Hello from Kolkata

Something very strange is happening over at the India blog -- different versions of pages showing, something bizarre in the caching. So just testing over here...

joella

Not a good start

Q: What's worse than waking up with food poisoning?
A: Waking up with food poisoning the day before you are due to go on a plane to India for a month.

Q. What's worse than waking up with food poisoning the day before you are due to go on a plane to India for a month?
A. Waking up with food poisoning the day before you are due to go on a plane to India for a month and then discovering that you never picked up the tickets for your internal flight to Calcutta and the ones you've got are for a flight you cancelled.

What a fucking awful day. I was busy vomiting and shivering for most of it, but have now recovered enough to pack, even if getting on a jet plane is the last last thing I want to do...

Anyway. I'm sure it'll be all right in the end.

To find out if it is, head on over to our specially created India Blog.

Normal service will be resumed in January...

joella

Sexual healing

There are some songs that I never play, but when I hear them on the radio, I am full of feelings drawn from many stages of my life.

They are mostly songs which first became important when I was a teenager, and which, because they are standalone great songs rather than simply because they have stuff that was in the charts when I was in adolescent turmoil, have stayed important since. They happen along at unexpected times and drop me into reverie.

Sexual Healing (the original by Marvin Gaye) is definitely one such song. It was just on Radio 6. Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cole is another. Pretty much anything by The Jam. Ain't Nothin' Going On But The Rent by Gwen Guthrie. Five Hundred Miles by the Proclaimers. Chain Reaction by Diana Ross. The Boxer. Most of Led Zeppelin IV, like it or not. Pinball Wizard. Purple Haze. Smoke on the Water. West End Girls. Planet Earth. Theme from S Express. Pump Up The Volume. The Only Way Is Up. Groove is in the Heart. California Dreaming. Between the Wars (though I do have that in several versions and have heard it live about 20 times).

*sigh*

But getting older ain't all bad. Tonight we had people for dinner for the first time in ages. There was me and M, plus our friend L, our friend C, and C's daughter. Two fortysomethings, two thirtysomethings and a teenager, and we had a great time -- some of the best food, the best conversation and the most fun I have had in a long time.

Today also bought digital camera. Building up to move over to India weblog -- more manana.

Long week, v tired, should have gone to bed early rather than taking the alcohol option. Alcohol is so evil. After your first drink you think just one more might be a good idea, then after your second you don't care whether a third is a good idea or not, you just want to drink more, and all tomorrows hangovers are of no consequence at all. Or maybe that's just sad old addict me (and my sad old addict boyfriend, and all my sad old addict friends).

Later note -- even weirder is when a song on the radio sounds like it's sampling a song like one of those above (as is happening now on the aforementioned Radio 6 -- I am sure Nick Saloman is playing guitar {from Then You Wanted Me} yet one of the Everly Brothers is singing... it's not at all a comfortable listen). It's like your past is being reappropriated, man.

Oooh, apparently that was The Coral. I never thought they were worth the effort, maybe I should rethink.

joella

Left field claim to dubious fame

I briefly went out with (and even more briefly shagged) the current England spokesman for Fathers 4 Justice (though I was very astute on the contraception front).

For an organisation run by volunteers, their website is very professionally done. Those dads know their web design (though it uses absolute font sizes rather than relative -- saying nothing, saying nothing).

Also, lovely quote from this story: "The rooftop protesters intended to remain at the Royal Courts for a week but had taken no food, clothes or bedding with them."

Must surely have been written by one of their ex-partners.

joella

Man eating man

I am fascinated by the German cannibal story. Three points in particular:

1. He says (though this could be a bad translation): "I had the fantasy, and in the end I fulfilled it... I don't need to have anyone else inside me." Surely there are easier ways to have someone inside you?

2. Assuming the victim was compliant (and we'll know when we see the video, right?), who is the weirder? If he *was*(or should that be if he *were*) compliant, should cannibal man go to prison at all? Consenting adults and all that. (Though this is very shaky ground, as I would jail certain pornographers who claim their victims are consenting adults).

3. He was discovered when he advertised for a second victim "on the internet". They always say that -- *where* on the internet? Where do you advertise for someone to come round your house and get eaten? How do you find that stuff? (And this does give the lie somewhat to argument #1).

Still, all this is keeping my mind off the Huntley/Carr trial, which is too disturbing for words.

joella

Holy McMoly I am zonked in the bonk

I am sooooo tired. I have been going in at 8.30 and coming home at 7 all week. I have got to the stage where my head is so full that is someone tells me something then either I forget it within seconds (despite appearing to have taken it in and even had a conversation about it) or I remember it but forget something else of equal size.

But tomorrow is my last day at work. After that I am not back in until Thursday 8 January. I do believe that is nearly five weeks -- FIVE WEEKS -- out of the office. I don't think I've had five weeks out of the office since I started going into the office about ten years ago.

I think the Australians would call it long service leave.

(Thought: I wonder if you can have phantom maternity leave as well as phantom pregnancy?)

I don't think I'm the only one suffering. The other night we watched a programme about people who've lost their memories through illness. It was very sad but also very funny, they were very charming people who did seem to have a decent life and all had a sense of humour.

One guy had been married for 47 years. We were childhood sweethearts weren't we? said his wife. If you say so, dear, he replied.

He got a pager to help him remember important stuff. M is famed for his appalling memory, so we joked about getting him one too. Piss off, he said.

After the programme, there was a trailer for a programme about celebrities who have found god. Michael Buerk is talking to Pamela Anderson about the role religion now plays in her life, they said.

I'm not surprised, said M, I'd find god if I was married to Billy Connolly.

joella

PS to one I wrote earlier

I have been meaning to take a photo of the previously mentioned Eid lights on Cowley Road, but I am both too lazy and insufficiently arty. Fortunately Jeremy can be relied on in such circumstances -- they are one of her 26 things. The other 25 are worth a look too.

joella

A tale of two dinners

We had two dinner invitations this weekend. I am not sure they could have been more different.

Friday was over at S&E's place, with C&J as well. I used to work with S and C in my Job in a Business Park. It wasn't much of a job and I didn't stay very long, but they did pay well and I did meet some cool people. I don't see them often enough, but we have a lot of fun.

Especially when it's S&E's turn to plan something. They have a) a lot of imagination and b) more drive than a 747.

When we got there M said oh bugger, they said to bring slippers, it's shoes off. What? I thought. They rent, surely they won't have got new carpets?

They hadn't, but what they *had* done was turn the dining end of their kitchen/dining room into a kind of Bedouin tent. The walls were cardboard boxes painted black, and there was a door cut in one end which aligned with the door out into the garden for C&J to sneak in and out for smokes.

The main entrance was through black curtains, and it was lit by lamps shining through tissue paper windows, fairy lights on the fabric-draped ceiling laid out like the stars, and tealights floating in water (slightly mitigating the rampant fire hazard). We sat cross legged on cushions and blankets and ate like kings and queens. You'd never have known we were in Didcot.

It was wonderful. They say they're going to build their own house one day. I believe them.

On Saturday it was dinner for 12 with The Band and assorted others out in Widdershins or some similarly named village in deepest Oxon. The house, belonging to A&P, was cottagey yet vast, the alcohol was plentiful, and aside from me spilling a whole box of soy sauce-toasted nuts on the carpet and having to spend 20 minutes crawling round sweeping them up it all started in very civilised fashion, with smoked salmon and small talk. A bit like the opening of an episode of Inspector Morse.

Later we ate Aga-baked pies followed by Aga-baked puddings in a long, beamed, candle-lit room, drank more alcohol, and had a big sing song (except me, I never get drunk enough to sing in public). It was quite odd -- they are M's Band, not mine, though I do know them all -- but rather marvellous in a 'how did I get here' sort of way. It was certainly a splendidly bountiful occasion, I must remember to do my thank yous.

Almost inevitably, some red wine was spilt, and covered in salt, and the tablecloth folded over to cover it. Which is when I saw that the table was made of MDF. A really big bit of MDF. A had built it specially.

So I suppose that actually they *could* have been more different, because they did have homemade tables in common.

When we get back from our Big Hols we will have a functioning kitchen *and* a functioning dining table. I can't wait to start returning the favours.

joella