Whisky is risky

It's funny. Or maybe sad. But I'm either drinking or I'm not, and right now it's post easter, I'm having existential doubts and I'm drinking. Should I go and be a plumber? Or should I make the next move in my so-middle-class-it's-not-even-very-well-paid so-called career? Riddle me that, Riddler!

Can't be done. So instead, here are some nice pictures I took in my house.





Clockwise from top left
1. Mathematician finishes pudding
2. Wooden jigsaw with whimsies
3. Morning after photo: M's home-made Hallowe'en mask and joella's favourite towel
4. Night before photo: how did I manage to take this?

joella

Something fishy in the air

I left the house this morning and could smell fish. Odd. I got a lift to work (lazy, lazy) and when I got out of the car I could smell fish. The air today is cold and damp, but there is no way this could be a sea breeze. Not in Oxfordshire.

Walked into work, smelling fish. Got to my office, no fish. Phew.

Had to go to a meeting, got outside, could smell fish. Ask someone, can you smell fish? No, they couldn't. Could it be I have some fish in my bag? Started surreptitiously sniffing it in the street. Strange looks from people. Have I trodden in some fish? Check shoes. Could *I* be smelling of fish? Go to toilet. Negative.

Forget about it till I go out for lunch. Bugger it, I can smell fish again. I have worked out that I can only smell fish *outside*, and that only I can smell it. On the way back to the office, I ask a colleague to smell my coat -- cue comedy moment while she sniffs at various parts of me and says 'no, no fish'.

Wait, she says, just by my left shoulder. This bit smells a bit fishy. I whip my head round to see if I can smell it, and my hair flips across my face.

Hang on, I think, and grab a handful of it. R, I say, would you smell my hair? She does and says Wow. That's really strong.

We had fish for dinner last night: haddock steamed it over a base of onions, anchovies, fennel and tomatoes. I steamed that smell right into my hair and it seems that every time I go out in the damp it steams itself right back out again. Nice.

I want to go home and scrub my hair and I want to do it now.

joella

Patience is a virtue

I have been getting very bored waiting for my compost bin to actually produce compost. Just how long is it supposed to take?

After the latest in a long line of such rants, M obligingly approached the little door in the bottom of it brandishing a trowel, and brought me a bucketful to dig into the brand new flowerbed. Hmmm, he said, I don't think eggshells were a good idea. Or mango stones.

And to be honest, it was a bit like looking at what we had for dinner 18 months ago.

But in fairness, it smelt a lot better than the organic chicken manure pellets I bought on Saturday, fully expecting that there wouldn't be any compost from the compost bin at all. Why did I think they *wouldn't* smell like chicken shit?

I am also slightly worried that they are organic simply because they are made of shit, rather than because they are made of shit from organically farmed, happy, fluffy, die of natural causes chickens.

You can't even garden without eggshells, bad smells and moral dilemmas these days. I wouldn't mind but I don't even seem to be getting better at it.

joella

Enigmatism

I've just given up on Enigma, still going on in the other room, despite M's charming assertion at its outset that when he grows up he wants to be Kate Winslet.

I gave up on it because I didn't understand the plot. Is that ironic?

Seeing as it's Easter, I shall share a moment of borderline-relevant private shame. When I was 17 I went out with A. Kind of by accident, but that's another story. He was essentially a good person, I think, but he was absolutely no match for me, burning with fury at the injustice of the world while curling my eyelashes, reading Spare Rib with one eye and Cosmopolitan with the other. They were confusing times, but at least I *knew* I didn't make sense.

Anyway. A ended up in hospital for six weeks, also another story. His mother loathed me, and I can kind of see her point, though her love for him was not, in my opinion, of the healthiest kind. I went to visit him every day -- no small effort, as the hospital was a bus or train journey away -- and sometimes, to our mutual great delight and the horror of everyone else on the ward, we drew the curtains round the bed and did rude things. I was however confused by the strange elation I felt at having a boyfriend who was stuck in hospital while I could go wherever I wanted, and I would occasionally turn up at his bedside all dressed up to go out clubbing once visiting was over.

Once he said to me... Jo, why don't I understand you? Ah, I said, because I'm an enigma.

What's an enigma? he said.

I hadn't anticipated that. I thought for a moment and said, well, it's when they stick a tube up your bum and wash it all out. I was shaking with laughter inside at my own cleverness.

I don't think you're an enigma, he said.

What I learnt from that particular relationship was that you should always pick on someone your own size. And with that vaguely Christian moral conclusion, I shall take myself to bed.

joella

Swirling thoughts

I haven't written much this week. There's a lot going on in my head, but it hasn't spun itself into formed thoughts, and it's hard to articulate unformed ones, and also not really my style.

But some examples...

It's Good Friday today, a pretty bleak day if you are a practising Christian, but it's also Holi, a pretty fantastic day if you are a practising Hindu.

I watched a programme about street prostitution which focused on a 21 year old with a bad wig and glasses. Over the half hour we heard pretty much every tragic inch of her story, with each stage silently accompanied by statistics flashed on screen illustrating how widely her tragedies -- sexual abuse from the age of four, heroin and crack addiction, mental health problems, two children before she was 20 which she gave up for adoption -- are shared by others in the same position. She really really wants to stop what she's doing. None of them want to be doing it. Of course they don't fucking want to be doing it. Why can't we protect them better?

I watched another programme about a shop in Birmingham where if you are skint you can take your valuables and draw cash on them. A busker needed to pay his rent so he put in his keyboard for £120, and then paid £156 to get it back. Safer and friendlier than a loan shark, but still a horrendously expensive way for vulnerable people to raise miserable amounts of money.

In thoughts following on from both the above, the Fabian Society has published some research on what the Great British Public really think about the poverty in this country. They say:

By European standards the UK public is uniquely misinformed about the extent of poverty in the UK. We are also much more likely to believe that poverty is caused by behavioural factors – something captured in the strength of negative stereotypes of the poor. A great many people still need to be convinced both that there is real poverty in Britain today, and that it is possible to do something about it. Our research shows that it is hard for many people to believe that poverty exists in the midst of our affluent society. They think there must be something wrong with the parents of children who suffer from material deprivation. They do not know about the government’s commitment to end child poverty. They are startled to discover that other European countries have successfully chosen not to tolerate it.

I *did* know about the government's commitment to end child poverty (which, as the Fabians point out, is a commitment unmatched by any other party), and also that they have achieved some success. I am so angry about Iraq that I'm wondering where to put my X in May, but we need to remember it's not all boys and toys.

I have started drinking again and have been reborn as a bitter drinker. I was hoping to be a better drinker too -- little and often rather than four pints the night before a bank holiday, but I'd forgotten what a whole lot of fun a pub full of congenial drunk people can be when you are a congenial drunk person yourself. Arse and feck.

And finally, if I don't tidy my bedroom this weekend it will start to seriously affect my self esteem.

joella

The rehabilitation of the tinned green bean

Two posh boyfriends in a row combined with three years in Cambridge and more than ten in Oxford have rendered certain legacy eating habits from a northern upbringing pretty much unsustainable.

To be fair, this has overwhelmingly been a good thing. I make my own salad dressings instead of using Heinz salad cream, sometimes I make coffee in a cafetiere instead of drinking instant, I haven't had a kebab since 1989 and I don't think you can make a decent pasta sauce out of tinned tomatoes and minestrone Cup a Soup.

But there are losses too. Getting to understand fresh vegetables was a revelation (in my childhood they were usually frozen at home and tinned at school), but you can have too much of a good thing and sometimes I just want a tin of green beans and a fork.

For a while I used to buy them surreptitiously, but I am more sensitive to food snobbery than I would like to be and I quickly stopped. Until I went to see the Lizard the other week, and she made me a salad which included tinned artichoke hearts (acceptable, who's got access to fresh artichokes on a regular basis?) and - gasp - tinned green beans. And you know what, it was bloody lovely.

I copied the salad wholesale the following week and it went down very well. And tonight I had them with chickpeas, olive oil, anchovies, chilli, garlic and parsley, and that was bloody lovely as well.

So. I am encouraged. Next: Branston pickle.

joella

Drunk in Devon

 


It was never going to be possible to stay sober this weekend.

We spent it visiting R&P in their lovely new house in very sunny Topsham, and when I said er, we're mostly dry at the moment, I got a very stern look from P followed by a large glass of posh white wine. So we went with the flow, and I will treasure the hazy memory of R filling tiny shot glasses out of a bottle of Becherovka so big it counts as a work of art.

Other outsize pleasures included proper seaside fish and chips, accompanied in my case by the most splendid gherkin (pictured above) I have seen in many a year.

On both counts I have been paying the price today, but in a definitely-worth-it sort of way.

joella

Know your enemy

I watched a few episodes of Nathan Barley -- Friday nights in happen more often when it's cold outside and you're sober.

Some of it's funny. Chris Morris has a bleak and sharp sense of humour, and does the almost-unwatchable very well.

But with its Rape magazine and its gratuitous nasty porn, it's moved into completely unwatchable. It's like being slapped round the face with Loaded magazine. Dark, ironic misogyny is still misogyny. I forgot that for a while, but I've remembered it again.

joella

Big pleasure from small things

Southall is a shopping paradise if you have a thing about stainless steel kitchenware (or copper, or cast iron), pulses Tesco have never heard of (by the kilo) and jingly jangly jewellery at impossibly low prices. I now have a tiffin carrier, lots of sandalwood joss sticks, a bottle of rose water (what for?) and some earrings that I can see while I'm wearing them. Cool.



It is also the friendliest place I have visited in the south of England, and the only place I have visited in all of Britain where there are hardly any white people. It reminded me of the smarter parts of Delhi, which I guess is to be expected, and I was struck again by a forlorn wish that I could carry off a salwar kameez every day, because they are truly splendid garments and I have never seen so many to choose from.



We also had two fantastic meals, in Chandni Chowk and Brilliant (which lives up to its name) and a couple of pints in the Glassy Junction, the only pub in the country, so they say, which will take rupees for beer. Not many women in there, it has to be said, but no macho atmosphere either. It was a Great Day Out and I recommend it. Just wish we'd timed it better for the Bollywood cinema...

joella

Didn't we have a lovely time...

... the day we went to



Yes we did. And more on that when I have had more sleep.

joella

Happy International Women's Day

... for yesterday. I tried to take this photo myself but failed miserably, so thanks due to the man of the house.

We had cake at work, which seemed fitting. And one of our volunteers left: she is from Cameroon, and made a beautiful impromptu speech about how much she'd enjoyed working with so many women (we have four men in a team of about 25). I've worked with women before, she said, but never with so many as educated and emancipated as you are. It gave us pause for thought.

Some good IWD photos on the BBC website.

joella

Get your tits out!

I have been mightily cheered this morning by the story of Prince Charles being greeted by a bare breasted protest in New Zealand.

Apparently the scheduled visit of a mobile breast cancer screening unit was cancelled because the Prince was in town. One of the protesters wrote "Get your colonial shame off my breasts" on her body.

How many people can say they've had an opportunity to do that? I think it rocks.

joella

If I ruled the world...

... I would obviously be a very benevolent dictator. But certain categories of people would automatically be banished to the salt mines of Siberia, no appeal, no return.

And clear front-runners would be anyone who owns (or whose husband owns) one of those BMW 4x4s. Round my place of work, these road hogging gas guzzling MONSTERS are usually silver, and driven badly by yummy mummies with platinum blonde hair and pokers up their ashtangaed arses.

Round my place of residence they are usually black, and driven badly by young men in baseball caps with someone riding shotgun who might actually *have* a shotgun.

I applaud BMW for coming up with a vehicle with appeal to such a diverse range of selfish human beings, and making it so easy to do the first cull come the revolution.

joella

Longest cold in Christendom

This time last week I was out in the garden, trying (and failing) to dig up the roots of a bush I've been trying to finish off for at least two years. It was cold and I was muddy, but generally pleased with myself.

Then I came in and had a bath. All of a sudden I felt shaky and weird, and I retreated under my duvet in disgust.

And if I didn't need to feed myself and earn a living, I'd have been there ever since. Every day I've been waking up with a head full of gunk and a pain behind the eyes, hitting the Lemsip (or generic Boots version thereof), going to work, feeling shite and coming home early. I've been heavy on the garlic, vitamin C and echinacea, reasonably good about early nights and haven't done anything I didn't have to do.

But I'm Still Not Better And It's Not Fair.

I know I just need to be patient, but I'm finding it awfully hard. Keeping me sane at night is Otrivine Nasal Spray. My mother disapproves deeply of such things so I never discovered it until I was an adult, and it's the business. I don't know how it does it, but it turns a blocked up nose into a open airway in a matter of minutes, with only a nasty amphetamine-flavoured drip down the back of the throat and gummy yellow stuff in your balsam Kleenex as side effects.

Okay, maybe this indicates that my mother is right (wouldn't be the first time) but sometimes you'll do anything to get a decent night's sleep, even if it does cost you your nostril lining.

joella

Irritating git becomes hero

I never thought this would happen, but I take back everything bad I have ever said about Jamie Oliver. And there's a lot of it.

But the man deserves a medal for making Jamie's School Dinners, even if (or should that be especially because?) he has no intention of subjecting his own children to the underfunded nutritional hell of the 21st century state school lunch.

I guess I still thought school dinners were about comfort veg, like in the 1970s. I have fond memories of tinned green beans, mashed carrot and swede (we called it pig food, but we hoovered it up) and pickled red cabbage. Lots of sponge and custard too, and let's not forget tapioca with a lump of jam, but on the whole it was pretty good stuff I reckon.

No more, apparently, never no more. If you eat at school these days you get Turkey Twizzlers (30% turkey, 70% crap), chicken nuggets and chips chips chips. There's fizzy pop to drink and the kids that bring their own have Dairylea Lunchables (which look like pre-formed mechanically recovered meat) and chocolate bars.

Exposing this, and the potential long term effects of this, is really important. Nutritionists have been trying for years -- we heard from a woman who ran constipation clinics for seven year olds -- but nobody's been listening. But here's someone who can make people listen, and can show us that kids in primary schools in deprived areas, who may only get one full meal a day, don't know what a leek is, or rhubarb, or corn on the cob.

And there was a hearbreaking scene where he took a bunch of them to a pick your own farm, and there was a little boy holding a big strawberry, looking at it and saying 'I don't dare taste it'. A *strawberry*. How, in a country where strawberries grow wild, can there be kids who don't know what they taste like?

He struggles with the kids' resistance to anything that look like a vegetable, and he struggles with the catering companies (outsourced, of course) that feed them on a budget of 35p each a day. And he works with parents on cutting down sugar at home, and is as shocked as they are at the immediate reduction in hyperactivity and aggressive behaviour.

All in all it's great political television and it might just make a difference.

There's still no excuse for inflicting the insufferable Jools on us, mind.

joella