What the middle classes do on their holidays

Center Parcs is a strange strange place. But that mustn't stop you having a good time there. You are what you is. And if someone else's weekend was even a little weirder as a result, that's All For The Good.














Captions are in the alt tags -- hover to find out what was happening...

joella

Squirrels, rectangles, flotation and lots and lots of trees

I take it all back. Center Parcs is great, as long as you are in the right company. And this weekend, I was.

There are some photos to come -- I am so, so tired and have to go to bloody Manchester in the morning so can't be arsed to sort them now -- but highlights included the Japanese Steam Room, the lentil soup, M on Dave the horse, the custard doughnuts, watching the stars and getting stoned for the first time in about five years. (NB some of these are linked).

Lowlights included K's fractured toe (those wild water rapids are wild), C's breakdown on the M1 and G's car sickness, but most of these were on the way home.

Must sleep. Haven't had enough of that.

joella

I never took the advice in that book

Sometimes (not that often -- this is an egotistical process) I look at other people's blogs. Most people I know don't write them, or at least don't write interesting ones (though there are honourable exceptions) so I read the blogs of people I don't know. Which is kind of weird. But it was by doing this that I found I was far from the only person affected by Jonny Kennedy's life and death story (and don't forget the TV critics. They are people too.)

Which is all a long way round of saying that tonight I felt the need, after lots of red wine (and I was supposed to be giving wine up for Lent -- ARSE) to go back to my roots. Which is, when you're in your 30s and you're pissed, the music that a) saved your life and b) you were listening to when you were 17, to reference just two recent posts.

So I f0und myself singing along to every little word on Billy Bragg's Preaching to the Converted. But I only really put it on for a CD rendition of the songs on the Days Like These EP. Including Scholarship Is the Enemy of Romance.

I never understood it 20 years ago, and I certainly don't understand it now, but that doesn't make it any less fabulous. This weekend I will be playing Damon and Naomi to teenage girls. Maybe I'll try a bit of early Billy as well.

joella

Highs and lows of a long weekend Thursday

This week: chaos at work, lack of focus, mild panic, general frustration. Next week: a week of meetings in far flung corners of the country -- Premier Lodges with polyester sheets, curries on strange high streets with colleagues with complex dietary requirements, endless hours on Virgin Trains eating peanuts to stay alive and fighting old ladies for a seat.

So I was all set for an evening of indulgence. It started well with the Great Supermarket Guessing Game: cast your eye down the conveyor belt and have a competition (just with yourself if necessary but ideally with a companion) to guess what it will come to.

If I say so myself, I am *very* good at this. I don't count on the way round, I don't look back at the list (which anyway has been wildly deviated from). I just have a gut feeling.

Tonight's shop was a big one as we are self catering this weekend and feeding anywhere from six to twelve, depending. We went for cheap alcohol, but some premium items crept in there -- Roquefort (me), sunblush tomatoes (me again), a nice bottle of Riesling (M), sheep's milk yoghurt (bugger, me again). I scanned with my magic eye and said "A hundred and twenty".

"No... "said M. "A hundred and ten." It's always easier to go second, you just have to guess higher or lower. I stuck where I was and the tension mounted. It came to £122.54. How close was that for a guess on 62 items!

Drove home and had another competition with the £3.99 wine I chose and the £5.99 wine M chose. His definitely had the nicer bottle but mine won on both kitsch value (it was Black Tower Dry Riesling) and taste - it did taste cheap but it was clean and dry. I was impressed.

But then we watched The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off on Channel 4. There's nothing as sobering as watching someone's film of themself dying after thirty six years of pain.

It was brave television in a way, but it doesn't leave you with much of a place to put yourself. You need to know that there are mothers out there who would have aborted their children if they'd known what sort of life they'd have (and if there'd been foetal tests for the condition in 1966, which there weren't but there are now), and you need to hear those people and how they feel about their short, difficult lives, how they are like everyone else and how they are just not.

Next week it's about Thalidomide. There's a guy in the pub with tiny arms. He used to work where I used to work -- maybe he still does. I always say hello but I've never asked about his arms. There's a guy at work with no legs. I never asked about those either but someone told me he fell down the gap at a train station.

You can't take much for granted in this life can you? I think maybe I should have another wee drink before I go to bed.

joella

What I'm doing on my holidays

I'm a lucky girl this year. This weekend I'm off to Center Parcs with various members of my dysfunctional step- and extended family and friends. It will be weird, but I've booked in for a Volcanic Mud Detox Wrap and some pony trekking, so it should be enjoyable weird.

At the beginning of May I'm going to South Africa -- this is for work, but I'm still very excited as I've never been to Africa before unless you count Egypt, which I don't.

*Then* in June I'm going to Madeira for a week with my parentals and sistosa. Again, likely to be weird, but we had a lovely time last year. And they say the Botanical Gardens there are, like, amazing.

Then it's summer. I am not a big fan of summer days, but I do like summer nights, and I plan to have the garden sorted for outdoor eating this year with fairy lights and jasmine and Ganesha watching over us.

Miles might go off to India in September to volunteer at Gram Vikas. If he does, I will go on holiday there in December, but if not I want an autumn holiday somewhere warm... Syria maybe. I could do with getting myself on the road to Damascus, it might help me decide if I want to be a plumber.

Our introductory course finished today: bit of drain jetting (which distressed the yoga class no end), bit of earth wiring, bit of looking forward to the advanced course, can't wait.

Sometimes you just gotta look forward, and there's lots to look forward to.

joella

Songs That Saved Your Life

There was a feature running a couple of months ago on 6Music called Songs That Saved Your Life -- part of a wider BBC mental health awareness thing I think, and very interesting.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that a song had saved my life, but every now and again one comes along that saves my sanity, my soul, my sense of humour.

Yesterday was a lousy lousy day at work (I seem to be having too many of these at the moment). I had my headphones on and my head down when suddenly Liz Kershaw said "I can't be arsed to go and see Bob Dylan live anymore, he just murders his own songs. But on record, now that's a different matter..." and she played Love Minus Zero.

I turned it up, pushed my chair back, shut my eyes and smiled.

When I opened them again the answerphone was flashing, the email was blinking and someone was standing anxiously in the doorway, but for three minutes there something was saved.

joella

What is happening? It went all funny on me. There were things going bang all over the place and then it was quiet. Too quiet. Well, just a little bit on the quieter than is strictly ideal side.

(that was M blogging, I won't let him at it again)

What you do on a Monday when you drink more wine than you should

M had an idea. He decided we should play tunes we loved before we were 17. They had to be off albums not singles and they had to be things we hadn't listened to for at least several years...

1. He chose Cerdes (outside the gates of) by Procol Harum.
2. I chose Wham rap! (Enjoy what you do?) by Wham!
3. He chose My pink half of the drainpipe by the Bonzo Dog Band
4. I chose The passion by Billy Bragg
5. He chose Happiness is a warm gun by the Beatles
6. I chose Love is a stranger by the Eurythmics
7. He chose Set the controls for the heart of the sun by Pink Floyd
8. I chose Get up off our knees by The Housemartins
9. He chose Hullo der by Soft Machine
10. I chose Alive and Kicking by Simple Minds
11. He chose Magic bus (live version) by the Who (M: "This is about sex, isn't it? I thought it was about driving a bus.")
12. I chose I'm on Fire by Bruce Springsteen (A song I never listen to but which runs through my head surprisingly often)
13. He chose Around the Plinth by the Faces
14. I chose Marlene on the wall by Suzanne Vega
15. He chose I've seen all good people by Yes
16. I chose Come live with me by Heaven 17 (and then we went to bed)

We are so different.

joella

I love the smell of Milton in the evening

I have a lovely boyfriend. He's been having a bit of a crisis for about the last 18 months, and that can be hard to live with, but there seem to be green shoots of recovery, and every now and again he just really blows me away.

Messenger conversation today:-

M: Guess which household task I have just performed for the first time this year!
J: Um... cleaned the fridge (she said optimistically)? Dried the washing outside on the line (she said realistically)?
M: Er, yes, the washing one

It was a fairly grim day and I cycled home in less than sparkling humour. But when I arrived there was celeriac roasting, there were mushrooms having Roquefort put on them and there was broccoli boiling.

*AND* there were jars all over the side. Why? Because the *fridge had been cleaned*. It hadn't been wiped out with Milton, but nobody does that except me and my mother. So I did that. There's nothing like a fridge that smells of Milton, there really isn't. I was so happy.

Billy Bragg has lost his edge of late, but for many many years was pretty close to being my ideal man. And this line from The Short Answer pretty much has it:

"She said 'no amount of poetry can mend this broken heart, but you can put the Hoover round if you want to make a start'.

I thought then, and I think now, that that is one of the best lines of all time. I don't want smoked oysters and champagne on a Monday, I want a fridge that smells of Milton, a glass of wine in front of EastEnders and a pile of clean washing. And I have big respect for a man who understands that.

joella

A weekend of self loathing offset by further plumbing triumph

On the down side, this weekend I drank too much beer. I enjoyed it on Friday, though it had a few of the hallmarks of being a little on the desperate side. I did not enjoy my working week, put it that way, and I am not looking forward to the next one. But M and I went for some lovely Thai food, then went to the pub with C and his sixteen year old daughter.

She got in ok, she said nobody would really notice her as she was with three patently old enough to be drinking people, and she was right. But then she asked for a Malibu, and we rather cruelly made her drink pints of lager instead as nobody was prepared to go to the bar and order such an obviously underage drink. It was great fun. I like being out with people who have different stuff going on.

I didn't enjoy it so much on Saturday, though I did have a lovely time with R&J. The scary thing is I managed to get lost on the way to R's house, because I was already a bit pissed. It's about a ten minute walk but it took me 45 minutes. I have been living in East Oxford for six of the last ten years. How did I start at Londis and end up at the bus garage when I was supposed to be going to Iffley Road? I terrify myself sometimes. I need a GPS just to get myself around town. They tried to make me get a taxi home. I refused (the shame of getting a taxi for a half mile walk, never mind the cost), so they made me ring them twice on the way home.

We had a great time and I did want to see them, but I got drunk because I wasn't feeling good, and I don't like doing that. And I spent a lot of today lying around berating myself as a result. I should have stayed in and drunk herbal tea instead. Or gone to M's gig, he was a bit let down that I didn't show. So all in all, not a weekend to be proud of...

*However* plumbing S and I did go over to her parents' house, where her dad is no longer able to wash his hair in the downstairs sink, as he has been doing for the last 20 years, as the sink refuses to drain. Our plumbing teacher said it would probably need core-cutting (very hardcore thing you need to do with a drill and expensive kit) so we were basically there to take photos of it to get further advice. But we did take the drain blaster that was one of my birthday presents from M, just in case.

And bugger me if we didn't fix it. Blast blast blast.... gap... blast blast blast... nothing much happened, we went round outside to look at the exit pipe and a big gloopy lump of hair appeared. Moved it with a stick, went back inside, repeated a few times and gurgle gurgle the sink drained away. That's two successful projects out of two. The drain it empties into is also blocked, but we are learning about rodding on Wednesday so we can have a go at that as well. Hooray!

joella

Daffodils at night

I took this on the way home from the pub. I must've looked a right weirdo leaning over someone's garden wall with a camera but nobody came out to arrest me, this being a nice middle class area.



joella

Puzzle Inlay as analogue for life

I have spent a depressing amount of time this week playing Puzzle Inlay on the MSN Zone site. I was not alone.

I spent exactly one hour playing the deluxe download version, as that is all the time it gives you before you have to pay $19.95. My self esteem is sufficiently robust *not* to think this is a worthwhile, life-enhancing use of hard earned cash [GOOD], but my motivation is not sufficiently robust for me not to then spend a disgusting amount of time continuing to play the free online version with its inferior features and annoying habit of crashing IE every 20 minutes or so so you have to go back to the beginning [BAD].

But I digress. Basically, you pick up different shaped and sized pieces and fit them into an outline shape. The outline shapes get more complicated, and the pieces you get to fill the outline shapes come in thicker and faster so you have less time to think and make more mistakes, even as you get more proficient. You're never get better enough fast enough to cope with the increased speed of the game, and if you did play it enough for this to be the case, your wrists would start packing up. Pieces you pick up and then can't fit in you can dump, but they come straight back again.

It really is just like life.

But what's redeeming are the special tools you get. Every so often a piece comes along with a little twizzle in the middle of it, which gives you one of two things -- a star, which fills in a gap in your space which you don't have a piece for, and a hammer, which allows you to smash a piece you don't have a space for. If you are playing the deluxe version you might also get a transformer, which changes big unwieldy pieces into smaller, easier to handle pieces, or -- best of all when the going gets tough -- a break, which gives you a bit of time to fit in the pieces you already have before more arrive.

These are things you wish you had in your *real* life. Honest. Try it, but just not for too long. Go straight for deluxe and walk away after an hour...

joella

Beware the Ides of March, behold the Queen of May

This evening I decided to stick on Superseeder, by the Bevis Frond, to give me a decent soundtrack to compose an email to send across a burning bridge.

The track I was hanging out for has the splendid refrain "So sue me if you don't believe me", which has been a line of mine ever since I first heard it, but then along came the Queen of May, singing about the Ides of March, so that track wins for being so SPOOKY.

Beware the Ides of March is apparently a quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, as today is the day he was assassinated. Behold the Queen of May is a quote from nowhere I can identify, but together they make a lovely song.

Which is irrelevant. What I really want to know is... did my subconscious lead me to put that album on, knowing it was the Ides of March? I haven't listened to it for easily two years, maybe longer.

The faded slogans of the past
Sit heavy on my breast
While flights of angels sing me sweetly
To my troubled rest
I fell asleep and when I woke
They carried me away
Beware the Ides of March
Behold the Queen of May

Aaaahhh.

joella

Oh to be in England in the springtime

This is very unfashionable, but I'm not a big fan of summer. And like most people, I struggle a bit with winter. However, I love spring and I love autumn. Autumn used to be my favourite season, but since I started gardening -- not that I've done any for months -- spring has to win. Doom, gloom and barren squelch turns into green prickling life and improbably coloured blossom.

Oxford seems to do spring extremely well, and we took a stroll into town to appreciate it properly. We got hailed on a bit, but it was still a life affirming experience.



Clockwise from top left
1. Bulbs in the grounds of Magdalen College
2. Ornamental quince in our front garden
3. White blossomed tree on Divinity Road
4. University Church of St Mary the Virgin

joella

Big Day Out

Yesterday was a big old day for a little person. Up dream-bustingly early in time to stand itchy-eyed under the shower before assembling something vaguely resembling a smart outfit and heading for the station to catch the 7.34 to Birmingham International.

All day at the NEC talking about gender and regeneration with a truly diverse group of people -- think crop-haired DM-wearers, think power suited briefcase wielders, think dreadlocks, think bad jumpers, think fleece and lace ups, think smart, think scruffy, think head to toe black with killer shoes, it was all there. And we got the photos to prove it, about which I am very glad, as that was one of my jobs (looking after the photographer, not taking the photos, I'm not that good).

Legged it just before the end to catch a train from Birmingham to London (Aside -- this cost FORTY EIGHT QUID! For a SINGLE!), wandered round Euston slightly pissed and searching for sustenance. Best non-Burger King non-Upper Crust offering I could find was a vegetable samosa but it did the trick and then I hared over to Embankment on the Tube, muttering 'I hate London, I hate London' to myself every time someone elbowed me or opened a newspaper in my face.

But I didn't hate London when I got there, as I found a stand selling popcorn and then I got to walk over the sparkly new bridge to the South Bank, and walk down the river to the National Theatre. It really is an awesome vista, looking out over a full size, world class city. It's cool. (Though on balance, I mostly do hate the place).

I found the bar, drank some vodka, and rendezvous'd with my compadres, though not before freaking out slightly in the toilets which were stuffed full of posh teenage girls doing their best, to my jaded 30-something eyes, to make themselves look like the streetwalkers you see under blinking lamp-posts in shitty parts of town. (Hey, check gender and regeneration link!).

They were here to see, as were we, Part 1 of the stage adaptation of His Dark Materials. It was, as the Aussies would say, pretty full on... but I think, also pretty wonderful. I don't like the theatre much as a rule, but I liked this.

We drove home through the snow and I wished I'd had my camera... all the road signs were whited out like there was an invasion happening.

But I was out of bed for 19 hours. That's too too long for a sleep lover like myself, on a school night anyway. There was a time when I could go clubbing in London, get home at 5 and be in work for 9 the next day. Actually, I think I only did that once. But you take my point. Ooof.

joella

When I find myself in times of trouble...

I am not having a good week. There is tons to do at work -- we're in the final stages of build up for a big event on Thursday and everyone is tired, stressed, overloaded and generally pretty miserable.

I went in on Monday a) late, b) hungover and c) slightly unsettled following evening out with Significant Ex (very enjoyable though it was), all of which Really Didn't Help. I went in today only a) late, and didn't get a wee in till lunchtime as a result.

So it's time to take remedial action. If I weren't such a snob, I might read the copy of Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul that someone once bought me, but given that I *am* such a snob, even if I did read it I'm not sure it would help.

So here's my recipe for French Onion Soup for the Bewildered Vegetarian's Soul

1. Hot Ribena
2. Jacket potatoes for tea in front of EastEnders
3. Healthy dose of late period Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
4. Hot hot bath with lavender oil and much scrubbing
5. Into clean pyjamas in time to watch Shameless in bed

Sounds good, no? Best be getting on with it.

joella

Whaddaya whaddaya

My dad always said... well in fact he didn't explicitly say, but if asked my dad would say, I reckon anyway,

Think very hard about which road to travel, but don't be wondering about the other once you've decided.

... in other words, as soon as you've made a decision, it's the right one, because you can never know what would actually have happened had you decided otherwise. The outcome you have is the only possible one.

And I like that advice. I have referred to it often, even if he never actually said it.

And I have always said myself: if you feel it, it's true.

Which is all an oblique way of saying, it's quite hard to psyche yourself up for going out for dinner with your Significant Ex.

You try very hard to be on time. You think very hard in advance about suitable topics of conversation. You vow not to drink too much.

Oh no! Before you know it you are spitting venom about previous mutual friends and sneering at alternative interpretations of slights against you you you.

But then you get to the pub, meet up, have a nice cool pint, some nice Thai food and suddenly all is benign. You feel like four hours isn't enough when you only meet once a year.

This is all very very grown up. Can this mean that not all modern life is rubbish?

joella

Having said that...

S and I learnt how to solder last night. We got the Power.

Onward Christian (er, well, and non Christian) Solderers
Marching as to war
With a great big blowtorch
Going on before

Oh dear. I'll get my pyjamas.

joella

While my guitar gently weeps

... not that I have a guitar. Well, I do, but I can't play it. It wouldn't so much weep as shriek.

Tonight I am full of sadness, but in a good way. I feel like if I started writing about it I'd never stop, and I have a hell of a day ahead tomorrow, so probably best not to start.

I used to work with a Mormon woman in her late 40s who had, by anyone's standards, been dealt a difficult hand to play in this life. She said to me once (when I was about 25) that nobody under 35 could call themselves an adult.

I'm not there yet, but I'm beginning to see what she means.

joella

Life affirming moment

Before (going drip, drip, drip -- mostly into the overflow but sometimes onto the floor)



After (not going drip at all)



S and I did that. The future's bright. The future's plumbing.

joella