So far so good

Everything here works. Nobody is rude and there is a ridiculous amount of space. There are rollercoasters in lakeside woodland and gherkins with every meal. Also vodka. Ace. joella

Offline alert

I'm going to be quiet for a bit. Not that I've had too much to say recently. I *am* feeling better though, and look forward to letting thoughts settle like leaves and form new things to say. Shortly. With maybe some photos too. Meanwhile wherever you are I hope the weather is clement and the gods are smiling.

joella

Big is... um

I share several significant dimensions (not height, sadly) with the first 'big girl' to reach the final of Miss England. Not sure how I feel about this. Anything that means fewer teenage girls (or indeed grown women) hate their bodies has to be good, so I salute her role model curves. And she's only seventeen -- and wants to be Miss England -- so it would be unfair to expect her to have too much in-depth awareness of body fascism.

But the bit about beauty coming from within is squidged rather breathlessly into the last five seconds, like someone mouthed it at her from behind the camera. Maybe I should send her a copy of the Beauty Myth. With a Post-it note pointing out not to feel bad if she never reads it -- the beauty myth is harder to shake off than Catholicism. Heroin has nothing on it.

joella

In which I emerge from the gloom of sinusitis...

... with an increasing sense of smell, a reducing Kleenex consumption, and a gradually recovering ability to take an interest in anything beyond the end of my nose.

Two such things as examples:

1. The over 60s nationwide bus pass. What a wonderful initiative. My parents came at the weekend and we got the bus into town with them. My mum got out her bus pass, and it worked! In Oxford! All the way from Lancashire! I couldn't get over it. My dad also has a bus pass, but he hadn't actually been on a bus since 1969 so he hadn't brought it with him.

2. Freecycle. One of the best things the internet has ever made possible. M managed to blow up the food processor. There were flames coming out of it and everything. We got a new one (it was a Kenwood and he'd always secretly wanted a Magimix, what with them being French. They hum more discreetly and chop more stylishly). So we had a million attachments for a lump of melted plastic, but I couldn't bear to throw them out. So I put them on Freecycle, and someone replied within about three minutes, and was round to pick them up within half an hour. I initially figured she must be taking them to sell as spares on eBay -- not that I would have minded, better that than landfill -- but it was a much lovelier story. Turned out her mum had died three years ago, and ever since she'd had her mum's Kenwood food processor in the cupboard *with no attachments*. She just happened to log on as my message came up, in fact her husband had recently said she should get rid of the base as it was taking up space and she was coming round to agreeing with him, but feeling sad about it. So I made her very happy, and she made me very happy. And M is making Thai curry paste like there's no tomorrow, so everyone's a winner.

I hold these small things up as proof that the world gets better in some ways even as it melts down in others. Somewhere in between there's a DRM free music download site that will sell me Enter Sandman.

And so to bed.

joella

10 reasons why it doesn't pay to check your blog stats

1. You find out that you are the top hit on Google for the phrase 'aubergine insertion babe'.

Actually, I don't need any more reasons than that.

joella

Smell-o-vision

A long, long time ago I had one of my first proper attacks of the munchies. I sat in a corner on my own, stoned out of my tree and working my way carefully through a packet of chicken flavour crisps.

Every now and again I would look up and say 'but they're so... *chickeny*!' Nobody was listening to me, they were all listening to Frank Zappa instead. Or possibly Captain Beefheart. I had a lot of nights like that a long, long time ago.

I was reminded of the chicken flavour crisps yesterday, when I got out of the car at the New Building (I have been going to work, but I have not been cycling there, I am exhausted at the end of the day as it is). Just before I got out of the car I gave my nose a good blow, then I cleared up the resulting mess -- there is still a ridiculous amount of it -- and set off across the car park. Halfway to the door there was a gust of wind, and it stopped me in my tracks.

I could smell the air! It smelt amazing! Salty and damp and fresh and amazing. I leant against the wall and breathed and breathed and breathed. Then I went inside and I could smell even more things, toast and carpet tiles and printers. Sadly, by the time I got my coffee, my sense of smell had gone again, but it comes back sporadically, in brief bursts. I get to smell the inside of a tissue. Or the ends of my fingers. Things that don't normally have a smell. While food, perfume, wine, flowers are still largely lost to me.

It's the weirdest thing. I was in olfactory heaven in a car park by a ring road. Who knows what the seaside would have done to me.

joella

For those about to rant, we salute you

I've been too ill to do any ranting of late, though as soon as I get to post 'Jo woke up and smelt the coffee' as my Facebook status I intend to get straight back to it. It can only be a matter of days now, I got a hint of Vicks Vaporub last night and a tiny burst of sandalwood this morning. The second course of antibiotics is maybe taking hold. Either that or my sinuses have been served with an Asbo and decided to turn themselves around.

Meanwhile, may I recommend Jeremy on the Guardian on wasting food, and Ben on various Christian factions on women bishops. I was hoping for a good one on this pile of wank, though he's done a fairly good job of digging his own hole.

joella

Even more too much information

Yes, it's still all about me. I did in the end burden the NHS, and am now on my second course of antibiotics, as the first lot didn't do anything except give me the runs. Around the same time, I came on, and the first tears of self-pity rolled down my cheeks. I didn't have enough hands to staunch all my flows. If my ears start leaking, I said to M, I really will be losing stuff from every orifice.

Also, I am slightly worried that, like the dog with no nose, I must smell revolting. Do I smell of poo? I asked. Well, he said, it's hard to tell, since you've been honking of fish for a week.

I threw a box of tissues at his head.

joella

Teething problems

Sight is the only one of my facial senses that is currently working properly. As a result I am still utterly miserable and have nothing of interest to say, except that I went to the dentist (which is an interesting experience when you can't breathe through your nose) to get my canines built up. This was one of the alternatives offered to having braces -- the idea is that if my canines are bigger and fatter they deflect the grinding that my inner fury otherwise inflicts on my increasingly fragile incisors.

I was impressed with the results -- basically, this is what celebrities get done, though for aesthetic rather than existential reasons. It's like Botox for teeth. But the left one did not even survive two days: there was an ominous crack upon its first encounter with a packet of Walkers smoky bacon, and half of my celebrity tooth fell out.

I haven't even got the bill yet. Arse.

joella