Seasonal highlights part two: to Christmas and beyond!

It was all a bit last minute. On Christmas Eve I was slightly hungover, having had an unexpected (and very enjoyable) evening out with my Significant Ex the night before. Not so's I couldn't function, but there was the whole house to clean, all the decorations to put up, the presents to wrap and the nut roast to cook. It needed to be done early because there was a giant turkey too (Peach Croft Farm's finest*), which was going to leave mere millimetres to spare in the oven.

In the end, the wrapping, apart from for M (who anyway had half a washing machine to look at if he was after shiny) was done on a 'they're coming up the path now' basis. I can recommend this approach as long as you have sellotape in one of those quick-action dispensers.

Christmas Day itself had something of the military about it, in the early part anyway. The nut roast never did get done on Christmas Eve, so there were back of envelope calculations about oven timings and temperatures, and there was a mountain of potatoes, parsnips, sprouts, carrots, swede, broccoli, and two colours of cabbage to prepare. This was because M had offered to feed ex-housemate S, her Young Man, Big Boy Tungsten and Baby Particle (well, at one remove). Somewhere along the line her Young Man's parents were added into the equation, but by then it was well into sheep as a lamb territory anyway.

One of the indisputable joys of living in East Oxford is that if you decide you absolutely must have six cans of Coca Cola and a Swiss roll (for trifle) at 1.30pm on Christmas Day, there's a shop open that will sell them to you, and you can have a little solitary walk there and back through the churchyard. After dinner, which was a success of epic proportions for which I can take only minor credit (nut roast, some peeling, excavation of posh wine glasses, table decorations) I had another burst of claustrophobia, and this time managed to persuade ex-housemate S to come for a short stomp with me over South Park as the sun went down. Then we all watched the Gruffalo together and I thought, maybe I'm not such a misanthrope after all.

Boxing Day featured more wrapping and more eating, this time with M's offspring. They are all proper grown ups these days, and it doesn't half make life easier. For them as well as me, I'm sure. We had a splendid cheese fondue with an enormous winter salad and drank a bit too much (or was that just me?) without it getting messy.

And then there was peace, interspersed with spontaneous socialising, which I think is the kind I like the best these days. Right now I have a streaming cold, but one that is containable as long as there is a generous supply of Lemsip Max and those tissues that don't make your nose hurt. We went to see Avatar last night (a shit Hollywood plot that you can almost but not quite ignore because the 3D special effects are so awesome) and tonight I am going to share a little sloe Sambuca at either or possibly both of two gatherings, one of which is largely made up of people I last saw in the Hot Place.

It's been a funny old year, what with the global economic meltdown, a trip to quite possibly the worst place on earth, dealing with leaks in roofs and radiators, and nearly having skin cancer. Perhaps the funniest thing is it feels like it's not been a bad one. Maybe close escapes are good for the soul.

joella

* Going to pick up the turkey on the 23rd with M and the ex-housemate S collective was about the most middle class thing I have ever done. There was a big marquee with heaters and mulled wine and carols playing. I was sitting with Particle and a posh lady said 'how *delightful* to have a new baby at Christmas!'. Oh, I said. He's not mine. Fortunately, I didn't get arrested or anything.

Seasonal highlights part one: pre-Christmas

There's a new dog in town. Well, actually, he lives in Lancashire with the parentals, but I paid a pre-Christmas visit and got to take him for walks. He's about a year old. He wasn't technically a rescue dog, but he needed rescuing - he was bred as a show dog and then wasn't quite good looking enough. He's very thin, he doesn't eat, he sits sideways like he was taught to, and he trots dutifully along beside you with no obvious enthusiasm. It's quite heartbreaking. But he can actually fetch, which is promising, and once he's learnt to wee outside and eat proper dog food (rather than table scraps, which is what he was brought up on), he'll be right. I'm glad he didn't pass muster, he'll have a better life than if he had.

So there's the dachshund. And then there's the Miele. I have never had much luck with washing machines. This is the fourth one through these doors in eight years. The first was one M bought off Dave the Rave when he left the country. It never did more than get stuff wet, really, but it worked. We sold it on when M inherited his mum's. Which was a new-ish Electrolux, but broke down a couple of years later just before ex-housemate S left. Mistake #1 was not getting it repaired. We had a tumble dryer at that point, but it was in the bathroom, and I'd found out how many water and electrical regulations that was breaking. So I got rid of the broken washing machine, sold on the tumble dryer, and bought a Hotpoint washer-dryer. That was mistake #2.

Anyone will tell you that washer-dryers are shit, including the engineers you have to call out to them on a depressingly regular basis. They don't wash very well, they hardly dry at all, they *eat* electricity in the process, and then they blow up. Which ours duly did. I hated it from the start, but I cried when it died. Where were we going to find the cash for a new washing machine just before Christmas?

The answer was that I bought M a third of a washing machine for Christmas, and he bought me two thirds of a washing machine. And this time, we got it right. We bought a Miele. It was number two on the Which Washing Machine list (number one is a Miele as well), and even the man who knows everything about washing machines says they're basically the bollocks. And I love it. It is the MacBook of washing machines. It arrived on the 22nd, and after we installed it, I stroked its sturdy corners and sat cross-legged in front of it for its entire first cycle.

But it's not all been introspective dog-walking and appliance-stroking. No. It's a social time of year, and while I begged off the NGO X Christmas party (ceilidh! karaoke! other circles of hell!) we did have a team high tea, which was good fun and marvellously festive, though I would have preferred a higher sandwich:cake ratio myself. I did some mulled celebrating of the solstice, which was also lovely, but I think the highlight was the Queen of Clubs Pre-Christmas Cabaret, featuring Oxford Maqam, Kimwei and Scarlett in the Wilderness, all playing to a shawl-swathed audience in the tiny and ridiculously atmospheric Bartlemas Chapel. I am suspicious of any act whose description contains the word 'burlesque' (SITW - the first two acts were anything but), but it was far too cold for corsetry. And I think all the better for it. Worth listening out for any of them... and remarkable to see them all in the same place. My hat was off to the organisers. At least, as soon as I got back in the warm.

Now, I must away and wash my pyjamas. Again.

joella

Anxious Vegetarian Markup Language

There was a spate of articles recently about how annoying it is when people who eat fish and/or bacon sandwiches call themselves vegetarian. Like this one. The Vegetarian Society is so pissed off about it that they've devoted a whole section of their website to the issue.

Now I regularly answer 'yes' to the question 'are you a vegetarian?'. And I'm not. But from my point of view what's annoying is that there isn't a word, or even a phrase, to describe what I do and don't eat. Not even close.

It goes a little something like this:

• Vegetables = Yes. Although not aubergines, because they're the devil's vegetable. I try to eat vegetables which are organic, in season and grown in the UK, because they taste better, and I believe the taste better = grew better = better for the planet hype. We get a weekly box from Abel & Cole, which we supplement with things we grow on the allotment, or things we buy on Cowley Road. This can be from the uber-ethical East Oxford Farmer's Market, but can also be from the Co-op, Tesco, or any of the Asian grocers. I'm not a purist. Every now and again I buy Kenyan green beans in the middle of winter. I feel bad, but not that bad. Those Kenyan farmers have got to make a living. Those Asian shopkeepers have got to make a living.


• Fruit = Yes. But mainly summer fruits, in summer. I like the fleeting nature of the soft fruit season. Lemons all year round. Fairtrade if I can get them, but whatever.


• Lentils, beans, rice, pasta, bread = Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. The first three generally sourced from the aforementioned Asian grocers in large quantities, which is more about frugality than anything else. I have the kind of brain that can hold vast quantities of price comparison data. Bread, I'm kind of fussy about. I'll pay silly money for fresh rye bread. But there's also always a Warburton's Toastie in the freezer. Horses for courses.


• Dairy = Mostly. My favourite cheese in the world is Norwegian Jarlsberg, and I don't even think that's vegetarian. But I don't have it very often. Mostly I cook with British (vegetarian) cheddar, and I eat ewes milk cheeses like roquefort and manchego. It costs more, but you can't farm sheep intensively, they won't stand for it. And it's easier to digest. These things are possibly related. Yoghurt = also ewes milk, if I can find it, else organic. Milk and butter... yes, in moderation. Sometimes organic, sometimes not.


• Eggs = Yes, but free range only. Anyone who's seen a battery hen and still eats battery eggs has a bit missing. If you can't afford free range eggs, don't eat eggs. End of.


• Fish = Some. I don't eat farmed fish. I don't eat things caught in purse seine nets. I don't eat fish where stocks are clearly at risk, eg sea bass, bluefin tuna, most types of cod. I read labels carefully and look things up on the internet. I adjust the list of fish I do eat all the time, mostly downwards. But I do eat fish. Smoked mackerel, trout, tuna from M&S, anchovies, coley, pollack all currently feature in my diet. Smoked wild salmon is one of my favourite things, but can only be justified at Christmas, on cost grounds.


• Shellfish = Some. I don't eat warm water prawns because of the human and environmental evils of intensive prawn farming (the mangroves! the mangroves!). I don't eat oysters because I'm squeamish. I don't eat lobster because of they way they are cooked. I don't eat octopus because they're too big and wriggly. I don't eat scallops because I don't like them. But cold water prawns, mussels, clams, squid, I eat.


• White and read meat = 99.9% No. Theoretical exceptions apply. The 0.1%: when poorly, I eat Knorr Chicken Noodle Soup, and on the first day of my period, if I am near anyone eating liver, I will have a bit. Intensive animal farming is bad and wrong. Bad for the animals, and wrong for the environment. The food that comes out the other end of it is also bad for people, as evidenced by the obesity, diabetes and heart disease statistics which have emerged over the last few decades. And that's before we talk about variant CJD.


• Frog's legs, foie gras, veal, cat, dog, monkey brains = Never have, never will.

Those theoretical exceptions:

1. I gave up meat in 1983, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I have had the occasional drunken lapse in the mini pork pie direction, but these are very occasional. And there's the liver thing, but that counts for maybe 2oz of liver a year. Maintaining this while travelling is usually no problem, but it's a nightmare in many parts of Africa. Firstly, there aren't many vegetables, and secondly, someone else is usually taking care of the food side of things and the whole vegetarian concept is totally alien to them. And, I realised when I was in the Hot Place, my reasons for not eating meat do not apply in this context. The chicken or goat running round the yard has more freedom than a lot of people living in the same settlement. There's nothing intensive about it. So in those circumstances, I lapse where necessary, with necessary being defined as not otherwise eating anything, or deeply inconveniencing someone who is trying to be hospitable with limited resources.

2. I live with someone who eats meat, though not much of it, mostly organic, and mostly when I'm not around. We talk about it a lot. And I do think there's meat and meat - I have less objection to rabbit than to chicken, to venison than to beef. Wilder animals are fairer game, so to speak. In theory, I eat wild things. But in practice, I don't.

3. Meat grown in a lab that doesn't quite exist yet but will soon. No problem with that in theory, but I'll probably stick to Quorn.

4. Human placenta. Curious. Mainly because it's supposed to taste a bit like liver.

And that's it in a nutshell. Oh, nuts. Them as well. And seeds. Loads of them. And Marmite.

So I tick the 'vegetarian' box because there's a box to tick, and there's not much vegetarian that I won't eat. If I get on a plane, I am an AVML.

You might not agree with where I've drawn my personal line, and I might not agree with where you've drawn yours. But I have a lot more respect for people who've thought about it and drawn one. And there's no word for them either.

joella

We're all going to hell in a shopping cart

I get very annoyed by the 10:10 campaign. I've never commuted. Or bought (or for that matter worn) disposable nappies. We fitted eco lightbulbs, turned down our thermostats and got into economy gastronomy *years* ago. The council delivered us a little bin for waste food collection this week, and I'm struggling to find anything to put in it (Current contents: some dried out feta, a bit of fish skin and some baklava that wasn't very nice). We went exactly nowhere on holiday this year, though to be fair that had more to do with having to get the roof fixed than with being green. And we had a lovely time staycationing.

So yeah, I could find another 10%, but not without buying a new fridge, a new boiler, or new windows. Only the first of these lies within my means, and there's nothing wrong with the fridge apart from it being 30 years old and full of CFCs that are better off inside it than out in the world.

And 10% of what? Our neighbours are posh students, whose parents are paying their utility bills and who live off ready meals, Dominos pizza and alcopops. You never see anything on their washing lines. You never see anything in their recycling bins. They drive or get cabs everywhere. They couldn't give a shit.

Go a bit further down the road, where incomes are lower and houses are smaller, and it's an orgy of consumption. Primark, B&Q, Lidl, Matalan et al are still piling it high and selling it cheap. And *they're* buying it even cheaper from the world's newly industrialised countries, who will cut every corner, emit every gas and fell every tree necessary to keep the profit margin up.

And there's my *real* problem with 10:10 - at the end of the day, 10% isn't going to make any difference. Sure, there's the low-impact hardcore eco-vegans out there, and more power to them, but they're outside the system. The system isn't going to destroy itself anytime soon, and if it did, what would we replace it with?

This first became clear to me when I watched The Corporation back in 2003. I was mad with big business in all sorts of ways and always have been, but I hadn't fully realised that the basic building block of the modern capitalist economy is pretty much legally obliged to take the course of action that will generate the most money for its shareholders. So you can cycle to work as much as you like, but if your bikes is made in China and you work for the Man, it's all just so much pissing in the wind.

And if your bike is hand-made by artisans in the Black Country, your tyres are fairly traded rubber and you work in an organic swede field, it's still pissing in the wind, but at least you have the moral high ground. Counts for something, high ground, these days.

This is the sort of grumpy realeconomik dialogue that I have with myself a lot of the time. I still cut up my old T-shirts for rags, but only because I was brought up right, not because I think it will save the world. So I wasn't the most welcoming when a bouncy young woman came round the office on Friday to ask us all if we were going to The Wave. No, I said. Why not? she asked.

I wanted to say... because we chose to consume rather than to conserve hundreds of years ago, and painting ourselves blue now won't make any fucking difference. I wanted to point her at this excellent article by Paul Kingsnorth, who says "democracies predicated on giving their consumer citizens what they want are unable to tell them what they cannot have". I wanted to tell her that I was luckier than her, because I was born in the 1970s. Because I am part of the generation who got to ride the last wave, who saw coral without knowing it was dying, who escaped obesity, who knew off-grid freedom, who only had one coat at a time, and who will die, in all likelihood, both after Margaret Thatcher and before all the fish.

But I didn't. I said that I was going to Lancashire because it was my dad's birthday, and there wasn't a train I could get on the Sunday so I had to go on Saturday. Almost as true, but not nearly as honest. But I couldn't bring myself, as my friend L would say, to trample on her flower.

I'm prepared to be proved wrong on this. We may all wake up the day after Copenhagen to realise that the best things in life are, after all, free. But I'm not holding my breath.

joella

Major life event horizons

Me? I'm fine. I wouldn't quite go as far as never better, but my foot has almost repaired itself, Moley's histology was clear, I can walk as far as I like again, and it feels great. Last week I was striding down Cowley Road in the dark and the drizzle, in search of a) paperchain raw material and b) aromatics for preservation purposes (of which more shortly) and feeling... uplifted.

Autonomy is a beautiful thing. I have more invested in it than perhaps I should - which is something I might choose to worry about once I'm done feeling liberated and skippy even though all around me are steeped in seasonal gloom.

But it's not been as simple as that of late. Firmly on the good news side, ex-housemate S has safely delivered Baby Particle, full size (him), full complement of faculties and accoutrements (also him, though she's no more partial than usual), intact perineum (her). All hail womankind for managing something so improbable on a stupefyingly regular basis. It truly is an ordinary miracle.

We were on call to look after Baby Tungsten (henceforth known as Big Boy Tungsten) during the birthing proceedings, so we needed to get special dispensation - or what M calls (from his boarding school days) Per - to go away for the weekend before in order to attend the wedding of L & H. Per was granted, and we headed off to Wales on the Friday night.

And I'm not normally a great one for weddings, but this one was exceptional. The venue was like an upmarket Tudor youth hostel - remote, slightly chilly, roaring open fires, huge scope for conspiracy and improvisation. We hung out in rooms with panelling. We harvested sloes. We bathed in a huge cast iron tub. And of course we celebrated the marriage of the lovely bride and groom.

We came home on the Sunday, relieved to hear that S's waters remained unbroken. But sadly, very sadly, her dad died late that night. It wasn't completely unexpected, he'd been ill for three years, and she'd been up to Lancashire to see him a week before, but still a huge shock. There were a couple of days where it wasn't clear if she would be able to go to the funeral, but the NHS intervened in the form of something called a membrane sweep (don't look it up, it will make you feel ill, but needs must), and baby Particle arrived bang on his due date.

So S and her young man and Tungsten and Particle were all able to head north. And we went too. I was last in that church for S's mum's funeral 12 years ago, and that was incredibly sad because it felt like we were all too young for this to be happening. Her dad was 80, but there was a four day old baby who will never know either of his mother's parents in the congregation, and that was incredibly sad too. But my hat is off to the lot of them. There were tears all round, but it was a good do.

I find myself increasingly fascinated by the art of preservation - I have sloe gin and sambuca, gherkins and beetroot on the go at the moment, and I am hoarding things for a remnant-based art project that M doesn't quite know about yet, or at least hasn't fully acknowledged. I wonder if these things are somehow linked.

joella

When I grow up, I want to be an old woman...

I took time out to go and see Michelle Shocked play the Drill Hall yesterday. The Drill Hall is one of those venues where my possible pasts catch up with me big time, and I am amazed to see how so many of them have made it into the present.

I went (up) to Cambridge in October 1988, aged 18, outwardly stroppy and inwardly terrified. I look at some of the photos from that first year and I really cannot believe my own balls. But I guess that's what being 18 is all about. There was nobody like me (there still isn't, but hey, there's nobody like anybody, I know that now) but after a couple of weeks I met E, who was from Cheshire and wore leggings and DMs. I was from Lancashire and wore leggings and DMs, and for a good while we clung onto each other like two ports in a storm. She had a very cool older brother, who was in a band called Wild Bill Harzia and the Malarial Swamp Dogs (if memory serves) and who, more importantly, was in a position to get me a ticket to see Billy Bragg play the Corn Exchange.

Now, I'd had a ticket to see Billy Bragg before. In September 1987, he'd played Blackpool Opera House and E had sorted us out with good seats. But then about five days before the gig, round at our friend D's, he'd held me by the throat and punched the wall next to my stomach. It was one of those nights that creates a spike on the graph of your life. That was the end of me and E, and not before time, but I always kind of regretted not holding out for my ticket.

So there I was, on 16 November 1988, at my first Billy Bragg gig. I went on my own. I still have the T-shirt. And the poster. It was another of those nights... and the support act was Michelle Shocked. She blew me away. Short Sharp Shocked is still one of my favourite albums of all time.

What I didn't know then was that 1987 was a big year for her too - she came over to the UK for the first time, played the Drill Hall, and that was the start of something big. This was a kind of 20 years on celebration of that, and the journey. And it was moving. Michelle Shocked has made it into the present big time. She played Memories of East Texas, and I cried, like I did when I first heard it 20 years ago. It's so weird to have an adult life that stretches out so far, with these powerful constants in it. In many ways she's a thoroughly modern heroine, and I am in awe. But these days she's also a serious god-botherer, and, you know, whatever works, but personally I can't be doing with that sheeeeeit.

I came away with a whole range of things to think about, none of which I'd really expected. And I'm still thinking about them. I feel a bit like the walking wounded. And not just because of my foot.

joella

Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone

I've just been out on my own, for the first time in nearly a fortnight. Only to the Co-op, and only because I'd run out of wine. M would have gone if I'd asked him to*, but he's not drinking at the moment, and it didn't seem right. 

So I took off my slippers and put my trainers on, and limped slowly down the road in the clocks-gone-back drizzle, sniffing the air like a dog and obstructing the hordes clattering down behind me on their way out to tick another box on their student experience checklist. 

It still hurts to walk. In a 'you probably shouldn't be doing this' sort of way. I have a stitched up wound with various non stitched up bits opening up off it. If it was on my head or my arm or pretty much anywhere except the side of my foot, I think it would be better now, but despite doing *almost nothing* for what feels like forever, keeping it clean, keeping it dry, adding Sterastrips to give the stitches a helping hand, every day it still bleeds a little. 

I have evolved two modes of moving around. The first involves just putting weight on the ball of my foot. You can move quicker that way, but your leg soon cramps up. The second involves putting weight on ball, heel and instep. This can only be done very slowly... any attempt at speed makes you feel like the whole thing might bust open at any moment. Which it might. 

You do of course, at least if you're me, spend much of this time thinking about people who have to walk a long way with wounded feet, and what fucking agony that must be. Or people who can't walk at all. 

My whole life is geared around having functioning feet, I just never realised. And while I usually find the termtime walk to the Co-op fairly oppressive, what with the non-compliant rubbish that the council will never collect, the badly parked Minis that I want to run a key down, the shitty dance music emanating from every window, and the clouds of posh girl perfume that just don't mask the stale smoke and the ghd-singed hairspray... tonight it felt kind of liberating. Look at me! I can walk to the shop! Buy a bottle of Soave and some houmous! Walk home again and put my foot up! I don't care that it's raining! I don't care that I'm in your way, but I will of course let you past if you ask! No, I don't need a bag! Yes, I have a Co-op membership card! I am part of society!  

The odds are that my foot will be completely fine at some point soon. I hope I will remember to celebrate full foot functionality, and also to get a little less annoyed by shit that doesn't actually matter. 

joella

*In fact, M has been a gold-standard boyfriend throughout this whole experience. Except for coming home with No Added Sugar Ribena, but that was an honest mistake.

The wide awake club

God knows, I'm bad at most things, but I'm good at sleeping. It can be hard to get me into bed, but it's nigh on impossible to get me out of it. I can sleep for England. I love to sleep. My Significant Ex and I once slept through the burglar alarm going off at his mum's and the police coming round with his elderly key-holding great aunt to check the place out. We woke up five hours later and wondered if we'd forgotten to set it. 

So why am I awake? I've been awake since four. I'd like to blame the students, who generally get home around that time on a Tuesday morning, but I can't - we discovered the joy of term time ear plugs last year, and haven't looked back. No, I just woke up. I put the light on and finished my novel, then I turned the light off and lay in the darkness for an hour, and then I thought fuck it, I'll get up. This almost never happens. I am not one of those people who creeps round the house in the small hours making cocoa and listening to the World Service. 

I was out last night, had a few drinks. I did have a lychee martini (which, incidentally, tasted like heaven on earth), and gin can mess with your head, but that doesn't account for it. It wasn't one of those panicky fast forward did-I-say-anything-unforgivable depth of the night hangover awakenings. Not even close. 

I'm worried about work things. A sort of mild, bottled panic that might pop its cork anytime but hasn't quite yet. I am over-committed and under-resourced. That's just how it is, probably, I need coping strategies that I haven't managed to develop, but probably will. But normally, when I'm not there, I'm pretty good at not thinking about it. I don't get paid to wake up at four in the morning, you feel me?

Specifically, I'm furious with several of the powers that be at NGO X, who have turned our IT helpdesk into an ITIL-compliant Service Desk. There is a poster on the wall which says 'are you being served?'. Well, possibly, technically, if telling me that the thing I am asking for is not on the list of things that are now permissible counts. You can close that call and hit your target. I've been served, but I've not been *helped*. I'm just looking for another workaround, and feeling sad for the guys who used to be able to help people. While I was lying in the dark, I hit upon the workaround I can use, and wondered if it contravened any policies, and wondered if I cared if it did, but I'm not so sad that this would have actually woken me up. 

My foot hurts. I'm bored of not being able to walk properly. I haven't been able to get to the allotment and water my cabbages. I'm slightly allergic to the dressings I'm using so my foot is itchy as well as sore. I just want it all to heal up and go away. In the back of my mind is the thought that it might not. All reasonable enough, but you know, sleep helps, and I'm tired. So WTF?

I used to go for a weep in Wantage at 7am every Tuesday. It was the hardest thing in the world getting up for that. There's something about the early morning mind that's easier to access, apparently. No wonder, given the chance, I normally sleep till 11. 

joella

Hurty foot update

This isn't a very good 'after' photo: there are still strips covering the stitches and there was a bit of bleeding which I haven't been able to wash off yet. 

But let's just say it hurts. Not so much when I'm not doing anything, but a lot if I try and walk on it. They did warn me. I did say 'yes of course I'll take it easy'. I didn't quite realise I wouldn't have any choice. 

Which made it all the weirder when, nine hours after I can back from hospital, when I was lying on the sofa full of wine, painkillers and macaroni cheese, the doorbell rang in an urgent kind of way. It was the students from next door -- the side we like -- asking if we knew how to turn their water off as their toilet had exploded and the bathroom was flooding. So I grabbed a walking pole and hobbled round. We got the water off but the toilet didn't have an isolator. 

So M followed with my tools, and I ended up breaking all the rules of plumbing: don't do it when you're a bit pissed, don't do it in your favourite trousers, don't do it when you can't walk. Nothing too drastic - just cut the pipe to the toilet and stuck a cap end on it so they could put their water back on, but they couldn't believe their luck, and I woke up the next morning in a codeine haze thinking 'did that really happen?' 

Guess it did. And, as the nurse said, Moley's in a pot now. I wanted to ask how she knew I'd called her Moley, but I guess it's a pretty common name. 

joella

Feet and millimetres and clay and spirits.

I've called her Moley Cyrus. She's 8mm long, and she's coming off tomorrow. 

I won't be digging for a bit, so I made the most of the glorious weather today, and went down to the allotment to plough the fields and scatter (aka pull up a lot of bolted lettuce and weeds, and plant out some spring cabbages that likely won't survive our current plague of whitefly). 

The sun was going down, and it was just me and J from over the way left on the site. "Don't overdo it," he said, as he loaded up his bicycle. 

One of the many, many reasons I love my allotment is because I get to hang out with people like J, men who are either retired or very partially employed, who practically live on their plot (they have sheds, and quite likely *have* spent the night there on occasion), whose wives probably despair of them in a well-at-least-I-know-where-he-is-and-I've-not-had-to-buy-an-onion-since-1983 sort of way, and who are generous with both their advice and their surplus apples. 

I'm fine, I said. Beautiful day, isnt' it? 

It is, he said. I just spent the last half hour drinking whisky in the sun and doing nothing. 

I'd guessed whisky was one of the many things J keeps in his capacious bike basket. He has that look, and occasionally that smell, about him. But he has asparagus beds, and has just single-handedly built his own polytunnel. I aspire. 

He checked I had a key on me, in a delightful slightly pissed courteous way, and took his leave. I stayed there a while longer, pulling out the bad stuff and leaving in the good. 

Listening to: See that my grave is kept clean - Diamanda Galas

joella

Free at the point of use

I have this brown mark on my foot. It just kind of arrived a couple of years ago. My mother said I was getting old. I *am* getting old.

Over the summer, my friend N came to stay. A few years ago she went into hospital Up North (where she lives) to have a mole removed from one of her eyebrows. You can see the scar if you know where to look, but they did a lovely job. More importantly, while it turned out to be a Bad Mole, she has since been given the all clear.

She spotted the mark on my foot when we were both curled up on the sofa watching TV and said 'has anyone looked at that?'. No, I said. 'Go to see your GP', she said.

So I booked an appointment via the EMIS system. I've been going to the same GP practice for over 10 years, and I think it's great. I got to see the doctor I always try to see - one of the partners, who is also a trained homeopath and the closest thing to a British bluestocking I can imagine. She had a student in with her, and they both looked at my foot. 'Need to refer that, I'm afraid,' she said, and filled in a form. It was ticked 'urgent', which alarmed me slightly. I took it downstairs and gave it to the receptionists.

A couple of days later I got a phonecall at work from the Dermatology department at the Churchill, who'd called me at home and got the number from M. She offered me a 9.30 appointment the following Tuesday. I said I *could* make that, but I was supposed to be in an all day meeting that day, but I wasn't working on the Friday? She said I could come at 9am on Friday instead. I said thanks. She said she'd send me a letter to confim but it might not arrive on time, but there was a map on the website. I said thanks. I took advantage of this. 

[NB The letter did arrive on time, but I didn't open it, which I'm quite glad about, as it told me I had an appointment at a Tumour Clinic and I should try not to worry.]

I turned up at the appointed hour, and was directed to Waiting Area 2, where five minutes later a doctor called me in and asked me some questions. Do you want to see my foot? I said. I want to see all your skin, she said. We went into an examining room, I went down to my bra and pants and she looked at all my various moles. Right, she said, we do need to get the consultant to look at that foot. There will be a short wait.

She handed me one of those hospital gowns with no back, and went back into the outer office. I put it on, then lay down on the examining couch to read my book. After a couple of minutes, I put my socks back on, as it was a little chilly. Five minutes later, she came back in. Are you ok? she said. The consultant is coming soon.

Five minutes after that, he burst through the door with a student in tow and bearing a special mole magnifier. I took my socks off and he had a good look. Then he talked about the ABCD of moles to the student and got her to have a look too. Colour was his main concern. Can I see? I said. It was a bit tricky because of the angle, but I could see that it might look basically brown, but is actually very splotchy.

How did you get here? he said. I got dropped off, I said. How are you getting home? he said. I'm going to walk, I said. Ah, he said. Not if we take this off now. Oh, I said.

Well, we don't have to do it today, he said. But I want that off in the next two weeks. Because of where it is, you won't be able to walk for a few days, and you'll have to take it very easy for a couple of weeks to make sure it heals properly.

Oh, I said. I'm supposed to be going to Brussels next week for work. Not if we take it off today, he said. Oh, I said. Is the week after next ok? I mean, is it dumb to wait?

It's fine, he said. Chances are it's not melanoma but not worth the risk of leaving it there. There's something not right about it.

OK, I said. Thanks.

So I got dressed, the first doctor took an MRSA swab from my nostril (I have no idea why), and gave me a green form and a white form, which I took back to reception.

The receptionist took the white one, and directed me down the hall to the surgery appointments office. The woman in there looked through her bookings. It looks full, she said, but I keep a few slots hidden for two-weekers like you. How about 1.30 on the 14th?

Great, I said. She gave me an appointment card and a leaflet about minor surgery, and I walked home via the public right of way across the golf course.

When I got home I opened the original letter they'd sent me, where it did say that they also treat private patients. One wonders what extra you'd get for the money.

And while the ultra-specialist part of my care so far has been delivered via a male consultant, who was brusque but not bossy, every other contact I've had has been with a woman. And they've all thought about how I might be feeling and what else might be going on in my life. 

So I have to say to Ms Death Panel Palin and her freakish ilk: if this is socialised medicine, you guys should Bring It On. 

joella

Celebrations

It's been a month of earthly and other-worldly delights.

Walking tours. Two of them. Both on the same weekend, celebrating P's 60th birthday and discovering many things about London. The first one accompanied Radical Nature, an exhibition at the Barbican, which I could not wholeheartedly recommend. The dolphin embassy is hilarious, and Agnes Denes's wheatfield is spectacular, but most of the 21st century 'interventions' are fairly excruciating.

The walking tour, though, was brilliant. We thought we would be visiting private green spaces not normally open to the public. Instead a softly spoken man with a satchel and a passion for tiger moth caterpillars showed us wild plants and flowers growing in obscure corners and crevices around the complex. Catch it if you can... as C pointed out, the botanist who leads it looks like he might disappear back into the brickwork at any moment.

The following day we explored Subterranean London, and learnt how John Snow worked out what was causing the cholera epidemic in Soho in 1854, and how Joseph Bazalgette banished it forever out by sorting out sewers in a big way. Kind of sobering to think about all the cities where people still get cholera because their shit runs down the middle of the street, and then remember that it was only 150 years ago that happened right in the middle of London. Amazing. Also recommended.

Over in art world, for M's birthday I took him to 'experience' Susurrus in the Botanic Gardens. Verdict: hmm. It's a glorious time of year there, so I'd say take your own iPod, stick on something mournful and lovely, like say the new Unthanks album, walk slowly and forget about the play.

I finished Infinite Jest, all 1079 pages of it. I am rather haunted by images of broken, addicted people in a broken, polluted world, but it's also hellishly funny. If you have the time, it's worth the time.

I went out for dinner with my Significant Ex (preceded by beer in the Wheatsheaf where they now have Proper Pint Jugs, very excitingly) and came home with Here Come The Snakes, which I haven't heard for years, since my tape of his album was destroyed by the tape deck of the 2cv. For years that was my very best tape, HCTS on one side and Stone Roses/Stone Roses on the other... but while the latter album is now near-ubiquitous, the former is hard to find except in expanded expensive reissued form. As great lost albums go, they don't get much greater than this one, and I stuck it on, turned it up, and had a large glass of red and a little weep. No shame in that, every now and again.

The allotment produced so much stuff last week (mostly potatoes, but also chard, French beans, carrots, gherkins, and lettuce) that I had to bring it all home in a wheelbarrow. Add this to last month's stellar red onion haul and the squash still to come and I'm coming over all Little House in the Big Woods.

Only *they* didn't have to deal with the annual migration of the Brookesalikes. But I'll save my griping for another day. There's digging to do.

joella

Season to taste

A couple of weeks back, when ex-Saturday-job-comrade N and her family came to stay, we went to the Elder Stubbs Festival. We'd probably have gone anyway, it is a highlight of the East Oxford summer calendar. But it was even more fun with a bunch of Lancastrians-turned-Mancunians, who boggled gratifyingly at the patchouli-and-patchwork people, the wicker sculptures, and the bands who all sound like Hawkwind. This scene somehow blends seamlessly with whatever the collective noun is for upscale off-road pushchairs full of Boden-clad kids. We played NGO X bingo, and it didn't take long to get a full house.

But the festival's raison d'etre is mental health awareness. The allotment site has strong links with Restore, a fine organisation which also runs a cafe, garden and craft shop round the corner from us. The party bag contained a copy of One In Four magazine, which I found myself reading in bed the other day. It had an article about SAD, which I thought was a bit odd, as *I* struggle with summertime, but I thought I was unusual.

But then I realised that the magazine was nine months old. Maybe it's because we got there late.

And then I carried on reading, and discovered there is also 'reverse SAD': rare but real, apparently. I wouldn't claim anything like full-blown depression, it's more that some days are edged with black. The sunnier the day, the deeper the edging. As soon as there's a chill in the air, I rest a little easier, despite the price of gas. So yeah, I can vouch for the existence of the summertime blues, and minimal research confirms I'm not alone.

But I can also vouch for the therapeutic value of growing stuff. Or, for that matter, just having your hands in the earth. I have spent hours over the last few days digging the summer's spent allotment beds, breaking the big chunks into little chunks, pulling out the couch grass roots and making a pile of weed spaghetti. The soil needs to be in the right heart (as I believe it's called) before you can do this ... too dry and you'll never break it up, too wet and it sucks you down. Right now, our soil is perfect for it. Most people don't do it by hand, but I'm cool with that. Then I put my jumper on and smile inside.

joella

Yay autumn!

I survived another summer without getting sunburned, getting stuck in a traffic jam on the M6, going anywhere *near* a caravan, making forced smalltalk with other people's husbands over disappointing barbecues (barbecues are always disappointing, in my experience, plus they are deeply ethically suspect) or - worst of all - having to play rounders or otherwise throw and catch things in the name of good clean fun.

I hate good clean fun. As August progresses I become more and more misanthropic, and by the time the Bank Holiday weekend comes around I just don't want to see anyone or do anything. Let it be over!

And it seems that it is. M accidentally invited his whole offspring-plus-significant-others collection round for dinner last night and I nearly hid in my bedroom till they'd all gone, but in the end I rallied. I don't think they noticed, or only a bit.

Only a bit is ok, I don't mind being discernibly prickly. Most of my favourite people are.

And now I can start wearing jumpers again. Hooray.

joella

It's all relative

Last night M asks, as he cooks lentil and chard soup, whether there's anything on the 'tellybox' (this is what people from the 70s call it, I gather). I go look it up. Of course there is stuff on, but most of it, as usual, appears to involve a) football or b) quiz/reality/talent shows designed and presented by obscenely well-paid people which dangle transient fame or potentially-large-but-almost-certainly-small cash sums in front of the kinds of people willing to abase themselves on camera in pursuit of the same. I have zero interest in the former, and the latter make me feel kind of hollow inside.

Well, I said, Miami Vice is on at 9?

Maybe I was still stuck in my A-level reverie. I remember my Geography teacher looking me up and down when I first turned up in the sixth form in my regulation grey suit (the grey was regulation, but the suit itself was up to you) and saying 'how come everyone else looks like they're at school and you look like you're auditioning for a part in Miami Vice?' I was secretly very pleased. Not quite as pleased as I was four years later when I was sitting on the Backs in my dungarees, reading Kate Millett, I wouldn't be surprised, and one of my friends came by and said 'how come everyone else looks like they're at Glyndebourne and you look like you're at Greenham Common?', but still.

Anyway, we watched it. It was kind of shit, of course. Ultimately harmless, probably, though I have even less faith in my 15-year old taste than I used to. And Colin Farrell can't hold a candle to Don Johnson circa '85. At least, so I thought till I did that Google images search.

joella

The male of the species

I returned my mum's call the night before the night before last. She was still in bed (she works nights). I had a nice chat with my dad.

The night before last she called back, but I was out.

Last night I called. She was out. I had a much shorter chat with my dad.

Tonight, I called. 'She's still not back', he said. I'd forgotten. I thought she'd been at work the previous night, but in fact she is visiting her sister.

My mistake, I said. Do you have anything new to say to me since yesterday?

Not really, he said.

Bye then, I said.

Bye.

Dads are great.

joella

Summer: nowhere near infinite

Like lots of other people, I started the summer with the intention of finishing Infinite Jest by the end of it. It's not going to happen... I am only 400 pages in.

I read like a fiend, but IJ is just so *dense*. I have had to keep taking a break. Interleaved with it over the last couple of months have been the following, all of which are a walk in the park by contrast and which I thoroughly recommend:

• Consider the Lobster. Also by David Foster Wallace, but essays rather than a novel. I learnt things about the porn industry from its opener, Big Red Son (originally published as 'Neither Adult Nor Entertainment'), that I really wish I didn't know, so I might counsel against that particular chapter if you are sensitive that way. But the title chapter, plus the ones on 9/11, Tracy Austin and John McCain, are total blinding genius. 
• Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. I have a weakness for crime novels but I see it *as* a weakness because such books generally deal with crime and violence without doing much (in fact usually doing precisely nothing) to analyse the power structures underlying them. Larsson totally rocks on that front. Both adult and entertainment. 
• John Le Carre's latest. I managed my first under-140-character book review on this: Slightly heartbroken at the end of A Most Wanted Man. It seems love will not save the world after all. Not much to add to that, except it's beautifully written and plays you like a pro. 
• I think there have been a couple of others, but I forget them now. 

I am still committed to finishing IJ, mind. I'll get there, I estimate, by the end of October. We all need something to help us through the long nights, and immersion in bleak toxic dystopia could be just the thing.

joella

Third Thursday in August

'Can *you* remember getting your A-level results?' said M.

I know he's not actually joking, because I know that he remembers almost nothing about anything. And I can see the advantages of that. As Ani DiFranco wrote about the goldfish, the little plastic castle is a surprise every time.

I can remember getting my A-level results like it was yesterday.

I had two such experiences, as I took General Studies A level in the Lower Sixth, and Maths, Chemistry, Geography and a Cambridge STEP (Sixth Term Examination Paper) in Geography in the Upper Sixth. At least two of these qualifications probably don't exist anymore.

I really enjoyed my General Studies exams. Writing an essay about morals and answering multiple choice spatial reasoning questions was fairly close to my idea of a good time when I was 16. Might still be now, in fact. My boyfriend at the time was in the year above, and took the exact same exam (I took it a year early because I was a geek. I was already a year ahead of myself because I was a precocious geek) at the exact same time. The difference was that he walked out of it early, while I was still chewing my pencil and being thankful I'd revised my Greek gods.

We had to go into school to get our results. By that time he'd dumped me, for a variety of reasons, most (in retrospect) having to do with my non-compliance with 1980s Blackpool girlfriend norms. It was bruising. But it wasn't over. I spent literally hours getting ready. I had my hair in a massive back-combed ponytail with a white scarf round my head, I was wearing copper-coloured eyeshadow and frosted peach lip-gloss, plus a white cotton jersey zip up jacket with shoulder pads and a second-hand black tube skirt. And many, many gypsy-style silver-style bangles. (There are no photos of that day so I can't prove any of this. But I'm ridiculously sure.)

I got an A in my General Studies A level. Like all anxious brainy girls, I never really thought I would. But I wasn't over the moon, as I knew I was *capable* of getting an A. It was more a relief.

I met up with schoolmate S, who wasn't getting any results but came along to hang out anyway, and we went to the Winmarith pub across the road. At some point, E showed up. We pointedly ignored each other for a while, but eventually came face to face.

'You actually look all right', he said, in an 'I'm surprised to find myself not embarrassed at having gone out with you' sort of a way. I presented my new enigmatic 'your loss' look, and put 'I am a rock' on the jukebox. (Again).

E got an F in his General Studies A level.

That day was a turning point for me. Though it still wasn't over.

And yeah, I remember it.

joella

Staying home, playing out

We spent our holidays at home this year, primarily for financial reasons (roof replacement, window renovation, lodger shortfall) but also because, after a stressful interlude, we have the house back to ourselves for a while, and we wanted to reclaim it. There was a fair amount of reclaiming to do, so we decided to spend the first week dealing with house stuff and the second week resolutely not dealing with anything.

It went pretty well, though we discovered that it takes more time and effort than you would ever think possible to change the colour of a front door from faded, chipped, rattling-paned blue to zingy, glossy, freshly puttied green. It's greener than either of us expected*. But I think it will be fine when we've offset it with some chartreuse foliage. Mmm, chartreuse.

And then I cut down most of the ceanothus - beautiful in May, but a big fat bully the rest of the time - and took it to the tip. And then we cleaned the bathroom to within an inch of its life, and the kitchen to within several inches. Or maybe a couple of feet: the oven was not approached. And then we lay down for a while, rising only for a splendid boozy lunch at Fishers. Boozy lunch! We don't do enough boozy lunch.

And *then*, as I hope the displacement of Ani DiFranco by Mika in my last.fm playlist might indicate, we had visitors. The Finnfans came to stay and we cranked the Oxford-as-pleasure-garden engine up a gear.

It was like a Proper Holiday. We harvested lettuce and gherkins**. We ate lasagne and stewed fruits. We did an epic trek which took in parks South, Headington Hill and University-via-Mesopotamia, the Turf, the Covered Market (for the purchasing of pies and radishes), the towpath, Port Meadow (for the eating of pies and radishes), and the Perch. We called a massive taxi to take us all home because we could walk no further. We went out for pizza and Sambuca. We played late night Jim Steinman**. We applied clay mud masks and sat in deckchairs with slices of cucumber over our eyes while they dried***. Or, if we did not do that, we watched Brazil. We went for afternoon tea in the Old Kitchens at Magdalen College, having first tried to explain to a polite Japanese lady why we were playing Poohsticks on Addisons Walk. We explored the bounties of the Eau de Cologne range carried by Boswells**. Or, if we did not do that, we explored the bounties of the Norrington Room. We went for an early evening swim in Hinksey Pool and made like Putin with the butterfly stroke, only possibly not quite as good. We had a massive fish pie Friday feast, followed by crème brûlée, which M persuaded me to brule with my blowtorch.

Remarkably, we got up early the next day and undertook a joint road trip to Slimbridge Wetland Centre, where we fed geese, admired flamingoes (best done from a distance, they really stink) and fell in love with the rare things with green beaks that honk like pigs. The Finnfans took their leave after lunch, and we wandered a little further, out past hide after hide all the way to the Severn Estuary. On the way we gathered fallen damsons, which are now steeping in gin.

I also got another 80-odd pages of Infinite Jest under my belt, though found that while lying on a blanket by the river, it serves better as a pillow than as a book.

joella

* The colour is called Indian Ivy 5. There will be photos, but it's still not finished and consequently looks a bit shit.
** Appreciate these list items are minority interest. Tho' the rest of you are missing out.
*** I see now the instructions say you should not let them dry out, but that would spoil the fun.

Jetlag dreams

I find myself talking to the landlady of a go-go bar in Oxford on a quiet night when one of the resident dancers hasn't turned up. Apparently these women are very unreliable. So she asks me if I'll do the warm up for the main act, who is the real Bada Bing pole dancing deal.

And so there follow several months where I dance at the same time every week in a tiny room (accessible from an even tinier dressing room, where I smoke roll-ups with the Bada Bing pole dancer and put a lot of make up on), wearing the same dress, which I do not take off and which is entirely unrevealing, to the same song, which does not exist but which can best be described as a cross between Standing In the Way of Control and No More The Fool. I do not use the pole on principle, I am no better a dancer in my dreams than I am in real life (well, maybe a bit), and I get paid in cash that the audience gives to the landlady because there is nowhere in my outfit to stick it.

And I never get busted. This is my secret life until there is a Christmas break, when the landlady is kind of vague about what day she's opening up again. But I pride myself on my reliability, so I am walking round town looking for the alleyway that the bar is down with my dress in a plastic bag, getting a bit panicky because I can't find it and I need to get my make up on before I am on at 9.30. Then I bump into Ex-Schoolmate R and Ex-Housemate S. We have a conversation about the ethics of dancing in bars for money, and then I say I have something to tell them and I'll be back in half an hour.

When I find the bar it has children in it, and I wonder about the ethics of this as well. Then I realise it is under new management, and has in fact turned into a subterranean Chinese children's party venue. It now echoes like a swimming pool and there is lots of screaming.

I feel that I should be pissed off with the landlady for not telling me, but I am secretly relieved that I have got out of the dancing in a bar for money game without letting anyone down. I knew it wasn't really for me.

joella

Legal alien

This morning, I got to nurse my hangover in the Olympic Flame Diner on W 60th St in NYC, eating a three egg feta cheese omelette with fried potatoes, drinking bottomless coffee and listening to Pat Benatar. I couldn't have been happier.

This followed three days spent staying at the seriously weird and cool Hudson Hotel courtesy of the much less weird but just as cool Open Society Institute. I am doing a bit of guerilla knowledge management at NGO X using a platform that they have developed. I love these guys. They are thoughtful, serious and funny all at once, and I get to be the least geeky person in the room for a while. Loads to think about.

And they are fantastic hosts. I arrived on Monday a little dazed and confused, and fairly shortly afterwards someone said 'so if I took you out and bought you a beer would you drink it?' I knew from that point on that I was going to have a good time, and I did. There were frozen pomegranate margaritas, there was a long walk downtown to eat gelato in the new High Line park, there was some amazing food, and there were discussions ranging from democracy to permaculture to the origins of morality. It was, as we used to say in Blackpool in 1984, ace. *And* I did it without a credit card.

I said yes to everything because I don't know if I'll ever get back there. Which was a great strategy, and je ne regrette rien, but as a consequence I am now feeling like shit. Plus, I'm waiting for a delayed seven hour five time zone flight in an overcrowded JFK. It's going to be a long night.

joella

Guerilla plumbing

One of the many medium-level irritants for the politically aware water obsessive who lives in shonky East Oxford is pointless water wastage. You see it quite a lot round here, with our Victorian-era HMOs and their evil tightarse landlords and lazy letting agents. You hear it first... patter patter patter... in the winter it could be snow melting off a pitched roof faster than the gutters can cope with, pretty much anytime it could be broken gutters after heavy rain, but generally it's neither. It's a faulty float valve in a cold water storage cistern or a WC cistern, and it's pouring out of the overflow. 

For days. Weeks. Months, sometimes. Litres a minute, for months. In a region which is water stressed -- hard as that is to believe when it pisses down nearly every day -- because we have few reservoirs Down South, relying on our ground water supplies, and our ground water supplies are not replenished like they used to be because we have paved over every possible inch of land. Meanwhile we put in power showers like there's no tomorrow. Keep on like this, there'll be fewer of them, most def. 

In an occupied house, it's not hard to change a float valve. I've done lots of them in WCs. CWSCs in loft spaces are a bit harder, because of access, but still no big deal. But your evil tightarse landlord can't be arsed to spend the <£100 it would cost. In an empty house, it's even easier to deal with, just isolate the valve, or turn off the water. Deal with it later. But they can't even be arsed to do that. 

Last time there was such a leak on our street, I stomped into the letting agents at least three times. Every time, a smarmy slick wanker with a shiny tie said 'yes, a plumber has been called'. You are lying, I said, on the third occasion. And I *am* a fucking plumber, give me the keys and I'll do it. Oddly, it did get sorted shortly after that. 

And then a month or so ago there was another one round the corner, running down the outside wall of an empty house, day after day, week after week. Marginal plants were beginning to grow in the permapuddles. The letting agents had a sign up but it was broken, so the phone number was incomplete. Every time I saw it, I reached for my phone, sighed, vowed to Google them when I got home, never did. 

Last week, we were walking past the pattering house on our way back from a pizza we went out for because I came home from work needing to sink some red wine and have a big rant. There were wheelie bins littering the pavement -- the students left before their rubbish did and it's left to the permanent residents to put the bins back in the front gardens -- and I had an idea. 

The long-suffering M helped me manoeuvre an empty 240 litre wheelie bin into a position where it would catch the falling water. I'll come back for that, I said, and I'll wheel it down to the allotment and use it on the gherkins. (I had sunk some red wine, so wasn't really thinking through the physics involved here). 

Two days later, I walked past again. The wheelie bin was exactly where I'd left it, and full of water, as I would have expected. But the water had also stopped falling. Someone had turned it off. I wonder if a visible quarter-tonne of water in less than 48 hours (and probably less than 24) finally pressed some shiny-tied bastard's shame button in a way that damp brickwork and environmental sustainability messages just never could. 

I'd like to think it did. 

joella

Kicking against the pricks

One of those possibly ill-advised work-related posts. But hey. 

There's a pay freeze this year for UK-based staff at NGO X. I kind of get why. Were it up to me, I'd freeze the higher salaries and up the lower ones a bit, but it's not up to me. We do have a union, of which I am a member, and if there's an argument to be had, it's in a collective bargaining environment. It's a free country still, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. 

But there are some money saving measures which have been introduced with (to my knowledge) no consultation at all. For example, you can now no longer request a cash float if you are travelling within the UK, the EU or the US. You should use your NGO X credit card, they now say, or pay with your own funds and then claim it back. This is more cost-effective. 

Well, not for me it's not. I do not have an NGO X credit card. I also do not have a personal credit card. I once had the former, but they cut back on them a few years ago, and to be fair I never missed it that much. I have never had the latter.

But I will be in New York for work from 27-31 July, which is (to state the obvious) the end of the month. And at the end of the month, I'm skint. This is what happens when you have a fixed rate mortgage and a part time salary. And generally it's fine, because generally I can control my expenditure. But four days in New York will cost money that I will not have at my disposal and cannot easily access right now. 

My manager was happy to support the case for an exception, and I'm optimistic that, because I was brave enough to ask and she is senior enough to have influence, there will be a cash float forthcoming. But it's a dumb thing, speaking-in-a-personal-capacity, to have a blanket policy on. It assumes individual staff members have a) a corporate credit card, b) pillowed personal finances or c) easy access to credit, and a) are rare unless you are relatively senior and travel a lot, b) is a palpably unfair assumption and c) is what got the world into this mess. 

So I was recounting this saga to a colleague earlier today. I got to the 'and I don't *have* a personal credit card' bit. 

'Is that an ideological position?' he asked. 

Yeah, I said. Mostly. 

And it is, but not many people notice that. I could afford to pay my Poll Tax back in 1989 (I was at university and my parents basically said 'send us the bill') but I chose not to, because it was ill-thought through and wholly inequitable. If only those who literally cannot comply do not comply, it becomes something about them rather than something about the thing they are not complying with. 

Sometimes, you've got to exercise the choices you're lucky enough to have. On the whole, I don't believe in credit. Mortgages, yes, and microcredit, yes, but generally, if you can't afford it, save up for it and then buy it, do not buy it and then worry about how you're going to pay for it. So why would I *need* a credit card? 

And I can count the times I've wished I'd had one on the fingers of one hand. I may be weird, but I may also be the future. So now I need to work on that policy. Wish me luck.  

joella

A new Particle in development

I am delighted to be able to report that ex-housemate S is up the stick again. 

This is excellent news. Baby Tungsten, marvellous as he is, could benefit from a serious challenge to his current 'I am the centre of the universe and I will glare at you till you agree with me' world view. I know this because I had that world view myself once. Still do, some would say, but there's nothing like having to share to make you buck your ideas up and get devious. 

And given that this is *my* blog and therefore as much all about me as my two year old self was, I look forward to having another baby to talk about. If you're a woman in her 30s, a fair proportion of your peer conversations will be about babies. If you are child free / childless / a tragic barren spinster (delete as per your secret view on this issue), it's a bit of a challenge. It reminds me of the time all my friends were having driving lessons and I was still too young. I spent hours listening to stories of stalling and clutch control and reversing round corners and accidental dual carriageway encounters and I had nothing to say. But I knew I would learn to drive one day (predictably, by the time I did nobody wanted to hear my tales of driving my dad's car into a fence, not even my dad, dammit) and the same cannot be said of pushing one out. 

Enter ex-housemate S. Baby Tungsten has totally delivered for me here. I had the details. I have talked at length about his chucking up, his early love of salt and vinegar crisps (just like his mother!), his first deliberate breakages, his steadfast and admirable refusal to smile on demand. He rocks. 

But he's getting on a bit. The last time we went swimming (possibly the same day the photo linked to above was taken, those are my goggles he is modelling), he stood there in the middle of the changing rooms, pointed at me and shouted 'Jo's nipples!' with the unfettered joy of one who has learnt the name for something interesting since the last time he saw them. He has his own social life now, involving playdates, edutainment and nursery school. We still get on, but I sense our paths will cross less frequently. Which is cool. We'll always have Bracknell Coral Reef. 

And now Particle is on the way. I'm an old hand now. It will all be easier this time. 

joella

I went out drinking with Thomas Paine...

... he said that all revolutions are not the same...

This song came out in 1991, right in the middle of the last big fat recession. It's amazing how sharp it suddenly sounds. 

And its inspiration, Thomas Paine, died 200 years ago. It's amazing how sharp *he* suddenly sounds as well. Fairtrade cotton company Gossypium (based in his home town of Lewes) have just released a very cool T-shirt in his honour. I am tempted. As BB also famously (chez joella at least) said, the revolution is just a T-shirt away. 

Or maybe it's more the case that we just carry on reinventing a broken wheel until we go the way of the dinosaurs. In which case, I'm having one for the road. 

joella

The May to September Fish Lines

When I was about 12, I had a sort of all in one halterneck top and shorts. It was banana yellow, and every time I put it on, which took a while as it was complicated, I experienced massive dissonance between how I would like to have felt wearing it - leggy, tanned, cartwheeling, glorious - and how I actually did feel -pallid, clumsy, exposed, and profoundly self-conscious. I kept thinking this would change, but it never did.

Summer clothes still have that effect on me. In fact summer itself still has that effect on me - I can't stay long in the sun, I only go to the beach when it's cool and breezy, and when I watch the brown, wiry Palestinian woman who has the allotment a few plots down from mine striding around purposefully in vest, shorts and wellies, I feel 12 years old all over again. Her plants grow tall and strong, mine give up and wilt.

But then there is Hinksey Pool, Oxford's seasonally open municipal lido, which lives in the middle of a park full of towering conifers. Somehow, it's different there. Pale Aquarians emerge blinking from the breezeblock cubicles, pile up their towels, put on their goggles and slip into the water. There, as the children go home for their tea and the shadows lengthen, women of an uncertain age swim up and down, up and down, along the lines of fish painted on the bottom of the pool. Above us is only sky, blue or grey it doesn't matter, because it's warm in the pool, as long as you keep moving.

Hinksey Pool is a strange organic shape, so no two crossings of it are the same length. The fish lines provide general direction, and there are men who plough up and down them, refusing to deflect. The women of an uncertain age travel along the same lines, but differently. Occasionally, I have swum up the longest fish line directly behind my friend H -- one woman can be knocked off course, but two are harder to shift. Eventually, though, one of them kicks you in the cheekbone, because ultimately, you are making an artistic statement, and they are making an autistic one.

There is plenty of shade around Hinksey Pool, and there is also a kiosk which sells chips and ice lollies. It's absolutely English, and absolutely wonderful. Last night, I swam over to the edge to climb out, and another woman was waiting by the ladder so she could climb in. 'This is like a tropical scene,' she said, 'and you're like a dolphin swimming towards me!'. I sort of knew what she meant, but I wasn't quite sure what to say. So I smiled, and said 'I love it here'.

We all do, she said. We all do.

joella

An invitation to the School of Life

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from Roman Krznaric, who I have met a few times - I once hung a radiator in his front room, and for several years I had a wood chest in my garden that used to belong to him and his partner K. He was calling because he is leading the 'Work' course at the School of Life, and he wanted to know if I would come and give a talk about becoming a Lady Plumber.

I was full of reasons why I might not be a good person to give such a talk - I am not really a plumber (or am I? I don't know), I'm still a 0.6 FTE NGO X wage slave, I actually bring in substantially less money that I did before I hatched this plan (though I grow my own salad leaves now, thus saving untold ££s), I don't really know what happens next - but he said no, that was all cool, and the course was just as much about questions as about answers. OK then, I said, you're on.

I was more nervous than I thought I would be, but maybe everyone is when they talk about themselves. Plumbing is quite easy to play for laughs, which helped, and there is a story in there - the Dark Days in the New Building, the inspiring if unpredictable presence of J the plumber, the urge to challenge a few stereotypes, and hell, to do something new. I don't think there's anything extraordinary about my experience, and nobody who finds it as hard to get out of bed in the morning as I do is ever going to change the world, but maybe that's the point.

And it was great fun. The best bit was the Q&A session... it was interesting to say out loud things that I have only really ever said to myself. Someone asked if I'd thought about going back to help out at the college, and wouldn't that be a good thing to do, and I'd sort of thought about it, but not for a while, and yes it would.

Generally, it was inspiring to be around such active thinking about the nature of work, what's important about it, and how it defines our lives. I'd like to have more of these conversations out loud. It's not an easy thing to do, so respect to the School of Life for starting some those conversations off.

joella

I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours

I have this rumbling fear that the country is sinking into right wing bigoted quicksand, and over the next decade we will all be suffocated slowly by our own fear and intolerance. It will be bad for lots of people, and lots of those people will be women.

Example 1: Female journalist is pilloried on CiF for suggesting, actually quite apologetically, that the students at St Annes College Oxford who elected a "white heterosexual male officer" were fuckwits and worse. Whereas anyone who has had to walk into a party full of shitfaced six foot rugby players to retrieve their stolen underwear from someone's head could tell you that whatever white heterosexual Oxbridge males need, it's not more representation.

Example 2: Successful-and-thin Liz Jones writes about how appalling it was to actually eat (her version of) normally for three whole weeks. This article made me feel very, very weird. I don't think I know a woman who has a relationship with food that is completely free of complications, and really, the last thing any of us needs is 'I know I am so wrong to basically starve myself but it is the only thing that validates me and I can't wait to get back to it' shit like this.

Example 3: A bad habit of mine is playing online puzzle games when I'm bored. Which is how I came by BubbleBox.com. The game types: Action, Adventure, Puzzle, Skill, Sport, Sandbox and... Girls. The top Girls ones include Cake Mania, Beauty Resort, Personal Shopper, and My New Room. On the one hand there is stuff, and on the other there is stuff - pink, sparkly stuff - for girls. A trivial concern, maybe. Or maybe not.

There is the odd glimmer of light. For a couple of years now I have been following I Blame The Patriarchy - beautifully written (the posts - one can't always say the same for the comments), furious radical feminism mixed with heartwarming nature crap. Google Reader suggested I might like it, and I do. Even though I, you know, live with a dude.

It was IBTP which pointed me at Sarah Haskins. And also taught me the word 'cuntalina', though that didn't go down so well with the radfems. Anyway, this is one of the things I read in my spare time. I don't share every sentiment, but it goes a long way to reminding me that Femail (and, let's face it, Observer Woman) are, basically, part of the problem.

But I don't see it getting better anytime soon. I think the solution might involve moving to a log cabin by a lake and listening to nothing but birdsong till we sort this shit out. Anyone want to come along?

This post was brought to you by Talking World War III Blues - Bob Dylan.

joella

The road leading home

I had a lovely evening out tonight with people I last properly saw in the Hot Place. Two of them are temporarily based in the New Building, and a third was passing through. It was a chance to revisit the days of chaos and paranoia from a safe distance, and with our guards much further down.

And I appreciated the chance, even as it was embarrassing to hear how I got stoned by accident - at the time, none of the women I was smoking with knew how to tell the (relatively) senior person from Head Office that the shisha that night was "special", so none of them did. I wondered afterwards why I spent two hours in a paranoid funk writing out all the numbers from my mobile phone longhand. And then washed my hair several times and ate my emergency stash of Bombay Mix. But now I know.

I wandered home via Tescopolis, to pick up a pint of milk. In front of me in the queue was a young woman buying a bottle of pink fizz. They have a sign up saying that you will be asked for ID if you look under 25 (this number seems to go up every week) and sure enough, she was carded by the (also young, also female) cashier, who said 'by the way, you forgot your zip'. She felt for her flies, which were down. I felt for mine, which weren't, but the cashier clocked me doing it, so they might as well have been.

Behind me, a someone held up a bag of Tesco Value frozen vegetables. 'Are these any good?' she asked me. 'I'm not really a vegetable person'. I don't know, I said. I mean, I *am* a vegetable person, but I don't buy that kind. 'Right,' she said, and laid them aside.

On the way home, I passed two students flyposting for the Jesus Festival.

All these young women, out on their own late at night, doing things and making decisions. It's like we live in a free country or something.

joella

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

I heard Nick Griffin on the radio a couple of years ago, and one of the few consoling thoughts was that he was pretty much a lone voice in the fascist wilderness.

But no more. No, the good people of the North West have gone and democratically elected him to the European Parliament, despite the fact that fewer people voted BNP than five years ago. What the fuck was everyone else doing? Singing Dixie?

I had an extended blog / Twitter / pub argument with a friend of mine in his early 20s who said he wasn't voting because there isn't any point. Here in the South East we have exactly the same MEP representation as we did last time, so he could claim QED, but you know what they say on the West Wing - decisions do get made by the people who show up.

Today there is an online outpouring of anger and angst. I am slightly reassured by this, as I'm sure is anyone else who had assorted family members made into lampshades, or is, like Housemate P, both British and black. 'They keep talking about indigenous Britons,' he said, 'but I don't think they're talking about me'.

No. I don't think they are. And yeah, online outpouring is important and cathartic. But Facebook petitions, Twitter hashtags and Not In My Name websites don't keep fascists out of parliaments. Only voting for non-fascists does that.

I *know* the Labour party have been banging nails into their own coffin ever since the invasion of Iraq, and I *know* politicians of all persuasions have covered themselves in shit with the expenses debacle. I can see why people are disillusioned with the political process. And I can see how fundamentalist Islam, cheap Eastern European labour and growing inequality feed the fire of discontent in the belly of our ill-educated, debt-ridden, benefit-dependent lumpenproletariat, who really, really want someone to tell them it would all be different if it wasn't for the foreigners. You are entitled to a better life! You are white!

Yeah, I can see all that. But I don't have to like it. And it gives me what my friend K would call the serious wiggins. You've got to have faith, but days like these, it's mighty hard to have much of it.

joella

Here be dragons

They ask me sometimes what PMS is like, those people who don't have it. I never quite know how to describe it, though I can tell stories of skidding across a kitchen floor on the half a kilo of dried penne I had just thrown on it, of sobbing on a swing surrounded by a shredded loaf of bread, of spending an hour crouched on the floor cleaning the gunk out of the bit of the dishwasher you only see when the door is open, of learning the hard way never, ever to make major life decisions when the moon is swelling.

Basically, it's a random mixture of big horror and fixation with tiny details. You don't look forward to it, but hey, it's not boring. Yesterday I was down at the allotment by myself. There are a million things that need doing at the moment... digging, watering, hoeing, hacking at nettles, more digging... but the only thing I wanted to do was squat by the rocket patch and thin out the seedlings.

I'd left this a tiny bit late and it was a delicate job, stroking the leaves apart and feeling down underneath the little clumps to tease a stem away and pull it out without disturbing any of the others. It was hot and the soil was almost steamy (I worked out it was easier to pull out damp seedlings than dry ones) and it was kind of mesmerising. I was fascinated by my own fingertips and the things they can feel. It was restful to be focusing on a little patch of earth and not having to think about the rest of the big scary world.

And then I had a flash of a TV programme about hand transplants that I saw many years ago. It was disturbing, these men with someone else's hand sewn on the end of their arm, learning how to pick up coffee cups. One of them went all purple and had to be taken off again. Big, clumpy dead men's hands.

And then I couldn't thin the rocket anymore. An hour or so later, there was the little dark stab of pain that let me know it was ok to put my pyjamas on and curl up in a ball. No more dead men's hands for another month, hooray!

joella

"What is lawful is appropriate"

What a charming man Bill Cash must be. They didn't say I *couldn't* bleed the country dry, mum!

I picked up this story because my blog stats shot up suddenly. This has happened before and only ever means a surge of interest in my 2003 post about the equally charming Laetitia Cash. Booze soaked old school feminism remains a minority interest, sadly.

Still, it's great to have new visitors. Thanks Laetitia! Can I buy you a drink? Oh, hang on, I'm a taxpayer. I already have.

joella

Target Women

How did I not know about Sarah Haskins till yesterday? More on how I came to know about her another time, this is too good not to share. Enjoy.

joella

Cornwall: the verdict

Executive summary

Not at all like Lancashire. Well, maybe a little bit.

Full report

Pluses

• Fish. I first "got" fish in 1992. My Significant Ex and I were staying on Kovalam Beach in Kerala, which in those days wasn't much more than a bunch of £1 a night huts and some bars playing Santana. The boats would come in, the sun would go down, we would have a little fishy (from the tandoor) on a little dishy (made of banana leaf), and it would blow our tiny minds. I have been few places since that have had the same effect but Cornwall is one of them. It's turbot-charged.
• Cliffs. Where I come from, we don't have cliffs. We have epic stretches of sand that move almost seamlessly (give or take a few sand dunes full of shagging teenagers) into market garden-friendly terminal moraine. The whole of the Fylde coast is one long ribbon development, where the streets are wide and the bungalows are many. Cornwall has tiny steep sea apertures, where the gradients are perilous and the cottages are miniscule. 
• Industry. Well, ex-industry. I heartily recommend the Charlestown Shipwreck & Heritage Centre. It gives some wild insights into life in a china clay exporting tiny steep sea aperture (by way of mannequins eating pasties with big boots on) while also and fairly unrelatedly packing thousands of shipwreck, rescue and salvage-related facts and artifacts into old clay tunnels. It's passion-led preservation at its best. Go see it. 
• Enviro-art. You know about the Eden Project. It has its critics but I was charmed. I particularly liked the WEEE Man (though would have preferred a WEEE Woman, naturally) and the rainforest biome. It was getting hot in there. We took off some of our clothes. 
• Horticultural Victoriana. The ancient rhododendrons and gunnera in the Lost Gardens of Heligan (warning: shit website - why do people still use Flash like that?) will stay with me for a long time. The whole place seems to be decaying gently even as it is restored, but if you narrow your eyes you can just about imagine what it must have been like at the height of the Empire. 
• Beer. They do lovely milds (I am getting quite into mild, in my old age), and they do it all over the place. Pretty much every pub is excellent, in a real ale real fire dog-friendly stylee.  In winter I imagine you may find yourself stranded in one for several weeks, but I could also imagine many worse places to be stranded. 
  

Minuses 

• Petrol consumption. It's kind of a nightmare to drive around, as the roads are miniscule and the parking impossible, but the geography means there's not a lot of alternative. And this was May - I would not like to get stuck on the main street in Mevagissey in August, you'd still be there in September. We saw the occasional intrepid cyclist, and some impressive bus driving, so maybe you could do it without a car if you were organised about it. There are lots of pubs to stop in, after all. 
• Time warp. It has a sort of stuck in the 1970s feel to it, and a lot about the 1970s was well worth leaving behind. Where there is money it is flashed around, where there is not it is all a bit bleak. Our hotel had something of the Grace Brothers about it, plus a disco on the Friday night that I seriously thought was ironic (I sat in the bar with my dad for an hour and didn't hear a single song recorded after 1985), but wasn't. I approved of the kippers for breakfast and original Armitage Shanks bathroom suites with matching tiles, however, and once you accept you're living in a world where chintz has never gone out of fashion and golfing clothes are normal, it ain't so bad. 
• Politics. You have to order the Guardian in specially. I think it comes by helicopter. 

joella

What we did on our holidays part 2: the Whitley Bay years

For a lot of the 1970s and early 1980s my dad was an officer in the ACF. He called it 'playing soldiers'. It didn't have that much impact on me, though I occasionally went out with him at weekends, and developed crushes of varying proportions on various boys (they were all boys) in uniform. I had my first 'nature wee' with the ACF, when we were doing something in a wood. I turned out not to be very good at it and my dad dried out the resulting yellow socks on the dashboard of the Austin Maxi.

In the summer, he would go off to play soldiers for two whole weeks. My mother often took us away on holiday at the same time, and for a couple of these years we went to Whitley Bay.

Now, I grew up about seven miles from Blackpool. Why we would therefore travel 150 miles across the country to stay in a seaside resort with an amusement park is still beyond me. It was certainly beyond my sister, who in those days used to get spectacularly travel sick. The first year we went, we got the coach, and then a taxi. Just as we pulled up at Mrs Cowan's, she vommed copiously over the back seat. I can still recall the taxi driver wiping sick off his vinyl while various women stood around wringing their hands.

Mrs Cowan's was a trad 1970s B&B, in that we had to be out between 9am and 5pm, the bathroom was down the hall, and hot water was only available for two hours a day. We shared scalding baths in the early evening before heading down to the dining room for a Three Course Dinner (thinking about it, it was a DB&B). The first course was always soup, reconstituted from powder stored in huge plastic tubs on top of the kitchen units, marked with things like Scotch Broth and Cream of Vegetable. There was tinned orange juice served in tiny glasses from a trolley. It was great.

After dinner we would watch TV in the TV lounge, and then head to bed so we could be up and out in the morning.

Which worked fine if it was sunny, and I impressed my first ever admirer (who was called Stephen - check him out!!) with a large crab I made out of pebbles. We went on a date to the Spanish City and he held my hand on the Waltzer when our mothers weren't looking.

But most of the time it was pelting down. We wandered between cafes and amusement arcades, making a dash for the beach or the climbing frames if the sun even threatened to come out. But a lot of the time there was no chance. Mrs Cowan generously relaxed the rules, and we spent long rainy afternoons watching TV and cutting things out of Richard Scarry books.

But one afternoon, my mother had had enough. Get your cagoules on, she said, we're going out. And off we went to the beach, to collect shells and seaweed in the middle of what Mick the Builder would call a Terminal Piss Down Situation. We were the only people in sight, not that we could see very far.

And then across the beach came a young woman in sandals, a summer skirt, and a far-from-all-weather coat. Trailing her was a miserable looking man with a large bag. They were a reporter and a photographer from the local paper, sent to find evidence of the Dunkirk spirit on what we later found out was "the wettest day in August for seven years". They took our photo, and ran it with some quotes about a little bit of rain never doing anyone any harm.

And you know what? It didn't.

joella