Juicing it

Juicing it
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

We cut down our organic fruit delivery to once a fortnight because we just don't eat that much fruit. Chucking away overpriced kiwi fruit makes me feel even more evil than having a standing order to a gym I never visit. (NB cancelled that years ago).

I do like citrus fruit, but even that is a struggle unless someone peels it and sits it in front of me. So once a fortnight we end up having a big juice. And I have to say, it's usually glorious. This time we had blood oranges and pink plus regular grapefruit. The juice was an improbable pinky-orange somehow reminiscent of student cocktails featuring too much grenadine (= any grenadine).

Every time I drink the big juice I think mmm, fruit is great, must eat more fruit. Never happens.

joella

Malarial Mary

Malaria Information Week
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

In theory, marking Malaria Information Week with an educational display in the Atrium of the New Building should only be a good thing.

Malaria kills more people than AIDS, and while a very different disease it does have some parallels: it's hard to get rid of, it kills poor people but not rich people, prevention is more likely to be effective than cure.

We had an interesting set of display boards with photos and captions, plus some leaflets and handouts to give us more information. The vast majority of British people never have this level of exposure to malaria itself, never mind to educational material about malaria. I should salute my employer.

But what's with Malarial Mary? Clearly on loan from Matalan down the road, she sat there all week with her full make up, 'am I bovvered?' posture and protruding joints - in fact you could probably sell those oversized rubber gloves and perspex face masks as eating disorder fetish kit.

We asked ourselves - how significant a role do anorexic white female mannequins usually play in public health initiatives to overcome global scourges? Answer: Um, none. We asked ourselves - is there a good reason for this? Answer: Um, probably.

joella

Sun and wind and laundry and me

Sun and wind and laundry and me
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

I love the smell and the feel of line-dried bedding... and it is spectacularly sunny and windy today. I wriggled out of bed specially to get the laundry on and not miss such a rare February opportunity.

Days like these are the reason I sank fence posts randomly across the garden and strung washing line between them: you just don't get the same joy from rotary dryers.

joella

Vive la difference!

After a hard night's plumbing, I was relaxing this evening with some of housemate K's vodka aux fines herbes - or somesuch - which she kindly brought back from her recent work trip to Poland. We were trading stories of the last 20 years and laughing like drains.

She headed off to bed saying ' I think I just need to listen to a bit of Oasis before I go to sleep'. Now I am very fond of housemate K but I can't fucking stand Oasis (with the exception of Champagne Supernova, which is ace). I needed a Gallagher antidote, and fast.

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Diamanda Galas is the sun! Here was a copy of Saint of the Pit, kindly lent to me by A last weekend at the end of a long and great evening featuring much red wine, much random conversation and many organic root vegetables. What, bar something featuring a harpsichord, could offset Oasis more appositely?

M, arriving home on a high from the inaugural meeting of his new band, said something along the lines of 'I'm so pleased that you have found avant garde music that you like; I just wish I didn't happen to think it was unbearable'.

Now I have said this before, but it bears repeating: as far as I'm concerned, Diamanda Galas's music is like the inside of my head on a bad day, maybe with extra goth sound effects. It's elemental female raging against the machine of church and state and I love it.

Now, M has a lot of John Zorn albums. To me, they seem to form the soundtrack to joyless postmodern existence... such as the lives surely lived by the new Observer sex columnists.

But not everyone is alienated by the sound of powertools meeting asbestos and kicking off an inescapable chronic lung condition while millstones grind on regardless. I mean no offence by this, but something in Mr Zorn's musical take on life clearly resonates with M, just as something in Ms Galas's resonates with me.

Which leads me to surmise that one person's eardrum bleed is another person's ambient. We could all learn something from that, no?

joella

Shameless

... is the name of one of my favourite Ani DiFranco songs (which is pretty much the same as being one of my favourite songs full stop). If you haven't heard it, I recommend it as the perfect song for those moments where you need to slam round the house scratching the itch of existence.

But more topically, Shameless is absolutely my favourite TV programme.

And tonight was one of its finest episodes. It turns out ultra-medicated Sheila killed her first husband with a fondue fork and buried him in the garden. Pisshead Frank gets cold feet, convinced she's about to off him as well. But salt of the earth Veronica (who was after the corpse's gold to finance her IVF) discovered the truth: that Sheila killed him because he used to beat her and burn her with hot medallions (of the Elizabeth Duke type, as opposed to the pork type). She told Frank, who (also realising that she'd opened a joint bank account for them, giving him access to an unprecedented amount of beer and E money) nicked a random kid's BMX to get to the police station before Sheila confessed all.

Frank is a fuckwit and a sponger and an addict and a very bad father, but he's not violent and he doesn't hate anyone more than he hates himself. He's the archetypal 21st century waster dad. And the scene where he did the right thing and told Sheila he was nothing without her... and you suddenly realised, well, actually he *is* the best thing that ever happened to her. Genius.

As Frank said himself... Vene vidi vol au vent - let's have a fuckng party!

joella

Lightbulb Wars: update from the frontline

I had a comment (which, annoyingly, appears to have disappeared in a Blogger glitch) from anna t about my recent lightbulb wars with the Facilities department in the New Building. She suggested joining a Union. In fact I think she suggested becoming a Union rep.

Which is good advice. I think we should all be Union members, and in fact I am - I have been a T&G member since I started working for this large multinational NGO about five and a half years ago. (As a trainee plumber I am also an NUS member, which is great for getting cheap cinema tickets, but I'm not sure that really counts).

And we do have a health and safety rep. And taking the matter up with her was going to be my next move. This would be a high risk strategy, as Facilities had told me they were 'progressing' the issue (which they are, but at a pace which is sufficiently glacial to remind you of your lowly status in the great lighting scheme of things).

Upping the ante in this way would, I am sure, light the red touchpaper of the Assistant Facilities Manager. And believe me, her red touchpaper is mighty short.

This isn't to say I wouldn't do it, but I am, after all, a manager with a headache, not a sweatshop worker who isn't allowed to go to the toilet. So I adopted a more subtle approach. I talked to the Building Services Engineer.

He is a lovely guy, who is fond of me because I am interested in plumbing, and has taken me on a tour of the amazing pipes and boilers and tanks hidden in the roof space of the New Building. He isn't allowed to do anything that alters the spec of the building without authorisation from Facilities. This includes removing lightbulbs. But, he said, 'we could just move the lights over a bit'.

The ceiling is made of squares, and every fifth square one way and fourth square the other way is a light. He went and got a stepladder, poked a few panels out, and moved the light above my desk two squares over and three squares back. Then he moved the light over my colleague K's desk. Then he said 'see how you get on with that', and left me in a blissful pool of shadow.

I don't have a headache. My colleague K doesn't have a headache. The Assistant Facilities Manager is incandescent. The Building Services Engineer grinned at me this morning and said 'I've got broad shoulders, I can take it.' Life is sweet.

joella

David Irving: not mad, just bad

I like to think I am reasonably well informed about current affairs (I snooze to the Today Programme for at least an hour every morning), and being a little bit Jewish I have a special interest in anti-Semitism. So I am really quite embarrassed to recount the following, but feel its comedy value might redeem me.

There's lots of buzzing on the airwaves at the moment about David Irving being tried in Austria, where Holocaust denial is illegal, for claiming that Auschwitz's gas chambers were a hoax. Skimming the BBC News RSS feed earlier, I saw the headline 'Irving admits Holocaust 'mistake'', and skipped over to take a look.

Hmm, I thought, I see he's not wearing those turquoise tracksuits anymore.

Hmm, I thought again, actually he might not be the guy with the turquoise tracksuits.

It turns out I had confused David Irving (who was a serious historian if also "an active Holocaust denier, anti-Semitic and racist ") with David Icke (who is clearly barking mad if also the holder of pretty dodgy views on Jews).

I had been wondering why anyone cared what he thought. I've got it now.

joella

Showing my age

This week I upbraided my friend Ben for being rude about Paul Weller - specifically, for claiming that he has always written miserable songs. No! I said. Listen to Cafe Bleu! In particular, listen to 'You're the best thing'. In what sense could this song ever be described as miserable? (At this point I should direct you to an MP3 of it but I can't find one, and I can't make my own as I have it on vinyl, and while I know that doesn't make it impossible, life is too short. If you haven't got it, ask iTunes. But, as I said to Ben, you want the original, not the Singular Adventures version.)

This song...

Could be discontent
Chase the rainbow's end
I could win much more
But lose all that is mine

I could run away
But I'd rather stay
I'm content just with the riches that you bring

... is by any measure the very opposite of miserable, but personally I love it because it, and the rest of the album it comes from, formed part of the soundtrack to my first serious relationship. So many things about my life are better now than they were 20 years ago, but nothing will ever be as sweet or as salty as some of those memories.

So I guess I'm biased.

But what *really* made me feel old was coming home from the pub last night, deciding to put the record (record!) on, and finding tucked into the album sleeve a page torn out of Smash Hits, with a photo of a young Paul Weller in a lemon yellow jumper and all the lyrics to that beautiful song.

RIP Smash Hits (visit the Smash Hits Tribute Messageboard!). We loved you.

joella

"Holy shit, I just shot Harry in the face!"

When did Pulp Fiction come out? 1995? (I know it's the work of seconds to find this out, but I can't be arsed). Anyway, I went to watch it at the Phoenix with my Significant Ex and my colleague C. For weeks afterwards, 'Holy shit, I just shot Marvin in the face!' was our all-purpose catchphrase. I still say it sometimes. I wonder if Dick Cheney's friends have seen it? They could be having a whale of a time winding him up if they have.*

God bless the right to bear arms.

joella

*though the Cheney version, according to today's Guardian, is the slightly less catchy "Ultimately I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry."

A paean to East Oxford

Last night Plumbing S was coming over. I didn't have any wine. I'm just popping out to Classic Wines, I said. Hang on, said M, *Plumbing S* is coming over and you're going to *Classic Wines*? (Plumbing S has a Diploma of Wine. Everything I know about wine, I learnt it from her. Classic Wines, and forgive me if you've heard this before, is the sort of off licence which smells of bleach and vomit.)

Shit, you're right, I said. Maybe I should go to Tesco.

But there wasn't time, and I headed for the compromise option: Wasim Regency Stores, where a wildly random selection of wine costs a consistent �4.99 a bottle. Who knows where they get it from, I have often thought to myself. It can be good, and it can be quite spectacularly bad. It's kind of a lottery, but this seemed more appropriate than the alternative of slightly gone off Ernest & Julio Gallo.

Scanning the shelves in a mild panic, I suddenly saw a familiar 'Finest' label. A Tesco Finest label. And then another one. So I emerged with a bottle of 2005 Aussie Chardonnay (Tesco price: �7.99) and another of 1999 Gran Reserva Rioja (Tesco price: �9.99) for the princely total of �9.98.

When I got home I discovered that plumbing S had brought a posh bottle of Manzanilla, just in case I'd resorted to Classic Wines. We drank some of that and most of the Rioja, which I thought was lovely but she judged to be low on tannin. She's undoubtedly right, but I am more curious about how it came to be there in the first place. I'm glad it was though: saved me a walk and eight quid. You don't get that in Middle England.

joella

Rearrange me till I'm sane

Quite by chance, we have ended up this evening drinking Rioja and watching Classic Albums on BBC2. Very ABC1. But hey, this week it's Dark Side of the Moon, which is possibly the album most centrally placed in the Venn diagram of the intergenerational record collection occupying the middle room of my significant relationship.

M saw Pink Floyd in Brighton in 1972, around the time I was toddling Up North, busy getting used to solid foods. I envy him that gig experience. I have never seen The Floyd, and have no desire to now. Musicians, unlike writers, rarely age well. He still loves the album, but he's mainly into it for the music, the strange time signatures, the special effects which these days could be done at the drop of an automated hat, but then involved lots of tape machines being turned on at the same time.

For me, it's mainly about the lyrics. I heard them first in about 1985, while still in deepest Lancashire, lying on the bedroom floor of a boy who was trying to get into my pants, too drunk for comfort and wondering what the hell was going on. The thing I remember from that first listen is all the clocks at the beginning of Time. I think they probably prompted me to get up and be sick.

A few years later I was on holiday with my Significant Ex in still (as opposed to former) Yugoslavia. It wasn't a good holiday, for reasons I am still too ashamed to articulate, but one of its high points was a visit to a nightclub at the end of the universe, where we asked the DJ if he had any English music and he played us Time. We threw spacy shapes on an empty dancefloor under the stony glare of crewcut Communist Europopsters and tried not to think about hanging on in quiet desperation.

That experience notwithstanding, over the next few years I had some of my most memorable orgasms, whether alone or accompanied, to the strains of Great Gig in the Sky. And it became a sporadic ritual to head out to the pub, roll a big spliff on returning, lie in companionable 20-something heaps on the floor and listen to the whole album with the lights off and the essential oils burning.

I don't really do that sort of thing anymore, and neither does M, but every time we put the album on I kind of figure we should. He bought my uncle J a reggae take on it for Christmas, listening to which made us giggle for at least five junctions worth of the M6 (a near impossible feat), and it was also sampled (Time again) by Madonna for one of the tracks on Confessions. Clearly it's not an album that's lost its mojo. And that's a beautiful thing.

My Pink Floyd secret is that (very unfashionably) I like the Roger Waters bits best. Us and Them, now there's a heart stopping song. He said on the programme that he fel slightly embarrassed that he'd got away with such Lower Sixth lyrics. Maybe I don't see them that way because I first heard them when I was in the Lower Sixth myself, or maybe they just work because the world was different then. They didn't have postmodern paranoia in the 1970s. It's not all progress.

joella

Shoot out the lights

You know how it is sometimes: the world's imploding in a series of medieval knee jerks and all you can think about is you you you.

I've been getting headaches nearly every day since we moved office. I don't cope well under bright artificial light, but never before have I had to work in it -- in every previous workplace where it's been too bright I have been able to turn off the lights, sit by a window and use a desk lamp with a daylight bulb in it when it's dark. This has worked as a modus operandi for the last 12 years. But not here. No. Here in the Brave New Building you can't turn off the lights yourself, and, I am assured in 'computer says no' style, that the light levels at my desk are fine because they "fall within the design criteria for the building".

To cut a long saga short, I'll just paste a chunk of the email Staff Health sent to Facilities, who are trying their damnedest to cast my request to remove the lightbulb from over my desk (temporarily, to see if it helps, though I can't see how it won't) as the action of a freak.

- Jo had an eyetest end 05 and discussed problems with optician. No changes to eye, therefore optician asked Jo to look at work environment.
- Jo is diligent about having correct w/station set up
- Jo will consider moving desks but doesn't think it will solve the problem completely [this is, I have explained Very Slowly, because I have had this problem in two completely different parts of the building]
- Jo has night classes x2/week
- Jo would consider wearing hat but only as last resort [I don't remember having this discussion, apart from something I thought was a joke about wearing an 80s-tennis-player style visor]
- Jo will look at plants and water. [I don't even know what this means]

I'm not the only person suffering this problem, but they are treating us all as individual freaks. I think I might (for the first time ever) talk to the union.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking of getting some protest T-shirts made up: How many facilities managers does it take to change a light bulb?

joella

Viz Letterbocks

Having written my previous post, I ended up on the Viz website for the first time ever... I did have tea coming out of my nose when I read this:

It really annoys me to see these suicide bombers blowing up other people as well as themselves. In my day, suicide was done in a more dignified way, such as slicing your wrists in the bath, or hanging yourself from a door with a belt.
Paul Mulraney, Belfast

joella

The flag burners and cheese boycotters are as bad as the cartoonists

I despair of the world sometimes. Were I a cartoonist, I wouldn't draw a cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb turban. I would think it a little crass, a bit like drawing a cartoon of Jesus as a choirboy abuser or Buddha as a... (um... can anyone think of anything bad that any Buddhist has ever done?)

But, you know. Art as satire. It's not what anyone really thinks. It's designed to get a rise. When I was a teenage feminist I used to get angry at Viz Comic. What's the fucking point? This is on about the same level of sophistication, and so is the bloody reaction to it.

joella

Day out in Big Smoke

St Paul's, Rousseau, Millennium Bridge
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

Took the day off yesterday to visit Tate Modern to see the Rousseau show before it finishes. It was amazing, and great to go in the week when it's not so heaving. It was chocablock with schoolgirls in long kilts though, sitting in packs on the floor sketching tigers. Which was a bit freaky, frankly.

We looked and looked at the deep green leaves and the strange animals and the big beautiful moons hanging in the deep bluey green skies. Then we headed off into the sunless grey to find something warm and exotic to eat. Which we did, at Busaba Eathai on Wardour Street. I haven't had morning glory for years (kind of like chewy spinach) but I could eat it all day. M had a mandarin juice with chilli and lemongrass which was like heaven in a glass. We were very happy bunnies. And then we came home.

Hmm. I think birthday celebrations are finally over. Sniff.

joella