Cash in boots

My lovely parents bought me some lovely boots for my lovely birthday. The boots I settled on were from the Gudrun Sjoden winter sale. You can only buy Gudrun Sjoden stuff online, unless you live in Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg, Oslo, Copenhagen, Hamburg or Nuremberg, and it's a bit of a pain, frankly. But the clothes are so completely unlike anything I see anywhere else that occasionally it's worth it. In the sale -- as they are also on the pricy side.

These ones are purple. They call it aubergine. They were £160, now £120. This makes them the most expensive boots I have ever owned by a factor of at least two, but they are lovely, and when things are lovely I wear them for years and years. I looked at a photo of them for several months, and I didn't want them any less. These are not a crush, or an impulse purchase. This is love.

So I ordered them. They took ages to arrive. Imagine my excitement when they arrived the Friday before my birthday, and imagine my disappointment when they turned out to be too big. They came straight off like wellies. I tried them with my very biggest socks (which are very big) but no. If you're going to have posh boots, they have to be the right size.

I checked on the website, and they still had the 37s in stock. I rang up to double check and it was the last pair. I asked them if they could put them aside for me until I could return the other ones but they said they couldn't. So I had to buy another pair. At this point I had spent £240 on boots. At the end of the month. My overdraft was creaking. I packed up the 38s to go back asap for a refund.

Then yesterday I got an email saying that the 37s had, in fact been out of stock, so they had refunded my (second) £120, but they would be back *in* stock on Feb 4, so I might like to re-order them.

I rang them up again. They said they had one pair. I should buy them now. I said hang on, you've taken £120 for the first pair, which were too big, so I'm sending them back, but you still have my £120. You've taken £120 for the second pair, which you say you've refunded, but it hasn't appeared in my bank account yet. Now you want £120 for a third pair? This could go on forever! Am I financing your entire operation?

Ah, she said. Well, I can put this pair on hold for you. I wish you'd done that last time, I said, when you said you couldn't. But great, thank you. So if I send back the 38s, you'll replace them with the last pair of 37s, which you're putting on hold?

Well, she said, when you send back the 38s, it will look like the 37s are out of stock, because they're on hold, so you'll have to put a note on the return slip to tell them that they aren't really out of stock.

Right, I said. OK.

So at the moment I am down £240 (actually, technically now I am down £120 and my dad is down £120 as in the meantime his money came through) and have no boots, but you've got to (try and) have faith. If these ones don't fit, I'll cry. And there has to be an easier way to get shod.

joella

You're so old

You must be 23
You spent the year
In a drunken frenzy
Lied to your friends
Adopted false ideas
Quit your job
Because it made you crazy

[If you don't know this album, check it out. And I suspect this could be one of those years...]

joella

The devil in the detail

I'm trying hard to make myself recession-resistant, but it's hard when there's a rat in my kitchen (possibly now a rat corpse, either way full of raisins), a leak in my roof, and the cold wind blowing. In days like these you'd think, as I always have in fact, that a fixed rate mortgage would make sense, in the spirit of 'best to know what you're committed to' shoebox full of envelopes type budgeting.

And it might, if we hadn't sodding well remortgaged at 5.79% for three years just before the Bank of England got busy. It's eye watering, but at the time it felt like the safest thing to do. I was talking to my dad about it, as he was about to transfer me the money for the new boots my parents have bought me for my birthday and I need it to come through as I've already paid for the boots and I can't otherwise pay my tax bill. It's not desperate, I have a job and there are some envelopes whose contents can be moved around a bit, but it's tighter than I can remember for many many years.

Have you thought about switching deals? he said. But there's a penalty, I said. Yes, he said, but if you were to save several hundred pounds a month, then over three years it might well be worth it.

He's right, he usually is. It's just he's not the one who has to do it. I decided to be brave and raise the subject last night, when I got back from drinking strange and interesting beer with A and L. M was already in bed, so I cut straight to the point. He looked at me calmly, put in his earplugs, and turned off his light.

It feels a bit like the Ryanair dilemma. You can save forty quid by taking a four hour bus journey to Stansted, being driven onto a plane with a cattle prod, paying good money for bad sandwiches, and fighting a passport control bottleneck battle at two in the morning with the entire population of Essex. OR you can go to Heathrow and get on a proper flight.

I don't know if there is a right answer. I have changed providers of pretty much everything in the last 12 months, usually for the first time, and it's almost always been a miserable, drawn out experience involving endless phone calls to call centres in far off places following attempted scrutiny of inscrutable small print. And I am numerate, literate, and practical. The less money you have, the more time you have to spend making sure you're not getting ripped off. There's something wrong with this equation.

joella

The interconnectedness of all things

I do heart Last.fm. I don't use it all the time, as I have a big CD and small vinyl collection (not to mention the tapes) but I listen to Last.fm radio a lot at work -- 80s electronica when I'm trying to write something, Scandinavian post-rock when I'm trying to read something, other things when I'm just trying to shut out the noise and think. Some people can't work to music but I'm the opposite -- I think it occupies the restless, anxious part of my mind so the rest of it can focus on something. 

But of course you get lots of other lovely Web 2.0 type stuff along with your music, and it was while listening to Damon and Naomi tag radio that I discovered they were playing last week at the Luminaire in Kilburn: a venue I have now been to twice and can't recommend highly enough. There's open parking after 6.30, there's a South Indian restaurant that serves masala dosas just round the corner, and there are signs everywhere saying things like 'you've come here to listen to the music: if you want to talk to your friends go to the pub downstairs'. 

Last.fm also lets you see which other last.fm'ers are going to the gig, which is good as you can then go and listen to their radio stations, but best of all it provides a Flickr machine tag for photos, which is a genius idea. I was right at the front and I did take a couple of photos, but a) I don't really have the camera for it and b) I hate that thing that happens at gigs now where all you get is a sea of cameras and mobile phones pointing at the stage, like it's more important to record your experience of being there rather than just be there. And anyway, Damon and Naomi don't exactly put on a show, their magic is to be found in stillness and space. You need to involve yourself. 

So I was rather hoping that someone else would take some photos and machine-tag them, and indeed someone did -- the guy who was standing next to us, by the looks of the angles, and his photos are great, a lot better than mine would have been however many I'd taken. We should come to a citizen's arrangement that there should only be one person taking photos at a gig and they should put them up on the internet. Think how marvellous that would be. 

Anyway, it was a gorgeous gig, and I was very thankful to have found out about it. Thank you, Last.fm. 

But there are always drawbacks. We had people round for dinner on Friday. The kinds of people who know how to make an occasion. I don't exactly remember going to bed, but I knew when I woke up on Saturday morning that there would be chaos downstairs. I had memories of an impatient taxi driver, a struggle over the volume knob (with me on the side of caution, but *you* try arguing with J when he's had a few) and some headbanging. 

And there was Last.fm still open, and able to inform me that the last song we played was Ace of Spades, at 2 am. I'm not sure I wanted to know that. 

joella

I scream, you scream, we all scream

I was at my absolute most irritable time of month last night, and my mood was not helped by the fact that I had to bring some work home. I did it after dinner, sitting at the big table, drinking beer in an effort to feel less irritable, which sort of works, but has an obvious knock-on effect on one's ability to process information and articulate sensible responses to it.

The table is practically *in* next door's house, so if the students open the windows and start screaming, as they do with tedious regularity (what can be so exciting? Did I spend my 20th year making mindless screechy woo noises? I don't think I did, but perhaps I've just forgotten) it can get oppressive pretty quickly. Sure enough, the noise started and I gritted my teeth, glared pointlessly in their general direction, and stabbed away at the keyboard. 

But then there was a genuinely horrific scream and my blood went cold. It sounded like one of them was being attacked, or someone had cut their head open. I ran out into the garden and looked over the fence into their back room, trying to see what was wrong. 

But they were all in there, drinking and smoking and laughing away. Then I realised the noise was coming from our house. 

Turned out it was housemate P listening to Diamanda Galas Really Pretty Loud. Drown out the screaming with more screaming, well, why not? 

I laughed, went back inside and turned up the PJ Harvey. 

joella

Celeriac dreams

It's counter intuitive, but getting an organic veg box delivered has saved us a lot of money. The vegetables may be relatively expensive, but they arrive every week demanding to be eaten. We peer into the box every Tuesday and then make plans, which generally involve things we have in the cupboard. Plus cheese. 

So we hardly go to the supermarket at all -- I do an online shop (or go to Sainsburys on a Saturday morning with ex housemate S and baby Tungsten) every month or so to replenish the things that live in the cupboard, plus cheese, and we are blessed with corner shops (one of which sells samosas) to meet most other conceivable food needs. 

I used to go to Tesco at least once a week, and somehow ended up buying lots of random stuff, plus things like ready meals that we just don't eat anymore because we've all the veg to get through. 

We use Abel & Cole, derided by hardcore greenies as the supermarket of veg box schemes, but they have two big advantages over genuinely local set-ups: first, you can tell them that you don't like Jerusalem artichokes and you won't get any, and second, they do use non-UK produce (though they don't air freight) from time to time, so it's not root vegetables and nothing but root vegetables the whole winter through. 

It's not far off it though, and I am beginning to run out of inspired things to do with parsnips, and to tire of scraping mud off carrots. I cannot imagine ever running out of onions, or to think 'hmm, I fancy swede tonight'. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge has been the celeriac -- they are so damn big. Two hungry people can only eat half a celeriac a day tops, and once you've had a celeriac day, you need a few days off. I've put them in soups and mashed them with potatoes; M has made stew with them and grated them into salads. Yet still they come. 

But hey, we have the internet. So I was delighted to find this recipe for smoked salmon and celeriac dauphinoise -- sounds posh, but it's dead easy (especially for me, as I didn't cook it...). We had it with rocket salad and something Jamie Oliverish involving beetroot and thyme. Mmmmm. I'd say the smoked salmon was optional, but you'd be hard pushed to make a decent vegan version.

Right, must dash, I've a date with a cabbage.

joella

What goes around comes around

I spent a goodly portion of Tuesday tidying my bedroom and making a charity shop pile. I do this a couple of times a year -- anything I hovered over last time but haven't worn / used / given a second thought to since goes. It generally works well, though there's a denim skirt I still miss.

This time round, I gave the briefcase a hard stare. I haven't used it for years, but I've hesitated to part with it during previous purges because a) it was a gift, and b) I could see an occasion when I might want to use a briefcase again happening before an occasion when I might buy another one. For a while I felt like that about my suit, but I got rid of *that* (M&S, machine washable, utterly charmless) ages ago.

I opened the briefcase to see if it was empty. It wasn't, but everything in it -- business cards from the House on the Hill, pre-rebrand Tampax, out of date painkillers, a mousemat from a conference -- was dial-up ancient. The most recent thing in there was a print out of my presentation for my first job interview at NGO X, which happened some time in early 2000. There was also a Parker mechanical pencil (result! I'd totally forgotten I'd ever owned such a thing) and a rather smart notebook. Was a time I passed as a proper grown up. I had more expensive hair then, too.

I flicked through the notebook, which mostly consisted of notes I took while covering the conference that provided the mousemat... end of 1998, I'd guess, possibly end of 1997. There were conversations with PR people (never my favourites) and marketing managers (only marginally better). There were lots of words with 'fucking' inserted in the middle, like 'super-fucking-highway' and 'stra-fucking-tegic'. Some things never change, I thought to myself.

And then I came upon the knowledge-fucking-management notes, taken during a conference session, I imagine, where I was probably both desperately hungover and spectacularly bored. Let's just say there are some environments where you wait a long time for a quotable quote, and this was one of them. But the scary thing wasn't my palpable uninterest or casual profanity, it was that the questions outlined by the speaker, which I dutifully wrote down, in my handwriting which hasn't changed a bit but which looks somehow like it comes from another world -- 'Who owns KM? How do information management people get senior managers to take it seriously? Why don't IT departments understand it?' are, at least in the NGO world, still not resolved. 

I struggle every (working) day with the same things those people were struggling with OVER TEN YEARS AGO. The wheel is still being invented, the mire is just as deep. I found this profoundly depressing. There is no way I want to keep that briefcase now.

I went back to work this morning. At least it was warm there.

joella

So, farewell then, 2008

Rising food and utility bills, plunging stock markets, the near collapse of the banking system... 2008's perfect economic storm made it a year in which we survived (or didn't) rather than thrived. And I'm sure when the history books come to be written it will be turn out to be a turning point year in lots of ways... some things, for better or worse, will never be the same again.

When the dust eventually settles, I think there *will* be things that are better -- housing will be more affordable, we will not spend so much money we don't have on things we don't need -- but there is trouble ahead for many of us. For anyone with an anxious streak, it was a traumatic year. There are tectonic plates shifting, and we don't know what the landscape will look like when they stop, and whose lives and livelihoods will turn out to have been built on sand. 

But chez joella, on the whole, things weren't so bad. Financially it's tight, especially as we took out a new fixed rate mortgage just before the interest rates tumbled. But we did well out of it last time, so I guess you win some you lose some. In an attempt to offset this, we changed providers of everything -- broadband, TV, phone, gas, electricity, insurance -- which was as excruciating and turgid a process as I always imagined it would be but I think is probably a necessary 21st century evil. Other frugalities have also come into play, some of which I am quite pleased with. My favourite is the discovery that you can wear disposable contact lenses two days in a row (just store them overnight in clean saline solution). Obviously an optician would Not Recommend This, but it works for me and saves a fortune. 

Other notable (if not conspicuous) consumptions... 

Gig of the year: it hasn't been a huge year for gigs, but there have been a few... the highlight was probably Rachel Unthank & The Winterset, at the Holywell Music Rooms in Oxford. Their live version of Robert Wyatt's Sea Song is a heart stopper. If that doesn't count as a gig, what with it being sitting down and having no bar, I'd go for the unexpectedly moving Bevis Frond gig at the Luminaire in Kilburn. I first saw the Bevis Frond when I was 20, and I hadn't realised quite how long ago that was. 

Album of the year: not new, but new to me -- In the Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. Came to me via the website of the year: Last.fm. And there is now a copy of the book about it in the house, which I look forward to reading. 

Book of the year: it was going to be Revolutionary Road, which was thrust upon M by the new man of Plumbing S, and which left me speechless. But it was pipped to the post by On Chesil Beach, which I got for Christmas. I read it in one go on December 30th and then I had a big weep. It's set around the same time as Revolutionary Road, though in Oxford rather than Connecticut, and there's something about the fragile modernity of the central relationships that just hurts. If only men and women could actually talk to each other. We still struggle, but we do better than that these days, I hope. 

TV show of the year: The Wire, duh. Season 4 was my favourite. 

Hangover of the year: also no contest. One night at the lake K looked at me with a bottle of Finlandia in her hand and a glint in her eye and said 'I want to drink myself insensible'. It was the morning after that. 

Childcare triumph of the year: taking baby Tungsten swimming at Coral Reef in Bracknell All By Myself while ex-housemate S was Going Ape to celebrate her big Four-O. There aren't many things I'd choose childcare over, but swinging through trees is one of them. And as it turned out we both behaved ourselves very well, and shared a secret packet of salt and vinegar afterwards to celebrate. 

Meal of the year: Out... I had a splendid birthday lunch at the Inn at Whitewell. In... well our now-traditional cheese fondue and winter salad Christmas dinner has to be up there. Elsewhere... the big dinners at the lake: smoked fish, gherkins, halloumi, what's not to love? 

Other highlights... fitting T's bathroom round the corner for £50, a curry, and the knowledge that my NVQ was then in sight. Getting to sauna, swim, sauna, swim all day long on a proper summer holiday with some proper summer holiday companions. Drinking pints of mild by a peat fire in rural Lancashire with snow falling outside. The flurry of text messages letting me know about a certain resignation from a certain NGO. Getting on the plane home from the Hot Place knowing that I did something useful, however small. Harvesting onions and potatoes and broad beans and sweetcorn and chard and spinach that we had grown ourselves. 

There were lowlights as well... a vile sinus infection, many allotment mistakes, days of mildly depressed inertia, some truly frustrating experiences at work, the truly scary moment I deposited housemate P's rent the day after the government bailed out the banks and thought 'hang on, am I mad to be putting money *into* the bank?', a general inability, which blights my life, not to seize the day. 

But the lowlights are always on my mind, so for 2009 I plan to try and dwell on what grows, what works, and what doesn't cost much. It'll be all right, I reckon. It usually is. 

joella