Q. How do the Red Arrows hang out their washing?

A. Online Information.

A long long time ago, M made that clue up for a cryptic crossword we put together for the December issue of Information World Review (the "official media partner of Online Information"). Nobody ever sent that crossword in. But then it was actually technically impossible, as we got the grid wrong. I never owned up to that.

And today I re-entered my past life, if only for three days, as I decided it was time I again passed through the Satanic Portals (as another ex-IWR writer put it) that lead to the Online Information conference. If you don't know, Online (as it is commonly known) is information management mecca. Gathered there every year are librarians from over 40 countries. You would not *believe* some of the knitwear.

I suffered two profound shocks to the system. One: getting up at 6 am. I don't care what anyone says, it's not natural. And two: being in Olympia without a giant hangover. I really don't think that's ever happened to me before. (More about why not from Justin Ruffles - you need to scroll to 07 December - for some reason I can't link to the exact post).

I learnt about ontologies and asked Jakob Nielsen a question. I then did a bit of networking and came home. I am So Grown Up.

joella

Begrudgingly approaching festive

Yesterday we hit the town on a Christmas shopping mission: get it done early and get it done fast and you don't end up haemorrhaging money on Christmas Eve with every other sadsack in town. It's a basic self-esteem essential as far as I'm concerned, especially as I despise the fact that I have to do it in the first place.

It went ok -- about halfway there I reckon -- and two hours later we were ready to party. We met up with A&L for a drink (at the same time sampling the Princess Anne-a-like crisps that Jonathan Crisp have got into trouble over. Recommended).

At six we went to watch the turning on of Oxford's alternative Christmas lights, a tree made from reclaimed bicycles by an artist whose name escapes me. Please don't let it be vandalised. It's very beautiful.

Then we went back for dinner and wine and a few round of a fantastic game called Set and more wine, and deciding to go home, and changing our minds, and more wine. So all I've done today is some laundry. But hey, don't underestimate the importance of clean pants. Especially my new low rise shorts: they have definitely got Most Favoured Pants status.

joella

Old dog. New tricks.

Ha! Just when I thought life couldn't get any better than porridge for breakfast and soup for lunch, here comes risotto for tea.

As a teenage vegetarian, I hated risotto. Together (though not literally) with stuffed aubergines, it was the thing that other people's mothers made me on special occasions to mark me out as a special needs friend. It was also a regular vegetarian option at college. In both instances it usually featured tinned asparagus, and usually made me want to heave.

I've had maybe one or two good risottos since -- those prepared by my friends H and V particularly stand out. But I have generally steered clear, working on the following received and learnt wisdom: risotto has to be star of the show. You can't do it in advance, for huge numbers of people, or as a second string dish to whatever the carnivores are eating. And I've never even thought about attempting it myself.

Until tonight. On Tuesday plumbing S and I had dinner with K, and she made the best risotto I've ever tasted, which featured courgettes, feta and smoked salmon. It was just fabulous. I was inspired to try and emulate it, and gave it a go this evening, to make M and housemate S feel good following our house meeting (these are usually kind of fraught). I didn't have the recipe but I'd talked to K, and I referred to techniques given by both Nigella and Nigel.

And it was glorious. Not quite as good as K's (I put the courgettes in a bit too early, and I did rush the end slightly as Blackpool had started, and I didn't want to miss the Best Thing On Television This Century) but I was v pleased, not least to have opened the door to a whole new culinary technique.

It could easily fall into the select list of bountiful yet accomplished dishes which I rely on to impress people who believe that no one as scruffy and meat-eschewing as me could possibly get anything reasonable on the table from scratch in 45 minutes.

If it does (and time will tell) it will be the third dish in my repertoire to rely on a combination of fish and rice to deliver. If you add M's excellent kedgeree, there's a pattern emerging somewhere.

joella

The joy of soup

I am a bit drunk, and am currently typing with the non-business ends of two tesco value pencils, one in each hand. It's quite fun. And quicker than you'd think.
We bought the tesco value pencils for the treasure hunt m did for our street fair in may 03, figuring we'd never get any of them back so we didn't want to spend much on them. I seem to remember they were 94p for 20 or something astonishingly cheap like that. And we still have quite a few so they have staying power too.

Tesco Value (I've moved back to typing with fingers so can manage intra-sentence caps) is an interesting sub-brand, and one I have pondered before. One of the Guardian's Guide to Youth columnists has argued that she can't buy it because its packaging is too ugly, but that's just an overpaid media babe talking. Or maybe I'm just getting older and care less about what people see in my basket.

For some things I personally find it unbeatable: salted peanuts (21p for 100g -- blindingly good value, tiny and salty -- almost like a delicacy in this world of the jumbo lo-salt nut); sparkling water (18p for 2 litres and from a real spring not a Dasani-style mains supply, pray, why pay more?); tinned new potatoes (20p a tin and perfect for spanish omelette on a Sunday morning); and my own personal favourite Tesco Value purchase ever, a lemon squeezer for (I think) 49p which is both a joy to behold and dead easy to use.

But for other things, no. No to Tesco Value smoked salmon, in fact to any Tesco Value fish product. No to Tesco Value sanitary towels. No to Tesco Value eggs, think of the hens. No to Tesco Value cheese.

Some things, you get what you pay for. Which (finally) brings me to soup. Soup is, if done well, one of the world's great underrated foodstuffs. But is is so rarely done well. Cup-A-Soup is verging on a crime against humanity, and 'value' tinned and packet soups aren't far behind. Even premium tinned soups (with the honourable exceptions of Heinz Tomato, which is a national institution, and Waitrose French Onion, which is better than I've ever managed myself) are poor man's food. Which is so very wrong, as soup is actually both cheap and easy to make.

But time-consuming, and there's the rub. So the best of all worlds is when someone else makes it fresh for you. This is an idea growing in popularity, and this week I have had fresh home made soup for four lunches out of four. Monday was vegan vegetable and dill at a groovy boho place near Manchester Piccadilly, and definitely the best. Tues-Thurs were from Taylor's deli, newly across the road from work, where the staff are preternaturally cheerful and the soup is delicious but maybe slightly posh. Tues: curried parsnip. Weds: broccoli and watercress. Thurs: Thai mushroom.

It's only matched by home made porridge for breakfast, and I've managed this -- courtesy of lovely oaty boyfriend -- three mornings out of four this week. What more wheat-free culinary delights (in line with bowel regime) could life bring?

joella

"More" than a "Snack"

Being utterly convinced that I am deeply unphotogenic, I tend only to take photos of myself when I am drunk. (At the risk of stating the obvious, this is because I cease to care that I am unphotogenic, rather than because I suddenly become better looking).

Being reasonably health conscious, I tend only to eat crisps when I am drunk.

Below, taken in the parental home on Saturday night following Queens chucking out time, therefore represents a supremely rare occurence: a series of crisp-eating self portraits.



And what's more, crisp-eating in bed: this is a long-term bad habit of mine which is generally in remission, as it's fairly unacceptable behaviour if you're sharing the bed with anyone. But I wasn't, and I was shitfaced, so anything goes.

The eagle-eyed crisp aficionado will spot that these are none other than Seabrook's Original, which are the finest crisps in the land. Made in Bradford, they are rare Down South, but very popular Up North -- the subject of debate on h2g2 and also (in most flavours) demonstrably Halal.

joella

Choose your battles

I had a colonic irrigation this lunchtime. In and of itself it was extremely successful. The Oxford sewage system experienced a temporary surge, and my bowel is fitter, happier and more productive.

But my therapist was incensed about a parking ticket she had unfairly received, which led to a rant about the country going to the dogs: immigrants, the evils of socialism, the perils of state education, and much, much more.

And I learnt a great lesson in life: you can't argue with someone when they're in charge of a tube stuck up your bum.

joella

Being a grown up

M has just said "wow. I'm doing the most grown up thing I know".

What's that, I asked.

"Missing the Simpsons in order to get food on the table."

I guess if you're a boy, that may just about be true.

joella

P(prandial)S: In his defence I should add that the food he got on the table was superb: Madhur Jaffrey's salmon curry, plus spinach and lentil dal, spiced cucumbers, rice and poppadums.

A vindication of the rights of foxes

(... with apologies to Mary Wollstonecraft).

My housemates are underwhelmed, but I am delighted. No more fox hunting! This was practically the first thing I ever had a political view on, the first law I ever wanted changed, and 20 years later it's happened. Could even be enough to get me to vote Labour again.

All through my teens I had pictures of foxes with their guts ripped out adorning my school folders and bedroom walls. People would occasionally express discomfort at this (along with the photos of the monkeys with electrodes in their brains and rabbits with shampoo in their eyes), which was of course exactly what I was after as then I could harangue them at length. If you're uncomfortable, do something. If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem. And so on.

Over time I have switched my (declining) campaigning zeal away from animal rights and towards human ones, but I still believe. I don't eat animals, I don't buy products that are tested on them and I still argue whenever I get the opportunity that bloodsports are utterly inhumane and, moreover, utterly anachronistic in 21st century Europe. The Russians may still shoot bears from helicopters, the Spanish may still stab bulls with spikes as hordes cheer, but they won't forever.

John Rolls, the RSPCA's director of animal welfare, is quoted as saying "this bill is a watershed in the development of a more civilised society for people and animals".

I couldn't agree more.

joella

It's so funny how we don't smoke anymore

When I was a kid, my mum used to work nights. She would sleep in the day, and in the school holidays I used to go into Lytham with the housekeeping money, a shopping list, my little sister and a wicker basket on wheels -- the last two being deeply embarrassing appendages that I would attempt to disassociate myself from at every possible opportunity.

We would go to the butcher's, the greengrocer's, the baker's and finally Booths, where I would be careful to choose the middle queue, because that was Dorothy's till, and she would sell me the 20 Silk Cut No 3 (for my mum) and 20 Silk Cut No 1 (for my dad) that would be on the shopping list. I had a little note from my mum in her purse explaining that they were definitely for her and not for ten year old me.

Which was true. I didn't smoke my first cigarette until 5 November 1983, down a back alley in South Shore, Blackpool, with my friend Amanda and her dog Algie. The cigarettes were hers, they were called Kim and they were super slim and super cool, exactly not like me.

Thereafter I smoked sporadically -- JPS walking the dachshund in the woods, Consulate on the top deck of the 11A, Lambert & Butler in the toilets with housemate S (then schoolmate S). I have particularly fond memories of Saturday lunchtimes: I would take an early lunch from the bread shop where I worked, get my wages, buy 20 Regal King Size, go to the Elms Cafe and sit on my own, alternately drinking hot chocolate through a straw and smoking the adult fruits of my 15 year old adult labours. Economic independence is intoxicating.

I became a proper grown up smoker while living on Kibbutz Yagur after my A levels. I smoked in front of my parents in the Little Chef on the way back from the airport, and I never stopped.

Until I did stop. Fourteen years later, I gave up. And I now haven't smoked -- bar a few spliffs and some enthusiastic passive smoking every now and again -- for approximately 686 days and 23 hours.

Mostly, of course, I see this as a very good thing. But sometimes I miss it like crazy. Right now being one such time, and I am sure this is a side effect of hearing the news that smoking is soon to be banned in England in all workplaces and public places serving food.

I support this ban. I really do. I hate coming home smelling of smoke when I haven't had the (dubious, edgy) pleasure of smoking myself. And I know -- which is why I gave up -- that smoking is not big or clever. We shouldn't do it. We should all stop. There should be laws to help us instead of those really cool B&H ads they had in the 80s.

But oh, it makes me feel old.

joella

Postscript: Bhutanese teenagers don't have these pressures, I surmise. Go Bhutan!

Coping strategies

I really have had a bitch of a day, but for no reason I can put my finger on, which makes it even bitchier. I was underproductive and glum, and had a really *really* disappointing lunch. M&S sushi is horrible. I know it's horrible, so why did I buy it? I wasn't in a rush, I could have bought any number of fresher, tastier, cheaper things. It was subconscious reinforcement of the badness of my day, that's what it was.

I won't even go into my latest encounter with paid for downloading. Oh well, ok, I will. I tried to buy aforementioned Jolene from Big Noise Music, what with it being a good cause and not iTunes. They took my money, but didn't give me my mp3. I emailed in protest, and got the automated support email from hell back, all in HTML which cannot be rendered by legacy clunkware Lotus Notes which I am forced to use at work.

I printed it out thinking that might help and it was 20 pages long. I threw it in the bin and gave up.

So now I am having green beans from a tin for my tea. With fish fingers. I am listening to old media and I am going to have a traditional bath later on, in case the newfangled shower blows up or something.

joella

Fame for the 'pool

I sometimes tell people that I come from Blackpool. This isn't strictly true. I actually come from Lytham, which is about five miles down the road / round the coast from Blackpool. I say it partly because far more people have heard of Blackpool, and partly because I did go to secondary school in Blackpool, and consequently spent many teenage Saturdays 'up town' and many teenage nights in Very Bad seafront nightclubs with names like Sands. Part of me *does* come from Blackpool, as anyone who has caught me staring longingly at the big light up Santas in garden centres recently could testify.

So the odds were high that I would tune in to the first episode of Blackpool, the new musical murder mystery series from the BBC, which is set in an amusement arcade on Central Beach with a cast of paunchy Brylcreemed small time crooks and brassy women in expensive but slightly too small dresses. It took a bit of getting used to, but by the time Ripley the arcade owner and DI Carlisle the Glaswegian detective were singing along to These Boots Were Made For Walking I was hooked. I think it's going to shape up nicely, and Ripley's house has classic Blackpool interiors taste down to a T, so it's got that nostalgic edge as well. Perfect Thursday night viewing.

And as if that weren't enough, we caught the late show at the Phoenix cinema last night, which was The White Stripes: Live Under Blackpool Lights, a grainy, wonky film of what looked like an insanely intense gig at the Empress Ballroom in January this year.

What a band: who'd have thought two people could make so much noise? I would give anything to have a voice like Jack White's, let alone be able to play guitar like that. The version of Jolene nearly made me cry, so I am very happy to hear it's coming out as a single. Could this be the song I can finally find on iTunes? And what a venue: I saw the Stone Roses in the Empress Ballroom in 1989 and it blew me away. They filmed that as well. Which seems to confirm that there must be something about the place. You don't get legendary gig films shot in Basingstoke now, do you?

joella

God bless the Great British Public

...not for anything intrinsically cool, but for voting Will Young as Pop Idol over Gareth Gates.

OK, so that was, like, years ago, and any number of evil pseudo-democratic bollocks reality TV programmes have been shoved down our gullets since. I wasn't deliberately being tardy. I was just gleefully acknowledging that, while the judges clearly wanted Gareth (17 year old spiky haired doofus) to win, there remains something glorious about the Great British Public (GBP) that meant the 21 year old gay public schoolboy politics graduate got the vote.

What a great country we live in. I said it at the time, only quietly. And I say it again, only louder, because he has just narrated/headlined a fantastic hour-long documentary about runaway kids and the woefully inadequate services that exist to support them and their families. This is all, of course, part of Children in Need. When I am a plumber I will take two holidays a year: one will avoid Christmas and the other will avoid Children in Need. But both prompt those who would otherwise not bother to think of others to do so, so I can't be too vile about it. And it was a good documentary.

And one which I am sure Gareth Gates a) could never and b) would never have done. I am not happy about the power of celebrity, but I do see that it is a reality, and my woolly hat is off to Mr Young for using his power well.

joella

The skinny chez joella

I've been short of words recently, and those I've had have mostly been about music. This won't do: I must remember that Colin relies on me for insightful cultural analysis.

So.

1. The Corporation. Wait for the DVD. It's good, but it's far too long. Especially if (as of course you should) you see it in a small independent cinema with uncomfortable seats and stains on the carpet. But I learnt a lot from it, and I also found it strangely reassuring. I am not a freak. In fact I am the future. Well, actually India is the future. We should all move there now and never get on a plane or buy a share again. (NB I have got on many of the former but I have never bought any of the latter).

2. May all the gods in all the world please pull their fingers out to stop Middle East meltdown when they turn Arafat off, cos the Americans and the Israelis sure aren't going to. We all need this to work, people, but I don't have a great feeling about it, know what I'm saying?

3. Everyone's asking why French women don't get fat. I read about it in the Observer and the answer is because they eat fish and vegetables for lunch and they skip all other meals and replace them with black coffee and cigarettes. Then they have their picture taken next to a teeny tiny cake and give the rest of us a hard time. Oh, and they wear uncomfortable underwear, which serves as a kind of hair shirt reminder at all times.

4. If you are a lady (but not a French one) or simply like ladies things, I can recommend the low rise short, a new shape of pants. I am sure most women change their pant shape allegiance less often than they change their partner, which is already proven to be less often than they change their bank. But I am definitely considering making a change. They are comfy, they are flattering (unlike full shorts, which look like something you used to skive off athletics in), and there is minimal VPL. Though you will have to live with the fact that your pants are classed as outerwear in clubland and R'n'B videos.

5. Spooks is no good since Tom left.

(that's enough insightful cultural analysis - Ed)

joella

He's a ghost, he's a god, he's a man, he's a guru

Last week I spoke to my mother on the phone while suffering from my horrible cold. Take it easy, she said. Don't be going out getting drunk. Of course not, I said.

Twenty four hours later M and I were jammed down the front of a splendidly unlikely theatre at the end of Hastings Pier, screaming at Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I am not quite sure that's what she had in mind.

I am rubbish at reviewing gigs, so I won't -- the Observer's done it here and the Times here, and there's bound to be some even more elaborate hyperbole in the next Q. Suffice it to say that it was easily in my top 10 of all live music experiences. He is a man at the peak of his powers, and we were right down the front.

Afterwards, we caught last orders at the charming Gritti Palace, a bar at the land end of the pier with benches and fairy lights outside, and sat in the mild sparkly darkness as equipment was trundled out and people in long black coats disappeared into the night. We stayed overnight in an underheated room with a squidgy bed and a sea view.

In the morning we had a (desultory, as it was never going to be me) argument about who should move the car. Twenty minutes later, M returned clutching the Guardian and telling me that as he got back to the hotel, there was Nick Cave getting into his car. What are the chances of that? Apparently he accepted compliments graciously and winced charmingly at the front page headline ("Four more years" - this was the morning after the US election) before driving off.

Took a detour via Battle and imagined lots of horses and chainmail and longbows, then drove home, feeling generally at peace with the world and listening to Abattoir Blues.

To paraphrase Stephen Fry talking about Noel Edmonds in quite the opposite sense:
A short word about Nick Cave: Yes.
A longer word about Nick Cave: Transcendent.

I'd be a microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan anytime. Hey, maybe I already am.

joella

iTunes schmiTunes

Legal download services are a bag of shit. All of them.

There are three tunes I want.

1. Beautiful, by Clem Snide. Only released on an EP, which costs £6.99 on Amazon. I only want the one tune. Can I find it anywhere? No. Well, yes -- on iTunes in the US. Which, in this brave new virtual world, won't sell me anything.

2. Don't stop movin' -- Beautiful South cover of the S Club 7 dancefloor ass-shaker. Can only get a Radio 2 session version of it, which is shite. Why? This is off a fucking chart album!

3. I love rock'n'roll -- Joan Jett's ultimate stomping party classic, which by some shocking oversight, I don't already own. Lots of Joan Jett songs on iTunes, but NOT THAT ONE. Why not? It's the only hit she ever had!

In the good old days of Napster / audiogalaxy / Kazaa I'd have had all those tracks within about 20 minutes. Now, what with copyright clampdowns and virus hell, you search all night with your 79p per track held out for the taking, and nobody wants it.

So far, this seems to be a new way of getting the kind of music you can buy in motorway service stations. That's not what we want.

joella

Cure for the common cold

Well, not quite cure, but close.

Go and see Kate Rusby, owner of the 'most beautiful voice in England', says the Guardian, on her website.

I can't swear to that, but she can't be far off. And what I can swear to is that she will remind you that you are British, and make you feel that being British is not such a bad thing to be.

While loving political (Billy Bragg) or modern British (Richard Thompson) or American (early Dylan) folk music, I never listen to traditional British folk music in the sense of putting it on at home or even seeking it out on the radio. But I do like it live.

I used to go to the Fir Tree in Oxford, before it was the Old Ale House before it became the Fir Tree again only not like it was before. Before, it was full of men in waistcoats with bits of tapestry on them who had their own tankards behind the bar. You would buy your pint, roll your roll-up, and squeeze yourself into a little chair at a little table. Then the folk music would start.

Mostly the musicians were older than me, in their 40s and 50s (I was at this time around 24 or 25). Lots of beards for the men and rather too much crushed velvet for the women. There were accordions and fiddles and songs of the rolling countryside and the sea.

Once, there was a rosy cheeked boy with curly blonde hair, an acoustic guitar and the voice of an angel. He and his sweetheart a-wandering would go. I fell in love, and had a recurring fantasy (part of the my non-spotless mind series) which involved me wearing long flowery skirts and cheesecloth and owning nothing but a hip flask and a chocolate brown labrador. Hand in hand (with the boy, not the dog) we would gambol through wild flower meadows, sleeping on beds of heather, like the Famous Five used to.

Of course, such fantasies were quickly dashed by both the reality of my life (pre-existing relationship with Significant Ex, reliance on mod cons like hot water and clean bedding) and the reality of the 1990s (unlikelihood of folky boy actually having capacity for commitment, access to hedgerows, labradors, etc).

So the dreams die, because of course they never really lived, but a small part of me will always be willing to take Richard Thompson up on whatever kind of offer he is willing to make.

But this is supposed to be about Kate Rusby. And there's a link -- she did cover RT's Withered and Died, and there aren't many better songs in this world. But mostly she played the trad stuff, and explained what each song was about, and why we should care. And I bought it all.

My favourite Kate Rusby song, though, is Our Town - which she wrote herself, about how you feel about where you grew up, about life now in where you grew up, which ain't necessarily what life's supposed to be like.

She didn't play Our Town, but she did play a song she wrote for her grandmother, who is still alive and who nursed her grandfather to an early death from respiratory failure caused by a working life spent down the mines. The original recording was with the colliery band: for various reasons they were unable to travel to Oxford so instead we had five members of the Coldstream Guards making an unforgettable brass section.

While not from mining stock, I come from that part of this country that was ripped into bits by the closure of the mines, by the end of heavy industry in Britain generally, and which has never recovered. Kate Rusby sang, the boys played their brass, I cried like a child.

And that's why I love folk music.

joella

Four more years?

I hand over my thoughts this morning to Vernon Gregory Little:

I sense a learning: that much dumber people than you end up in charge. Look at the way things are. I'm no fucken genius or anything, but these spazzos are in charge of my every twitch. What I'm starting to think are maybe only the dumb are safe in this world, the ones who roam with the herd, without thinking about every little thing. But see me? I have to think about every little fucken thing.

joella

Miz. Errr. Ubble.

It's November, the clocks have gone back, and I have got a cold. A sort of hover at the back of the throat and muzzy the edges of your faculties cold. The sort of cold that in a fair world you could take to bed, but in this one means you drag yourself into work and underachieve.

I read once that the South Koreans used to have a policy of menstrual leave: every menstruating woman could take a day off a month. I don't know if this had to be the first day of your period, or could be your own particular worst day of the month, but what an amazingly civilised thing to do. You will be no earthly use that day, so you might as well be under a duvet mustering the strength to venture back to the fray.

That's the sort of day I would like to be having.

They've stopped it now though. Can't fight progress, right?

joella