Make your own Mr Man

I used to love the Mr Men, but only the old school ones -- Mr Tickle, Mr Bump, Mr Messy, Mr Uppity and of course Mr Strong.

I had no time for the brand extensions like Mr Brave and Mr Perfect, and I think I must have had nascent feminist sensibilities by the time the Little Misses came along, as they pissed me off right from the start. Who wanted to identify with creatures so obviously derivative?

But I take it all back, now I have created my own on MrMen.com (click Mr Bump).

joella

How fragile we are

I may have used that line before (and of course it wasn't mine to start with), but it keeps coming back to me. Not just in our bodies, although those too: I am more thinking of the world at large.

I have an increasing fascination with the 'built environment', as it is called in the regeneration business. Things may look shiny and new when you build them / instal them / extend them / replace them, but it's all on the surface. Undo a few screws, take off a few bits of casing or some cladding, and the dirty innards appear.

And unlike the cathedrals of yesteryear, not much of it will last long. Consumer culture has some obscene aspects. For years I've wished (on and off) that I could wander in the past, see what the world looked like before there were cars or electricity or millions and billions of people. But I'm beginning to wish I could wander in the future too, see what post industrial meltdown looks like. Will we sort it out before it's too late?

Pensive times. But on the bright side, I am now on the first page of Google hits for joella, just after the story of the first person ever to get their sex changed on their birth certificate. Result.

joella

Eat flowers and pulp babies

Heard Babies by Pulp on the radio. M wondered where it was from. Lazily searched Amazon, with this result:



No! That's not what I meant! I'll have the pro-lifers round here in a minute if I'm not careful.

joella

"Working from home"

Today, I am working from home. I am getting lots done here in my pyjamas. It's very different here. I have had lentils for breakfast. I have waved my arms in the air a lot to Town Called Malice on 6Music. And I have spent longer than usual (usual being just long enough to press Delete) perusing the spam that makes it to my work email account.

Today it seems to be from people who write their evil messages in another language, Polish maybe, and then put it through an automatic translator. Hence

Exotic sex is urgently necessary for you!

1ncread1ably hooge and l0o0ng deek! (lots more in this vein)

and (my favourite)

Free yourself from kilograms promptly!

I think to free yourself from kilograms promptly, you buy drugs from a website, rather than taking the more sensible route of eating fewer lentils for breakfast, but to be honest I didn't investigate too closely.

joella

Great lost albums

The sun is out, the nights are long, the wine is cold and, as previously mentioned, my CD collection is all in one place for me to browse through at my leisure. I neglected to mention that it has also been alphabetised by M, one of the great altruistic things one person can do for another. Our collections remain separate of course. We're not *married* or anything.

All this, plus the fact that the CDs are near the hifi and all the bits of the hifi work and the speakers are great and in the same room as the PC, has allowed me to excavate corners of my musical history that have lain neglected for many years. When I can get past my boyfriend's obsession with Squarepusher, that is.

Anyway... albums de la casa currently include everything I have by Gil Scott Heron (not a lot, but enough) -- surely one of the greatest urban songwriters of all time -- and Halfway between the gutter and the stars, perfect getting ready to go out music. Tonight we are off to see the strangely named Múm. They are from Iceland, like Björk and Sigur Ros. Their tour bus was outside the venue by lunchtime today -- Scandinavians are *so* punctual.

joella

Viva La Vega

I've just had J and K round for dinner -- J is about to have her first baby, and K has just come back to work after maternity leave for baby number two. Which isn't to reduce them to the fruits of their loins, it's just where they are at. We had a lovely evening, but I struggled slightly with the music.

The household's CDs have recently been decanted into purpose built drawers, so I can scan my whole collection in a way that hasn't been possible for many years. This also allows me to run my fingers idly down the spines of the jewel cases, and sometimes that's how I choose. And tonight, after a couple of duff choices, my fingers found for me Suzanne Vega's Nine Objects of Desire, which was just the perfect album for the occasion.

I love it when that happens, and I love it more when you hear an album again that once spent months on constant rotation and you remember why it was that you didn't want to listen to anything else at that point in your life.

I think Suzanne Vega's first album is one of the best albums of all time. I know every inch of every track and I will love it till I die. But Nine Objects belongs to a time and a place and I haven't listened to it for years. Yet after J & K left I filled up my wine glass and put it on all over again. If they had Booker Prizes for albums I think it would win one.

joella

PS I am v pleased with my title this evening, reminds me of the days when writing headlines was part of my job. Almost not worth posting anything else. Why use 50 words when three etc.

I feel like plumbing tonight

Well, actually, I don't -- I feel like shit. If I felt even a bit more like shit I would be at home in bed reading trashy magazines and keeping housemate S company, who is confined to bed having bust her Achilles tendon.

But I feel just enough not like shit to be at work. This is the worst of several worlds, I find.

Having said that, I will be going home early to neck Lemsip and muster limited resources to start my Advanced Plumbing Course tonight. I'm going to miss two of the classes but I intend to make the most of the other eight.

joella

Time will show the dirty shagger

About a year ago I had some 'gender training' with my (then) new colleagues. We had to bring along an object which illustrated something we felt about gender.

I took a copy of 'Hey Yeah Right Get A Life' -- a book of short stories about the massive impact having children has on women and their relationships with a) their partners and b) the world in general.

My (male) colleague M brought a sarong, which represented David Beckham, who, he argued, was the most positive thing to happen to modern masculinity in years. What a role model -- sexy as hell, fit as a butcher's dog, well developed feminine side and... monogamous.

Like chuff, it transpires. Maybe no big surprise, but what *is* surprising is the scale and reach of the disappointment. A whole society sighs. We all had a little bit of hope invested in the man. Where can we put it now?

joella

April showers

It absolutely pissed it down today... the day when a) 35,000 people ran 26 miles each for 35,000 reasons, and b) the day I had set aside for gardening, as I have done fuck all out there since autumn.

Let's focus on me, those 35,000 others can write their own weblogs if they like.

1. It was not only raining, I had a sore throat.
2. There were sweet peas and tomato plants and fuchsias and impatiens (groovy pink and white ones, I normally hate them, but I made an exception this year) sitting patiently in tiny pots just ready to be transplanted into bigger ones, after my annual outing to Milletts Farm with A&D.
3. Pots are particularly important this year as the rest of the garden is going to be 'restructured' (sounds a bit too much like work for comfort, but this kind will be worth the money and nobody will lose their job).

There was nothing else for it, I had to get out there. M valiantly came too, and planted up our old kitchen sink with mint and parsley and coriander. In fact he was the wetter, as I did some of my potting in the shed, but after an hour we were soaked to the skin and freezing cold with it. I am only just getting the feeling back in my hands.

It better be bloody worth it, that's all I can say.

joella

Other thoughts for the week

Books which changed my life -- following a programme on Radio 4 last week.

1. The Women's Room, by Marilyn French.
"I'm bright, you're bright. Maybe we're even brilliant. Our aspirations are equal to our intelligence and our backgrounds. We want to make it in their fucking world."

That's a direct quote from, as I recall, page 521. Or maybe 518. I used to know the whole paragraph by heart but I don't anymore.

I was *exactly* the right age to read that book. By literary standards, it is pants. As a feminist classic, it has its place, but it's deeply naff. But I read it (and -- even cooler -- I stole it in order to read it) as a 17 year old, and I was a 17 year old whose mother wouldn't have read it because she was the wrong generation in the wrong country.

The people who wrote in to Radio 4 about this book changing their lives were women who had read it while unhappily married, and it was one of the things which gave them the strength to leave those unhappy marriages.

That is great. But I was 17, and I read it before I had a chance to become unhappily married. And it is one (of many, I hasten to add) reasons I have never married at all.

It was a book -- one of the first books, one of the first anythings -- which made me see there was another way to live your life, along with Spare Rib (dying at the time), and The Female Eunuch (dated at the time), and The Beauty Myth (brand new at the time), all of which I discovered around 17, 18, and none of which I coped with terribly well, given that I was a slightly slutty Blackpool teenager.

But you don't find these things if you're not looking for them, and I maintain to this day they it was a lot easier to be a teenage feminist then than it is now. And I feel these days that I have built up a world view that is consistent with my attitudes and behaviour (and vice versa) in a way that I could only have dreamed of then, but kind of wanted to.

I don't think my 17 year old self would dislike my 34 year old self. In fact, I think she'd be pretty proud of her. And the same goes the other way round.

Not all marriages are unhappy, of course. It's my parents' 38th wedding anniversary today. I will never have a 38th wedding anniversary and my hat is off to them both. Happy anniversary, parentals.

joella

Thought for the week 1

I've had a bit of a heated debate with someone recently about the benefits of deliberate succinctness over fullness and frankness (to paraphrase [arf]). On my side I brought in Mark Haddon (author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time, ostensibly a murder mystery written by a boy with Asberger's Syndrome), who said in last week's Observer:

"The best question I ever received came from a boy who asked whether I did much crossing out. I explained that most of my work consisted of crossing out and that crossing out was the secret of all good writing."

I totally agree.

There can be such beauty in brevity -- but it is so hard to do well. Brevity can be exclusive, it can demand that you understand its context, but ooh, it can take your breath away. Ten words can speak thousands.

Here are some of my favourite examples:

1. Why am I sat here with Fatty and Spotty?
(Fran from Black Books when she goes to work in an office)
2. Does anyone want my long black leather coat?
(Jeremy's review of The Matrix Reloaded)
3. Stand where the fuck you like, as long as it's nowhere near me
(Melody Maker's review of Lenny Kravitz's Stand By My Woman)
4. Maggie Thatcher Ate My Future
(A tax paying 60s child wondering what happened to Cradle to Grave)
5. Everybody's making love or else expecting rain
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

joella

Seeing red

Note to self: Pret a Manger serviettes do not make very good improvised sanitary protection.

This month I celebrate (if that's the right word) 20 years of menstruation. You'd think I'd *know* that sort of thing by now.

joella

Peer pressure

We were drinking last night with young Mr D, recently split from his fiancée.

Working on the (fairly self-evident) assumption that you can't stay in the first flush of love on a permanent basis, when the going gets tough you either get going or work at it. When you decide it's not worth working at anymore, you leave, unless the other person decides that first and you get left. The timing of the point at which someone decides it's not worth working at can depend on many factors, including culture, religion, age, laziness, self esteem and... peer pressure.

Most of the time, if you're over 25, the world appears to be stuffed with couples. Once you're over 30, most of the couples seem to be getting married and having babies. If you're not doing that, even if you're perfectly happy not doing that, have perfectly good reasons for not doing that, actively don't want to be doing that, you start to feel a bit like a freak, simply because everyone else is.

And couples (many not all, I hasten to add, lest I piss any independent thinking yet coupled people off) like to hang out with other couples. It's comforting. It's comfortable. It reassures that we are all happily doing the right couply thing.

Nobody likes it when a couple splits, least of all a long-established couple. It can shine a very harsh light on that which is dysfunctional or co-dependent, and makes people see their own relationship along the scale of worth working at / not worth working at a bit more brutally than is the case if you are popping round to hold each other's babies and have a nice barbecue.

Because there are few coupled people as excitingly on the edge as the newly single person, who can smoke in bed, live on gin and pistachio nuts, take Class As on a schoolnight and go home with strangers, while others have the same old argument about which DVD to rent on Friday night and whether the living room should be yellow or green.

I was at one end of that experience exactly six years ago. I had a wild few months, but mostly without the people who had made up the majority of my pre-split social circle. This was fine in the end if painful at the time... some people are your friends, some people are friends with half a couple, and you certainly find out which is which.

And last night I was at the other end, watching someone reflecting all that freedom, all those possibilities, and feeling that light of scrutiny. It's amazing how different your own situation can look from two extreme perspectives... I am used to feeling relatively unfettered, but in fact here I am with a mortgage and a next of kin. I also like to think I don't give too much weight to the attitudes and behaviours of others, but in fact the pack mentality is frighteningly strong in all of us. I studied enough psychology to know that, so who am I kidding?

It's a funny old world.

Today it was sunny, warm and benign. Six years ago it was snowing... I remember driving my little 2cv up Boars Hill and running around on the hillside catching snow on my tongue and taking up as much space as possible.

joella

Finding space to think

Too many people in the room. Can't blog properly. But leave it till tomorrow and the thoughts are gone.

1. Time to get out there and do something useful
2. Need to talk to my housemate S as stuff is all wonky round here. It won't be easy but it has to be better than this strange non-communicado, used to it as I am.
3. Must try to remember, not everyone thinks like me.
4. Must also try and remember, sometimes I scare people.
5. March resolutions never happened, but May ones just might. There's got to be some way of getting through the summer (having come out as Not a Summer Lover).

joella

Easter on the estuary

No, not the Thames estuary, the Ribble estuary.

Thursday night: drive to Lytham. Manage to *miss* the new M6 toll road. How can you miss it? It's the biggest thing between here and Lancashire. The M6 is a very boring road. That is a very boring thing to say, but not as boring as the M6 is. Distracted myself by taking photos through the windscreen (NB I wasn't driving, before anyone rings the police).



Friday: Hung out with N&D and their gorgeous baby C -- it's a joy to see new parents a) away from home and b) in the pub. Most of them seem to disappear underground. Also wondered about the shops in Lytham (could find no actual shop called Exciter, despite a sign to same) and got too drunk thanks to midnight licence in the splendidly-named Cunninghams, where the fabulous Lisa was DJ-ing. She played We want your soul by Freeland, which had me dancing *on carpet* in front of my uncle. The shame.



Saturday: Spent a bit of time appreciating Lytham's traditional heritage and recent(ish) naffness



Oh, and her straightforward natural beauty.



Sunday: back down the toll road for gin. There are photos of both but I am running out of evangelical amateur photographer steam.

Moral of the weekend: it's good to go back to your roots, but it's also good to remember why you actually live in the branches.

More to say about writing and brevity, about The Books Which Changed My Life, and about driving a van to Amsterdam. All are Easter-related, but all need to be relegated to a later date. My boyfriend and his children are watching a boy band documentary. I don't have to go and watch it too, but I kind of want to. You take your bonding opportunities when you can in this life (cf roots thing above).

joella

"Working from home"

That's what I do when I have to think and when it all just gets too much. I also tend to start about an hour earlier then go for a bath in the middle of the morning, so everyone wins.

Sat down this morning to download all the stuff I sent to myself to work on.

There was an email from R beginning "Jo dear, just bring the tomato juice, I'll do the gin"

I'm so looking forward to Easter.

joella

Grumpety grump

On the plus side, I finally got rid of the adware pop up thing by installing Ad-Aware 6.

Also on the plus side, the purple tulips (left) are coming out in the garden, the berberis is flowering orange and the grape hyacinths are in their full blue glory. Oh and there are some lovely pale yellow narcissi. I never wanted a tasteful garden, which is just as well, as I haven't got one.

Actually, I feel better now. No time to be grumpy. Off for a nice bath and an early night.

joella

Random Sunday thoughts

1. Must get rid of the bloody virus we seem to have which pops up lots of evil ad windows in IE and crashes it every so often. Would move to Mozilla or Opera but neither supports the cleverer of the Blogger editing windows. So until can get rid of bloody virus, must 'post' at regular intervals while musing.

2. Old media will never die. Were it not for an article about blogging I read in today's Observer I might never have come across It's Wrong to Wish on Space Hardware. Its author isn't the world's best writer (bit longwinded for screen reading, imo) but he seems warm (if you disregard the Oasis fandom, always a danger sign) and interesting (if you disregard the football fandom, which I personally find tedious in the extreme) and it's certainly the only blog I've come across where every post starts with a Billy Bragg lyric. Can't be bad.

3. Never underestimate the importance of communication in any relationship. And don't be afraid to say what you want, even if it does involve trying to fix the guttering. You may only make the guttering worse, but you will nevertheless achieve something.

4. I should have stuck to my resolution to give up wine for Lent. I normally give up something fairly challenging, like crisps or cheese, and normally stick to it. Last year I didn't drink at all from New Year to Easter, and managed that ok, so I felt that this year giving up wine for Lent would be suitably difficult but not impossible. But I was wrong. I cheated after a mere three weeks, which is fairly pathetic, and have been pretty much ignoring the whole giving up wine thing ever since. Which is a shame, as wine does me in like no other drink. I had a fabulous Friday night in Glasgow with my friend A, but I needed dark glasses for the flight home on Saturday and proceeded to hide under a duvet for the rest of the day once I got there. I think it's to do with the delay between drinking wine and it catching up with you. For me it's too long, I can drink it faster than it hits me, and that's always dangerous.

5. Housemates can be weird, but you have to try and remember that they may think you are weird too.

joella