Meh.

So no one tells you that when you come home a bit late after a few glasses of wine and decide to change the wording - only the wording, mind - of the bit at the bottom of your blog posts that allows friends and strangers to show their approval by merely twitching their hand a fraction of an inch and applying an infinitesimal unit of pressure with their index finger, thereby putting a virtual tick in a virtual box, which translates to me as genuine psychological payment for the work I put in on these pages, NOT THAT I ONLY DO IT FOR YOU, but hey, I'd be lying if I said your praise and feedback were meaningless - so anyway, no one tells you that if you JUST CHANGE THE WORDING of that function, then it wipes all previous records of any box ticking, and you're back to zero on every single blog post since the dawn of time, with no visual sign of third party appreciation on any posts, and even if you change the wording back to how it was, the data is still lost forever and you're right back to being a loser with no boxes ticked at all, which is really quite annoying, even though only about, well, way less than one percent of the people who read this blog ever tick the boxes, which means there are either a lot of people who visit the site, read the blogs, enjoy them and then skulk off without ticking, which I think exhibits a level of laziness at which even I would balk, or there are a lot of people who do not enjoy the blogs but yet still read them, which displays a degree of stupidity and a lack of judgment that, well, I find depressing. It's not a flattering stat, but it must be true: most of you are either lazy or stupid.

Prove me wrong. Tick the damn box. Not this one in particular, but all the ones you've enjoyed over the past four years. Maybe a total change of mentality is needed. Here are your instructions: basically, tick the box unless you thought it was absolute rubbish, unless you finished it weeping with relief that it was over, unless it was the text equivalent of ocular rape. Don't view the tick as a treat. A treat would be a comment. The tick is just to say, 'Yup, read it. Well done for trying.' If you want to say something more meaningful, then comment. If you don't know what all the fuss is about, check out other people's blogs (there's a list down to the right if you need help). They're bloody littered with comments. Some of the blogs out there are so self-indulgent and miserable, they make LLFF look like... what's the opposite of self-indulgent and miserable...? Open-minded and chipper? They make LLFF look like... a Montessori teacher? But still, these people are inundated with supportive comments. I pour my heart out to you, I lay myself BARE and what do I get? Three ticks if I'm lucky. WHICH HAVE NOW BEEN DELETED. By me.

I'm so tired. Must go to bed. Anyway. I'd love to be so self-sufficient that I didn't care whether anyone was reading, but I'm not. Tick the mofoing boxes or I'll stop writing. Well, I won't. But I'll start only writing about politics. That'd learn you.

500

Well knock me down with a post-it note. The clever stats on my Blogger dashboard tell me that this here is my 500th entry on Lost Looking For Fish. Since November 2006, thousands of words have been strung into sentences full of self-obsession, self-regard, self-derision and self-doubt. My teenage diaries catalogue, in fine-ruled page after fine-ruled page, my love for boys, the objects of my affection changing so frequently that I now find it very difficult to understand who is who. At several points I genuinely believed I was in love with two or three different people at once, in many cases having talked to them for less than two or three minutes and certainly never having been alone in a room with them. The extent of my own fickleness is breathtaking. These days I worry about crows' feet, debilitating illness, early menopause and getting behind with Desperate Housewives. I don't know which is worse. Anyway, sincere thanks for being here for the last 500 chapters. This blog is one of my most favourite things in the world and your virtual presence is much valued.

Last night I went to my ukulele class and we learned to play Delilah by Tom Jones. It's all fine except the transition from B7 to E at the beginning of the third line of the verse, when all of us needed to pause for about six seconds to get the next chord. I think it'll be a while before we're ready to lay down our first tracks. Then I went home and watched Three Colours: Blue, the first film in the 1990s trilogy that I must have lied to about seventy people and told them I'd watched before, but I haven't. Apologies if you were fooled. It was excellent: Juliette Binoche was astonishingly good in quite a brutal role. If her nostrils were fractionally smaller, she'd be perfect. Looking forward to the next two instalments.

This morning I was on the tube and miraculously got a seat around London Bridge somewhere. The man next to me was about my age, meticulously dressed in a very dapper grey suit with a bright shirt, and had a neatly-trimmed goatee/moustache combo going on. I felt like he should be a stereotypical gay tailor in the 1980s. In his hand was a large paperback book, about the size of a weighty school textbook. It looked like a textbook too - thick white paper, heavily illustrated with line drawings and colour pictures, and large chunks of text explaining things. Always keen to learn, I looked closer. The pictures were of fantasy creatures. The words were discussing a place called Hive City. I have since looked it up on Wikipedia, and found that Hive City is the capital of a computer game land called Necromunda. And then I found this adorable geek's account of his obsession. And then I found all this fan fiction that people have written, that is published and available on Amazon. And really, isn't humanity amazing? You think you're getting your head round it, I'm just about coming to terms with World of Warcraft and Second Life and accepting them as part of the modern world, but then you realise how many games there are, how much of a contribution they've made to people's lives, formed friendships, started real life romances, ended marriages, caused real life deaths and bankruptcies... It's strange, and I don't have the time or the inclination to get involved, but I love that it exists. Variety FTW.

Electric dreams

Two typos and a misused 'which' yesterday but due to rushing I didn't spot them until long after my self-imposed thirty minute editing window had past. Tut tut. Am distracting myself with my consumer excitement of the day: I am going to go to John Lewis after work and buy a fleecy heated underblanket. My arctic bedroom conditions have beaten me - I went to bed last night wearing velour bottoms, a T-shirt, a velour long sleeved nightie, a snood and slippers and was still so cold that I had to heat up my microwave beanbag and arrange it over my face so that it heated up my nose while still allowing me to breathe. Basically, I need another radiator in my bedroom, but a fleece underblanket is a) cheaper and b) easier so we will all have to ignore the fact that c) it makes me feel like I should also be applying for a freedom pass.

Not much to report from this end. New eyeliner is lovely. I am waiting to see what the Apple Tablet looks like. The Guardian's editor says that Murdoch is wrong to charge for online news access, but I can't see how it's sustainable to give all this journalism away for free when so many individuals are prepared to do it on a smaller, more niche basis without getting paid or by generating advertising revenue on their sites. Of course, the big papers generate online ad revenue too - huge amounts - but it's simply not enough to cover their overheads: apparently the Graun is losing £100k a day. Hmmm. The next few years are going to be very interesting.

I feel so lucky to have been born with one foot in The Past and one in The Future. I got my first mobile phone and email address when I was 18, but I still clearly remember life without them, when home computers were rare, TV only had four channels, and I spent most termtime nights queuing with ten other girls, waiting to use the landline at our boarding school, trying to get through to the house of some uninterested boy who was out playing sport or doing something really cool and would never get the breezy messages we left. Now Skype videocalls are normal, I can watch live TV on my phone and I frequently leave the house without a clue where I'm going, but by the time I've reached the tube station I've copied and pasted the postcode from an email into the maps app, found my destination, worked out which stop I'm headed for, and then found out which part of the platform to get on the train in order to be nearest the exit stairs on my arrival. I can't imagine how the future of technology could be much cooler than it is already but I'm sure it will surprise us all. Hold on tight.

Overconnected?

Ways I Know I'm Old, Part 32: The way that my carpet slightly lifted up from my underlay due to the supreme suction created by my hoover once I'd put in a new bag made me go, "Ooooh!"

Last night, I got home, put on a pair of very fitted, grey Nike tracksuit bottoms that belonged to my mum in the eighties, and an oversized grey sweatshirt featuring a large picture of Mickey Mouse. I put my hair in a topknot, slid into my FitFlops, and cleaned my flat. I emptied the bins, I did the washing up, I did three loads of washing, I watered and pruned my plants, I plumped my sofa cushions, changed my sheets and vacuumed my floors. I also kind of tidied my V+ box, watching lots of month-old TV programmes, mostly on fast forward, while I scurried about. I ate my guilty home alone meal of microwave wholegrain rice, fried onion, tuna and mayo, drank two glasses of white wine, had a mini Magnum and received a couple of fun emails. Then I went to bed and nearly finished Prospect magazine. All in all, it was a brilliant night, accompanied by a Genius mix which started with my choice of Work by Kelly Rowland, and went via Play by JLo, Tears Dry On Their Own by Amy Winehouse, Superstar by Jamelia, My Love Is Like Wo! by Mya and Chain Reaction by Diana Ross. Pig in shit. Genius really is genius.

I do worry a bit about my obsessive love of technology though. The internet and its associated facilities affect the way I find out about news, the way I communicate with my friends and family, the way I cope with boredom at work, the way I find out about what fun stuff is going on in my city (and thus it directly impacts what I do in my spare time), it's the way I find out about new films and new dates and new music... I was standing in the shower yesterday, thinking that if someone threatened me with never being able to go online again, I would swap almost anything. Including possibly a limb. Any amputees out there will probably spit with rage at that, but I don't mean it flippantly. I am aware, though, that my perspectives might be slightly skewed, so (in an instance of fighting fire with fire) I downloaded an app to my iPhone called 'Disconnect', a hypnotherapy programme that is meant to make you less reliant on technology. I listened to it last night and although it didn't seem to be remotely profound at the time, I haven't checked Twitter today. Or Texts From Last Night. Hmmm. Maybe after a couple more listens I'll give up LLFF. Be a shame though. You'll be the first to know.

Genetically modified update

Just what the world needs. A chicken that will never say the word 'spastic'.

V Fun

Ow. Ow. Ow. That's basically what I've been doing fairly non-stop for the past 36 hours. You really haven't missed much. On Wednesday after work, Laura and I made use of two free guest passes she'd been given, and went to our local Virgin Active! gym in the City for an evening of intense exercise. Determined to get our money's worth, we optimistically decided to go to not one, not two, but three classes throughout the evening. We started with 30 minutes of 'V Core', which was basically a selection of really Sixties exercises like stomach crunches and press-ups, but with the letter V stuck in front of each of them to suggest some sort of unique and 'now' vibe. Believe me, holding yourself in push-up position with your elbows on the floor for minutes at a time is no more fun than it is normally when it's called The V Plank. Likewise, the V Crunch and the V Lunge can V Fuck Off.

Then was 45 mins of 'Body Pump' which is, for the uninitiated, V Hell On Earth. A perky woman with a Madonna headset plays bad house music and shouts at you to lift a dumbbell in time to the songs. The girl in front of me was unquestionably strong but had the rhythm of a drunk toddler. I resisted following her, determined to follow the beat of the music as I had been instructed, but because she was confidently doing the opposite to me, while being about a stone lighter than me and wearing serious gym kit including a top made out of some hi-tech breathable fabric and special gloves to prevent blistering while gripping the weights, the result was that I looked like I was the one doing it wrong. Livid.

I finished off the evening with an hour of yoga, which was fantastic, until yesterday morning, when I tried to sit up and go to work, and felt like I had been on the rinse cycle in a vigorous human-sized washing machine with several large bricks. It has been agony ever since. Thankfully, yesterday evening was a perfectly-timed and long-awaited treat: an after-work spa session at The Sanctuary with Em, my birthday present from last year. We saunaed, we steamed, we jacuzzied, we lounged with the koi carp, and we ate healthy food. It was blissful and exhausting and, despite an awkward incident when handsome young Pete from choir busted me on the tube home wearing no make-up, with wet, unbrushed hair and blotchy skin that made me look as though I'd been in a fight, I still managed to maintain my zen state and arrived back at the ranch convinced I would be dead to the world within moments.

So it was frustrating that my V Broadband decided to work for the first time since Sunday, as I was then unable to tear myself away from my laptop. I was faffing around with Skype for some time, and eventually got to bed just before midnight, where I became transfixed by the Presents for Men Travel Paraphernalia & Outdoor Leisure catalogue for Summer 2009. Always a favourite, I was sure there would be a gem or two therein, but even I wasn't prepared for the brilliance of this fanTAStic telescopic photo arm. I can't think of a time when I've seen two models look more like they would rather be dead. And who can blame them? Their product is the most desperately humiliating gadget known to man - if you can't read the text, the photo arm even includes a mirror to help you aim the camera. The kerchief alone is winceworthy enough to justify storming off the shoot but the guy's terrible faux-surfer necklace is equally terrible. The rictus grins say it all. I was so excited with my find that I didn't get to sleep until nearly 1am.

Anal. Ytics.

As is the norm for someone who writes a blog and takes an interest in such things, I follow the action on these pages with Google Analytics. This tool allows me to see, for example, how many visitors I get, the city in which they live, how long they viewed a particular page and how they found my site. Many of my regular readers access the site directly, either through a bookmark or through typing the name into their address bar. But a fair few access LLFF through Google's search engine - and another of the things that Analytics allows me to monitor is which search terms people are using to find this site.

The most popular, fairly unsurprisingly, is 'lost looking for fish', closely followed by 'lostlookingforfish'. I must say, however, that I was disappointed by the number of my Faithful who are clearly unreliable spellers or inaccurate typists. Typing 'lost' and 'looking' don't seem to present too many problems, but in the last month alone there have been attempts to locate lost looking for 'fih', 'fiah' and 'fsih' so in future I will remember that our piscean friends represent a dexterity challenge. These Googlers, though, are at least on the right tracks and I am fairly confident that, when someone types those terms and then clicks through to this blog, they'll have come to the right place.

Sadly, however, there are a few people who search for issues with which I don't think I'll be much assistance. Unsurprisingly, I get a fair few (presumably disappointed) visits from people with fish-related queries. Someone simply searched for 'lost looking fish' which made me feel a bit sad. Someone else was interested 'how to tell what fish just had a baby' while a third clicker was simply 'looking for nice fish' which seems slightly vague but charming all the same.

Another search was more specific, asking for 'astrid "finsbury park" drunk', which sounds like it could be a story worth hearing, while someone else was clearly with me on the pedantry of the lower-case 'i' problem, as they searched for 'gmail inbox capitalisation lost'. I doubt that I was much help.

This one tugged at my heartstrings: 'how to shrink my massive bottom lip without makeup'. I simply couldn't imagine how these terms threw up my blog as a result, so I performed the same Google search myself - and sure enough, half way down page four, there was LLFF:

"I was reading a gripping article this morning about the massive figures that are ... I now have full sensation back on the right side of my chin and lip, .... over a week since my operation and I still can't feel my chin or my bottom lip. ... in The Guardian "Amazon could shrink by 85%" and panicked that my regular ..."

Clearly my wisdom teeth and my tendency to be hyperbolic were mostly to blame in that instance. I hope our swollen friend found more practical advice elsewhere. In a similar vein, a slighly paranoid Googler enquired 'is 5"10 small for a male?' and was directed to these pages for the answer. In the interests of generosity, I'll assume he meant 5' 10", in which case I'll say "No, it's about average in the UK, but personally I probably wouldn't date you." I suppose there's always the chance he (I'm assuming it was a man) was referring to another body part and meant 5 inches and 10/16ths, in which case I'm afraid I'd need more information to make a judgment call. There, ladies in gentlemen, is proof - should it be needed - of the importance of proper punctuation.

Right. I'm off to Get A Life. Well, for a few minutes, anyway.

Capital news

Ooh goodness, what excitements. The people at Google have, in their infinite wisdom, recapitalised the 'I' of 'Inbox'. I am currently trying to persuade myself that the switchback was entirely as a result of my whiny blog post on the subject, but somehow I doubt that is the case. If millions of campaigners can't get Google to change their stance on Chinese state censorship, I doubt my meagre rant would have made any difference to their stance on grammar. In any case, things have at least been restored to their proper position and I can tick that off my ever-fluctuating mental list of Things By Which I Am Vaguely Irritated At Present. Now I'm focusing on the fact that my cowboy boots are still at the menders' and I want to wear them soon; the fact that the person on eBay still hasn't responded to my URGENT question; the fact that I have a cold and my lips are chapped; the fact that American Idol isn't on for another four nights and the fact that I don't have a personal chef to cook me dinner tonight.

Time wasting

Aw. Look at the little catcow. I could so have one of these. More hybrid animals can be seen here for as long as the link stays active.

Worrying

Now, I know he's the first digital president and all, but you'd have thought the new Leader of the Free World might have better things to do than read about the self-absorbed life of a 31 year old London lass. Clearly not. Just moments ago, I received an email (see left) entitled: 'Barack Obama is now following you on Twitter'. Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that.

Anyway, in other news, yesterday evening after work, I got to the gym, undressed out of my office clothes, put on my gym kit, and then realised I didn't have any socks. So, in what may have been a first for the gym at work, I went barefoot. Thirty minutes on the cross trainer and a few weights - no one batted an eyelid. Liberating.

Right. It's Saturday, I've been looking forward to the weekend all week and I'm wasting it by lying in bed. Must get up. Later dude.

Excitement for pop tarts

It's been a quiet work day, and even more silent on the internet (total email haul thus far: 19 emails, of which 13 were spam, four were from Amazon confirming my purchase of The End of the Affair, leaving two from friends) so I am glad that at approximately 11am I discovered this amazing website. I don't expect that all the Faithful will find it quite as spine-tinglingly gripping as I do, so just to help you understand my excitement, let me copy and paste (and, obviously, reformat) the following list.

The top 20 best-selling albums of all time in the whole wide world are:

01. Thriller - Michael Jackson (60 million)
02. Black In Black - AC/DC (42m)
03. Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 - The Eagles (41m)
04. Saturday Night Fever soundtrack - Various Artists (40m)
05. Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd (40m)
06. Come On Over - Shania Twain (39m)
07. The Bodyguard soundtrack - Various Artists (37m)
08. Bat Out Of Hell - Meat Loaf (37m)
09. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles (32m)
10. Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin (32m)
11. Dirty Dancing soundtrack - Various Artists (32m)
12. Falling Into You - Celine Dion (32m)
13. Let's Talk About Love - Celine Dion (31m)
14. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac (30m)
15. Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette (30m)
16. Titanic soundtrack - Various Artists (30m)
17. Millenium - Backstreet Boys (30m)
18. 1 - The Beatles (30m)
19. Abbey Road - The Beatles (30m)
20. Bad - Michael Jackson (29m)

So much to say, so little time... To condense my inital thoughts:

Dirty Dancing! Hilarious.

How ridiculous that there are no artists who aren't either British or American.

But I'm quite proud of the fact that there are so many Brits.

They've spelled Millenium wrong. By 'they', I don't know if it's the website people, or the Backstreet Boys, or just the whole of America. But it definitely has two ns in it if it's proper.

Also, if you don't count the soundtrack to The Bodyguard as an album by Whitney Houston, then Michael Jackson is the only non-white entrant. And even that's now questionable. Odd.

I'm shocked by the AC/DC entry, in that, I am finding it uncomfortable to admit, I cannot name a single AC/DC song unprompted. I'm sure if you tell me a title, I'll be able to hum it... [goes off to look up AC/DC songs] Nope. I've just looked at their hits on the aforementioned amazing website, and I don't recognise a single one. Also odd.

LLFF fact fans: I own (or have owned but have now lost or given away) 11 of these 20 albums. Can you guess which ones? No? You don't even want to try? OK then. I'll tell you. The albums I own are: Thriller, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Dark Side Of The Moon, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Jagged Little Pill, 1 and Bad. The albums I once owned but have now lost are: the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, Bat Out Of Hell and Rumours. And I was sent a review copy of MillenNium back in the day but it's long been deliberately discarded.

With so many incisive discussion points from just one list, you can imagine that I had a feast on the website itself, given the tens of similar trivia lists there are - including songs with the longest titles, songs with the longest titles not including brackets and songs with the highest number of different individual letters in the title. God the internet is amazing.

Come here often?

After a fairly standard day at my desk, the last ten minutes have been a flurry of email hilarity as a boy and I have been bantering at top speed. The internet dating site where we met has a facility whereby, if someone sends you a message and you are too boring, stupid or cowardly to think of something interesting to say back, you can choose one of their homemade 'one-liners' to send instead.

The one-liners offered by the site are as follows:

I'm interested so far. Tell me more about yourself.
Thanks, but I don't think we're right for each other.
I think our age differences would be too large.
When I said absolutely crucial, I meant it!
I'm focusing on conversations that have already started.
Thanks, but I think I've already met my match here.
I'm very busy right now, but I'll get back to you soon.

For some reason, we decided to make up our own one-liners that we felt might be more truthful and/or useful:

Admit it, those photos are at least 10 years old.
Sorry, you bore the shit out of me.
I'm concentrating on less ugly people.
You are old and you probably smell.
I find the fact that you think you could pull me offensive.
I wouldn't go on a date with you even if I'd been denied human contact for several decades.
Your self-satisfaction oozes from every pixel of your profile and I find you abhorrent.
I'm afraid you are too unfashionable for me. River Island is not an acceptable T-shirt brand.
I'm currently emailing people with more potential, but if they turn out to be no-goes, I might consider you later.

It's sad these aren't actually on offer on the site since, using lessons learned at the Simon Cowell school of honesty, these might actually prevent people continuing on their merry delusional way, unable to work out why no one has replied to their attempts to make contact. Who says online dating isn't fun?

Love is in the air

I have found a rebound relationship. He's black, smooth, fashionable, incredibly handy in a crisis, reliable, cutting edge, everyone who meets him wants to touch him, and he comes with me everywhere. His name? Phone. iPhone.

Much as I'd love to satisfy female stereotypes and pretend that I can't set a VHS to record and don't know how to change the timer on my boiler so that my man can have his Knight In Shining Armour moments, the fact is that I'm a gadget fan through and through. Since I picked up my new handset on Monday, I've been unable to get to sleep before 1am, so busy have I been with rearranging the icons on my phone into order of usage frequency and downloading new applications from iTunes so that I can check the London Underground lines' status with a single click, or turn the whole screen white to use it as a torch. By the middle of next week, I'm hoping to have programmed it to answer my work phone and send emails so that I no longer have to go into the office at all.

I'm still limping, although today I am wearing a black skirt, black tights and black shoes (as well as some items on my top half), and I positioned my bandage over the tights so that I could remove it if necessary. I thought it looked quite jaunty and I was proved right when someone by the lift said it looked like I was wearing one spat. That's me, a forgetful twenties gangster with a shiny new phone. Hooray.

Tense times

When I was writing my 200 word review of I Am Legend yesterday, I had a quandary. I wanted to say that the film didn't quite reach its potential and my plan was to conclude by suggesting that the tense in the movie's title might have been more accurate if it had read 'I Should Have Been Legendary'. Thus, my draft sentence was something like, "A good effort, but I'd switch the film's title to the perfect conditional." However, verb tenses have never been my strong point - I am far more instinctive about syntax than my poncey style might suggest - and even after a fair bit of research, I couldn't find the correct tense for 'I should have been'. So I went onto my beloved Facebook group, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar, and asked the panel, using the noun 'ballerina' instead of 'legend' for no clear reason. Today, I received this reply from a gentleman, previously unknown to me, called Barrie:

"Jane, strictly speaking, ‘I should have been’ isn’t a tense at all, but an example of aspect. Aspect tells us about the way the speaker views an action or state in terms of the passing of time. However, forms such as ‘I have been’ are frequently known, particularly in books for foreign learners, as the present perfect tense. The sentence also includes ‘should’, a modal verb (an extra verb that tells us something about the speaker’s attitude towards the meaning contained in the main verb). ‘Should’ most frequently expresses obligation, but in your sentence it expresses an ‘unreal’ situation. The speaker wasn’t a ballerina, but she wishes she had been. So, ‘I should have been’ is the first person singular perfect aspect of ‘be’, modified by the modal verb ‘should’ to express an ‘unreal’ situation."

I mean, really. That paragraph makes me glow with happiness, encapsulating so much of what I love about the world. I adore computer geeks and the internet, the English language and grammar pedants, precision in general and random acts of kindness by strangers. And even though I didn't take Barrie's answer on board on this occasion, I hope we can all agree that the final phrase I chose for my review is a fair bit catchier than, "A good effort, but I'd switch the film's title to the third person singular aspect of 'be', with the addition of the modifier 'should' to express an 'unreal' situation (rather than an obligation)."

Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

This whole weekend has been rather extraordinary in a very low-key way. Just totally unlike me. Yesterday I woke up with a vague plan for how the day was going to turn out, but in the end completely different things happened and it was really pleasant and not overwhelming or incredible, just very nice. I did some worthwhile things and was rewarded with warmth, acceptance, friendship and unsolicited compliments. And on Friday I realised I'd lost my 2008 diary and I thought I might have left it at work but then yesterday I received a phone message from someone saying it had been found on a train and now I'm going to be reunited with it. Extraordinary kindness and efficiency from a stranger, Diary Doug, who I will have to repay in some way.

Today I had no plans and lay in bed reading and emailing intermittently. Just before lunchtime I finished a book called Men! by Isabel Losada and noticed in the back that she had a website. So then I went on her website and noticed that she had a blog. So then I read the blog and saw that she had just set up a Facebook page. So then I went on Facebook and befriended her. And now for the rest of the day, I've been reading another of her books in my comfortable chair, while we've been writing on each other's Facebook walls about her impending Facebook addiction and my quest for spiritual enlightenment. It's all been rather surreal and wonderful.

And again, I am filled with the still-unfamiliar sense that everything is happening for a reason and my job is to learn the lessons I'm taught. I feel more accepting, more New Age and more content than I ever thought it was possible for me to be. And no, I'm not drunk.

Apologies to the Faithful who may have found my blog a little wishy-washy and sickeningly positive of late, but the fact is that I simply don't feel as bitchy or downtrodden or vitriolic these days. I'm sure it's just a phase but really, if I end up being insufferably upbeat and zen the whole time, I won't be remotely upset if you all stop reading. Hang in there for another few days, though, because I have to go to hospital for a minor operation on Monday and meet with two builders on Tuesday to get quotes for building work that will clean out my bank account faster than a sprinter on steroids. And then, to continue the vague feeling of a Craig David song, on Wednesday I am off to Amsterdam for two days' work and one day's play. Surely, somewhere along the way, I'll have to vent some frustration about something? Only one way to find out...

The reason I haven't posted for a month

Apologies.

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.

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.

iPod idiocy and job update

In decades gone by, a sign of mental decrepitude was the sight of an absent-minded individual searching for the pair of spectacles they were already wearing. In a modern take on an age-old problem, I am now confronting a new embarrassment. As I sit on the tube or walk along the busy London streets, I am regularly plagued by a panicked conviction that my iPod has been stolen and have to pat my pockets frantically and search my cavernous bag until I find it. Given the metropolis' reputation for petty crime and white-wire targeting, such behaviour could perhaps be seen as sensible caution were it not for the fact that, during these frenzied searching sessions, my headphones are always sitting comfortably in my ears and beautiful music is wending its way down the wires into my mind. Looking for an iPod while wearing it and hearing its music: absurd when it happens the first time, worrying when it happens every few minutes.

In other news: I am employed.

Gains and Grievances

Today's achievements:

1. I successfully rewrote my CV for the PA/Executive Assistant arena - this involved deleting everything I believe to be impressive about my employment history and flagging up non-events such as typing words per minute and the fact that I can organise a meeting.
2. I finally completed my application for a writing job at the Red Cross that sounds gripping - unfortunately, having finished the online form after a substantial amount of time spent grappling with awful drop-down menus and reams of equal opportunities questions, I spotted the salary in the job description. I had got the idea from somewhere that the salary was around £28K. I was wrong. It is precisely the salary that one would expect from a fascinating job at a charity: a pittance.
3. I checked in at MacFixitForums where Apple geeks share info, and found that my post about slow running programs had been answered. I thus rebuilt Entourage, my email programme - and installed and ran OnyX, a deceptively small programme that rooted out all the space-filling rubble on my system and gave me an extra 1.5 Gb of available space. Very satisfying.
4. I sellotaped the spine of my borrowed copy of Duruflé's Requiem as it was falling to pieces.

Today's gripes:

1. People who are clearly at their desk and who are, in some small way, holding my future in their grasp, but who do not reply immediately to my emails. They should be culled.
2. Part-time job ads that use pro rata payment information: it's misleading and irritating. A new position that I thought sounded extremely appealing was advertised as four days a week, salary £30K pro rata. It all seemed lovely - but then I took a fifth of the salary off, to account for me working four days rather than five, and it emerged that the actual salary would be £24K - not an insubstantial difference. How annoying.
3. Cats that don't run down the stairs fast enough when I'm trying to reach the front door before the postman sprints gleefully away down the street clutching my undelivered package. Loitering on the staircase in front of me is not helpful - particularly when I am in a hurry. Of course, my frame is delicate and fragile, and I am well-known in my family for being fleet of foot, but even so, in a contest between my descending weight and a feline spine, I think we all know who would win.

With the day's achievements outweighing the gripes, I think I can afford myself a virtual high five - although high fiving oneself does smack of desperation and loneliness. Additionally, I must make sure I don't get too cocky - it's only lunchtime and there's still much potential for further events of both negative and positive persuasions. I'll put the high five on hold 'til the flower of Tuesday has unfurled a few more petals. Check back soon for more terrible metaphors and self-indulgent musing.