Something old, something new

In my New Job I am (among other things) managing the archivists, so today I went out to visit the archive. What an amazing place the archive is. There were press cuttings from the Biafran crisis, which apparently the BBC once borrowed by sending a taxi for them, T-shirts from the 1980s, a Christmas card drawn by John Lennon, minutes from the organisation's first ever committee meeting (lovingly restored by someone at the Bodleian in their spare time), and -- my personal favourite -- a file marked 'The Shoe Affair - 1969'.

What's this? I said. 'Ah, yes' they said. 'The Shoe Affair'.

I can't tell you what the Shoe Affair was, it's still a trade secret.

It was a good meeting. I know the importance of information, but it reminded me of the importance of history, and of provenance. It's a hard job though. There can be few archivists in the world who feel they are taken seriously enough.

I overstayed, and then left in a hurry to get back to the office for another meeting. Briefly stopped on the way at Bicester Village to get some lunch.

I *hate* Bicester Village. As one of my colleagues later put it, it is the apotheosis of capitalist evil. I didn't have that exact delightful phrase on my lips as I stomped past the outlet shops in search of Pret a Manger, but it did occur to me that Bicester Village is the exact polar opposite of an NGO archive.

It looks like Main Street USA, all anodyne wood-fronted store fronts with spotless walkways patrolled by security guards. Everyone shopping there has perfectly highlighted hair and this season's jeans and boots. You can hear the credit card debts Ker-CHINGing up the mountain of conspicuous consumption. Who needs yesterday? Who cares where and how these products were manufactured? Give me the latest colour and give it to me cheap. Cat fur? Not my problem, unless my bum looks big in it.

I took Wendy the GPS with me to help me find the archive. I took her out of the car when I went to get my lunch -- you can't trust these 4x4 drivers. As I stomped back to the car with my sandwich she was in my pocket saying 'find the nearest road. Find the nearest road'.

There are times when I couldn't agree with her more.

joella

Easy like Sunday afternoon

There's not much I like better than waking up late on a winter Sunday morning without a hangover. I squirm around in my own body heat, letting in little cold blasts of air just for the pleasure of warming them up. Then I stretch out and consider my options. Will it be a bath with sandalwood oil? Shall I lie here and read a bit more of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? Shall I get up and do something useful?

This last option always seems to be a waste of time that should be savoured, so I read for a bit, do some thinking, offer thanks for the blessing of a boyfriend who brings me coffee on such mornings, and generally keep the cruel world at bay for as long as possible. Which is until I start to feel ashamed of myself for not getting up, so then I do.

Unlike hungover Sunday afternoons, which tend to be spent prone on the sofa with the Observer trying to combat feelings of self-loathing, non-hungover Sunday afternoons are a joy. I went to the tip! I bought bird food from the garden centre! I did some online Christmas shopping! I tidied my bedroom! And the living room! I made lots of coffee for M, who is painting his new room! I had a shower because I was too busy to have a bath!

Finally, I made a winter vegetable stew with a red wine sauce, which is bubbling away in the oven waiting for A, A and L to come over and help us eat it.

Sometimes I feel like a functioning adult.

joella

Men! Don't expect any help on a Thursday!

Threading steel pipe in plumbing class
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

At least not from me or plumbing S, for we are well busy subverting expectations.

This week we were threading the steel pipe it took us so long to hacksaw last week. After two and a half hours, when we were the only ones who hadn't finished, some of the boys came over and asked if we wanted a hand.

Ten years ago, I would have said no. But then ten years ago I wouldn't have been learning to plumb. And I have also learnt how to accept help gracefully if you need it and it's offered for the right reasons. It took me a while to reach that position, but I'm very happy I have.

joella

Womanising pisshead finally pegs it

I have a new job. For the next year I will be sitting in the goldfish bowl next to reception in the New Building. This has many advantages in terms of profile, space and proximity to sofas and filter coffee, but one major drawback: unless I wear blinkers I am constantly aware of the plasma screen in reception with its rolling news coverage.

I am thus acutely aware of how long it has taken George Best to die. 'Not dead yet', I've been shouting out every hour on the hour for the last two days.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I cannot understand why his shuffle off this mortal coil has generated so much media coverage. He was hardly the Pope, for god's sake (though I was no fan of his either).

I am interested in one thing though - did he wear out liver #2 as well, or are they going to be able to whip it out and give it to someone else? Legend lives on through liver: now that *would* be worth the headlines.

joella

Hang the Great British Public

In the early 1990s I accidentally lived in Andover for a year. It had home comforts in the shape of my parents, who accidentally lived there for seven years, but not much else going for it. Let's just say it's the only year of my life I have ever managed to maintain a gym membership.

In between flexing my pecs and digging a tunnel to civilisation I did manage to identify some drinking buddies. They were a strange bunch but they were prepared to drink with me, and so it was every Tuesday night we would find ourselves in the Railway Tavern, constructing a midweek hangover that would see us through till the weekend.

They were all boys apart from Rose, who wasn't out often as she was a single mother and the father of her child had gone back to Russia, or maybe never left Russia, the detail is sketchy now. There was Michael who periodically tried to get off with me, Owen who was always driving and drank five pints of lemonade, Richard who wore cowboy boots and smoked B&H and liked to move it move it, and Steve, who was big and loud and opinionated and worked in a video shop. He ended up having a thing with my Australian artist half aunt, and later still went back to college and did a degree in archaeology, but those are other stories.

We used to have fierce arguments, which would get fiercer as the night wore on, and would usually end with me and Steve thumping the table and yelling at each other. One such (as I finally get to the point, but I thought it worth setting the scene) was about Steve's 'if I ruled the world' approach to local democracy. Citizens would all have little voting consoles (a la 'Ask the Audience' in Millionaire). Their views would be canvassed constantly and there would be no need for politicians or indeed a judiciary. Legislation would be designed and justice meted out by the man in the street. It would be fair and swift and efficient.

Hang on a minute, I would say. The man in the street would bring back the death penalty. The man in the street would send all asylum seekers home. The man in the street would outlaw abortion. The man in the street would start burning witches again, given half a chance, and I'd be first on the pile. You're only going to get a fair hearing from the man in the street if you are Just Like Him.

And yesterday's revelation that a third of 2000 British people surveyed by Amnesty International believe a woman is partially or completely responsible for being raped if she has behaved flirtatiously could not prove my point more.

I could probably have predicted that attitude, but I was still shocked. What shocked me even more was that nearly half of the people holding this view were women. Women who never flirt, one presumes. Or who have ever been raped.

Representative democracy. It's the only way. The people have quite enough power sometimes.

joella

Raglan Road

I was inspired to do this by A Free Man in Preston. I don't know him, he doesn't know me. All we have in common is Preston itself. But I read his blog from time to time, and am introduced to / reminded of good tunes at the same time. Bargain.

I fell in love with this song when Billy Bragg released it on vinyl in 1990. To my knowledge his version has never been released on CD, so I still only have it on vinyl, and it's one of the few songs I downloaded from Napster before it went all Corporate. I would have paid 79p for it, I really would. It's better than Van the Man's version (I have never actually heard the original. I am not entirely sure whose the original *is*).

But no matter. This version is a beautiful thing. Enjoy it while it lasts, during these autumn days.

joella

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Let our bodies be twisted but never our minds

I spent most of last week frantically writing handover notes and doing other handover things, and am now at the end of the briefest of 'between jobs' interludes. Tomorrow I will have a new desk and a new job. Though I might end up sitting at my old desk as my new desk doesn't have a PC. It's all a bit strange.

In response to this (and as if I need an excuse), I have been having a very lazy weekend. Yesterday I read nearly all of the Guardian and then went out for a curry. Today I have read nearly all of the Observer and been to the laundrette. I read about the vocalists who have inspired Anthony (of the Johnsons). One of them is Alison Moyet. I immediately leapt up (well, 'leapt' might be pushing it) and put some on. He is right. What a voice she has. Why don't I listen to it more often?

I had Alf back to back on a C90 tape with Sade's Diamond Life. Hearing it again reminded me of summer holiday days painting N's bedroom when we were both about 16. We did every wall in a different pastel colour, which we mixed from cheap white paint and coloured poster paint, and she sang along and I wished I could.

It's good to have time to remember things.

joella

Talking DRM blues

Dear legal music download services

You are all absolute fuckers. If I buy music from iTunes I can't import it into Windows Media Player because it's in protected AAC format, which means I can't put it onto a CD EVEN THOUGH I'VE BOUGHT IT (I can't do this via iTunes because bastard iTunes is not compatible with my CD writer). If I buy music from Microsoft I can't put it on my iPod EVEN THOUGH I'VE BOUGHT IT because it's in protected WMA format so iTunes won't take it.

So I can listen to things at home on my computer. In one room. Jesus, reel to reel tapes were more bloody portable and convergent than that.

joella

Who says girls can't parallel park?

I will confess, I can't do it to the right. But I am shit hot to the left. Even in the dark.

joella

a bottle of whisky and a new set of lies

Christmas adverts really, really piss me off, especially when they are for compilation CDs targeted Straight At Me. There's one doing the rounds at the moment for an album called The Greatest Hits of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler (or some combination of these words). I turn away with a sneer when I hear the bass line of Money For Nothing, but then it plays a little bit of Romeo and Juliet -- All I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme -- and I feel like a sixteen year old all over again and hey, I don't have that album on CD, maybe I should get it, and dream a little dream of lost boys.

Or maybe I should switch off the television set and go and do something less boring instead.

joella

Somebody's getting married...

Balloons at Emma's hen night
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

About seven years ago Emma bought Eurostar tickets to take her boyfriend for a weekend in Paris. A week before they were due to go, they split up. I had just split from my Significant Ex. Do you want to go to Paris for the weekend? she said. Too right, I said. We drank a lot of wine and I got a tattoo (occasionally pictured right).

Five years later she fell in love with a Frenchman and now she lives in Paris with him and their baby. Next month they're getting married; last night we went out to celebrate. Hen nights can be dreadful occasions (I recall a particularly bizarre one which featured a male stripper), but this one was lovely.

I especially liked drinking Ice Picks, cocktails featuring gin and champagne. As teenagers in Blackpool, ex-housemate S and I would drink Pick Me Ups - half a cider with a double gin. I see the Ice Pick as the grown up version of this. In fact it was a very grown up night all round. Well done Emma. Can't wait for the wedding...

joella

Art for art's sake

Tonight at the Pegasus: Horsehead

Would I have gone without an invitation from M's daughter C, who both performs and works there? No. Did I get something amazing from a bleak, 40s noir, freak-centred, puppetry performance? Yes.

Ain't life weird? And therefore sweet?

joella

PS The horse connection between this post and last is *entirely* coincidental.

Horse in The Hague

Horse in The Hague
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

I've been working in the Netherlands since Sunday. Work-wise, it was great -- hard work and frustrating in places but challenging, inspiring, interesting.

I was with a (what's the word for this?) lover of all things Dutch. She loves the cleanliness, the efficiency. Her glass is always half full when she is in the Netherlands.

I am not so sure. I am taken with the architecture and the waterways, and tulips are some of the finest of flowers, but equally I like a bath in my hotel room and I feel they overdo the sugar and the dairy products big time. Sour cream on a *pizza*? What is going on with that?

And I had the following grumpy exchange this morning, upon finding that you cannot buy a train ticket with a credit card. I had spent my last cash on a taxi to the station.

She: No cards.
Me: Why not? Am I in the wrong queue?
She: Cash only. All queues.
Me: How much is it to the airport?
She: 7.30
Me: Cash only? Euros?
She: Of course euros. You are in the Netherlands.
Me: Not for long.

Her English was better than my Dutch, of course, but still. I like a place where they acknowledge random illogicalities with a shrug.

On the way back from plumbing tonight I stopped (on my bike, going uphill) to let a car past coming down hill. Technically, it was my right of way, but that didn't stop him from swearing at me for causing him to slow down. Fuck you too! I yelled, and aimed a kick at his car in my steel toe caps. It felt good to be home.

joella

Spotted by Jeremy

brass plaque representing local culture
Originally uploaded by Jeremy Dennis.

I've noticed a couple of these 'celebrating local culture' plaques appearing on the newly upgraded Cowley Road pavements, but this one is quite something. Regeneration-tastic, I think the word is.

joella

Women! Don't expect any help on ...

... Monday, for that is the day the new Kate Bush album comes out, and normal rules of New Manhood do not apply. If you are very unlucky, you live with a man who is both a Kate Bush fan and a Nuts reader, so you might as well write next week off, but I would like to think that the two groups occupy entirely separate circles in the Venn diagram of British masculinity.

And talking of British masculinity -- what's going on with Grant Mitchell, getting duffed up by his girlfriend? What a splendid tabloid story -- hyper-tabloid? meta-tabloid? -- and a depressing reminder that the ladette has not yet left the building. Anything they can do, we can do, right? Lovely.

joella

November ain't all bad

Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

Autumn is my favourite season. I have usually stopped saying this by November, when all is dark and cold and wet, but this morning was stunningly blue and splendidly crisp, and trees just don't look much better than this. My sumac tree is a pain in the arse most of the year, but its three glorious autumn weeks make up for it all.

I do feel for all SAD sufferers, because I know this time of year can be no fun at all. But I would not be without seasons myself, and on autumn I'm right with Barbara Ellen.

joella