, that he had not escaped entirely and was suffering from minor burns having used his thumb to block the small hole in the cup's plastic drinking lid. The food selection deserves all the negative press it is currently receiving - the only way to eat healthily within the park's confines is to abstain altogether. Even fans of junk-food are in for a shock though - a chicken sandwich meal is over £7. I may have an insatiable appetite and a new salary but that was out of the question.

How things change. It's a week after our Legoland visit and I'm now on a strict pre-holiday crash diet and have eaten only soup, corn thins and fruit today. My stomach has been rumbling non-stop for seventeen hours and suddenly £7 for a chicken burger looks like a generous and irresistable option. I must go to sleep before I phone for an emergency portion of garlic bread with cheese.