May be!

Tomorrow is May the first. Eight years ago it was the dawn of a new political age. Since Marx (is this true?) it has been the day to fete the workers of the world. And, since god knows when, here in Oxford town it has been the day when pubescent choirboys (and latterly girls too) sing in the summer at 6am from the top of Magdalen College.

If you live here, it's the weirdest day of the year -- a cross between all that is posh and all that is populist. Workers of the world are united, and you are eating kedgeree in a ballgown.

Well in fairness I've never done the ballgown bit, but thousands have. And the most important thing is that the pubs are open from 6.30-8.30 am, which is just too fabulous to miss if it falls on a Sunday. Which, lo and behold, tomorrow it does.

I've got to say, right now meeting about 10 people at 5.45 isn't feeling like my favourite thing to do. But sometimes, you just gotta.

joella

From feet to garlic in 10 sentences.

I've got flat feet, which means I walk funny.
I've had a dodgy knee since I did some yoga, and a dodgy ankle since I did some cross country skiiing.
This bears out my theory that exercise is bad for you, but never mind.
I need to get this sorted, and my GP referred me to a podiatrist.
First I got a letter saying you'll be lucky, there's an 18 month waiting list, but today I got a letter saying please come and see us next Thursday.
I had to ring and say I won't be here, I'll be in Zambia, can we rearrange?
This was one of the 32 things on my to-do list pre-departure.
Another was to reply to my host's email about vegetarian food availability in Lusaka, which encouraged me to immediately seek out things I am likely to miss.
One of these is pickled garlic from Fasta Pasta in Oxford's Covered Market.
This I would not want to be without in the long term.

joella

Plate spinning ball juggling etc

Zambia countdown continues. There is now a Zambia blog at zambiajo.blogspot.com: next week joella will go quiet and zambia jo will pipe up.

This is because joella is not widely visited by my colleagues or indeed my family. Or indeed many of my friends. And I like it like that. But more people have an interest in what I am doing over the next month, and I can't be having them all reading about my alcoholic existential angst.

Though I might still bang on a bit here if I've something non-work-safe to say.

joella

Slush puppy white noise full moon mayhem

About fifteen years ago, I tried to make out that I liked science fiction. Perhaps I even *believed* I liked science fiction. I think this was because the men I admired all seemed to be reading it. Anyway, I started lots of sci-fi books, finished almost none of them, and moved back to novels when I realised the pointlessness of this exercise.

But the first line of one of the books I started has remained in my mind ever since. I can't remember the name of the book, but the opener went:

"It was 1986, and the hippies had long since left law school."

All Tomorrow's Parties is the spiritual home of the hippies who never went to law school, and of those from every generation since who never cut their hair and got jobs. They get to come along and perform their weird shit for those who did, but who wonder if they should have. And it all happens in a decaying holiday camp in a part of England that time forgot. It's the perfect setting.

    
    

L-R, top-bottom
1. Lemon yellow chalets as far as the eye can see
2. Japanese noise merchant Merzbow against a mural of can can dancers
3. The Chefette was shut, so we couldn't try the Traditional Indian Curries
4. You can have any colour you like as long as it's neon
5. joella's tongue after one raspberry slush puppy too many (ie one)
6. Everything was Vincent Gallo-branded, including the wristbands

I loved... Merzbow -- I hitched my anxieties, my stress and my period pain to his noise wagon and let him take them all away. *And* he's beautiful. I also loved Polly Harvey, who played solo for the first time in 12 years and brought me to tears, and I loved the slush puppies they sold from the bar as only a someone who grew up immersed in seaside tack can.

I hated... Peaches. There's got to be better ways to be empowered than standing on stage in your bra and pants and pole dancing without a pole. Call me a hairy-pitted old timer, but she ain't no heroine. I also hated Yoko Ono. Get *over* yourself, love. But M loved Yoko, and lots of people loved Peaches, so everyone was a winner.

Most of all I loved having the festival vibe in Pontins -- there's something about that combination of cool and naff which really does it for me. Camber is a one horse place (and that horse isn't very well), but get your friends down on the beach at midnight with a full moon, some wine and some grass, and there's not a lot better in this world.

joella

Pontins revisited

First there was Blackpool Pontins. I never actually went there, but the 11A from Blackpool to Lytham trundled past its near-endless perimeter, and I would always sit on the top deck, which afforded a view over the wall. I would look at the endless chalets and wonder who went on holiday there -- why they would choose it and what they could possibly be like. Many years later my sister got a summer job in the shop there and would tell stories of quivering with fear as she had to ask very large Glaswegians to repeat themselves over and over again as she couldn't understand what brand of cigarettes they were asking for.

Then there was the Pontinental. Housemate S and I got a cheap mini-break to Tenerife one year when she was back on hols from her slightly bizarre job running a casino in Tanzania. It was pot luck on the accommodation, and the Pontinental is where we ended up, although by that time Pontins had given up on it and it was known as the Ten-Bel. We called it Ten-Bel Holiday Hell. My first over-riding memory is of lying on the freezing cold stone floor in the bathroom with period pain and a gargantuan hangover. My second is of being too scared to sneak out of the 'blue' cabaret in case we got picked on by the enormous 'lady' comedian. She wore a flapper dress with rouge on her wrinkly cleavage, into which she pushed the head of a twelve year old boy with a wink at his dad and an 'eh, he's old enough now'. He's probably still in therapy.

But now there is Camber Sands Holiday Village - also previously a Pontins, but now with a new lease of life. For it is home to All Tomorrow's Parties: a music festival celebrating the wild, the weird, the left field and the just plain noisy, where chalets (I am guessing) will be full of Japanese teenagers, avant garde art punk types and, er, us. Ten of us, to be precise, sleeping on under polyester sheets on sofabeds and bunk beds for a long, strange weekend by the sea. I can't quite imagine these worlds colliding, but I am so looking forward to it.

And so to bed. It's been a long, long week, and it ain't over yet.

joella

Going first class

I *have* travelled first class on a train once or twice, but I've never paid for the ticket. My approach as a teenager when the train was packed was to get on in between the two first class carriages and sit on the floor. Sometimes the guard would give you a seat, and even if he didn't, the toilets were better and there was carpet on the floor.

I've never travelled first class on a plane. I've never even travelled business class, and I'm beginning to realise that I probably never will. But that's ok, there's always Valium and flight socks.

But there's one kind of travel where I always go first class, and that's by post. This is because I have a just-in-time life. Who remembers to post anything four days early? Who has two kinds of stamps in their purse?

My family are accepting of the fact that if their birthday is on a weekend, they won't get the card till Monday. My application to vote by proxy will get there in the nick of time, no earlier. I can't decide if this is a hopeless waste of 5p a time, or that I should be proud that I get cards and proxy vote applications out there at all.

joella

glory glory hallelujah

I am working so hard at the moment that I might explode. From a work-life balance point of view it seems fitting that I seem to be living so hard that I might explode too, but from a mental-health-clean-pants-in-the-drawer perspective it's all a little manic.

Returned home from a weekend Up North last night, slightly apprehensive about the week ahead and to a house empty of sustenance. Not only is the dishwasher still bust, the oven has now joined it. So we went out for a curry. And then for a drink. If you don't think about these things, you see, they might fix themselves. Or go away. Honest.

I bought some overpriced beers, and then it was M's turn. What do you want? he said. Oh whatever you're having, I replied. He came back empty-handed. Where are the drinks? Oh, he said he'd bring them over. Weird, I thought. And then I heard the noise of ice shaking against metal.

Are we having *cocktails*? Yes, we were. At 10pm on a Sunday night, we were drinking mojitos. I would never have thought of this as a solution to the Monday Morning Apprehension Blues, but it worked an absolute treat. Slept like a log, got up only a bit late and have worked like a demon all day.

Time to head out for another one.

joella

Competing selves

I can't quite believe how much is going on at the moment. I have had a fantastic time over the last couple of months catching up with friends from Cambridge. A bit like buses, you don't see them for years then three come at once. In fact five. Five people I haven't seen for ages. And it's great. And somehow very reassuring: friendships may lie dormant for many years but they don't often die. I feel warm inside just thinking about it.

And people you have known for 15 years or whatever give you the long view on yourself, you get a good perspective on life. And bottles of sparkling wine keep appearing, just like the old days when we used to refer to it on party invitations as SpWW. I'm knackered though.

Also trying to work out what to do next with my life, trying to get a new mortgage, thinking about what housemate S's imminent departure will mean (beyond the financial, but thinking about the financial as well). Bit existential. Bit stressful. Many awkward conversations. Horrible phone calls to estate agents and financial advisors. Personal shortcomings in sharp relief.

On top of *that* - and there's more hard work hidden in there than might be apparent - I'm going to Zambia for a month in early May. Worky stuff, very exciting, kind of terrifying. And mountainously complex to organise, as I have to prepare for a month away and get everything done that I won't be here to do... *and* try and organise a week's holiday at the end, mad not to, right?

But I'm away this weekend with the parentals, and next weekend at All Tomorrow's Parties. My to do list fills me with panic. I have to have jabs. I have no time for mood swings or hangovers until July.

So if I owe you an email, forgive me. It's all burbling and no sense at the moment. Who am I?

joella

All becomes clear

 


I'm doing quite well at ignoring the news. But I did put the 10 O'Clock News on this evening, because I wanted to watch something after it. And my hackles were raised immediately by the sight and sound of Michael Howard standing on a soap box in Middle England, shaking his puny fist about yobs and foreigners.

What an irritating voice he has, I thought. Who does he remind me of?

And then I realised that he's actually the spit of Montgomery Burns.

Excellent.

joella

As the song goes...

 


...sometimes it snows in April.

*Last* weekend I got sunburnt. Isn't weather great?

joella

Great cheap laugh

One of my lovely colleagues just came in and said, in a Friday-cake-sort-of-way 'do you like chocolate doughnuts?'

Hey, I said, was the Pope Catholic?

My how we laughed.

On that note, thanks to Andy for directing me to Polly Toynbee's fantastic Papal piece in today's Guardian. I couldn't agree more, and I am glad someone's speaking out over the mawkish hypocritical cant that seems to characterise the rest of the media coverage of the Death of the Year.

A snippet:

Still the Vatican turns a blind eye to this most repugnant and damaging of all sexual practices, the suffering little children whose priests come unto them. Yet at the same time it thunders disapproval of sex in every other more innocent circumstance, blighting the lives of millions with its teaching on gays, divorce, abortion and unrealistic self-denial. There is no reckoning how many of the world's poorest women have died giving birth to more children than they can survive; contraception is women's true saviour.

I recommend reading the rest of it, it's good angry stuff.

joella

Something old, something new

 



Well, two things old really. One is the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, and the other is the magnolia tree, which has been around so long, Wikipedia tells me, that it is designed to be pollinated by beetles as it *predates bees*. Not a lot of things can say that.

The new thing, of course, is Spring. It's always been, but it's new every time. We budding (arf) gardeners are loving it like that.

joella

BORED ALREADY

I'm not going to listen to the Today programme or watch the 10 o'clock news until after the election. I can't bear it.

I can't even bear thinking about it.

I went to see Asian Dub Foundation on Monday night. Vote them out, they exhorted us, and we cheered. And if your issues are Iraq and immigration policy, that certainly seems like the thing to do.

But 1. I have other issues too. The 'war on terror' issue is huge - both the war itself and the implications for human rights and civil liberties - and has exposed some frightening realities at the heart of government. But it is not the only thing we are voting on. There are many areas where the Labour government has made big steps in the right direction. Think child poverty targets, think National Minimum Wage, think dropping (some of) the debt of the world's poorest countries, think free museums, think Disability Rights Commission, think citizenship education. Lots of small things that have benefited the more vulnerable and less powerful, who were systematically screwed during the Thatcher years.

Which leads onto 2. If you vote them out, who on earth are you going to vote in? Michael Howard? That pillar of liberalism and tolerance? Yeah, right. I can remember what Tory governments were like, and I don't want another one.

I would like half a vote this time. I know where I would cast half a vote, but I feel very uncomfortable about casting a full one.

But that's all I'm going to say on the matter, before I start boring *myself*.

joella

Topical tiffin

As I reported a few weeks ago, one of my prized Southall purchases was a three-level, stainless steel tiffin tin. It has been much admired, and I love walking into work swinging it jauntily and thinking of lunchtime.

Of course, if I were an Indian office worker rather than me, then my tiffin would be delivered to me at lunchtime, having been made by my wife in the morning.

But no matter. It is open before me now, with split pea dahl in one tin, carrot and cabbage with mustard seeds and chilli in another (both leftovers from a splendid meal M cooked last night) and fruit salad in the top one.

As I usually do while eating at my desk (which I do more often than I would like) I was perusing the BBC news website, thinking that not many people seem to have shared my view of the Pope and his archaic stance on condoms. Or maybe they're just better than me at not speaking ill of the dead. Anyway, I was thinking, even Prince Charles might move his wedding, how weird is that.

And then I saw this lovely story about him sending two tiffin carriers from Bombay an all-expenses paid invite, because they sent him gifts after he helped raise the profile of their work.

My heart is warmed. And I think there could be future in tiffin. If schoolchildren are to get fresh food every day, thanks in no small part to Jamie Oliver and his media savvy, then could there not be scope for office workers to get it too? Fresh, affordable lunch every day delivered in your own environmentally-friendly tin? There must be a business opportunity in there somewhere for those of us without wives at home.

joella

See ya, wouldn't like to be ya.

The Pope is dead. Long live the Pope. Kind of.

I'm a born-and-bred lapsed Catholic. I come from a long line of paid-up sinners, where sinning means pretty much anything that involves exercising free will. Especially as a woman.

John Paul II had (as his successor will have) an unprecedented opportunity to improve the lives of the half-billion female Catholics living in the world today... about one 12th of the world's population. But with his medieval adherence to the no birth control dictum, he nailed his colours to the mast of male oppression.

And in a world riddled with sexual violence, often leading to infection with HIV and other STDs before we even get to the issue of unwanted pregnancy, his passing, in my opinion, is not something to be mourned.

I hope his successor has more balls. But I'm not holding my breath.

joella