Not very bleak midwinter

It will be hard to leave the Nilgiris, though leave them we must (tomorrow in fact). I can't imagine anywhere else where you could head up into the hills on Christmas night to an old wooden colonial house with braziers burning in the garden, a local music teacher singing Silent Night, a Father Christmas who wobbles his head sideways, and young men in light-up Santa hats providing tandoori cauliflower and 'handkerchief rotis' (so called because they are as thin as handkerchiefs). We drank local red wine with our hosts (a passable substitute for sloe gin) and went back for seconds and thirds (wontons, beetroot salad, fried rice, tandoori paneer...).

I am also now the proud owner of my first sari, a Christmas gift from our hosts. First of all I thought the top was too tight, but then it turned out I had it on back to front. The rest of it I couldn't hope to get on by myself, but help was at hand. I still don't think I would be able to go to the loo in it, but I will confess I did feel rather splendid, though it's a long time since I had my midriff on display... M got a kurta which also looks pretty amazing. The question is, where to wear them?

joella

The night before Christmas, Nilgiris-style

I came to the Nilgiri Hills a long time ago, when my Significant Ex and I were backpacking round India on a shoestring. I remember it rained, and everything felt grey, chilly and overpriced. I didn't really see the point of hill stations anyway (all those *hills*), and was happy to move on.

This time, I feel like I could live here. This is in no small part down to the wonderful hospitality of our host family, who have fed us royally, given us a cosy cottage to stay in with views of endless green hills, and taken us places we would never have found by ourselves. But it's also down to the sheer beauty of the place, the sparkly clean air, and the relaxed pace of lives lived largely in harmony, rather than competition, with the suroundings.

We've been walking through Shola forests and tea fields, and down winding roads past blue and pink villages with technicolour temples. There are little tea shops (and government liquor shops) and snack stalls, like everywhere, but there is also broadband and fully computerised banking. The cows are milked by hand, and the roads are mended (or not) by barefoot men and women balanced precariously on hillsides, but these same men and women have better mobile phone services and more TV channels than we do. It's a lot to get your head round.

Most everyone's a Hindu round here, but Christmas is celebrated too, in a slightly surreal kind of way. I'm looking forward to it.

joella

Chilling

This morning, I had to check my packet of malaria pills to find out what day of the week it was. Now that's what I call Being On Holiday.

We arrived at Misty Heights the day before yesterday, via an overnight train to Mettupalaiyam. Thank Krishna it was the last stop, as I couldn't undo the combination padlock with which I had chained our bags to the luggage rack. We could have ended up anywhere. But thankfully our hosts were waiting and sorted it out (how, I don't know), and we were off into the glorious Nilgiri Hills.

We're now at somewhere around 6600 feet. The air is thin, the stars are huge, and we are ourselves getting bigger by the hour thanks to three home cooked Indian meals a day. We've done a little walking through the tea buses and eucalyptus stands, a lot of sleeping, and M had purchased some shiny new Indian specs, having stomped on his two days before we left...

Our to do list is getting smaller, which was the plan, and I feel we are, you know, acclimatising. I even have an Indian mobile, which could text in Hindi if I wanted it to, and which reminds me when it's Kingfisher time (about now).

You don't need as much beer up here. I am sure there are myriad reasons for this.

joella

Rushed thoughts from Chennai Central

Whoah. It's different here. And largely great, though very very hectic. Good stuff: food (masala dosa!), drink (salty lime soda!), sense of humour, endless things to look at and think about. Bad stuff: traffic, squalour, and getting groped in the breast while walking down the street by a man who then apologised to M when I yelled at him. I was *incandescent*.

However, it appears the Indian male is beleaguered (sp?). I read in the newspaper yesterday about a story, which a, about how Indian men are, on the whole, too small in the trouser department for 'international' size condoms, which is having a detrimental effect on efforts to get more of them to use them. I can see why. The columnist writing about it added wryly that it was further galling to have as a related link on the page a story about how South African men have the opposite problem, as in they just can't get them big enough. It's bad enough losing to them at cricket, apparently.

There are also multiple posters pasted onto bus stops, hoardings etc advertising cures for 'sex problems', which are expressed in glorious euphemisms such as 'sleeping time sperms release' (actually there's nothing euphemistic about that, is there?)

So next time it happens I will shout 'Hey! Small Penis! Shortly sperms come out!' at him down the street. Even if he doesn't get it, I will feel better. And a very nice man gave up his seat on the rammed 17M bus for me, so it's swings and roundabouts.

We are about to get a sleeper train to Mettupalaiyam. There it will be calm and cool. Or that's the plan...

joella

Stress head

I thought I'd be packed and have my roots done in time to go see Tim & Jeremy's band tonight (sorry Jeremy). Instead I am STILL PACKING despite needing to get the airport bus in six hours, and the last thing to squeeze into the rucksack is the hair dye, as I will be doing it subcontinentally.

Check out the latest bizarre hand luggage arrangements. Who gets to make these things up?

Thankfully, housemate L is hanging around so we don't need to remove all perishables etc, but it's still been a hideous day. Next time I go away I will plan it for the middle of my menstrual cycle so I am not weeping and dropping things and swearing at myself. However I believe we are now packed.

So, in parting, here is my parsnip soup recipe (specially for C, who could use a little comfort...)

2 finely chopped onions
6-8 parsnips, whizzed in food processor or chopped v small
3-4 handfuls red lentils
garam masala
ginger
chilli powder
vegetable stock
olive oil
butter

Heat a knob of butter and 2-3 tablespons of olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan, add about a teaspoon of ground garam masala and half a teaspoon each of ground ginger and hot chilli powder, and sweat the onions until they're soft. Add stock (about a litre), parsnips and lentils and cook for 40 mins or so. Serve with sardines on toast.

Mmmm.

Right, next update, with luck, will be from Chennai. If I can't be arsed, merry Christmas!

joella

Reluctantly...two festive things

Sound is required for both of these...

1. Oxfam Unwrapped meets Mastercard on YouTube. I laughed at this despite myself.

2. Away - the Christmas single from Nonstop Tango on MySpace. Mawkish it ain't.

joella

In the gravy

(click image for a bigger version)

I've blogged before about the parallel universe of online grocery shopping, but until now those woah! moments have all been when they actually turn up on the doorstep with something almost, but not entirely, unlike the stuff you ordered.

Tonight, having reviewed the to do list for the next week, I thought the Tesco delivery charge would be justified and the random grocery risk worth taking. I also like the fact that, evil multinational though they may be, they take away all your carrier bags for recycling. (I feel oppressed by carrier bags - can't throw them away, can't burn them. I do have string bags, and a bike pannier, but still the plastic accumulates. I don't know where it comes from. But anyway.)

Now last time I went to India you couldn't buy tampons for love nor money, and while things may have changed in the last three years (can you *be* a superpower in waiting while still requiring women to use Big Pads?) I thought I should stock up. Hence search for Tampax, as I am fairly brand-loyal on this front, though I should point out that I would never buy a san-pro product with a name including the word 'Fresh', as that is clearly a euphemism for 'Includes chemicals that irritated the eyes of rabbits', and why would you stick those up yourself?

But also squarely on the list of things I would not stick up myself is 'Antony Worral Thompson Onion Gravy'. Some Tesco techie smoked too much weed before his algorithm class, maybe. Or maybe the Revolutionary Communists, who I seem to remember had an ideological objection to tampons back in the late 80s, are subverting the capitalist system from the inside.

Or maybe... what? M came down to top up his Shiraz, looked at the screen for a while, and said 'well, it's an easy mistake to make'.

It'll be interesting to see what they actually deliver.

joella

A drill of one's own

This lunchtime I was swaying gently to Moondance in front of the parsnip mountain in Tesco when I felt my mobile vibrating.

'What voltage is your DeWalt?' said Plumbing S. 'Er, 14.4', I replied. Why do you ask?

I'm in Toolmaster, she said, and they've got a Makita special offer on. The 18v is £20 more, do you think it's worth it?

Yeah why not, I said, specially if you get one of those special side handles. Don't forget your bits. What on earth, I wondered, is Plumbing S doing buying power tools on a Friday lunchtime?

The answer is, she's getting divorced. She appeared half an hour later with a large turquoise case, and spent the rest of the afternoon brandishing her new Makita round the office, making grown men cry. (Plumbing S has been described as NGO X's 'cross between Liz Hurley and Nigella Lawson'. She confounds expectations like nobody I have ever met.)

Last time I was this angry, she said, I put on an Alanis Morrisette tape. This time I decided to spend two hundred quid on a fucking hammer drill.

I salute her.

joella

From festive bus ticket to the whole five feet

Festive bus ticket
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

I was tempted to come over all bah humbug this year and only give house room to decorations made from used bus tickets and / or parsnip peelings. But then housemate L asked in a small voice if we had any tinsel or if she should go and buy her own and I caved pretty quickly and hauled the box of shiny things out of the loft.

Then she asked if I knew of anywhere within walking distance selling Christmas trees. Tell you what, I said, I'll pick one up when I go to buy some firewood.

And so it was that yesterday, being a lady of leisure on Tuesdays at the moment, I tootled off to Bagley Wood Sawmill.

I adore Bagley Wood Sawmill. It smells fresh and damp and woody, and rugged men in padded shirts and fingerless gloves appear to tip barrowfuls of logs into the back of your car and advise on axe wielding techniques. You glimpse a parallel universe where you live in a cabin with one of them, wearing padded shirts and fingerless gloves too, spending your days making tea over a roaring fire in a big cast iron kettle before striding with a wolfhound through ancient woodlands. Well I do, anyway.

Do you have any small-ish trees, I said. Well, that depends on what you call small, said the rugged woodsman. They're two pounds a foot.

We walked over to an enormous heap of trees and he pulled two out that were about five feet. Um, I'll have that one, I said, pointing. That was an easy decision, he said, most people take ages. Well, I said, to be fair, it's not for me. I'm going away for Christmas. Wish I was, he said. But the wife wouldn't hear of it.

I suddenly realised that he probably didn't live in a cabin in the woods. He probably lives in a semi in Abingdon. But never mind. We chatted a while longer about rampant consumerism.

Where do these trees come from? I asked him as I was writing out the cheque. Oh, we grow them just over there, he said.

I never knew that. Genuine Oxfordshire Christmas trees from sustainably managed woodland. That makes me feel a lot better.

joella

Making do and mending

My uncle J, who works for a fairy light company and recently presented me with some trade-show leftovers resembling a pair of giant sparkly bollocks, has never been that great at remembering birthdays. These days I don't give a stuff (I'm not that great at remembering them myself) but there was a time when this mattered. My mother therefore made sure he got me a proper 18th birthday present, which was my first rucksack.

It's hard to express how much I loved that rucksack. It lived in the same part of my heart as my 2cv, which arrived around the same time. They were symbols of my independence, and I made the most of them both. My rucksack accompanied me up and down the country and round the world, a little piece of home that I could lean on in strange places. It had a special smell, a combination of sweat and mosquito coils, special stains from damp railway station platforms, and a special pocket that I kept £20 in in case of emergencies, which was pilfered several times from cheap hotel rooms.

The bottom pocket was once ripped open somewhere between Perth and Bandar Seri Begawan -- probably an accident, as all that disappeared was a box of condoms -- but I managed to get the zip replaced in Kowloon. A few years later a bus driver in Oxford slammed the door on the belt buckle, and I managed to get that replaced too.

But eventually it was time to say goodbye -- it was a great rucksack in its day (a royal blue and red women's Berghaus), but it was a real bugger to pack, especially once the fabric between the upper and lower pockets went, and its straps had started to dig in. So I filled it with unwanted clothes and carried it on its last journey, down to my local Oxfam shop. I hope someone somewhere found a use for it.

This was about three years ago, just as I came into possession of my second rucksack, a Karrimor Global 50-70L. This rucksack, you can open all the way round and pack like a suitcase. Its straps are adjustable to fit your back exactly. It comes with a little daypack which you can zip onto the back or clip onto the straps and wear across your front. It has an extension so you can take it away full and come home with it fuller. And it has a special flap to zip away the big padded belt for going on planes, plus a shoulder strap so it can be carried holdall-style. I have hoiked it all over the place, from Amsterdam to the Zambezi. It's the business.

Or it was till, at barely three years old, the strap-zipping away zip went. I have been giving it hard stares ever since, wondering what to do with it. You can't really take it on a plane with the straps out, as they are the kind of straps which are designed to be zipped away. You'd have to get it wrapped up in one of those giant cling film machines they have at airports in countries where luggage is generally held together with string.

I know planes themselves are bad these days, so maybe this was a sign that I should just stop getting on them. Well, fair point, but wild horses wouldn't keep me in the country for Christmas this year with Glum McGlum and the Absentee Stepchildren. I'll plant some trees when I get back or something. And think of the methane I won't be emitting after eating all those sprouts.

So I had to get the rucksack situation sorted out. I don't have the cash for a new one, and chucking a whole expensive rucksack away for want of a zip feels badder than flying, even if it isn't.

Enter Lancashire Sports Repairs. What a lovely bunch of people. Cost me £36 (it's a big job, that, she said, and I am sure she was right) but it was done in a week and I had the pleasure of receiving a giant parcel in the post, which was very exciting even though I knew what was in it. I look forward to packing up my troubles in my old kitbag and smile, smile, smiling.

joella

Of massages, goats, wildness and, like, so?

Good-o, said M, this morning, as I announced I was off to have a massage. Maybe you'll come back in a good mood. Piss off, I said. Exactly, he said.

How would you like to feel afterwards, asked the nice Australian lady as I was taking my clothes off. In a good mood, I said. She went away and mixed up some clary sage and some wild
marjoram, then got to work with her forearms.

As I was lying there a conversation about goats that I had forgotten about came back to me, which prompted me to think about a friend of mine who is buying some of her relatives a pile of poo this Christmas. The double-edged gift that gives twice! How splendid. The only thing better is temporarily emigrating to a Hindu country until the stakes are lowered, wrapped in tinsel and put back in the attic for another year. As this is exactly how I plan to spend the festive season, I did indeed emerge in a good mood, and float dreamily home for rye bread and sheep's cheese.

I then prepared my iPod for a drive to Winchester with Plumbing S and her daughter. Shuffle can produce items that scare children, but all that choice is too overwhelming, so I made up some playlists based on all the songs I have in iTunes with titles which start with the same word.

First go: Wild

Wild Children - Van Morrison
Wild Goose - Kate Rusby
Wild Horses - The Rolling Stones
Wild Jack Hammer - The Bevis Frond
Wild Life - INXS
Wild Night - Van Morrison (hey, he's pretty wild!)
Wild Star - Transvision Vamp
Wild Wood - Paul Weller
Wild World - Cat Stevens

Second go: So

So Hard - Pet Shop Boys
So Here I Come - Neneh Cherry
So Lonely - The Police
So Long Ago - The Coral
So Much More - Beth Orton
So Nice - Andy Williams
So Tough - The Slits
So What - Ani DiFranco
So Young - The Stone Roses

As it was we had to listen to The Best Disco Album In The World Ever all the way there, but it could have been worse. Glad to know that young hearts still run free.

joella

I'm finding it harder to be a gentleman every day

M heard back from the lawyers he should have gone to see ten years ago. They said:

Dear M,

Thanks for sending us copies of your correspondence with your scary ex-wife. We can confirm the following:

1. She is proper scary
2. You should have come to see us ten years ago
3. You did officially get done
4. She's not going to budge an inch without a court order
5. You might get one, but you might not, and either way it would cost you a screaming fortune

We therefore recommend the following course of action:

1. Go and get very pissed
2. Berate yourself for a few weeks
3. Be thankful that you're not married to her anymore
4. Don't do it again

We are pleased to note, however, that your taste in women seems to have improved recently.

Yours sincerely

Hard, Rain, Gonna and Fall.

The chilblains are deigning to communicate with him again following this development, but it's with pretty much the same la-la-la-can't-hear-you conditions as before. In fact, I think it's worse, because he did try and say something after years of long-game silence, and if the lawyers had written a different letter I think they'd still be ignoring his calls. Well, I guess the long game is better than no game if you're a parent, but hey, I'm not, and I'm not playing it anymore.

I had a long chat with R the hairdresser about it when I was up north. His children didn't speak to him for years after he left his wife. You get to the point, he said, where you just think 'well, they can piss off'. I think I've got there, I said. Not forever, probably, but for a while.

And on that unusually sober note I'm off to finish On the Beach, then spend the weekend partying like it's 1963.

joella

No heroines

Spine asked me to blog from the annual conference of the IPHE's Women in Plumbing group, which he imagined as lots of tiny women standing inside steel pipes banging tools on the walls. His description reminded me of a Reclaim the Night march I went on once in Cambridge: we stomped through the covered shopping centre ululating and banging shop windows, and the winos fled into the shadows like silverfish under a spotlight.

They didn't provide blogging facilities, but I'm safe home now, and the right side of a lavender oil bath and my second-best pair of fleecy pyjamas. And this is what I might have blogged.

I listened to Ani DiFranco on the train to London this morning, to get myself in the mood for Women in Plumbing. I hadn't been on a rush hour tube since 7/7, and I hoped that if I got blown up someone would think to play 32 Flavors at my funeral (original studio version please).

I got to Waterloo by 9.15 and sat and ate a Mushroom Feuillette (so wrong yet somehow so right) remembering the time I went shaking to the Transport Police here to report the man who wanked himself off at me on a Sunday afternoon train from Canterbury. Hoped there was no subliminal link between this memory and the filling of the Mushroom Feuillette. [They never got him, of course, but that was partly down to me not pulling the communication cord on the spot (you are allowed to do this, by the way), and I did have the small consolation of a large policeman escorting me to the door, putting his hand on my shoulder and saying 'mind how you go now'.]

I digress, but I was definitely having gendered thoughts by the time I parked my bike helmet in the cloakroom at the mildly terrifying pillar of the establishment Union Jack Club, went to the ladies and became one of many, many people to come out of the cubicle and remark to the queue 'that flush could use a little attention'.

I got my coffee and my bag of marketing literature and freebies, and I took my seat. Excuse me, said the quiet woman next to me, are those safety boots? No, I said, I wish they were, my safety boots are a size too big and I have to wear extra socks with them. There were nods all round.

Later, she and I were talking about how hard it is to get work experience, and how lucky we were to have found someone to take us on. Does he ever touch you? she said. Well yes, I said, he's showing me how to do stuff, and he helps me across narrow beams, and it's a bit of a squidge if there's two of you up a stepladder. But does he ever... touch you, she said. Oh, I said. No. Well, we hug each other occasionally, but no. He doesn't touch me. Oh shit. Really?

Yes, she said. I don't know what to do. I really need my NVQ.

I told her about my driving instructor, and how I really needed my driving licence. But I was 17 then. We talked about what she could do, whether her college tutors might be able to intervene, whether she could write a letter to the IPHE.

Later, some glossy blondes talked about how much money you can earn in this business by beating men at their own game.

Let me be clear. I like plumbing, and I like a lot of the men I have met who are involved with it. Men are not there to be beaten at their own game. It's not a fucking competition. There should be a place for women in all construction trades, and it should be an equal and fair place. You take yourself seriously, you deserve to get taken seriously. Ray O'Rourke and his like should be hounded out of town, you should be able to get shoes that fit, and nobody should 'touch you'.

When I was on the train home I looked in my bag of marketing literature and freebies, and discovered a tube of strawberry flavoured British Gas lip gloss. Tell me this isn't the future.

joella

Lost weekend in a household in Lancashire

... single insomnia in a double room.

Nah, I'm exaggerating slightly. I was definitely in Lancashire, that horizontal hail to the left of you and rainbow to the right is a dead giveaway. Parts of the weekend were a bit lost, it's true, but they were also the most fun, as they were spent in the company of A Free Man in Preston and Girl on a Train, drinking Blonde Witch beer for many, many hours and talking life, art, blogging, music, and, I fear (at least on my part), bollocks. It was splendid.

I did do a fair bit of waking up in the night, but mainly to drink more water and go to the loo and then again to repeat the same. My rule of thumb is drink half a pint of water for every pint consumed over the evening, but to manage that in one go on Saturday would have required some sort of intravenous contraption. I was in reasonably good shape on Sunday, considering (in a 'managed Sudoku over breakfast while defending self against so what time did you call that and where have all the gherkins gone' accusations style).

Sunday night I argued politics with my uncle J over red wine and Chinese food. It's one of those comforting traditions. He shouts more but I win and he knows I win even though he shouts more. I'm dead fond of my uncle J *and* he works for a fairy light company so I return south laden with sparkly ex-samples that I can use to make friends and influence people of the kitsch-appreciating classes.

One of the same, my gay friend A, was the ONLY PERSON to notice I've had my hair cut. 'Well', he said, it does look like it was cut in Lancashire'. Fuck off, I said, but I was still pleased he noticed. M said 'has something happened to your eyes?'. They should teach boys this stuff in school, they really should.

joella

Blood on the tracks

Buoyed by winning small 'greater good' pavement battle against 'I'm all right Jack' overprivileged dullards (no Clio in evidence for last 24 hours), this morning I asked two young men on the train to turn off the R'n'B videos they were watching (and listening to) on a laptop in the Quiet Zone.

'There's nowhere else to sit'.
'So... can you turn it off?'
'No'
'Do you want to borrow my earphones? You can use one each!'
'We'll turn it down'
'Mmmm, I can still hear it. It's the Quiet Zone. Please turn it off'.
'No, sorry.'
'Well, you're clearly not sorry are you? You can't be sorry about something that you know is wrong but you refuse to stop doing. Sorry doesn't cover it.'

'You're not going to turn it off are you?'
'No, sorry'.
'Spare me the sorry'.

I gave up at this point, being a) alone, b) small and c) unable to think of anything else to say that wasn't aggressive. As I sat down again my neighbours made little supportive grunting noises, and one of them said 'someone else asked them earlier'.

What is it with people that they think they can inflict their tinny sexist MOR shite on people who have deliberately chosen to sit somewhere they won't be subjected to tinny sexist MOR shite? I should point out that they were at the lumpen, inarticulate, scurfy end of humanity, but even so, I don't get it. I'd be embarrassed, myself.

joella

Underintelligent, overindulged, over here

I fucking hate posh thick students, especially when they're my neighbours. To be fair, the majority of students living on my street are no trouble at all, bar occasional late night noise (worse in summer, when they bray more), ostentatious underwear parading and kebab box litter. They have shit landlords, earning my sympathy, and they are burglar magnets (too many Sony VAIOs and video iPods in one house for their own good), earning my gratitude. On the whole, we rub along, and I think we've had as many noise complaints in the last five years as we've made, so the feeling's probably mutual.

But every year there's one little brat who got a souped up hatchback for his/her 18th without the parking lessons to go with it. These kids, I want to annihilate. It is murder parking round here in term time, and the least you can do is park considerately. By which I mean not in the middle of two parking spaces, so you can drive in forwards and you've got plenty of room to get out, and not on the fucking pavement.

There's a house down the road which has that rarest of things in East Oxford, an off-road parking space. You could use it perpendicularly, by parking under the archway between it and the house next door, or you could use it parallel-style, by parking in front of the front window and across the archway. I have seen it used both ways.

This year, however, the bint with the Clio thinks she can use it by parking perpendicular to the front window. This means that the back half of her car is on the pavement. Quite often one of her friends parks on the street blocking her in, which means that there's about a foot of pavement left to squeeze past in. Meanwhile, their driveway lies unobstructed.

If you ask them why they don't park there, they tell you that it's because that's because they'd block access to their front door.

Right, I said tonight (on the third attempt), but it's all right to block the pavement for everyone else? How am I supposed to get my pushchair past?

OK, so I lied about the pushchair, but they lied more, with their inconsistent flick-and-drawl 'we don't actually live here', 'the letting agent said this was our parking space' and 'the owner of the car has just today gone away for 2 months' shite. If that's the case it shouldn't be a huge inconvenience for her if I put her little runaround on bricks and burn the tyres in a righteous pyre.

I think I may be premenstrual*.

joella

* I was.

One language, many worlds

I am trying to book a room at the Hotel New Woodlands in Chennai (The City Formerly Known as Madras). I first of all tried to do it by email. They sent me the room tariff and the following information:

EARLY MORNING 6AM WE DO NOT CONFIRM BOOKING,SINCE OURS IS A 12 NOON CHECKOUT, OUR CHECKOUTS START ONLY AT 10 AM.ON ARRIVAL AT 6.00AM YOU CAN TAKE WHICH EVER IS AVAILABLE TEMPORARILY, LATER YOU CAN SHIFT TO YOUR CATEGORY ROOM.

Charges are very eloborate and finer details involved, hence we request you to
contact our travel assistant.

Hmm, I thought. I don't understand a word of that, I better contact their travel assistant. So I rang them up.

How many rooms? he said. One, I said. Four? he said. Just the one, I said. When are you arriving? he said. 16 December, I said. At what time? he said. Late at night, I said. We do not have any rooms at midnight, he said. Only in the afternoon.

I'm sorry, I said, could you say that again?

He did. Several times. They have rooms available on the afternoon of the 16th, and if I was arriving then I could book one of those for two nights, but I can't have one if I'm arriving at night. How does that work?

I guess I need to stop applying my Judaeo-Christian logic to Hindu reality, and call somewhere else.

joella

I have been released

The alarm didn't go off this morning. I woke up in a mild flailing panic to the eight o'clock pips, thinking shit, what am I playing at, what time do I need to be at...

... and oh how sweet it was to have that little jolt of nasty adrenaline replaced by the realisation that not only do I not have to brave the forces of darkness in the New Building this morning, I Never Have To Do It Again. I didn't set the alarm ON PURPOSE. I was so excited I went straight back to sleep.

This won't be the case every Monday, mind. The plan is that I will be hanging out with J the plumber on Mondays and Tuesdays, handing him spanners and learning how to use blowtorches and power tools, and this will necessitate being halfway across Oxfordshire long before I would normally be out of bed. Wednesday to Friday I will be a regular office worker, but on a new floor, with a new grade, a new remit, a new PC and a new manager.

But all this starts next week. This week I am free.

And getting stuff done. In between a trip to Kwik Fit (you really *can't* get better than a Kwik Fit fitter) and a yummy lunch at Yummy, I bought my first pair of knee pad trousers. They are cut for men, and consequently they are tight round the arse, loose round the waist and the knee pads don't quite line up with my knees. It's like buying clothes in Communist Russia.

Next week I'm going to the Women in Plumbing annual conference in the Smoke. I'll be demanding trousers that bloody well fit.

joella

Top quality friends

M has a friend whose last name is Faultless. Neat.

joella

Galloping down the home straight only a little bit pissed

Tomorrow is my last day as a full time employee, and, I hope, the last of my Dark Days. I. Can't. Wait.

It's a momentous day, and maybe one day I will be glad I had a job that made me so miserable I couldn't face doing it five days a week, or even doing it at all. Had I loved this job as I have loved previous ones, I can't see I would be making the leap into relative skintness and absolute strangeness with anything like this degree of enthusiasm.

Meanwhile I have eight working hours to implement modifications to our monitoring database, finish my handover notes, send comments on the Malawi HIV knowledge map content to the researcher in Lilongwe, write induction objectives for two new starters, attempt to conclude job offer conversations with the same, authorise everyone's leave for the rest of the financial year, clear my desk, wash up my mug, write an announcement for my new boss to send out, negotiate an acceptable level of storage space for the archivists (who are being asked to move areas), give two people interview feedback, feed into a communications review, finish migrating our content from one area of the network to another, and eat the cake that will surely appear at some point (and which will hopefully be an improvement on our current coffee-table offering of date-filled cookies from Saudi Arabia that look like the breasts of teenage girls).

I have asked one of my team to make sure I am in the pub by 6.15 (which equates to leaving the office at 6). The pints of Discovery will be on me.

joella

We are a godmother

I stood in a Catholic church in Manchester today and said 'I do' to a fair number of things that I actually don't. It was more uncomfortable than I expected and there's probably, this being 2006, video evidence of me mumbling and crossing my fingers and generally looking a bit shifty. However I am technically qualified for the job as I am lapsed from the right religion, and I was assured by A's parents that they won't hold me to any of the God-related vows.

The other ones I'm fine with, especially the unwritten gin-related ones that will come into play in about sixteen years' time. Meantime I think I just have to pay her lots of attention. Which won't be hard, as she is a very cool baby. And I don't say that very often.

joella

Gritty woman

A side effect of a conference by the sea in the bleak mid-autumn is sand everywhere. I've been home two days and I'm still finding it: in my boots, up my nose, in my ears.

I'm not complaining though. If you grow up by the sea there's always something missing if it's not there. At some stage I will need it back in my life, but meantime I take where I find. The Africans and the Asians thought we were bonkers to be fighting into the wind on the way out and staggering helplessly back with tangled hair and sand-blasted faces, but I am sure they have similar rituals, and it went some way to compensating for losing half of Sunday to Heathrow Terminal 4.

And back to crystal clear frosty Novemberness. Could be worse, though I have yet to find my under-the-bike-helmet hat, since I haven't needed it since February. And there's suddenly a whole lot more stuff to carry around... bike lights, scarves, high-vis jacket... plus today add plumbing paraphernalia and the exhaustion that comes with a disrupted week and three hours of wrestling with hacksaws and stilsons.

I hate being a girl at plumbing, but tonight I caved in and asked J the technician if I could leave my steel toecap boots in the workshop till next week, because I just couldn't face hauling the bloody things home.

He laughed and said 'as a fellow cyclist, I understand'. He is a kind person. It was still a long way back, but I could smile through my gritted teeth.

I don't mind the cold and the dark, but you have to make time to adjust. It's the time of year where you need to aim lower, and spend more time eating comfort food while wrapped in fleece.

joella

Counting chickens?

Don't go taking me for an optimist, but I'm having a great time at the moment.

On Saturday I had my first paid plumbing job. I left the house at 7.30 am to drive to J the plumbers' in Berinsfield. He made us Marmite sandwiches and we got in the van with his stepson and all headed off to a job in Watlington. The sun was rising, the roads were empty, and Suzanne Vega's first album was on the CD player. I couldn't have chosen a better album with which to enter a new phase of my life.

The job went well (I was changing taps in the bathroom while J did the kitchen sink and some electrics, and T jet-washed the patio). I was slow, but I wasn't incompetent, I bonded a little with the owner of the house over the sounds on the stereo and how it is being a girl, and (possibly as a result) we got a tip! How long is it since I had a tip?

I proudly bought M a drink with it down the Zodiac, where I headed later for Audioscope. I think he and A were a bit disappointed with the music overall (with the honourable exception of Parts and Labor, who were utterly wonderful), but I was unsquashable. I was right at the front for the Magnetophone / Sonic Boom collaboration and I was blown away. I went to shake Sonic Boom's hand afterwards and he ran his finger round my neck and said 'like the necklace'. How many people have fixed someone's taps of a morning and had their jewellery admired by a psychedelic legend of an evening?

Woke up on Sunday with a hangover, aching legs from gigging and aching arms from wielding tools at awkward angles. Proceeded to the Netherlands for a conference about sharing learning between NGOs. Heathrow is now officially one of the circles of hell (thanks guys) but the conference is being held by the sea. The hotel is right on the sea front, the wind is high, the skies are sunny-cloudy-sunny-cloudy, the sea is blue-grey-blue-grey, and last night I put on my flowery pyjamas, got into a clean white single bed and went to sleep to the sound of waves crashing.

Today I have been having conversations with people from many nations, walking on the beach into a stiff wind, eating smoked fish and drinking free wine. Truly I am a lucky person to have so many stimuli with which to engage my little brain.

And to top it off, there are only nine working days left until I can come home and pogo round the middle room to 'You're Not The Boss Of Me Now'.

Life is unfair. But sometimes it goes your way.

joella

Immediate gratification

We also tidied the shed. I love a tidy shed.

joella

Deferred gratification

There aren't many things that would get you out in this weather, said M proudly as I dibbered in the crocus bulbs with rain dripping off my chin.

He's not wrong. Bulb planting is bloody hard work. Well, crocuses aren't as they're so tiny, but things like daffodils and tulips each need a decent size, decent depth hole, and this needs to be dug at exactly the time of year that the soil gets heavy and wet and sticks to everything in sight. You come in soaked to the skin with muddy knees and a dull ache in your lower back, and there's nothing to show for it for months.

But then you lie in a hot bath listening to the rain and know that come spring, when those improbably bright shiny things are waving around in the breeze, it will be so, so worth it.

joella

When love affairs are over

There are some very strong feelings running through the media (and the -ack- blogosphere) about Clare Short's resignation of the Labour whip. As I said, I remain, broadly, a fan of hers: she's strong, she's brave, she didn't hugely sell out. I'm guessing she has a few regrets, but she can probably look herself in the mirror. That's no mean feat for a radical politician.

But I can also see why New Labour has washed its hands of her. I don't think they should have, we don't need any more shiny corporate maleness on the so-called left of centre, but I think it's an understandable outcome. I can - shock and awe - see both sides.

It's a bit like when married couples get divorced. You usually take one side (and can happily call the other party bitch-trog-from-hell or dirty-shagging-bastard and believe it), but you can often also see that they might have a little point. Doesn't make their behaviour honourable/reasonable/rational, but maybe New Labour can be justifiably a wee bit pissed off with ranty old Clare. She can't see it maybe, but we can.

M got a letter from his scary ex wife today, and I looked hard in it for the little point she might have in between the emotional bludgers. But I think the most charitable thing I can say is that it was a communique from a parallel universe. And you think to yourself - how did these people ever live together for so long when they just don't get each other?

But, like disillusioned members of the Labour Party, they must have got each other once, or at the very least thought they did.

Love by Numbers in the Guardian today cites the bleak statistic that children whose parents divorced are far more likely to get divorced themselves. It says "however loving their parents are to them, in their adult relationships children copy how their parents got on. The six behaviours proven to mess up a marriage and those of subsequent generations are: being jealous, domineering, angry, critical, moody, and not talking to their spouse."

Interestingly, it seems the chilblains are being angry, critical, moody, and not talking to their father. Four out of six ain't good. Me, I'm happy that a) my parents are still married and b) that I've never gone there. I will never, touch wood, be this pissed off with anyone.

The case continues. Meanwhile, we've got tulips to plant.

joella

Exit left

So, farewell then, Clare Short (well, kind of). I am sad, I really am. I think Clare Short is good for the Labour Party.

I have always admired both her politics and her feminism, and I loved her first and best when she campaigned in the 1980s for Page Three to be banned. I was a teenager at the time, and a bit later campaigned at university to ban The Sun from the JCR on grounds of sexism (or at least not to spend communal student union funding on buying it every day). As I recall, we won, though I never went to the JCR, and when I did I was a bit stoned, so I can't be sure.

Hmm. Not much of a legacy, when you put it like that. But we will be worse off without her, I am sure of that.

joella

Twin town: Timbuktu?

Just saw on the BBC website that Timbuktu is looking for a twin town.

They want somewhere with "a history of being a trade hub and centre of learning, an affinity with the written word, unique architecture and a cosmopolitan background". Oxford must have a good case, surely? Wouldn't that be cool? So far we have Leiden (Netherlands), Bonn (Germany), Leon (Nicaragua), Grenoble (France) and Perm (Russia). I think somewhere with mosques made out of sand would be the perfect complement. I might just write to the council.

joella

One day in history

Here's my contribution to the Biggest Blog in History.

Woke up at 7.45 with a horrible sore throat (which came on at work yesterday) and feeling generally pretty off colour. Decided I should call in sick, and also get a doctor's appointment in case it's tonsilitis. I get tonsilitis when I get run down, or when I kiss anyone new. I've had it many times.

I like the fact that these days you can ring your GP at eight in the morning and get an appointment for the same day. That never used to happen, or if it did nobody used to tell you about it. I made an appointment for 10.50, emailed some documents I was working on last night into work, and went back to bed.

M brought me porridge with dried berries and walnuts, and I got up to look at a woodpecker eating the peanuts we hung in the garden. I chose cosy clothes, including a big blue cardigan from M&S which used to be my dad's. It must be 15 years old. It's indestructible.

I decided I was too wobbly to cycle and walked down the hill to get the bus into Oxford. My GP's surgery is in Beaumont Street, which is beautiful, but the waiting room is in the basement, which is not. Most of the reading material was copies of Saga magazine. I guess 'over 50s' visit the doctor more often. Or are more inclined to donate magazines to waiting rooms.

I don't have tonsilitis. It's just a viral thing. I need to rest. I came home by way of Boots, to pick up a different prescription and a hair net for M: he does a lot of cooking and he has a lot of hair and the latter has a tendency to end up in the former. I also bought a sandwich from Pret a Manger for my lunch, and some beetroot from the Covered Market (I am having a dinner party tomorrow, assuming I am better. I am taking menu inspiration from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food).

I got home and ate my sandwich. Went to check my email but our BT Broadband was down. Again. Tried next door's wireless network, but no internet connection there either. They must use BT too. Next door but one's was working though (cable?) and I used that for a while, feeling slightly guilty. But they're easy enough to secure if you don't want anyone piggybacking, no? Anyway, I lost it after a while, weak signal.

I drank some LemSip Max and went for a little lie down.

Decided I felt well enough to go to my plumbing class, but it's a 25 minute bike ride to Blackbird Leys so I begged a lift. Dave's away in Cuba for his 25th wedding anniversary so we were taught about sheet lead by another Dave. Dave's gender awareness isn't as good as Dave's. Ninety nine percent of plumbers are men, so maybe shortcomings in this area aren't that surprising.

I had a whole bus to myself on the way home, and bought some Koka noodles from Wasim's shop to make my comfort food special: tuna-noodle-pickled-vegetable. Ate it with M, back from his singing class, in front of a documentary called the Madness of Boy George and remembered back to the 1980s when we really did believe that he'd rather have a cup of tea.

No red wine, unusually. Figured it wouldn't do my throat any good. I might take half a sleeping tablet though. My scary boss is back in the office tomorrow.

joella

Dream time chez joella

Other people I know dream on a big scale. Different universes are involved and wild and crazy things happen. My dreams are disappointingly mundane while also being a bit scary. My unconscious drives down Southfield Road in a car with no brakes, or leaves her bag on a chair after being an audience member at Question Time. That kind of thing.

This morning, I dreamt that I was late for work (I *was* late for work). I went to the back door to get my bike from the garden and noticed that the key in the door was a bit bent (it *is* a bit bent - our lodger bent it in a panic while trying to lock out the daddy long legses).

So, and this is where we depart from reality, I decided to get out my tool bag and adjust the lock. I noticed that they were flat head screws and congratulated myself on understanding that this means it's quite an old door (modern screws are usually pozi-head). I started unscrewing the lock and it became something very large. Some of the screws were in backwards, ie pointy end out, and I moved them out of the way with a chisel.

Eventually the whole door came away, revealing a cubby hole with a slanty roof, a bit like a cupboard under the stairs. It was full of hair and old bike helmets.

And then I woke up, even later for work. How life affirming.

joella

Old black dog, new tricks

I am reminded by tomato, who writes beautifully on the subject, that tomorrow is World Mental Health Day.

I am quite an anxious person. As Wikipedia explains quite well, anxious people often use alcohol as an anxiety suppressant, which works a treat till you wake up and then you feel anxious *and* hungover. This explains why I don't see many Sunday mornings. What's to get up for?

And there is a kind of depression brought on by anxiety (as opposed to anxiety brought on by depression, which is a different kettle of fish altogether). This is probably my biggest mental health issue.

Not drinking helps. Going to bed early helps. Evening Primrose Oil helps. Exercise helps. Time by myself helps. Low wheat and low dairy helps.

But god, how boring is THAT? And boredom doesn't help.

The very first time I went to have a weep in Wantage, I rambled on for a while about vitamins going past their use by date while I unscrew the top of a new whisky bottle, and MF the therapist said 'so you know what you need to do to help yourself, but you choose not to do it?'

Yes, I said. That's exactly it.

And thus, oftentimes, it remains. But I chip away at it when I can, because when you can, you should.

For example: the vegetarian lunch option today in the New Building was cauliflower cheese and bread. I love cauliflower cheese, but cheese sauce gives me gut ache, and the bread in the New Building is of the lowest common denominator. I knew I would wolf it down, but I knew it would a) disappoint me b) make me feel a bit ill and c) make me hate myself slightly for not looking after myself.

So instead I had a smoked salmon sandwich (omega 3!) and some watercress soup. For my tea I had tinned sardines and Encona on toast (omega 3!) and some miso soup.

If I weren't necking sherry at half past midnight while writing this, I'd be one of those annoying born again sane people. As it is I will have a muzzy head in the morning, but I will celebrate not having dodgy guts too.

Mentally, am I healthier or less healthy than average? I have no idea. Am I moving in the right direction? For now. Is that enough? Absolutely.

joella

Brown sauce in the bed

Tra la la la la

I managed to miss my fried egg with the HP Sauce this morning. The resulting stain on the sheet really wasn't a good look, so hooray for perfect drying weather. We've gone all eco in the washing machine though, so it's still there, just looking a bit less gross. I think I'll have to dye everything brown.

I started with my hair, which is now something called Bitter Chocolate. I like.

In other news, we spent most of yesterday waiting for things. First in the farmers' market, where they have two people serving on the veg stall and fifty people waiting. After forty minutes we bought a green squash and some curly kale. M went out for the paper and we read and talked to people and had coffee and looked at the bright autumn light through the skylights, but nonetheless I can see that the novelty will wear off at some point. Then we waited for a table in Cocos, drinking Virgin Marys with horseradish and trying not to tune into the inane braying of the posh and recently left home. Finally, we waited for J in the Holly Bush, and he never came. But other people did, and some of them played guitars and sang songs.

I think it could best be described as a day of enjoyable side effects. An odd one was a Jim Davidson divorce joke that M read out from the paper. Who'd have thought I'd ever find Jim Davidson funny?

"In the future," he said, "I'm just going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house and a hundred grand. It'll save time."

joella

Give me the future

And may it not have any of these in it.

Good on Jack Straw, I think. It's a can of thorny old worms but it's about time it was opened.

Let me be clear on this one. I loathe veils with a passion.

I loathe body fascism as well. I loathe the fact that our (majority) culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against a physical ideal which is completely unattainable. Even the people who epitomise it don't really have it, in this age of Botox and Photoshop, but we want to believe it, so we do. I loathe the fact that women spend so much time measuring how far they fall short of this ideal and beating themselves up about it, and that this message is reinforced by a diet and beauty industry which makes billions from our low self-esteem.

It's a struggle managing all that, finding your style, working out how to dress, how to look, what to care about, what to let go, what to confront, how to age. There's a lot of misery involved, some of it mine (though, on the whole, I have been able to plot a navigable route through this particular minefield).

But even at its sharp end it's better, in my opinion, than only engaging with the public sphere with your face and body covered.

There's something about the veil in particular, and associated shapeless black stuff in general, that I find unpalatable to the point of unacceptable. I think it has to do with the idea that women must be modest so that men are not tempted to indulge their baser urges. If you can't see women, I believe the argument runs, you will somehow be freed from your thoughts of defiling them.

Q: On how many levels is this offensive (to both men and women)?
A: Plenty.

So good point well made on Jack's part I think (and I haven't said *that* for a while). In fact I think his is a better way in than mine. I can't believe that anyone really does want to cover their face up, but some of them say they do, and I think his argument is both delicate and effective.

joella

Killer app

Okay, nearly two years in I've finally got the point of my iPod. I think my problem before was mainly that I just don't listen to music via earbuds (as I think they call them these days).

The ones that come as standard are a bit crappy and hurt your ears, which isn't much of an incentive. I refuse to spend even more money on Apple accessories when they should provide you with decent bits in the first place, and I'm just not street enough to have cans (as I think they call them these days).

Also I don't think it's safe to listen to music while cycling (you need to have all your senses engaged while cycling round here); I don't spend much time on trains or buses at the moment; and I just feel a bit... *conspicuous* walking down the street with giveaway white wires.

So for a long time my iPod stayed home and I felt a little guilty about owning it at all. But then I went to last year's Nightmare Before Christmas and Magic Chalet-mates brought an iPod sound system. It was amazing. All your tunes, all your friends' tunes, there in Pontins! I get it, I thought. This is what it's all about.

But I also don't go away that much, so even that's only had limited impact.

But I do drive. And I just went on eBay and bought a thing which sticks into the tape deck at one end and my iPod at the other and which means I can listen to my iPod IN THE CAR. Or in ANYONE ELSE'S CAR. Now that's life changing. I'm sold.

I still hate iTunes with a passion though.

joella

Weatherman says....

Most of my work clothes have been hanging on the line since Saturday morning. In a perfect reversal of what's supposed to happen, they have been getting gradually wetter as the weekend has progressed. I am wondering what to do next - will they dry eventually? Will they be smelly? Should I bring in armfuls of sog now and wash again, or leave till they've dried out just a little? Will that ever happen?

joella

Predictable start of term rant

What is it with students that they think cyclists don't have to follow the rules of the road? I wouldn't mind so much if they could actually cycle, but Oxford is suddenly stuffed with 18 year old shiny cheeked posh kids having near death experiences riding through red lights, making right turns where it's no right turn, not having any lights, and (and this is the one that really pisses me off) riding the wrong way down one way streets.

Cyclists need to have the moral high ground. Stop giving it away, you little bastards. If you are on a bike YOU ARE STILL TRAFFIC. If you crash into me and knock me off because you are cycling illegally I will hunt you down and kill you. And if I drive into you because you are cycling illegally I will feel no remorse.

joella

Fe Fi Fo Fun For Me

As a teenager, I was rarely without my Walkman (clunky, red, beautiful) while out of the house, and while in it I spent countless hours lying on my (acrylic, black, static-ridden) beanbag with my head in between the enormous fuzztastic speakers of my parents' Amstrad sound system (which they moved to my room when I was about 14 - at the time I thought this was an act of extreme generosity, but now I realise it may have had much more to do with not wanting to listen to Leonard Cohen on a Friday night). Either way... my ears, my space, my music.

Later in life, you share your music, you share your bedroom, you share your hard-won inner space. This is, arguably, the point of life -- to the point that ultimately you usually get round to sharing your genes, and the species moves on.

That sharing thing is totally great when it's working, but what happens to people who had all that space, all that privacy, and then gave it up for something that turns out not to be worth nearly so big a hill of beans?

In this particular scheme of things, I don't do so bad. I have a lot of time and space to call my own if I want to. Yet when you cohabit, somehow you often end up watching lowest common denominator television, cooking for assorted people you have in your life for random reasons, reading last weekend's Guardian Guide over and over again.

But tonight something good happened. M's children are still not speaking to him, our lodger was out on the town, there were no other social engagements. We had our mental and physical space to ouselves.

We also have new 'listening chairs' in the middle room. They are both from Ikea (and so cheap as chips) but -- and this is the really grown up bit -- they are NOT THE SAME. Because we are NOT THE SAME. I have gender-aware furniture. I rock.

And for the first time in many many years I turned down the lights, turned up the music and sat directly in between the speakers to optimise the listening experience.

Drink: Manzanilla, Famous Grouse, Tesco value sparkling water
Albums: Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden; Bevis Frond: Superseeder
Ambience: Fairy lights, house plants, tealights
Mood: Post-Simpsons, post-divorce, post-prandial

We could have done with some THC, but you can't have it all. I feel lucky to have most of it.

joella

Just say Pernod

Ye gods! What made me think it was a good idea to drink Pernod last night for last orders (clue: Q: 'what can you drink to follow a brandy?' A: 'Er, Pernod?') and then cycle four miles? five miles? seventeen miles? home in the rain. I feel like I've been filtered? filleted? something like that. I like the fact that you get it on ice with water in a pottery jug though. Feels kind of traditional.

joella

Brace yourself, Sheila!

This is the punchline to a bad joke I can't remember. But for a really bad joke, how about this. A woman walks into the dentist for an update on something complicated she needs to get done to avoid grinding her teeth away. Last she heard it was something to do with putting white fillings behind her incisors and grinding down a bit of one of her back teeth. The dentist has a cast of her teeth on some dental caliper type things and is moving them around and shaking his head mournfully.

There's no room in here, I think we might need to look at orthodontics, he said. What! I said. You mean, like, braces? BUT I'M THIRTY SIX. I had braces when I was FIFTEEN. That's what you do when you're FIFTEEN. You don't do it again when you're THIRTY SIX. What are you TALKING ABOUT.

Well, he said, they pulled your teeth in too far. We need to move them out again.

On the bright side, said colleague K, you'll lose loads of weight through only being able to eat soup for six months.

Seven-to-nine months actually.

The alternative is a night guard. Forever. Gross. Or grind them away and crown them and grind them away again. Great.

So watch this space. I may shortly be modelling the latest in train tracks.

joella

Art wash hair

Back in the summer of 1998 when M and I first got together his band were playing at a big garden party in a big garden up a big hill just outside Oxford. Idyllic in theory, but potentially terrifying in practice.

Will your scary ex wife be there? I said. No chance, he said. Really no chance? Definitely no chance.

The night before he said, oh by the way, I think my scary ex wife will be there. Right you are, I said, putting extra glitter in my armpits and painting my toenails black. Do you think she'll come and talk to me?

Of course not, he said. Really? I said. I really can't think of anything less likely to happen in the whole world ever, he said. There's just no way that will happen.

And so it was that while he was on stage singing Sympathy For the Devil his scary ex wife marched across the lawn towards me. Are you Jo? she said. Er, yes, I said. I'm M's scary ex wife she said (well, not quite, but you get the picture). Right, I said. He's a bastard, she said. At that moment in time (never before, rarely since), I agreed with her.

It's a line I've repeated sporadically since - like many things the comedy value grows as the terror recedes. And last night I laughed like a silent drain when M leant over at the beginning of Art Wash (NB beware v out of date website), an improvised dance / sculpture / music performance in a laundrette in Headington with a target audience of about 15, and whispered 'I don't *think* my scary ex wife will turn up'.

And lo, this time he was right. Instead we watched H struggling out of a wedding dress. I thought at one point she was going to shut herself in a washing machine (to wash that man right out of her hair?) but she told me later that they're not allowed to climb into the machines as it destabilises them.

There's something about laundrettes. And wedding dresses. And Indian summer evenings drinking Bombardier and nurturing allotment fantasies.

joella

Take your boyfriend out all night, show him what it's all about

Scissor Sisters @ Red Square
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

You'd think, if you'd gone to the bother of raising three children, with two of them being of the considerate and multi-tasking gender, that unless you had done unspeakable things (and possibly even if you had) you would get at least one birthday card.

Instead, M got one age 24 nothing at all, one age 26 Happy Birthday text message (possibly prompted by an email reminder from me) and one age 28 email detailing his failings as a father and a human being and offering adolescent analysis of the same (possibly prompted by the same email). And this for asking (the ex, not the children) the questions 'do you think what happened when we split up was unfair to me?' and 'If so, what are you prepared to do about it?'

My word, I was angry. But I guess this is a long game, and I have the advantage of being old enough to have worked out that two entirely contradictory versions of reality can each be internally consistent and therefore equally true for their creators. If you're outside those realities, you need to acknowledge both sides, and I guess this is the mountain that the children of divorced parents need to climb.

Meanwhile, I have a few questions. If they're not talking to him, do I call them if he has a road accident? A heart attack? If they *would* want to be called to his deathbed, would they not feel utterly wretched for not having made the effort to understand what's happening now *before* he pegs it? And if they would, why not try to understand it now? Maybe I'm naive, as my own parents are 40 years married, but I figure your time with them is scarce enough, don't waste it, unless you're really fucking sure that you never want to see them again. Even if you are sure, it ain't easy.

And M is of course having a far harder time of all this than me... so when I won tickets to last night's Scissor Sisters gig in Trafalgar Square I half expected that they would stay in their envelope and we would spend Saturday night on the sofa watching crap TV, drinking too much and contemplating our navels. Instead he said 'fuck it, I need to get out of this place', and we got on the train to London.

We visited the toy museum where M worked as a teenager, and then went on a Fitzrovian search for whisky macs - it was the worst possible day of the month for me to be walking miles and standing up for hours, and I find balancing Scotch and codeine the only way to go when stamina is required.

Then R&J joined us in Ragam, where we had the best dosai this side of the subcontinent, and we were ready.

And it was a blinding gig. Kylie introduced it, Jake danced his beautiful ass off, and the awesome Ana Matronic spoke the truth about music being the best therapy of all. We believed her, the guys who climbed into Trafalgar Square's fountains believed her, and a I'd wager a substantial chunk of Africa (this was a benefit for the Global Fund to fight TB, malaria and AIDS in Africa) believes her too. Filthy. Gorgeous. And, you know, necessary. Thank you, Sisters.

So that was last night. We got home at 2 only slightly grumpy. Tonight, I plan to bite my 10 mg of Temazepam in half and offer 5mg to M. We all deserve to sleep.

joella

Days of warm impermanence

Ok, so here's the skinny. I have QUIT MY JOB! I love my job in many ways -- indeed, if you had asked me 10 years ago what my perfect job might look like it wouldn't have been so far off this one -- but the fact is I need a new manager, so therefore I need a new job.

As Anne Robinson once put it, "You have to accept the treachery of the workplace. You cannot waste time discovering it daily.". I did my thinking, I had my therapy, formal and informal, and I decided to get the hell out. And I have.

Thankfully, I have not had to leave the organisation, which I also love, but not to the extent that I am prepared to make myself miserable for it. Circumstances conspired, stormclouds gathered, and I put my only smart shirt on this 9/11 and got myself a job which is a) higher up the food chain and b) part time. So in theory I will have more to fight with and less to lose. Should it come to that.

I am not intending that it will. I am intending instead to tighten my metaphorical belt, broaden my metaphorical horizons, and spend a broader chunk of my time engaging with the real world and the people who matter to me (specifically those to whom I commensurately matter).

And on that note, I sense that I am becoming a bit pissed and wanky so it's enough sherry for the dwarf and off to bed, as my dad would say.

joella

Afterthought: oh yeah, and I signed my resignation letter in purple ink.

Double VPL

Today I look a bit strange from behind as I am wearing my lucky pants. I have had my lucky pants since I was 14, and they have long since stopped functioning as actual pants: they don't stay up by themselves, and they have more holes in than the average Ann Summers offering. So, as I like a bit of substance in that department, I have to wear them with proper pants.

Last time but one I needed some luck I just stuck them in my pocket, figuring that that might do, but the result was something which appeared lucky, but in fact wasn't. Clearly it's important to wear them properly. So this time I did, over my normal pants, and I also blew three times on my lucky conker for extra luck.

And it appears that Thunderbirds are Go, the eagle has landed, one has flown over the cuckoo's nest, and normal sevice may shortly be resumed. Only better.

Details will follow when terms and conditions are agreed.

This is nothing to do with the massive storm brewing over M ... but I feel better able to support him, all thoughts of doing a runner have left, and I may even lend him my lucky pants for the duration.

As the Lizard would say, ROAR!!!

joella

Addicted to candour

After nine months working for someone who's either socially dysfunctional, misanthropic or just very, very rude, I am finding it easier to say what I feel when I am affected by her behaviour. The more I do it, the easier it is. I say it, I don't get struck down in flames. There's always payback, but the worst that can happen can't be worse than what already *is* happening, so hey, bring it on.

Many would say that I have never avoided confrontation, and in fact many have, but this always takes me by surprise: I have a reputation for frankness, but in fact I go to great lengths to present a diplomatic impression to the world.

So what I can surmise from this is... when I *do* take the gloves off, maybe I really can be a force to be reckoned with. And maybe I should do more of it. M is currently engaged in intimidating last chance saloon financial debate with his scary ex. She has told the offspring (when he explicitly asked her not to), which is a v below the belt move. I have always maintained radio silence with them on financials, and done my absolute level best to be friendly, likable and disassociated from all that nasty business. In fact, I clearly have an interest, and have been subliminally furious about the whole thing (details being inappropriate to share but suffice to say Homer Simpson could have got a better divorce settlement than M) for the last eight years. Now might be the time to disabuse the lot of them. I might come out of it single and stepchildless, but for fuck's sake, what are principles *for*?

Cackle. When I am an old woman I shall wear purple. If I bloody well feel like it.

joella

Nonstop weekend

Nonstop Tango at Klub Kakofanney
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

In classic work-hard-play-hard style, I had a big old weekend. Friday night was Nonstop Tango's first proper gig, at the Wheatsheaf's Klub Kakofanney (sp?). It was very very hot, and very very noisy, in a very very good way (the noise, not the heat. Could have done without the heat).

I was full of happiness for M, who was full of happiness for himself, and it was lovely to have so many people to have brief shouty conversations with and accidentally slop IPA over (sorry). Later featured going home instead of going on (grown up decision) and vast quantities of cheese and gherkin on toast.

In throwing myself whole-heartedly at Friday night (not that I'm really up to doing these things half-heartedly), I started Saturday with low energy reserves, and had completely forgotten that we were expected at a 60th birthday party in Acton. Which sounds scary, and in fact *was* fairly terrifying, as I knew not a single soul there, but was also held in a most beautiful house with gallons of fine wine flowing.

I took a photo in the toilet (must stop doing that) and made friends with the lone smoker, who turned out to be an interior designer who had advised on many of the house's more fabulous aspects. We admired each other's necklaces and generally got on, but later I found myself having my face stroked by her husband, who was shitfaced in the way I imagine Martin Amis would get shitfaced.

I remember us having a bit of a heated debate about something, and then I don't really remember much, but I did wake up with that vague 'did I disgrace myself or is this just normal hungover self-loathing' feeling.

What were we arguing about? I asked M. Well, he said, he called you a lady and you took offence.

Great. That one again.

joella

Little rollercoasters

Going up.

• Much great food and drink action, including posh dinner at Quod with Significant Ex (bit too much drink action there, to be fair), wonderful spaghetti with tuna balls when we had K&M over for dinner, sublime leek and potato soup on Sunday, pasta bake with Malawian Nali hot sauce to comfort several of us in need of comforting, and at long long last a farmer's market in East Oxford!
  
• Jumper weather. And socks. But still summer. It's a winner with me.
  
• Amazing plumbing success story, in the form of taking out one hot water cylinder (downstairs, somewhere in Burford) and putting in another one (upstairs, same dwelling). No huge mistakes made, no major injuries, all reconnected, everyone happy. Plumbing S and I drove back punching the air to Alanis Morissette and feeling groovy.
  
• A Scanner Darkly. I thought I might be a) bored or b) confused but instead I was c) gripped and d) moved.
  
• Eraser, which provides some of the soundtrack to the above film. Possibly the least accessible album I have ever loved, but love it I do. This is fucked up, fucked up.
  
• Digital TV and radio coverage of Reading/Leeds - the Yeah Yeah Yeahs *and* a bed to sleep in!
  
• Another blinding party chez family M in Old Botley. Yurt: check. Carnival lighting: check. Bison grass vodka: check. Beautiful people: check. DJ who plays Joan Jett: check. Leaving by 1.30 before anyone passes out and while taxis can still be hailed and bread toasted: check. What's not to love?
  

Going down.

• This year's courgette glut, surely the biggest since records began. I do not want to see another one for many months.
• Work still sucks like a sucky thing with extra suction. I attack this at night with Temazepam - what a great drug - but know this is not a viable long term option. During the day I just don't pretend I don't hate it. Eventually this strategy will pay dividends.
  
• Bank Holiday Monday in Ikea, largely to purchase something which was 'in stock' on the website before we left and after we got home, but nowhere in evidence while we were actually there. What the hell were we thinking?
  

On balance... well, there isn't much balance right now. Enjoy the view going up, scream while going down, make sure you're strapped in securely and be glad you spent your teenage summers in training on the Grand National.

joella

Working from home

There was a time when working from home meant lying in bed all day with a giant hangover and your mobile phone next to your head so if anyone rang you could pretend you were sitting at your desk working like mad. When I was splitting up from my Significant Ex I once woke up about six minutes before I was due to interview the marketing director of a large database company. I barely had time to sit up, fight back the existential demons and rinse my mouth out with flat diet Coke before I was plugging in the tape recorder and thanking lucky stars that a) I'd written the questions the day before and b) on the telephone, nobody knows you're wearing an outsize Snoopy T-shirt and smelling like a pub ashtray. Oh, those were the days.

So I am pleased to report that today I am fully dressed and I was sitting at my laptop before 10am, with a field mushroom sandwich inside me and a nice cup of Fairtrade filter coffee in front of me. I have done a load of washing, which is drying healthily on the line, and, perhaps more relevantly, have got really quite a lot of work done. More, in fact, I would wager, than I get done in a normal day at the office at the moment. So that's nice.

Later, I have a teleconference, and then I plan to have a bath before heading out for dinner with the same Significant Ex, who's over on holiday. I'm such a grown up sometimes I can hardly get my head round it.

joella

What colour is my hair?

Still economising, but this time invested in a £1.50 wide tooth comb and a bottle of wine to soften up M so he would help me with the home dye job (still came in at about a tenner all in, which is a third of the salon price).

He wasn't keen initially, as he remembered the time his ex-wife got him to cut her hair and it all went horribly wrong, but he liked the special plastic gloves, which swung it I think.

So I sat on the toilet lid, he snapped on the latex and it all went well until, swinging me round to get a better view of my roots, he said 'so are you going anywhere nice on your holidays?' which made me laugh so hard I got Warmed Terracotta smeared right across my forehead.

It's still all wrapped in the Least Favoured Towel but it has to be better than last time.

joella

Friday

Blood and chocolate and cheese and beans and socks and pyjamas and scotch and honey and ibuprofen and codeine and sofas and blankets and a good book and a film with George Clooney in and M and Tobermory the cuddly lobster.

joella

It's great when you're, er, thirtysomething

... and you're tired and emotional (for which read drunk and premenstrual) and you think, well maybe a bit of Late Junction would be good while I finish off that Tempranillo and contemplate my life.

And your soul is warmed by Fiona Talkington, gently, and you begin to think, you know, could be worse, all you need in life is water and blankets and speakers and broadband.

M appeared later. First there was a big silence, and he thought Radio 3 had broken. I said 'no, it's just a minimalist thing I think' and then there was a noise and he said 'is this Morton Feldman'? After one bar! He was bloody right as well. Later he said 'oh, this is the London Symphonietta playing Aphex Twin'.

How did I get here? Not that it's at all a bad place to be, it's like Womad on Valium, but still.

joella

Stillborn love, passionate dreams, pitiful greed

Sometimes you need something to take you away from your air conditioned view of the Oxford ring road, before you throw yourself at the reinforced glass hoping for something dramatic and blood-drenched but getting only a large bruise on the head and some more feedback on your problem with authority.

When such occasions arise, reach for your headphones and your latest eBay bargain, close your email, close your eyes and sing yourself lots more gypsy love songs. He might have a rep (not entirely undeserved, from what I read) as a grumpy old Sufist misogynist bastard, but there's no one to touch him for passion and venom and not a word wasted.

Onwards!

joella

Sunday: macro, meso, micro

Macro: rejoiced, briefly, at ceasefire news.

Meso: did two loads of washing with new Ecoballs, hoping they do not equal Ecobollocks.

Micro: remembered how effective flaming Sambuca is as a post-curry digestif.

joella

I'm a black man! I could never be a veteran!

I had my performance review today. Apparently I have a problem with authority. Fair point, kinda, but I suddenly got a little glimpse of why middle class white kids listen to black ghetto music.

Went to pub, had several Discoveries (it's great to stand at the bar and say 'can I have a Discovery please?'), then came home to throw myself round the room to Black Steel at neighbour-bothering volume. I am no poet (in fact, you could say I have a problem with poetry), so I leave my thought for the day to Public Enemy.

I got a letter from the government the other day
Opened it and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me givin' a damn, I said never
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like myself
Because I never did
I wasn't with it, but just that very minute
It occurred to me
The suckers had authority

Cold sweatin' as I dwell in my cell
How long has it been?
They got me sittin' in the state pen
I gotta get out, but that thought was thought before
I contemplated a plan on the cell floor

I'm not a fugitive on the run
But a brother like me begun, to be another one
Public enemy servin' time, they drew the line y'all
They criticize me for some crime

I got a letter, I got a letter, I got a letter
Picture me given' a damn, I said never

Nevertheless they could not understand
That I'm a black man, and I could never be a veteran
On the strength of situations, I'm real
I got a raw deal, so I'm lookin' for the steel


joella

I try. But not *that* hard.

joella

Glimmer of light

J the plumber came round last night. He looked at the bust shower and confirmed that it is proper bust - this was reassuring as if it had been merely temporarily laid up I would have felt a fool. He told me what to replace it with (we only have 6mm earth cable, which limits the permitted kilowattage, fact fans) and said he would come back to help me fit it. So far, so good.

But even better, I then got out my City & Guilds 6129 Scheme Plumbing Certificate folder, showed him what I've done and said 'so if I can swing it with work (big if) can I get some work experience with you?' You might need a Land Rover, he said. You what? I said. Apparently they are good for getting out in the middle of winter, when all other plumbers are frozen in, and also good for pulling up hedges when you need to dig up burst water mains.

I think I might start slow, I said. Maybe a small van? He said yes, that was fine, as long as I can get myself to Didcot of a morning. That sounds feasible. And so in one evening, my world potentially turned on its axis. Someone might give me a job as a plumber. Even if they don't pay me for it at first. For a middle class girl with more hours of gender training than plumbing experience under her toolbelt, that's quite something.

I took him out to the shed to inspect the blowtorch head I bought off Ebay but have not yet used because I don't know what kind of gas to get for it. Is this *your* shed? he said. Oh yes, I said, rootling through drawers of steel wool and solder reels, while surrounded by deckchairs, kindling made from old fences, and cocoa shell mulch. I think you're my perfect woman, he said.

It feels like there might be everything to play for all of a sudden. As Mike Harding once said, it's hard being a cowboy in Rochdale - but if that's what you are, maybe you should just get those spurs on your clogs.

joella

Overcast

I find August an oppressive month. You're supposed to be lithe and smooth and tanned and running around visiting areas of outstanding natural beauty then having barbecues afterwards. This doesn't happen to me. Instead I feel lardy and lumpy and pallid, and I lie around in bed reading novels, picking my toenails and wishing it would rain. I have SAD in reverse.

joella

Knobheads and joss sticks

I'm trying to spend less money. I'm not a particularly profligate person, and ginormous mortgage aside I am pretty much debt free, but I'm preparing myself for a future with a smaller income. Just in case I need to run screaming from the building.

It's not going too badly - I have been borrowing books instead of buying them, drinking Vinho Verde (£2.99 at Tesco!), and I brought my own lunch in twice this week.

But I think I may be going leetle crazy. I found myself in Lloyds Pharmacy in Botley (crazy enough, you might say) wandering up and down unfamiliar aisles full of bargain toiletries looking for deodorant. Which I found, but I somehow also bought a bottle of Yardley Sandalwood Eau de Toilette, surely the ultimate low-budget old lady perfume.

It was an exemplary impulse buy: unnecessary to the point of bizarre. I am not an old lady, and I do not need any perfume. It's also a spectacularly hideous bottle, and does not go with the Neal's Yard minimalist chic look I am trying to cultivate in the bathroom. I have been wearing it anyway, and M tells me I smell like a big joss stick. I fear he may be right.

So I was wafting around in a sandalwood old lady daze this morning when I heard our media people talking loudly (they don't talk any other way) about a knobhead. That's a bit rude, I thought, as I walked past with my breakfast (Frazzles! 40p!).

I walked past again a bit later and someone said 'we must make sure it *looks* like a knobhead'. I frowned and thought a bit harder, and realised they were on about an Op Ed.

I must keep an eye out for it.

joella

Go Congo!

There aren't many things I believe in but I do believe in democracy. It's hard work, it's flawed to hell and back, but there's no better way to run a country. You need universal suffrage, you need separation of powers, you need some sort of national pride, you need some level of gender equality, you need well paid and well educated public servants, and you've got yourself a country, that can talk to other countries and, you know, begin to sort stuff out.

The DRC hasn't got many of those things, but hey, elections are a start.

In other news, I still can't even begin to think about the Middle East... but I have downloaded Lebanon by the Human League to help me get it out of my head. Postmodern life is screwed, frankly.

joella

Avant-garde wheelchair-accessible curry-fuelled summer city nights

About a year ago, I went to a party in Old Botley where a young man in a wheelchair spent the earlier part of the night careering about madly. A bit later, the wheelchair stood empty in the middle of the garden, at which point it became clear that his occupancy of it had been both optional and confronting.

I spent the next couple of hours in the wheelchair myself, and it was both interesting and a lot of fun, though I woke up the next morning wondering if it's ok to do that sort of thing. My favourite bit was when C ran round the garden with me at great speed and then bumped me down some steps into the living room where several people expressed shock at his reckless handling of me, even though they knew me and knew that my legs work perfectly well.

I have thought about that night many times since. Which is one of the reasons tonight was so weird - M was playing his first gig with his new band in the Old Dairy in Headington Hill Park. I rang C, who is recovering well from his car crash but still very poorly, to see if he wanted to come. He said he wasn't really up for it as he can't walk very far. I said 'well, what if we find you a wheelchair?'

And it turned out that the performance art wheelchair was still in the garage in Old Botley, and I ended up wheeling C up the hill in it, in all its flat-tyred, spider-ridden glory. It was the wheelchair equivalent of the avocado bathroom suite, and all the worse, somehow, when he was having a little walk and I was wheeling it empty. I felt like something out of a David Lynch film.

Nonetheless, it was well worth it to see him out and about, and it was amazing to see the Old Dairy, which still has its stalls and its original milk-draining floor, and which all reverberated well to screeching and screaming and violins and bass and drums. The first song was called Silence in the Slaughterhouse. It was 7pm on a warm summer's evening and I was still scared.

Later K&A bought curry from Aziz and we all sat in the garden eating and drinking and (in everyone else's case) listening to me rant about the Great War of Africa (known to wikipedia as the Second Congo War) which no-one in Europe's ever heard of BUT WHY NOT. This was a response to A's comment about the UK's domestic and US news focus - I agree we're rubbish at covering Europe, but we're rubbish at covering everywhere else as well.

This developed into a monologue about the whole 'heaven in a wild flower why leave your house to discover all the beauty the world has to offer' vs the 'how can you be a global citizen without some understanding of the reality of life in developing countries even if you have to fly long haul to get there' dilemma. And when I say monologue, I mean monologue. My companions flaked away one by one, while being careful to say to me that it was nothing personal.

So let's say that I loved Malawi (photos here), but it's also good to be home.

joella

If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will

I am back in OX4, processing my thoughts from the last 10 days and rejoicing at the ferocity of tonight's thunderstorm... I'm sitting in our little conservatory with all the lights off, feeling battered by the sound of the rain on the plastic roof yet also knowing I have shelter from the storm.

It's a fucking enormous storm though, so this feeling might not last. The roof could cave in at any moment, is what it feels like. I am working off the battery in case of a power surge. It's wild and elemental and feels nothing like benign northern Europe should.

I am also thinking about A, who has to decide whether or not to subject herself to chemotherapy. These decisions seem never to be clear cut. It's not quite the Russian roulette that is unprotected sex in Southern Africa, but it's still a game of chance.

Humans have a particular relationship with risk. I think it's one of the things that makes us human. When I was younger and a bit fucked up, I used to walk down the middle of the road late on a Friday night, when I was wasted and nihilistic and wanted to taste exhaust fumes and feel engine heat. I surely risked my life, or risked my health at the very least, yet... at the time, if you'd asked me, I'd have said what is life for if you can't bet against the odds every now and again.

These days I stay on the pavement, but I take my risks in other ways. I still like to taste electricity in my mouth during a big storm. And I feel for A, who has to decide how much sickness to risk for how much health.

joella

The Test

One of my colleagues writes short stories, and yesterday he gave me one to read: it's called The Test. It's beautifully written, so I do him a disservice by summarising it so bluntly, but I've been thinking about it ever since.

The story runs as follows: young-ish man (aged 32) who has never had a sexual relationship is in church one Sunday listening to the preacher talk about love and wondering if he will ever know what it means. The reading is that one from St Paul about love being always this and never that. I read it at a wedding once so I do know it quite well, and I do think it's rather beautiful.

A young woman comes in late and sits beside him, and he realises that maybe he will know what love means. She is new to the area and they start seeing each other. His best friend is a doctor who has slept around a lot, and he advises that the young-ish man should make sure he knows what he might be getting, but the young-ish man is not that sort of young-ish man, and his sweetheart is not that kind of girl.

They go out for two years, then he proposes and she accepts. Everyone is very happy. Then without her consent the doctor (who is taking her blood for another reason) tests her for HIV, discovers she is positive and tells the young-ish man. The young-ish man is distraught and does not know what to do. How can he marry a woman who has kept her sexual past from him in this way? The doctor advises him to leave her.

He thinks a lot about the reading in the church the day they met, and decides he will go ahead anyway as he does love her. The day before they get married the young woman's brother, who is the doctor's assistant, comes over and also tells the young-ish man about his sister's HIV status, as he was the one who actually did the test. He is not sure the young-ish man should marry his sister.

But the young-ish man believes in love, so he marries her. On their wedding night he tells her it's his first time, and she says it's hers too. He doesn't believe her, and asks her if she has ever exposed herself to HIV. She says only once, with a young boy. He is horrified.

But it turns out that the young boy had been hit by a car and the young woman gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation, and he had blood in his mouth. She doesn't know what happened to him. It then turned out that the young boy was actually the youngest brother of the young-ish man, who had, it turned out, contracted HIV from unsterilised medical equipment used during an emergency operation a few years before the car accident. So the young woman discovered on her wedding night that she had contracted HIV from the brother of her husband. But love won out.

Or something. My colleague asked me what I thought of his story. I said it was difficult for me to say, as I wasn't really its target audience. I asked him why he had written it. He said he wanted to show that you can get HIV without being a prostitute.

Which is true. But it's also true that most HIV+ women in Africa caught it from their husbands. Young women can be as pure as they bloody well like, they're still at risk. It's the young-ish man who's unusual in this story. And the idea that three men can know your HIV status before you even know you've been tested is pretty unpalatable, even if, as I suspect, it's only being used as a narrative ploy.

What HIV does, in an unbelievably brutal way, is make patterns of human sexual behaviour evident. Old people catch it, because old people have sex. Children catch it because adults have sex with children. Faithful wives catch it because their husbands are not faithful, and, to a lesser extent, faithful husbands catch it because their wives are not faithful. Deeply Christian countries like this one are incredibly uncomfortable about this, but the evidence that it happens is now incontrovertible. They have to enable people, especially women and girls, to protect themselves. Moralising might help a bit, but acknowledgement, feminism and condoms help a lot more. In my opinion.

OK, rant over.
joella