Many switch in, switch on, switch off

Got a text message from local government the other day
Opened it and read it, it said they were suckers
Wanted me to put out my blue recycling box and garden waste bag for collection before 7 am tomorrow
Picture me giving a damn?
I said ooh, I'm glad I subscribed to that, I'd have forgotten otherwise.

joella
 

Recession playlist: track #3

The Bevis Frond's Maybe - part obliteration, part all seeing. A mainstay of my soundtrack to the last recession, and important for other reasons too. At least one boat is named for this song.

And are we the worst, who see it all, and still refuse to act?

Yeah, maybe.

joella

Party like it's 1991

I'm just back from a municipal swimming experience. Which is better than no swimming experience at all, but it did make me pine for the lake. In the lake, you could swim and swim and swim, turning thoughts over in your mind until they came to rest naturally.

And while I was there, swimming in the lake, I thought a lot about calmness, and how I should strive for more of it. Which of course I forgot as soon as I got home and got furious with the shrieking students and the parking hell and the relentless greyness and the price of butter. But as I was swimming today, for the first time in ages, my muscles seemed to remember, and I found myself thinking about calmness again.

I get angry too quickly. Not as quickly as J the plumber, who goes from 0 to C-word in about five seconds, but too quickly. With people, not with things. I am quite patient with things. But with people, I get furious, because they are so often Inconsiderate Or Just Plain Thick. Or are they?

Take the students next door (I wish someone would, BA BOOM!). Now, I graduated into a recession, and it wasn't much fun. Some people got jobs, but they were mostly the ones who had confused me by suddenly cutting their hair and putting on a suit around the beginning of their third year. That was their "student experience", and now it was time for their "junior financial analyst experience". Or whatever.

Those of us without a five year plan, or an old school tie network, who had thought we'd maybe see what happened next, found that what happened next was we signed on. My dad kept asking me when I was going to become a yuppie, I wrapped my oversized Oxfam overcoat more tightly around me and glared at him.

And got wrecked. A lot. For quite a long time. It was great fun. But it was also about the only thing that made any sense. And we were a luckier generation than this lot -- we were impoverished but we weren't hugely indebted. Nobody delivered us pizzas, so we could more or less cook; nobody had invented alcopops, so we drank cheap beer, and we didn't have mobile phones or laptops or iPods to maintain. It was all a lot more manageable. I'm also pretty sure we spent considerably less on personal grooming. Or maybe that was just me.

After a year or so, I borrowed some money and went travelling with my Significant Ex for a year, during which I'm pretty sure we spent less than we would have if we'd stayed at home. Eventually, of course, I did get a job, and pretty grim it was too. But that's another story.

So I do have sympathy with my neighbours' regular, valiant attempts to obliterate reality by means of vodka, class As and screaming*. It's cold, and it's going to get colder. And if you've been overindulged to the extent that you tumble dry your washing all year round, it's going to be tough when those bills start coming in and your dad's not paying them anymore.  

joella

* Not limitless sympathy, mind. Though they have been a lot better since M went round in his pink dressing gown and yelled 'I'm not interested in 'sorry', I'm interested in you shutting up'. 

Middle room finds fame

M's band's first YouTube video - shot by M himself (he asked me to do it, but I was too embarrassed: I am possibly fleetingly visible making soup in the kitchen) in our middle room.

Advisory: mostly work-safe, but does contain the clearly discernible word "wanking".

joella

Keep Calm And Carry On

I'm basically living in a self-imposed news blackout at the moment. I am waking up to silence rather than the Today programme, avoiding news.bbc.co.uk (a harder thing to do than I ever imagined), switching off the television set (not very hard at all) and not buying newspapers.

It's not that I don't care about global economic meltdown, but there is Nothing I Can Do. For anxious people, this is all the chickens come home to roost. We secretly knew they would. We hate being right.

But I can see no point in immersing myself in the current media frenzy, with its heated debates and BIG DOWNWARD POINTING ARROWS. It doesn't help, it just makes the dull screaming noise that's usually far in the distance much, much louder. I don't need the dull screaming noise right now. I've got stuff to do.

The dust will settle, and I will re-engage. A lot of it will be bad, but there are good bits too. One of them, of course, is the death of Thatcherism. I am glad she lived to see it. There are many, many things that the free market will never provide, and they are mostly the same many, many things that are worth celebrating about humanity.

So here's to more human times, eventually, and in the meantime check out this glorious Steve Bell cartoon. I broke my news blackout for this one, and it's going on the wall.

joella

joella

No blanket

One of my oldest friends is waiting for her decree absolute. I know her finances are precarious, and these are times when we all need some friendliness around, and you know, I love this woman, so the other night I gave her a ring.

It was one of those decisions where you wonder if there is a sort of sixth sense at work. It was her birthday, but she was in bed when I called at 9pm. I was on my way down to the Co-op for a bottle of wine, she was exhausted. The usual -- a long day at work plus solo early evening grappling with a recalcitrant three year old (possibly with a sixth sense of her own) -- but - happy birthday! - compounded by a letter from the lawyer of her nearly-ex husband. Something to do with the mortgage -- I didn't see any logic in the details, in fact the whole thing sounded rather bizarre and unhinged.

Which was what was troubling her. 'It's out of character, Jo,' she said. 'And that's when I get scared'.

This is a man who I know goes on days-long vodka and cocaine benders. He gets through cash like it's water. He's a useless waste of space, with fading looks and waning charm. And he has been a spectacularly rubbish husband and father. But... scared?

Scared? I said. But he's never... has he?

There was one of those silences when your stomach lurches, when you know there's something big that you didn't know, should you have known? Did she say something that you should have heard? Or did she not want you to know? If you had known, what would you have done? What could you have done?

Well, she said quietly, that's why the baby was born prematurely.

I was home by this point, bottle of wine open, red mist forming, tears rolling. Mate, I said, I am so sorry. I didn't know. I am so sorry.

I regret and resent every ounce of effort and energy I have ever expended on this man. But I also know that it won't be the last time -- there will be more instances in my life when I will prioritise the feelings of and cook food and pour wine for men and (more rarely, but not never) women who are abusing people I care about.

Usually, as in this case, I will not know what is happening. But not always. The first time I swallowed my disgust at the behaviour of the boyfriend of one of my friends, I was fifteen years old and she had an eating disorder. I said what I thought, and it wasn't me who got the hard time, it was her. What do you do?

I am not claiming moral high ground here, and in fact I don't think there is any. I have sustained bruises and gone back for more -- a long time ago now, but you don't forget -- and it could happen again, it could happen to anyone. One of the formative moments of my life was reading a -- I was going to write Guardian but it was before I was buying my own newspapers and my parents are not Guardian readers so probably -- Times article about Hedda Nussbaum's relationship with Joel Steinberg. She was a well-educated, middle class Jewish girl. He would beat her up and make her sleep in the bath, with only a blanket, "except when he said 'no blanket'".

I have been haunted by the words 'no blanket' all my adult life. They make me a kinder person as well as a more aware one. Technically, we all have the potential to be the abuser as well as the abused. The hippie in me says, let's just not fuck each other over for a bit, right? Life's hard enough right now. The pragmatist in me says, let's do the right thing by each other when it happens.

Now, where's my axe?

joella

Recession playlist: track #2

This one's for Gordon. I used to love this song back when I had a broken heart in the dark days of Thatcherism.

joella

Under Sink Cupboard

Under Sink Cupboard
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

We plumber-sociologists can tell a lot about a person by the state of the cupboard under their kitchen sink. I've seen a lot of these cupboards, not because I've worked on a lot of kitchen sinks (although I have worked on a few) but because that is usually where you find the mains stop tap -- and even if it's not there, it's the first place you look.

They are often pretty disgusting places. This is for two main reasons:

1. Hardly anyone ever cleans them out. A clean bathroom is no indicator of a clean under-sink-cupboard (USC) -- in fact a clean bathroom often means that the person who lives there pays someone else to clean it. You deal with your USC yourself, you do, and it separates the men from the boys.

2. They are wet and/or greasy. New kitchens are often put in in a tearing hurry, no corner left uncut, and the traps leak or the seal round the sink doesn't work properly, or, as in the case of our cheap kitchen sink and every other cheap kitchen sink like it, the pop up waste is a load of leaky old shit and the water gets in round the edges and drips straight down onto the Brillo pads underneath, creating a big lump of smelly sticky rust. (There are not words for how much I hate pop up wastes. They should be banned. But that's another story).

Sometimes you find that USC is empty. This is either because the customer has thought ahead and cleared it out -- that's only happened to me once -- or because they don't own any cleaning products. These people will also not have any milk. They are squatters in their own homes. They will probably have a big leather sofa though, and their new sanitaryware will be oversized and cheap. I do not often warm to these people.

Other times, you will find that it is so absolutely rammed with random crap that it takes about 20 minutes to empty it. This is especially frustrating when it turns out that the stop tap is not actually in there after all, but you don't find that out until you've decanted years and multiples of methylated spirit, J-cloths, picnic paraphernalia, tea lights, shoe polish, light bulbs, hoover bags, paint brushes, pet food etc. These people will also have a fridge full of random crap, some of it also not excavated for years. Their bathroom will be painted in an unexpected colour, which they'll have done themselves and never quite finished. It will be impossible to work in without knocking over an MFI shelving unit that contains 47 bottles of random toiletries, and it will feature lots of cobwebs. These people buy TOO MUCH STUFF, all of it cheap. They watch lifestyle programmes on TV but never manage to change their lifestyles. They are forthcoming with cups of tea, though, and nearly always have biscuits in.

Other times again, it will just be a bit manky and contain brushes, cloths, rubber gloves, cleaning products, washing powder, dishwasher tablets and the household carrier bag collection. If they're in, these people will apologise profusely for the mess it's in and insist on emptying it themselves. You might not even need to go there, because these are the people who also know where their stop tap is, and turn that off themselves as well. They clean their toilets regularly, including the walls and floor around it, and they also often have real coffee. They generally find a plumber first and then decide what to do, rather than spending a fortune in Bathstore on stuff that will never look right in their house or work right with their plumbing. These are the slightly anxious people and I like them best.

Possibly because I've had so many of them inflicted on me, cleaning out my own USC has been on my to do list for about two years, even though the only person who I'm likely to inflict it on is myself. Last weekend, I did it. Check it out.

I probably don't need to add that I am very pleased with myself. In the process I discovered a bottle of descaler, so I descaled the kettle (satisfying); I discovered an ancient bottle of Lemon Ajax and a Spontex scourer, so I cleaned the outside of the kettle (*very* satisfying); and I discovered a packet of silver dip cleaner, so I cleaned all the silver plated cutlery that used to be M's mother's and had been slowly turning black (*incredibly* satisfying).

Rainy Sunday afternoons aren't all bad. They allow one's hidden domestic goddess a brief moment in the sun.

joella

Recession playlist: track #1

Here's a good starter. I reckon we'll be onto Leonard Cohen by the end of the week.

joella

What's in an honorific?

In my second year at Cambridge, I shared a set of rooms with my (female) friend E. We had a party, the table (visible in the background in its undamaged state) got damaged, and a repair bill, addressed to Mr L and Mr D, duly arrived from the Clerk of Works. I went into their offices waving it around and demanding an explanation. They had a list of everyone's names, in fact they were the people who painted people's names on their doors at the beginning of the year, and in those days (and possibly still) men were just listed by surname while women were called Miss. So it's not like it would have been *hard* to ascertain that we were in fact women. Well, they explained, we just address all our students as Mr, it's usually right.

I'm not paying it, I said, until you actually address it to me. I'd like to think I flounced out, but I expect I stomped. And, if memory serves, a new bill to Miss L and Miss D was forthcoming.

I didn't have the stamina at that point to challenge the Miss -- I was a Miss when I got there and a Miss when I left and am a Miss to them still, but everywhere else, ever since there have been forms to fill in, I've been ticking the Ms box.

It's great being a Ms. I remember when I opened my first bank account at 15, running my fingers over the MS that was embossed on the cash card, and thinking 'I chose that'. I love it when they ask, as they still SO OFTEN do, 'is that Miss or Mrs?' Neither, I still SO OFTEN enjoy saying, it's Ms. Yeah, I can see some of them thinking, that figures. I don't care. I am happy to be defined by the fact that I won't be defined by my marital status. Make of it what you will, that's why I do it.

And every now and again, especially online, you see a form that just has Mr or Ms as the main options. That, brothers and sisters, is progress. You'd never have seen that in the 80s. Although, now I think about it, it still doesn't leave space for people who identify as neither male nor female. I am not sure they have any option except to get themselves a PhD.

But it's not all progress. As I get older, and have to talk to people about boring grown up things, those who used to default to Miss (which is at least technically accurate) now default to Mrs. What I particularly hate, and I'm sure I'm not alone, is when someone rings up for M, aka Mr D, and I answer instead. "Is that Mrs D?", they say, in that flat monotone that call centre people have.

"There *is* no Mrs D," I say in my scariest voice. "Well, actually, there is, but she's in the attic."

And then yesterday I had the pleasure of calling an anonymous appliance service centre FOUR TIMES, because our cooker is playing up, and I can't get through a recession without a working hob, thank you very much. The whole experience, with the automated menu that doesn't have any of your options, the checking with the kitchen installer to find out where the gas isolation valve might be, the inexplicably getting cut off twice, was so exhausting that I didn't have the energy to disentangle myself from the lazy assumption that only married women might need their burners servicing. Fnarr.

The phone rang this morning and it was the engineer, telling me what time he'd be coming round. 'Is that Mrs L?', he said. Yes, I said. Yes it is.

joella

Know your onions

I get very upset when I stand behind people in supermarkets who are buying those microwavable cheeseburgers already in a bun. Food is one of life's greatest pleasures, and we've never had it so good, but you have to know what to do with it, and millions of people don't.

These days I sometimes go to Sainsburys on a Saturday morning with ex-housemate S and baby Tungsten. She's come a long way from the days when she'd ring me up from the Co-op in Botley and say 'what should I buy?', but she'll still stand there at the meat counter and ask me questions about stew. S, I say, I haven't eaten meat since 1983. I've never cooked the stuff. I have no sodding idea.

Her mother was what used to be called a 'good plain cook'. Her cheese and onion pie was one of the highlights of my late adolescence. But S was the youngest of five, and somehow never learnt. Most of her recipes are mine. Most of *mine* I made up in my early 20s, many of them based on things that the mother of my Significant Ex used to cook on her Aga. When I was living at home, I somehow never learnt either.

I'd never cooked anything till I went to university. My first recipe was pasta with sauce made from a tin of chopped tomatoes mixed with packets of minestrone Cup A Soup. The soup had croutons. It was kind of crunchy. I can't believe I fed this to people. But I worked at it, and these days I am a passable cook. I am best at soups and things which spend a long time in the oven, like roasted vegetables and pasta bakes. I think this must be an Aga throwback thing.

This is a rather long-winded way of admitting that I am again taking my hat off to Jamie Oliver, if as begrudgingly as last time-- he still gets right on my tits. The first episode of the Ministry of Food made me cry. If we lived in a decent social democracy this would be a public health issue the government addressed at its root, as in fact it did during the war, but as we in fact live in a celebrity-obsessed Daily Mail reading dystopia, it's down to Jamie to enrich the lives of those single mothers on benefits. 

But if he *can* get people learning how to boil spaghetti, it might just save us all. It's not just poor people who can't cook, I've seen plenty of middle class fridges full of Waitrose ready meals and mouldering bags of salad, but it's mainly poor people who live in such a nutritional desert, with all. The reasons for this stretch back forever, as Felicity Lawrence explains very well, and will stretch forward forever too if we don't do something about it. It's a national tragedy. 

joella