Scary little man from Texas

He's going to do it isn't he?

I wonder if being the President of the United States is a bit like working in marketing -- to be really good at it you have to believe your own hype. You have to be able to say things like "hold the vision", and "drive the strategy forward" and "grow the business" without snorting your tea out your nose and rolling your eyes heavenwards.

When Dubya puts his military style bomber jacket on and that extra bit of Brylcreem and starts doing little salutes to people maybe he does really feel that these are things you need to do in serious times. Where men are men and women are... um...

... filling in petitions in the forlorn hope that they will make a difference.

www.oxfam.org.uk/iraqaction

joella

Astrology and gastronomy

Happy birthday (yesterday) to me
Happy birthday (yesterday) to me
Happy BIRTHDAY (yesterday) dear ME
Happy birthday (yesterday) to me.

For I'm a reasonably well balanced person
For I'm a reasonably well balanced person
For I'm a reasonably well balanced PERSON
And so says most of me.

Right, that's enough self-obsession for one year.

Yeah right. Cos, like, why write a weblog otherwise?

I have heard that it is going to be a blinding year for Aquarians. This is excellent news. I have felt slightly let down this far by the supposed Age of Aquarius, but nonetheless I remain convinced that it is the coolest by far of all star signs, and anyone who disagrees is just jealous.

And the signs are pretty good. I had a wonderful birthday: my new colleagues gave me cake and cards, lots of people rang me up and emailed me and the spot on my chin began to look as if it might one day not be the first thing you notice about me.

Then M took me to the jolly posh Le Petit Blanc in the evening and we had a fantastic meal, talked of things heavy and light and made barely a faux pas between us (though I still don't know what the etiquette is for buttering bread if there is no side plate -- use the table or use your hand?). And *still* in bed by midnight like a healthy person.

Tonight I had dinner with a fellow Aquarian at the not so posh but still very delicious Chez Gaston where they give you a side order of gherkins to go with your pancake without making you feel like a weirdo. It had been a long time, and it felt really good to see her again and talk about new things and old. Next week will be back to normal, but I will try and keep this one special.

Days till my birthday: THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR

joella

Counting blessings

Counting several things actually. Days of Living Healthily: TWENTY-SIX. Days till my birthday: ONE. (Actually, less than that, in fact about 34 minutes as I type, but ONE is what I felt when I woke up this morning). Blessings: MANY.

Monday is a rubbish day to have a birthday party. I have managed it, but only in the days when serious drugs could be consumed on a schoolnight, and as a) I am not taking drugs anymore, b) I don't have friends who are taking drugs anymore, well, not on a schoolnight, well, certainly not on a Monday, and c) I am not consuming *anything* of interest at the moment, I decided it was a disastrous idea to try. Everyone would be glued to Enders or at yoga or something.

So I decided to have it today instead, and then I came up with the splendid idea of having it at the Waterman's Arms, and then Miles came up with the double splendid idea of having it at lunchtime.

You think that the web has got something about everything, yet nowhere is there a mention of Sunday lunch at the Waterman's Arms, or even much about it at all. Yet it is my favourite pub in all the world. It squeezed fourteen of us in, and Jen provided birthday balloons and banners and a little chocolate log with a candle in it. I was bursting with happiness.

A lot has happened since I last had a birthday on a Monday. I live somewhere else, work somewhere else, love someone else. And while I still have friendships which go back at least two birthdays-on-Mondays, I did seem to go through a phase of shedding them not long after last birthday-on-Monday. This was a source of great pain to me at the time, but if it hadn't happened then today wouldn't have happened, because I wouldn't have met most of the people who were there. And while a wildly diverse bunch in themselves, they all know who I am, I think. How lucky am I.

Oh! It's really my birthday now! And my first present of the day is a little piece of kit which means I can plug the TV in in my room when something needs videoing, rather than having to video it in S's room then carry it all upstairs to watch in mine. This does make sense, but only if you understand the television dynamics in our household. Won't go into them here.

And so to bed.

joella

Food Justice

I've got a feeling I've got a little political phase coming on. Partly it's New Job: lots of political stuff coming my way rather than lots of shite about e-marketing and content management systems, and partly it's because I've got time for it in my head at the moment. It's either that or watch Midsomer Murders every week. Or maybe both, who knows.

A long time ago, when I had the Job In A Business Park, I went out for a long walk at lunchtime down to the only real shop it was possible to walk to. It had really good home made sandwiches and I liked it a lot. I think it's shut down now, because they opened some kind of hideous shopping plaza across the road.

But it was still open then, and I was walking back to work, daydreaming about what I was going to do with my life, because though I was working with some lovely people, the Business Park was destroying my soul and this wasn't going to change anytime soon. It was a feeling that had kind of been there for years, but it was harder to ignore there than anywhere else. That song by Sinead O'Connor where she screams "Why don't you go out there and do something useful" -- that song was going on in my head.

And I decided that one thing I would really like to do was take on junk food. There had been a story in the news about teenage parents whose baby had died of salt poisoning beacuse they had fed it on liquidised burgers and fried egg sandwiches, which is what they were eating. I was reading about the McLibel two. I had been into Iceland looking for something that the Co-op didn't have and got angry about all the frozen shite that was really cheap but which you'd get scurvy if you lived off, and I was coming to terms with the fact that I had just moved in with Ms P who not only didn't know how to cook, she didn't know how to shop. If you didn't feed her, she'd live on toast. And ketchup.

And I was thinking to myself that while people say that it's cheaper to eat junk food than fresh food, is it really? Somewhere like India or South East Asia, the cheapest food comes from street stalls where they make it right in front of you. Things like lentils and potatoes are dirt cheap, surely? But of course you've got to know what to do with them, how to cook them, make them taste good, do stuff to them so kids will eat them, get round this thing that men have about it's not a meal if it's not got meat in it, etc.

That was the essence of my big rambling thought. How cool it would be to be part of something that meant people didn't buy value burgers anymore because they had better options that didn't cost them any more. I could do a course in nutrition! I could write a book! Heart disease rates would drop through the floor! Nobody would ever eat KFC again!

But I did recognise this for the hopeless middle class daydream that it was, wandering through the Business Park with my stomach full of smoked mackerel salad sandwich on granary bread, and while I returned to it a few times like all the other hopeless middle class daydreams, it never went anywhere.

Then today I discovered Food Justice -- the campaign for the Food Poverty (Eradication) Bill. Thank god for people who understand how to get things done. Now *that's* what I call strategic. Support them! Tell your friends! I'm going to.

joella

Grown up office life

I've got a new job. Still in the same place, but a new job. My lovely team, my surrogate dysfunctional family, are now over the road arguing about rice cakes and remaining resolutely cynical about anything corporate, and I am in a room on my own trying to work out what it is I now do. Yesterday I had two visitors, but today I have only had one.

It's a grown up move. Very strategic, and I have bought new boots to prove it (and to make myself taller and more imposing).

But I am a little bit sad.

I felt just like this when I moved from the House on the Hill to the Job In A Business Park.

Not much of your working life can be like that -- I guess I am lucky to have had it twice. Justin Ruffles is doing a great job of documenting the days on the hill with his Ghost of Working Past occasional series. My favourite so far is January 18th. It wasn't all great -- in fact bits of it were downright awful -- but you knew who your friends were. And some of them still are. Can't be bad.

joella

Cervix on TV

A friend writes to me and tells me he is checking out my blog but that nothing in my life can compare to his recent 'camera up arse' (medical reasons, presumably) experience. Ha.

Not once, not twice, but three times I have seen my cervix on TV, as people have stuck cameras up there while they have been trying to fix various things wrong with it. Successfully, as far as we know, which is good, because I am in no hurry to repeat the experience. I can report that it looks like a big pink shiny doughnut, and that one inadvertently knees oneself in the face when they start poking around with very long cotton buds and other less fluffy things.

So there.

Although there was the time his penis exploded. I can't beat that.

joella

Another place

Went to MOMA today (or Modern Art Oxford as it is now calling itself) to catch the last day of the Tracey Emin exhibition This is Another Place. I might well not have made it except M went a while ago and came back saying he imagined it was like being inside my head. So I couldn't really not go, could I?

And while some of it completely passed me by, and some of the rest of it made me pull faces and shudder slightly, I think I can see what he meant. It was a bit like an Ani DiFranco album embroidered on a blanket. A bit heavy handed at times, but maybe that's just because people don't say this sort of thing out loud very often, so you can't afford to be too subtle or nobody will get it.

I felt a lot of things, but one of them, oddly, was grateful.

joella

Best laid plans

I would just like it on record that, in the spirit of Year of Living Healthily, I tried to cycle to work this week. No really, I did.

On Sunday I spent ages (not because it should take ages, but because I am extraordinarily inept at these things) fitting a new back light to my bike. Brand new. Not cheap. A proper one. Lack of such a light has been my reason for not cycling for the last two months -- I know how easy it is to die a horrible death on the roads of Oxford if you aren't visible enough.

Anyway. Lights on bike. Sorted. Get up early, dress appropriately, sling bag across body, don helmet, wheel bike through house, climb on, feel virtuous and *incredibly* healthy, set off.

Freewheel down hill to T-junction with Cowley Road (where I need to turn right). Wait patiently for gap in traffic. Wait less patiently. Identify tiny gap, push off, realise shoes aren't actually very appropriate as foot slips off pedal and neatly kicks new back light off bike and into the middle of the road.

Reach the other side and get off. Watch helplessly but still with hope as ten cars zoom past, missing light by inches. Shout FUCK IT very loudly as No 1 bus crushes light into dust.

Walk bike back across road, cycle back up the hill, chuck bike and helmet in through the front door, walk to the bus stop. Refuse to get No 1 bus on principle (as one should anyway because they are run by bastard homophobic Stagecoach, but normally one just can't be arsed).

Do best to maintain bad mood all morning, and largely succeed.

joella

Radio silence

Been kind of a quiet week. Year of Living Healthily is now thirteen days (THIRTEEN DAYS!) in, and birthday countdown (FOURTEEN DAYS!) has begun.

And how do I feel? Okay, but a bit disappointed that I am not bursting with energy like a satsuma. I am getting more sleep than I have in years but am nowhere near leaping out of bed in the morning with joy in my heart.

But here are some good things I have been doing with my time:

1. Skincare. I have never been any good at this. But now I have invested in lots of things from Neutrogena (their animal testing policy is ok if not perfect). As well as cleanser and moisturiser, I have two products that I am very excited about. It goes to show how far skincare has come since I last took an interest (sometime in the late 80s when I spent far more time looking in the mirror than could possibly be good for the soul).

The first is Visibly Firm Night Cream. I am ridiculously pleased with this, firstly because I have never had night cream before, and secondly because it is such a beautiful colour. Its magic ingredient, apparently, is 'active copper' (as opposed to what? Passive copper?), which means the tub has a copper coloured lid, which goes perfectly with the cream inside, which is a wonderful shade of pale blue. This in itself has been enough to make me put it on every night, although truth be told I don't think I am visibly firmer yet.

And secondly there is the utterly fantastic Pore Refining Mattifier. This stuff is magic. It's clear silicone stuff that stops your nose shining *all day*. I love it.

More good things later, have to do some work.

joella

Blood, shit and tears

Sounds quite obscene doesn't it? But it's all depressingly mundane.

I am constipated. Very. It's been days.

Eight days (EIGHT DAYS!) without cigarettes and alcohol have taken their toll on my already sluggish-as-a-sleepy-slug digestive system and I am beginning to worry about what will actually happen when all systems are, as it were, go.

Have also been aggressively premenstrual (never a help in the 'movement' department in itself). Been doing lots and lots of shouting at people under the cast iron nicotine withdrawal excuse, and also spent hours cleaning out the tumble dryer fluff filter and making lists of things to throw away.

I have been out for Big Pads and linseed. Sometime this week it's gonna get ugly.

joella

Sunshine on a rainy day

It was fiercely sunny this morning as I exited at an unexpectedly early hour to visit the lovely Elaine for some much overdue depilation. I didn't have a hangover -- almost unprecedented for a Saturday -- and the whole street was twinkling with frost. And it felt good, especially as for the last week we have had nothing but darkness, floods and pestilence.

So, having checked that the street was empty, I started singing Sunshine on a rainy day. But in my head, the next line was "makes my soul drip, drip away". I don't remember caring too much when it came out and I used to sing it in the rain, mostly, but today it didn't feel quite right. Surely we need all the soul we can get?

So when I got home I decided to check. Couldn't find my dodgy early 90s tape with it on, probably left it in the car when I sold it. So went online to check it out -- and then I got Angry. Because if you search Google on Sunshine on a rainy day you'd think it was a bloody Emma Bunton song. And it bloody isn't.

I get kind of pissed off with girl and boy band cover versions at the best of times -- too often they are soupy massacres of songs that weren't that wonderful first time round -- but I fucking hate Emma Bunton.

Partly this is because she has covered songs that I actually like and turned them into a flouncy pouty gingham and cleavage slice of hell, and partly it's because she's such a big name that people think these songs, including, to my great distress, Edie Brickell's What I Am (off the wonderful Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars) are *hers*. As if.

Anyway, cut a long story short, the Zoe lyrics sites tell you that it's "makes my soul trip, trip, trip away", while the Emma Bunton lyrics sites opt for "drip, drip, drip". Couldn't put it better myself.

joella

The Joy Of...

... knitting. If you have just given up smoking (Day Three! Day Three!) then knitting is brilliant. You can keep your hands and just enough of your brain busy to stop thinking about it for, ooh, minutes. Well, until you drop a stitch and have to stop because you don't know how to pick them up. Come home Ms P and fix my knitting! Soon.

But when the wondrous piece of handiwork (a scarf, somewhat wonky, for Miles, also somewhant wonky) is finally finished it will be a true joint effort -- at least five pairs of hands will have had a go. And thanks will be due to Julia, for the knitting needles, the casting on lesson and finding the splendid red parrot fandango.

joella

Year of Living Healthily

... starts today. Yes it does. No cigarettes and no alcohol. No cigarettes, obviously, because they are evil. And no alcohol because it makes me want to smoke. And also I drink too much, so let's give it a rest and see what I do with all that time and money.

It's going okay so far, but I've only been awake for six hours and I'm probably still drunk from my quite odd but very pleasant NYE spent house-hopping round OX4 and ending up with splendid fireworks chez Ricardo. Don't remember going to bed, do remember waking up thinking 'I am not going to feel this shit for a whole year'.

Snack of the day to keep my mind off the enormity of this undertaking: Tabasco olives, by the spoonful.

Happy New Year

joella

Lara Croft

Tonight we are blessed with Lara's presence. She comes over from Canada and eats and drinks with us. It is always a pleasure. One day she will be a famous film director and producer -- she is already a producer and cites Watcher in the Woods as one of her favourites.

She's not really Lara Croft, (although she is really Lara) but who would really want to be? But she makes Miles play the piano and would have made me play the flute if I had been able to find it. Shows how long it is since I have done anything more with music except put it on the CD player.

Hope she comes back again soon.

joella

Es la vida

Today Miles designed me a garden, to my specifications, for sure, but in a way I never could have managed. Right now, he is singing Fairytale of NY on the piano. Can't do that either. And Anthony came over for dinner. Only us as a household could do that.

On your own I don't think you can make the most of life. But you don't have to be a nuclear family to be happy. I like my weird little life, even though there is so much sadness around at the moment. We do what we do.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Sara P. May you live long and prosper.

joella

x

Mick, son of Mick

My lovely friend Mick lost his dad suddenly yesterday. I've known him forever but I can't be there cos I live here, and don't life suck shit sometimes. And I can't make the funeral, cos it's the same day as the memorial service for Mrs D, and that's where I both need and want to be. But this one goes out to one I do love, and my little sister will be there for both of us.

Thanks also to Roger and Pom, for surely the most Dynasty-like Boxing Day ever (think swimming pool, think jacuzzi, think balcony with view of Oxford, think Bloody Marys, which for some reason I can make better than Rog).

Thanks also and altogether to life, for having us.

joella

x

The joy of OX4

Today we have been mostly smoking and drinking. S and I had a good old weep at Jamie's passing on Enders, but some of that was undoubtedly displaced grief at other more real passings that we haven't cried out yet. Meanwhile Miles was cooking up a storm *and* getting Virgo with the fairy lights. We did touch festive, and I am full of love for my motherless housemates.

We did have a dodgy moment at around 6 when we realised we were going to run out of cigarettes. S was under the limit, I rode shotgun, and we ventured out into the dark in search of shops. And barely were we down the hill when we found one open. It furnished us with carcinogens but also butter and Coca Cola. What more can you ask of your neighbourhood on the most Closed day of the year? It quite made up for all those fucking burglar alarms going off in the small hours.

*And* I got a pair of tiger skin trousers (of course they're not real -- I had nut roast for dinner) and Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food.

Peace be with you.

joella

Prudence Little Kitten

Today (yesterday, but today, waking-wise) was Miles's mum's funeral. He did brilliant.

joella

The M55 forcefield

Have just returned from a family 'do' in Lytham St Annes, home of the parentals, who live these days in splendid style in a big house by the sea. It is a bloody long way, and Ms P (who was attending a similar -- in the 'comparable but not remotely the same' sense of the word -- 'do') and I did not enjoy the journey there or back one little bit. But you do these things because you want to be there, and because you can, and because when you get there the sea air and the big sky and of course the people make the journey worthwhile.

But it's a funny place. The last time I was up there I went out to the pub in my new red fleecy top, which I was convinced was a fine item of clothing for me, and which had been much admired Down South. But in the Queens I felt people were giving me funny looks, and having checked in the mirror for obvious faux pas, I eventually said something. Turned out this person assumed it was a Man U item of clothing, and he is resolutely Man City. Freaky.

I love the M55 because it is not a through road. You are only on it if you are going to the Fylde coast. We cheer as we pass the Lancashire sign on the M6, and we cheer again as we finally hit the M55. I remember one long Christmas haul up the country as a student, with Jus and Kath in Jus's blue 2cv. We sang "take me home M55, to the place I belong" and we felt it.

But we were returning, from Cambridge, Leicester and Brighton. We now live in Oxford, London and Germany. We were all back in June for Kath's wedding, and it was wonderful, and any of us might go back there for good one day. But if and when that happens, we will have been other places and done other things. Many people don't. It's like The Prisoner: there's some kind of forcefield round the place that bounces people back to shore if they ever try and leave, and it's like Rupert Thomson's Dreams Of Leaving: there's a whole mindset that stops them even thinking about it.

Lytham is certainly still home in a very important sense. But there is a whole world out there, much of it more accessible than it's ever been, and it's by getting out into it that you can put your own existence into some kind of context. We do not exist in a vacuum and we shouldn't live in one, not in Britain anyway. We should understand the consequences of our actions as individuals and as societies.

So come on Lythamites. Get global. Aim for escape velocity. At least get on the M6 once in a while.

joella

Something is lost, something is found

Today I am thinking about all the people I love who have lost a parent. Or both parents. My parents both fall into the latter category, as does Miles himself, but I myself fall into neither yet. Long may it last. My lovely friend N once said to me that the world was divided into people who have lost a parent and people who haven't (she has). I think she was right.

People can be divided in lots of ways. Those who have children, those who don't. Those who tend towards action, those who tend towards inaction. E and I, N and S, F and T, J and P. Believers and non-believers. Eaters of animals and vegetarians. Forgivers and forgetters, grudge holders and rememberers. (me: no children, inaction, ENFP, non-believer, vegetarian, grudge holder and rememberer).

All these last you can do something about. There are other things that you just are -- male or female, gay or straight or bi, black or white or Asian or Jewish or mixed race. These all matter too, naturally. (me: female, straight, white, a bit Jewish).

But losing a parent transcends both and everything. It's inevitable, if you live long enough, at least in this part of the world.

And this is the right way round. It's what should happen. Michelle Shocked once said that the secret to a long life was knowing when it's time to go, and somebody else said that everyone's got to go sometime, and they were both right, but when it fucking happens it's fucking awful.

I've just been reading Tennyson's In Memoriam:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

joella