All over bar the recycling

That's done for another year. I confess to spending the whole of yesterday in bed, eating toast, keeping warm, reading Any Human Heart, and rejoicing when the sun broke through the clouds to shine on Christopher, truly a bear for all seasons.

I'm getting better at it, but I don't think I'll ever be a natural. I hate enforced jollity, I hate having carcasses in the kitchen, and I hate waste. Christmas seems to be full of all three, unless you opt out completely, which I've tried, but then I just feel bleak and selfish.

These last two years we've had ex-housemate S, her Young Man, Tungsten, Particle and her in-laws over on the day. The in-laws bring much wine and a ton of cheese, S brings the turkey and we do the rest. There was a moment when the oven started leaking beetroot juice all over the floor, and another when Tungsten attempted to sabotage the beautiful-yet-delicate Moomin mobile we got Particle (textbook inner fury of the firstborn - I do feel for him, but he's not getting away with wilful damage on my watch), but on the whole it went off extremely well. No tears, no swearing. Well, not much.

And we had M's offspring and associated others over on Christmas Eve, where we had a vegetarian curry extravaganza with mulled cider and it was all fleecy blankets and festive warmth *and* they went home in time for us to have a small sherry and open a present each. Mine was a Rob Ryan tile, which made me cry a bit.

I tend to get excellent presents from M, because a) he knows me best, and b) he has an extravagant streak I haven't quite talked him out of yet. And I get good things from my parents, because I get to choose them. And a few other people stick to the failsafe brands - Hendricks, Dr Hauschka, Neal's Yard, Kniepp, Toast, Pukka Tea, Real Seed Catalogue - or simply look at my Amazon wishlist, which I endeavour to keep in reasonable shape at this time of year. These are things I would buy for myself if I had an extravagant streak of my own. You can make me very happy with a visit to a single corner of Boswells, if you so choose. Or you can not get me anything, and I won't mind at all.

But what I find hard is the gimmicky presents - "funny" books, novelty chocolates, DVDs that I'll never watch, chemical toiletries, things made of plastic then sealed in more plastic, generic girl-gifts that sparkle with man-made geegaws.

I don't want this stuff. It's keeping someone in business, but it's killing us all softly. When I get it, I put it straight in a bag, and take the bag to the nearest charity shop as soon as they open after Christmas. Each year, I swear I will broadcast that this is what I do, but I never quite have the balls.

So this is an aide memoire for next year. I vow to say to these people: please, if you don't want to get me something I would get for myself, save your money. If you still want to spend, do something useful with it. Build a toilet. Buy some sanitary towels for girls in Uganda. Get me some peace oil, man.

I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I know. Sue me.

Now I'm annoying the man of the house by playing tunes I remember dancing to in Blackpool nightclubs in the 80s. All together now, heaven must be missing an angel...

joella

Ladies and gentlemen, we are moving Up North

I go quiet when I'm making big decisions. And this is one of the biggest decisions I've ever made. Me and M have joined Lancaster Cohousing*. We will be moving to a new eco-house in an intentional community on the banks of the River Lune, just outside Lancaster, sometime in 2012.

FAQ

Q. WTF?

A. There was a confluence. Last winter was SO COLD. We could get warm, but it wasn't the natural state of affairs. The price of gas in recent years has really freaked me out. It suddenly feels like a finite resource. We are all going to have to live differently in the future, and our houses were built for the past. Our house is better than most - it's not damp, it's well-ventilated, it's well-built, it's cool in the summer. It's a lovely house. And it could be retro-upgraded - double glazing, external insulation, sheep's wool under the floorboards, wood-burner, new boiler.

But we can't afford to do that and still live there. True fact. Meanwhile, ex-housemate S and her Young Man are buildng an eco-house in Kennington. They are using phrases like 'passive solar', 'ground source heat pump', 'rainwater harvesting' and 'folding sliding doors'. Now, having seen how insanely stressful it is to self-build, especially when you're not doing standard things, and also having lived in Kennington, I didn't have any interest in following suit. I did realise, though, that I was getting major house envy. And I spend a lot of time in my house. The pub is only my second-favourite place.

One lunchtime at NGO X I was idly Googling for eco-housing in Oxford. Nothing. So then I widened it to Oxfordshire. Nothing remotely affordable. And then I thought 'but I don't even *like* Oxfordshire' (I like Oxford very much, but have never had much time for its environs). So I did a search for eco-housing in Lancashire, that being a county I do like. And there was Lancaster Cohousing. Hmm, I thought, it has communal stuff as well. I should tell M (who has long yearned to live communally. He doesn't see why we should all have our own lawnmowers).

So I emailed him the link and got on with my day. When I got home, he gave me his 'serious look'**, and said 'we have to go and meet them'.

For real? I said. But it's Up North! Yes, he said. I think I want to do this.

I left him to it, thinking it would be like the time he wanted to go and live at Gram Vikas, or the time he wanted to open a breakfast cafe in our front room -- both excellent ideas in their way, but entirely unfeasible. But before I knew it, he had called up the lovely L, had a chat with her, and agreed that we would go up for one of their monthly vegetarian-brunch-and-site-visit Sundays. We asked Tim and Beth if we could stay with them, they said we could, and off we went.

We were early for brunch at the Whale Tail that Sunday, and we were a bit nervous. It was all quite strange, though it's hard to imagine how it could be otherwise. Tim and Beth walked us there, and withdrew to a safe distance, and the co-housers started to appear. We ordered our veggie breakfasts and started talking to people. After a while, a man walked in bearing three giant (and clearly allotment-grown) courgettes. I thought 'he looks like he lives in East Oxford!'. I got talking to him, and it turned out he used to live in East Oxford. We had a conversation about plumbing.

Then we headed out to the site, in Halton, for a site tour. I stood on the riverside path (not far from where the photo above was taken two months later), with a weir to the left of me and a hidden garden built over a filled-in mill pond to the right, and some deep, slow-moving cog inside of me clicked round a gear. And I knew then that I wanted to do this too.

There are more questions, and I have answers to some of them. But the decision was made for us both on a totally different level, like an accident waiting to happen. So I will stop there for now, and come back to the detail...

joella

* The website is about to get better, because there is now a web team. And it's us.

** A slightly set jaw and a hard stare. Makes me giggle.

Channelling Joan

Not Joan Holloway, although she does have some of the best curves on television. And some of the best lines:

"I can't wait until next year when all of you are in Vietnam. You will be pining for the day when someone was trying to make your life easier. When you're over there, and you're in the jungle and they're shooting at you, remember you're not dying for me, because I never liked you."

Exquisite.

No, I'm thinking Joan Armatrading, who many years ago provided me with one of my favourite mantras: Don't use your army to fight a losing battle.

I am walking away from my quest to eradicate the use of 'best practice'. In my line of work, as in most (I would argue) there is no best practice. It's all about context. There is good practice, but claiming 'bestness' implies you've got it nailed. And you have never got it nailed -- you could always do it better, and even if you did it nigh-on perfectly, if you did the same thing next time it wouldn't be as good, because next time will be different.

For years I have been red-penning or track-changing 'best', and changing it to 'good'. But I've had enough. It isn't even 'best practice' anymore, it's 'best practices'. People want to share best practices with me. I want to say What does that even mean? Nothing, that's what. Go away and come back when you make sense.

But I'm going to get over it. I'm tasking myself with a do-it.

jo

To have and to have not

It's the end of the post war dream today, so I thought I'd focus on something else. 

Here are some things I really like. 

1. A house featuring four kinds of fruit steeping in four kinds of booze, oh yes. 

2. Wet walnuts

3. The beginning of hat and fingerless gloves season

4. Two trips to the seaside (one north, one south) in two weeks

5. Neal's Yard's new Soil Association Certified eyeshadows.

Here are some things which really annoy me. 

1. When people 'like' their own Facebook status updates, or end them with x, or both. 

2. The phrase 'om nom nom'. 

3. When people say 'X more sleeps till Y'. 

4. Comic Sans

5. Anything involving the words 'going forwards', apart from this. 

joella

Season of the mist

I can't really fault Lucy Mangan's thoughts on autumn, or for that matter the other seasons, though I take issue with the headline (which of course may not be hers).

For allotmenteers, autumn is a benign season, in a windy, squelchy sort of way. I love the milky skies and the temperate dampness, and the way you can be down to a T-shirt one minute, and snuggled into fleece the next*. The soil is uniquely receptive to attention, and some of the things you have been carefully nurturing for many months finally deliver their bounty: the sweetcorn, the amaranth**, the beetroot, the best of the courgettes, the bulk of the tomatoes, all come with the autumn.

But there are flip sides. For permanent residents of the studentified neighbourhoods of university towns, it can be a hellish time. A whole new set of people you have to hope won't vomit noisily outside your house at 4 am. A whole new set of awkward and occasionally aggressive late night encounters and next-day follow ups. A whole new set of domestic discussions about the ethics of retaliatory tyre slashing and stink bombs through letterboxes. Though also a whole new chance to hear young people sitting round twig fires in their gardens talking about the proletariat and the Iliad.***

And for any product of a northern hemisphere education system, autumn is a time of change, and for change. We can't help but remember the milestones of Septembers and Octobers past, however romantically or otherwise painful they may have been. I think this is reflected in the workplace: we're halfway through the financial year and three quarters of the way through the calendar year yet still this is a time for new beginnings. I would like to see the figures for 'most popular month to resign'. I reckon September's up there.

I think it's a time for reflection, a time for melancholy, and a time for searching for and seizing the light. As for cheerful, that's for the birds.

joella

* This applies to all outdoor activities, it's just that once Hinksey Pool closes at the end of September, I don't have many.

** One of the season's surprise successes: tastes sort of like a cross between spinach and vine leaves. Amazing in a fish pie.
*** One set of our immediate neighbours are always Oxford Brookes students. The other set are always Oxford University students. You can generally tell which is which at 100 paces. Sad but true.

Home again.

I've been away. It's a long story, though mostly available on Facebook and Twitter for those as is interested.

But it's good to be home. We shared a large bottle of Italian white wine and ate pasta with allotment fennel and tomato sauce. Then we watched Juno. I loved it. I hope there are really are teenage girls like that these days. There weren't when I was one. We did our best, but we didn't have the role models.

joella

The politics of meeting

It's all about work at the moment. Which makes it hard to write about, given the Blogging Policy. But I have noticed an interesting form of power-play recently.

You get a meeting invite. Before you accept it, you check your calendar, only to find that you have not one, but two meetings in that slot already. So you send a reschedule request. Here, you have a choice. You can choose a time that you know you are available, or you can take the time to check the other person's calendar and choose a time that you know you are both available.

But they didn't take the time to do that before they sent the invite, so by doing it you are saying 'I acknowledge that your time is more important than mine'.

You never get these kinds of invites from people who are more junior than you. They will have taken the time to check your calendar, so that you are more likely to accept their invite rather than just decline it. And you never get them from very senior people, as they have PAs. PAs will check your calendar, and won't schedule a clash unless they have made a judgement that the thing already in your calendar can probably be moved quite easily. And they usually say that on the invite.

No, it's the people who are about as senior as you are who usually do this. And they are usually men. The women will usually ring you up and say 'we should meet, when are you free?', and you each look at your own calendar and suggest a time.

For a while, I adopted a policy of just accepting every invite without checking my calendar, choosing to have faith in all my colleagues. That was a disaster, but I haven't found a strategy I like better yet. There are certain situations where it's important not to give ground. More on this to follow.

joella

It takes a nation of homeowners to hold us back

I have a deep sense of foreboding about this government. I didn't vote for them, fairly obviously, but I don't believe that the people who did vote for them are getting what they voted for, especially the ones who put the tick in the orange box. Instead they are getting to witness the taking of a battering ram to the public sector - up to and including the NHS and the BBC. And like Humpty Dumpty, once it falls off the wall, that's it, we've had it, we are living in America.

It's being sold as inevitable, on the grounds that the last government broke the economy.

I believe this is bullshit on both counts. It's not inevitable, and it wasn't the government that broke the economy, it was the unregulated hyper-capitalist banking system. No. This a concerted attack on local government, the post-war welfare state and anything funded with public money.

The private sector can do it better, they argue, and if the private sector can't do it better we shouldn't be doing it at all. I don't agree. As my friend Dr A put it recently, it's "more about the ideology of a smaller state than the economics of a smaller deficit".

For the middle classes, things may get tighter, but relatively few things will break (though, with luck, Cath Kidston's bottom line might suffer a bit). It's the breadline workers and those reliant on benefits (who are often the same people, or in the same households) whose coping strategies will fail. I'd recommend Polly Toynbee's Hard Work, a book which paints a bleak picture of life in low-pay Britain. And that was under a Labour government who invested in improvements to social housing and introduced a minimum wage.

Some of the people she worked with are dinner ladies and hospital porters, who were once public sector employees. These jobs still have to be done (at least while we still believe we should feed schoolchildren and wheel people round hospitals) but they are now done by agency staff who are worse paid, unrepresented, and have minimal job security.

There's money being made, tons of it, but it's not going into their pockets. The private companies which took over these contracts, and will take over many more essential services, are constituted to make money for their shareholders. They will pay as little as they can get away with, and cut whatever corners can be cut, in order to maximise their profits. That's what private service provision companies do. That's what they have to do. CSR only comes into it if someone with a spreadsheet has worked out that it's a money-spinner. They would pay less than the minimum wage if there wasn't a law against it.

This is what we will see more of. Less accountability, worse services, and more money in fewer pockets. Depend on it.

I do think it was time for a change of leadership, and I also think there are policy areas where reform is much needed. Too much time at the top is bad for anyone, and even the most faithful had lost their faith in shiny Tony (and isn't he looking old these days?) and dull Gordon. I wasn't one of the most faithful - I have never been a member of any political party - but I believed, at the beginning, in the New Labour project, and only later wondered exactly what it was which was sold down the river in the name of electability. The public gets what the public wants, until there's a Global Financial Meltdown, and that's part of the problem.

Ultimately, I wish, as a nation, we were braver. I wish we were genuinely prepared to throw our private hat collections in a communal ring, and could do so with the confidence that our freely-elected milliners were the best they could be. Sadly, this is not the case. They say we get the government we deserve, and sometimes I think they might be right.

I am thinking radical thoughts. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

joella

The road that takes you to the places where all the things meet, yeah

I get an email which invites me to a local event with "family activities". It ends "volunteers are needed to help – making cakes or preserves in advance, or helping on the day".

Um... no. The last local event I was invited to happened directly outside my house. It was fun in many ways, but blighted by (let's call him) W, a man who had drunk so much red wine that his mouth resembled a black cave of horror. M was providing the music for the event, and I was very glad that this was controlled a) largely by a prepared-earlier playlist and b) from upstairs, as after a certain point in the evening, whenever the track changed W would shout 'this is shit!'. When something came on that he did like, he would lurch to the amp, on our front path, and try to turn it up to 11 so "everyone" could dance. My job - which I took upon myself, but someone clearly had to do it - was to deflect him from this mission for long enough for him to forget about it. A couple of times this involved physically pushing him out of my front gate.

Later, he came over to me, and told me I was giving him 'a look'. I'm sorry, I said truthfully. You are pissing me off, but I really was trying to keep my face neutral. Ah, he said, but the more you glare at me, the more I want to impress you.

What larks.

At such moments, I also remember the time X years ago, when one of M's chilblains got (temporarily, as it turned out, in the best Blackpool tradition) engaged. There was a party. It was 17 shades of uncomfortable. And several days beforehand there was an awkward phonecall, where it was suggested to M that I might "like to do the vegetarian food".

Um, no, I said. I cannot think of anything I would like to do less.

And I didn't do it, a fact of which I am now rather proud. I did turn up, but I was somewhat dissolute. Like the monasteries.

All the above sometimes leads me to fear that I am not a communal person, not willing to do my bit, etc, whereas generally I think it's fair to conclude that I'm actually dangerously sane, believing as I do that nobody wants to bake cakes, that men like W should be confined in the nearest cellar till they no longer pose a public nuisance, and that engagement parties are a crime against humanity.

But the sometimes bit twinges, so I was very happy today to be part of a plan to have a Reunion Picnic. It is 10 years (give or take) since I spent a year (give or take) working on the smallish but perfectly formed Millennium Project which was my entry into NGO X. Of the seven other people (plus one husband and one son) present, I still see two regularly and one occasionally, but I was mildly and pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was to lie on a blanket by the river and laugh with all the others as well. There was no plan as such - beyond two of us bringing blankets and several of us knowing how to find the river - but delegations were formed, roles were assigned and a perfectly serviceable picnic was purchased, consumed and later disposed of in an environmentally friendly fashion.

I conclude that I can do community, as long as it isn't compulsory, and you get to take a packet of leftover cheese and onion sausage-style rolls home afterwards.

joella

The tectonic plates, they are a shifting: part 1 of ?

Today, the youngest of M's children (whom I still occasionally refer to as his chilblains) turned 28, which is the age that I was when I started going out with him. It's one of those days, essentially insignificant -- just another day, after all -- that give pause for thought, like the day I realised I was the same age that my mother was when she had me, or the day I realised I had been split from my Significant Ex for longer than we were together, or the day I realised that I'd been menstruating for more than half my life. (Shortly to be two thirds, and no sign of let-up yet. Marvellous.)

So I paused for thought. It's a difficult age, 28, and these are difficult times. I feel for her. But more importantly, I'm glad to know her well enough to be able to feel for her, as for a long time I didn't think that would happen. She (and her older siblings) are much better placed now to imagine what it might have been like for me, especially in the early days, and I think to some extent they have all done some of that imagining, Which can't have been easy, and I appreciate it. Equally, I have got much better at working out which boundaries need to be clearly defined, and which need to be porous. And at getting over stuff that essentially isn't personal.

I maintain some central reservations, but these are the things which differentiate me, to paraphrase Rebecca West, from a doormat. I have yet to find a woman who finds stepmotherhood a straightforward or 100% positive experience -- but a surprising number of us end up doing it, and I have had some excellent cathartic and/or hilarious conversations about it over the last 12 years. 

At the same time, M is about the same age my parents were when we got together, and I can see more clearly now how they might have found the prospect of their daughter going out with a not-yet-divorced man with three teenage children a bit of a challenge. 

The long game. A lot of it is about the long game. Vive la long game! 

joella

Power to the people!

Breaking news is that the BBC Trust has rejected the BBC's plans to close 6 Music. This is BRILLIANT, not just because the proposal to close it was a short-sighted, dumb, management by numbers one, but because thousands of people said so and they were heard. Well done us.

joella

The smell of long ago and far away

I wouldn't really say I was bullied at school. Yes, there were some horrible days, some things which made me cry quietly in the toilets, some things that kept me awake at night. Overall though, in the scheme of things, in the Big Picture, I did all right. Better than many people.

But something comes back to me every time I eat a packet of prawn cocktail crisps. I like prawn cocktail crisps a lot, but I seldom eat them. Until I do, I wonder why, then when I do, I remember.

I was small when I started secondary school. I was the youngest person in the year (so for my first year I was the youngest person in the school) and I had bad hair and unfashionable shoes. I didn't start my periods until I was 14, which now sounds like a total blessing, but until the hormones kicked in I had a flat chest to go with my flat feet, and would rather have been reading a book, whatever the alternative was. I wore glasses, except I didn't, so I spent winter running in random circles round a hockey pitch and summer looking in the wrong direction for a rounders ball while people screamed 'CATCH!' at me*. I also generally came top of the class. You can imagine how popular I was.

They used to call me Keeno. One of them in particular. Secretly, I didn't see what was so bad about being keen, I was quite interested in glaciation and fractional distillation and the industrial revolution. Still am. But I knew it wasn't cool to be seen to be keen. So I tried not to be seen at all. Generally, this was a successful tactic - I wasn't ginger or fat, I had no extreme physical defects, and some of the more sensitive teachers were careful about not drawing attention to my precocious efforts. But some of them (the pupils, not the teachers, the teachers were ok, on the whole) could tell I was small and not cool and didn't have any friends, not really**, and was scared, and was trying not to be noticed. One of them in particular.

He was one of the cool ones. One of the scariest cool ones, because he was also clever... clever enough to get by without doing very much work, and clever enough to to look like he was doing no work at all. He was one of those who'd hang out with the drop outs, but never actually drop out. He had the quiffiest quiff, the skinniest tie, the pointiest shoes, went out with the blondest girl. Our last names were calamitously close together in the alphabet, so in the more regimented classes we often ended up sitting next to each other. But all I wanted was for him to ignore me. That would have suited me just fine.

And most of the time, it suited him too. I really wasn't worth bothering with. I did my homework in purple ink, underlining salient points in green, and always had the answer if anyone asked, but I learnt not to sit right at the front, got a brutalist haircut and made my mother buy me a pair of huge clumpy shoes and a second hand boys' blazer three sizes too big. Project Nothing To See Here was generally a success. Lunchtimes were always a risk though, especially in winter, when we were more or less confined to our form rooms, which were randomly inspected by unpredictably corrupt prefects.

It was a lunchtime in my third year, and we were in Room P. I had made a trip to the tuck shop to buy a packet of prawn cocktail crisps - KP, green and orange packet, my favourites - and was sitting at my desk reading a book and eating them as slowly as possible. Crisps were both a delicacy and a pastime in those days, and I used to eat them by crushing them into tiny pieces inside the bag with my left hand, then tipping them slowly into my right and eating them crumb by crumb with the tip of my tongue. This way, I could make a packet last half an hour, while I read my book and ignored the mayhem going on around me.

I'd done this before. But this time, when I'd finished and got up from my desk and headed for the bin with the empty packet in my left hand and a right hand full of oily, prawn cocktailly crisp crumbs, I found my way blocked by the Beautiful One.

He was sneering. I said 'Can I get to the bin?'. He said 'No'. I said 'Please?'. He said 'No'.

There was a pause. I considered my options. There weren't many. And then something sort of snapped inside me. I looked up at him, and said 'OK'. And then I rubbed my oily, prawn cocktailly, crisp-crumby right hand all over his face.

There was another pause. He stepped aside. There was one of those silences that can make your bowels move. I walked to the bin, dropped my crisp packet in it, rubbed the rest of the crumbs off my right hand and walked out of the room.

I didn't spend a lunch hour in my form room for the rest of that year. And I paid for that action, in little ways, here and there, for the rest of my school career.

Deep down, I think it was worth it, even though 25 years later I just need to smell prawn cocktail crisps and I am 13 years old again, with my heart thumping in my nylon socks.

After I finished my prawn cocktail crisps, I googled him. He's bald now.

joella

* To be honest, there was more than inadequate eyesight at play here, but it didn't help.
** Until the sixth form. I had real friends in the sixth form. Still my real friends, some of them.

The illusion of freedom in the age of entitlement

I passed my driving test a couple of months before my 18th birthday. My dad, (rather generously, given that I drove his car into a fence four days after my 17th) used to let me borrow his car, a pale green Austin Maestro that I loved driving. I had a couple of close calls, but never drove it into anything else, and a few months later I got my own car, a red 2cv that I loved driving even more.

Where I grew up, everyone had a dad, and everyone's dad had a car. Sometimes their mum had a car too, a smaller one. My 2cv was someone's mum's car. There was one family where there was a dad who didn't have a car. They used to cycle everywhere. Everyone thought they were odd. Dads didn't ride bikes. Bikes were for kids, mums (a few, including mine), and teenagers who hadn't passed their driving tests yet.

It was a long time ago, and a long way away. And, looking back, astonishingly suburban. But basically, if you could drive, you could go places. We mostly went to each other's houses, or to pubs (though we mostly didn't drink and drive) or to the beach, or just drove round aimlessly smoking cigarettes and listening to tapes in the small hours of the morning. There was a road running across the Moss that I used to drive down with the roof off and with my friends standing up in the back screaming. We would give each other petrol money, 20p here and 50p there, and keep our cars running just above empty.

Cars were like extensions of our personalities. They were certainly extensions of our personal space. I never took the 2cv to university -- there was nowhere in Cambridge I needed to go that I couldn't walk to -- but I drove up and down the A34 every weekend in her to visit my Significant Ex when he was living in Oxford and I was accidentally living in Andover, and when I properly moved to Oxford in 1994 she came too. We were a two car couple, and when we split up I drove up to Boars Hill and sat on a bench wrapped in a blanket, gazing at the view with a head full of white noise.

When I got together with M, we were a two car couple too, but after we moved in together it became clear that we didn't need them both. Mine was the one that needed to go -- only a welding enthusiast should own a 20 year old 2cv -- but psychologically, I struggled with the prospect of not having my own car. What if I wanted to... go somewhere? Well, said M, you can use mine. But what if I wanted to... leave? Well, said M, there are taxis. And if you find it unbearably oppressive not to have a getaway vehicle parked outside, you can always get another one.

After a while, I got used to sharing a car, and pretty soon after that, I realised that a burden had lifted... no more MOTs, no more insurance renewing, no more tax discs, no more checking tyres, no more cans of WD40 on a cold morning, no more remembering to renew RAC membership, no more welding bills. And I could still go pretty much anywhere I wanted. And I haven't left yet.

But we haven't had a (working) car at all for about four months now. The circumstances surrounding this are less than desirable, which is one thing. But there's also the reality of life without a car.

And I am genuinely surprised at how ... nice it is. The fact that it's summer helps, but still.

1. Getting to work. Often, I used to drive. I ought to cycle, but it's such a faff, with the lights and the clothing and the negotiating of bike through house. And there's a hill. I feel genuinely bad about this, but I'm always running late, and the car was there for the driving. But I have discovered how easy it is to get the bus. It can be quicker than cycling, and has an easier start, in that I just fling myself out of the house in the right direction. No paraphernalia required, and on the way home I don't have to find a parking space. Bargain.

2. Not having to buy petrol. Have you SEEN the price of petrol recently? It used to make my blood run cold, but now I sit on the bus and smile.

3. Deliveries. I already knew about Amazon, Tescopolis, Ocado and Just Kosher (for those pre-Christmas pickle orders...). But I now know that Majestic Wine will deliver for free. With glasses, if you are having a party. And it turns out I live in easy walking distance of Majestic Wine, and can carry 48 (well, 47 in the end) glasses back to them with no problem. B&Q will deliver a shed, and then let you get in the van with it to direct them to the allotment. The Pink Giraffe delivers for £2 (or free for bigger orders). When I had a car I never used to get food delivered, and it's a brilliant idea. And I was pining slightly for garden centres, but then I discovered the Real Seed Catalogue.

4. Taxis. We got the bus to Waitrose, did our shopping, called a minicab while we were at the checkout and it took us and all our shopping home for four quid. I wanted to go to swim in Hinksey Pool in the pouring rain. We got a cab there, and then walked into town afterwards and caught the bus back.

5. Trains and bikes. We went to a wedding in Wallingford. We caught the train to Cholsey with our bikes, cycled to friends in Wallingford for lunch, got changed, cycled to the Town Hall for the wedding, wheeled our bikes to the river and put them on the wedding party boat to the reception at the Beetle and Wedge, then cycled back to Cholsey for the last train back to Oxford.

6. Just bikes. When it's not pouring with rain, it's a lovely bike ride to Hinksey Pool via backstreets and towpaths... I did know that already, but I still used to drive it.

7. Locality. The furthest we ventured during our lovely, lovely week in Robin Hood's Bay was Whitby, and we walked there. And then got the bus back. We bought all our food in the local shops and drank all our beer in the local pubs. The local shops were pretty limited, but we went with what was there. Vegans might have struggled, but we had fried fish, fish pie, fish soup, and went out for fish and chips. M asked the woman in the village shop if she had any spinach: she didn't, but she ordered us some in for the next day. As part of that conversation, she recommended the gingerbread and Wensleydale combination which was a highlight of the week. If we'd had wheels, we might not have discovered the beck, eaten so much ice cream from the van on the beach, or devoted three hours to building the best sandcastle in Christendom.

8. Mutual favours. When I want to go to the supermarket, which isn't very often, I do a deal with ex-housemate S. I get a lift there and back, and she gets help managing the tantrums in the frozen food section.

And coming up, possibly, joining a car club. Collective ownership of the means of getting to the tip. A tiny part of a great leap forwards? Let's hope so. We are the generation that bought more cars, and we're getting what we deserve.

This is unless the government start bigging up car clubs, at which point I'm going to go right off the idea. They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, turning out to be a bunch of fuckers. More on this anon.

joella

The sadness I feel for the grass in the Business Park

This was one of the posts on the 'never got round to it' list. So many things come into my head then go out of it again. But the grass in the Business Park hasn't gone away. I see a lot more of it than I used to, on account of getting the bus to work.*

The Business Park does not have a bus stop. It is designed for cars, and getting there by any other means can be challenging. You can cycle, and there is a cycle path of sorts, but you have to contend with kerbs or (what most people do) deal with a bike-lane-free roundabout. You can walk, but you will find there are only long ways round, and that there is only pavement on one, varying, side of the road. Or you can get the bus, which means getting off on the main road and then walking.

Which is all exercise, I guess, but you quickly find that the paths put there by the Business Park are more aesthetic than functional. They do not go where anyone wants to walk. So everyone walks on the grass. I counted the steps from the Business Park end of the footpath from the bus stop to the back door of the New Building if you follow the path: 470 steps. Then I counted the steps if you walk across the grass, cut through someone else's car park and climb through the bushes: 290 steps.

All the plants in the Business Park (with the honourable exception of a couple of magnolia stellata which have somehow snuck in) have that low-maintenance, block-colour municipal look. It's like they looked at the architects model, with bushes made out of coloured sponge, and bred real shrubs to look just like that. But it's greenery (and in the case of photinia, of which there is tons, reddery) and it seems to be thriving on all those bark chippings.

The grass is not so lucky. It is the kind of grass you see in the sale at B&Q, piled in crumbly, dehydrated rolls next to the wafer-thin sheds. It is not thick, it is not lush, it looks like it spent its early life in the grass equivalent of a battery shed. Nobody has ever loved it, nobody has ever sprinkled seeds on its bare patches and said 'please grow!'. It could pass muster from a distance, but you get the impression that the person who ordered it would secretly have preferred astroturf.

Grass of any kind is better than concrete, and easier to walk on than bark chippings, so I am not quite sure why it makes me so sad. I think it's because it sums up the joylessness of the business environment. This isn't even a bad one, and the New Building itself has much more going for it than many of its neighbours, but it says a lot that the central feature of the Business Park is a pond with a waterfall, and they put it on a roundabout.

There are thousands of people working there, but there is no communal area, no shops or cafes or services, except the ones in the individual buildings. At lunchtime, you can walk under the ring road to Tescopolis, you can get in your car and drive somewhere, or you can stay in your air-conditioned box.

So it remains that the best thing about the Business Park is the grass where the path out of it ought to be. It deserves to be better.

joella

* There is more to say on the car saga too, but for now let's just say my knowledge of bus routes is higher than at any point since 1987.

To: customer.relations@crosscountrytrains.co.uk

[STARTS]

Dear Cross Country Trains

I just want to thank one of your staff, the Train Manager on Sunday 23rd's 13.27 from Manchester Piccadilly to Oxford. We were sitting in the Quiet Coach and, together with all the other passengers, had to contend with the deliberately noisy and disruptive behaviour of a group of five young teenagers. They refused to keep the noise down, despite being asked by several people, incuding us, and kept making phone calls, shouting, trying to get reactions from other passengers etc. Eventually my partner asked the carriage if anyone objected to him asking the train staff to take action. Nobody did, and he went to get the manager, who acted swiftly and very effectively, removing them from the carriage to talk to them, and then asking them to leave the train. I was really impressed with the professional way he handled the situation, and would like to thank him again.

I am not a fan of the call centre and anonymous website culture which characterises many of our dealings with large companies, train companies included. It all feels very impersonal and a lot of customer service experiences are fairly bleak because you seldom get to talk to anyone who is an expert in anything or seems able to take responsibility for anything. So it's good to be reminded that there are of course many people in large companies who do a great job.

Yours sincerely

joella

Please note: I tried to send this via the feedback form on your website but it tells me that it is sorry, but there is an error. 

[ENDS]

Slightly worried thought: does this mean I am part of the Big Society?

joella

By the beck near Boggle Hole

This is my new favourite place. A lane comes down to the beck, and then runs out. There's a footbridge over it, but there's also a little ford, and its heap of rocks creates a mini weir, which the water bubbles over. I could listen to that noise for ever.

You can also hear the birds singing, and the bumble bees buzzing.

There's a bit of pebbly sand to sit on, and if it's warm you can paddle. The air is still, and full of the scent of wild garlic, which is all around.

The trees are coming into leaf, beech trees I think, with trunks clothed in ivy. There are ferns, and moss, and a big holly bush, and brambles, and some irises yet to flower and some red campion just beginning to.

But the main thing is the water, flowing down to the sea.

joella

Greetings from the People's Republic of Oxford East

See that little red island in the middle of the vast blue sea that now makes up the south of England? That's us, that is. Constituency swing: 4.1% to Labour. The Guardian thinks we are extraordinary. We're very proud. I love not conforming.

But, as allotment S put it on Friday morning, what were the rest of you doing? Oxford West now has a 12 year old Tory as its member of Parliament. She beat Evan Harris - Lib Dem, fan of atheism and evidence, loathed by homeopaths, homophobes and evangelists - by 176 votes. Her website tells us what she did on her gap year, and that "she has volunteered with aid projects in all sorts of exotic places like Mozambique, Rwanda, Bangladesh and a few less exotic ones like Birmingham and even Blackpool". I didn't vote Lib Dem, but if I'd lived a couple of miles west, I would have. What a disaster.

Elsewhere, lovely Lancastrian places like Morecambe, Lancaster and "even" Blackpool North were all lost by Labour to the Tories, though I am heartened by the socialist 14 year old who voted Lib Dem (tactically) in Wyre & Preston North, having gone to vote disguised as a Tory, on the grounds that nobody would expect anyone under 18 to be a Tory so he might get away with it.

It wasn't all bad: Caroline Lucas's victory in Brighton was great leap forwards for the Greens, and the BNP's annihilation in Barking and Dagenham was both just reward for the sterling work of Hope Not Hate and a great leap forwards for humanity. Whatever the world's problems, fascists are never part of the solution, and I'm glad Britain has said that more clearly than it had this time last week.

And I am greatly heartened by the fact that even with 13 years of new Labour, an illegal war, an undeniably unpopular Prime Minister, the expenses scandal *and* global financial meltdown, shiny Dave and his posh boy friends didn't get a majority. I loathe him and everything he stands for, can't help myself. But the overall outcome is a bit... WTF? I wanted a hung Parliament, but I was hoping the Lib Dems, who I basically agree with about many things, would have more seats, and more choice about who to get into bed with.

I don't think a 'progressive coalition' is going to happen, the maths are too shaky, though I would be happy to be proved wrong. So the next best thing would be a minority Tory government, which falls over by Christmas, while Labour get a new leader, then we have another election, shortly followed by a referendum on electoral reform, which might deliver something approaching the sweet moderation that this country is supposed to be good at. We might get a couple of fascists into the bargain, but I think that would be a price worth paying.

It's all kind of fascinating though, in a scary kind of way. But that's enough politics for a Sunday morning, I'm off for a bath and then to pick asparagus with Plumbing S.

joella

If I were to vote Lib Dem tomorrow...

... and I'm not saying I will be (I'm really not saying I will be), but if I were to, turns out it wouldn't be the first time.

In 1983, I was 13. I remember (though these kinds of memories are notoriously unreliable) having a conversation with my parents about voting, and who they were going to vote for. I remember my dad saying that he didn't vote, and me asking him why. He said it was because he worked in local government, and he had to be able to work with whoever was elected, so he stayed neutral.

Now, I'm sure you can have a personal political view, and yet work in a politically neutral way (indeed, all NGO X employees have been reminded that NGO X is not aligned to any political party and we shouldn't shout too loudly on social networks about our own views in the election run-up if we are identifiably NGO X), and I'm certainly sure that you can vote and still work in a politically neutral way, but maybe my dad believed that he should live neutrality as well as work neutrality. It's not the worst argument for not voting I've ever heard. Or maybe he thought 'what's the point, whatever I vote this place has Tory written through it like a stick of rock' (check it out!). Possibly I should ask him again.

But then I asked him if I could have his vote, if he wasn't going to use it, and he said I could. So on election day, we went down to the polling station (which was also my old primary school, so I felt VERY IMPORTANT), and he got his ballot paper, and he gave it to me. I went into the little booth, and decided which candidate I was going to vote for, and put my X in the box. Then I came out, and gave the paper to him, and he put it in the box.

I don't remember if he asked me who I voted for (I should ask him that too, but I'm betting he didn't). And I don't remember if I told him anyway (I'm betting I did). But my decision was this: there was one woman on the ballot paper, and I voted for her. I remember making the decision, I remember why, and I remember putting the X in the box, with the pencil on a string (I love that pencil on a string. I always want to vote like that). But until yesterday I don't think I could have told you which party she represented. For me, she represented something else altogether.

I was telling M this story last night as we were having our daily who-to-vote-for debate of our own*. I wondered again which party I'd voted for. They had the National Front in 1983, and a little shiver went down my spine in case I'd voted for a lady fascist. But a) fascists are not known for their feminism, b) coastal Tory heartlands are not known for their fascism -- even if only because there are no black people to hate** -- and c) I like to think that even at 13 I would rather have gnawed my own arm off than voted NF.

But I can't remember what I thought about politics at 13. I really can't. I can remember getting Rio by Duran Duran, and I can remember smoking my first cigarette, and I can remember hating my hair and wondering if I'd ever grow breasts, and I can remember becoming a vegetarian, but I can remember nothing about the political landscape, though the miners' strike was on the horizon and would change all that.

Still, we have the internet now. I bet you can find out, I thought. And you can (scroll down to Lancashire, Fylde).

Turns out I voted Liberal. Not a bad choice for a properly young person.

joella

* It does feel like there's a proper choice to be made, though we agreed to discount both the man in the Batman outfit and the woman who hates foreigners without further discussion.
** I don't mean to be too damning here. There are worse political landscapes than Domesday Book Tory. Like anywhere with the BNP on the ballot paper.

World of girls

There are no men allowed in the Sanctuary in Covent Garden, where I have just spent the day with my (currently literally) fragrant friend K, who gets credit both for this post title and for generally making it happen. It was the final leg of my 40th birthday celebrations and the first leg of hers. Our package deal was called Girls' Delight, which made me squirm a little, as did the house copies of Tatler and the invitation, during my Sleep Retreat, to enter my very own secret garden.
 
But mostly it was a gorgeous experience. There is a sauna and steam room, and a pool big enough for proper swimming. Upstairs is the Koi Carp lounge, featuring koi carp and lounging. For the latter, there are double bed size cushions for friends, blankets for snoozing, and quite the loveliest ginger and honey tea imaginable. There's also the famous pool with the swing, and a super-hot hot tub tucked into a stairwell.

And no men. Which somehow felt appropriate for a sanctuary, but it took a bit of getting used to. We discussed -- among many other things, of course -- how far back behind the scenes this womanliness extends. Is it a philosophy, or a business decision? Are there men working in the kitchens? In the laundry room? Do they come out at night to change the lightbulbs, or is there an army of maintenance women in dungarees?

On the way to the pool, we passed the Plant Room. As in plant room, not as in greenhouse. I'm betting they have men in there. But if not, what an amazing place to work *that* must be.

joella

Oh Lord, won't you erase all memory of every interaction with Mercedes-Benz

I'm going to tell you what happened to the car. I'll try and keep it brief, because it's not really the interesting bit, but it's important background.

Summer 1998: M buys Velba, a dark green ex-demo Mercedes A140, from Inchcape, aka Mercedes-Benz of Oxford. It wasn't that he *wanted* a Mercedes, it was more that the ancient Golf he'd driven away from his marriage in got written off by a bus, and the ancient Golf he replaced it with was fading fast. There was something about wanting to have a decent car, something about having the money to buy one (hey, it was 1998 - Things Could Only Get Better), and something about liking the shape of it. There are loads of cars that look like the Mercedes A Class now, but there weren't then. And the early ones were especially pleasing. So he bought one.

Summer 1998 - January 2010: M drives Velba, and, especially after we moved in together in 2001 and I sold my beloved 2cv, so do I. I think it's fair to say that we love Velba, and, the vast majority of the time, she loves us right back. She has a comfortable driving seat, which you can raise and lower and move backwards and forwards, and lovely glowing lights to welcome you back when you press the 'unlock' button from ten metres away across a dark car park. She is warm in the winter and, for a while, cool in the summer, though the air conditioning packed up about five years ago and we never got it fixed. She has an incredible haulage capacity for a small car: you can get a lot in the boot, but if you need more, you can fold the back seats forward in several different ways, and even, in extremis, take them out altogether. She can carry two full size bikes and a week's worth of self-catering supplies, or a whole band's equipment, or a toilet and basin and all the tools, fittings and pipes you need to put them in. She's economical on petrol, starts first time every time, and parks like a dream. They know how to build cars, do Mercedes-Benz.

The only drawback is that when stuff needs doing, and it regularly does, it costs a screaming arm and a screaming leg. The car never actually breaks down, she is designed to fail elegantly, but over the years M spends what, in retrospect, is an eye-watering amount of money on her. Mainly this is because he continues to get her looked after by Mercedes-Benz of Oxford, so various warranties and guarantees and service histories are maintained. After a certain point this becomes economically pointless, as the car is not worth enough to make those warranties and guarantees and service histories anything like worthwhile, but we don't really notice that point passing. And it's hardly in their interest to point out that we could get the same work done tons cheaper elsewhere, so of course they don't.

A bit like when we were briefly members of Esporta, I am faintly ashamed, even once removed, of my association with Mercedes-Benz of Oxford and their Living The Dream, You're Worth It, Finer Things In Life aesthetic. When I go with M to drop off or pick up Velba, we get to sit on shiny chairs and drink coffee from a shiny machine, brought over by a young woman with shiny hair and shiny lips. There are flowers in shiny bowls, of the type you find on the tables at a certain kind of wedding, and a range of Mercedes-Benz merchandise (cufflinks, pens, clothing) in shiny cabinets. Through my head, without fail, plays 'what the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here...'

But the car is not like that. The car has values we share. The car is worth it.

Until the big snow. Actually, until the service just before the big snow, when N, the Human Face of Mercedes-Benz of Oxford (whom I am only annoyed with because if he wasn't actually a nice guy we might have moved on several years ago), pointed out that the clutch was 'on the way out' and that to carry out that scale of repair on a car of Velba's age was possibly not the best decision. So, he advised us, we should think about what we wanted to do when that happened.

And then it snowed. I was the first person to drive Velba after the roads cleared, and there was a strange engine noise. A couple of days later we were taking stuff to the tip, and there was a loud cracking noise as M moved the driving seat from 5'4" to 5'11".

There was no obvious performance impact resulting from either of these things, but the noises were a little alarming, so we booked her in for a check-up. M dropped her off, and caught the bus* back to Oxford. Later that day, they called M and informed him that repairs would cost £1200, including-but-not-limited-to new shock absorbers, tyres and windscreen wipers. This was a shock that needed absorbing in its own right, but for various reasons, including-but-not-limited-to a daughter who wanted to borrow the car that weekend, he agreed to go ahead without much further deliberation.

M's thinking was that this would see the car through until the clutch needed replacing. This would give us the time to think about our options, which, despite N's advice, we had not really done. There was no suggestion whatever that these repairs might not fix the problems he had reported (and indeed he paid over £100 for 'diagnosis').

But they didn't. When Velba was ready, he caught the bus* to collect her, paid the bill of £1196.61, filled in a form saying he was happy with the service he had received, and drove her back to Oxford. By the time he got back, the car was making the same noise as before, so he turned round and drove straight back to the garage.

And from then on it just got worse. M was informed that more diagnosis would involve 'dropping the engine out' (at a cost of more hundreds of pounds), but that the car was 'probably' fine to drive around town. He drove home, and later rang to complain about the service he'd received. There was an offer to diagnose the problem free of charge, but, once the car was returned yet again, this was retracted... the person who had made the offer was over-ruled by the Service Manager.

This same man would not come and talk to us when we both caught the bus* to the garage to try and resolve things. We drove the rattly car home again knowing nothing more than it might be something to do with the alternator, or it might be something to do with the air conditioner. It was probably the latter, said the Service Manager, when he finally did return M's calls, and it would probably 'last longer than the clutch'. (Subtext: stop making a fuss, and go away).

It wasn't, and it didn't. Less than a week later the alternator went bang while M was driving me to work. We have had a dead car parked outside the house ever since, and two more calls to the Service Manager have gone unreturned. I feel he may be the kind of man who is rude to his wife in company.

It's all been very, very stressful. M has been wounded, and not just financially, because he still puts value on loyalty, and doing the right thing, and it pains him when in fact there's nothing behind the facade of 'service' beyond naked capitalism. I am less surprised and more angry, because when it comes down to it, naked capitalism is breaking the world, and makes decent people, who have to work in it, miserable.

But maybe my car days are over. I am exploring my thoughts about this, but gently, as they were formed over 20 years ago when the car keys in my pocket ignited a whole lot more than petrol.

Meanwhile I stroke Velba's flank gently as I pass her, and tell her that we know it's not her fault. And maybe as car doors close, other doors open. To be continued.

joella

* Technically, two buses - Mercedes-Benz of Oxford is actually in Kidlington. But Mercedes-Benz of Kidlington would not sound so Finer Things in Life, would it.

140 words good, 140 characters better?

It's now self-evident: my Twitterstream is cannibalising my blog. I know several other people in the same situation, though a few, the most creative and prolific, are keeping a balance.

I like writing short, and I think there's something both satisfying and addictive about the discipline of saying something in 140 characters, while still making sense and not compromising with naff abbreviations. I do like a well-composed tweet, even as I hate the fact that it's called a tweet. But it's more than that, it's quicker - you can easily do it by text or email if you're not online -  and (unlike blogging), it's not all about you. Most Thursdays, I watch BBC Question Time on the TV while following (and sometimes contributing to) the simultaneous fury being vented on #bbcqt. It's social, and I am a social animal.

But I miss creating joella. My tweets are backed up, and paint their own picture of the last year or so, but it's not the same as the narrative arc of a blog... actually more like a narrative sine wave: trawling the archives I can see the cycles of the year and the month, the ebbing and flowing, the posts I find I have written several times over, using different words in different years, not remembering that I've said it before. Some things change, some stay the same. Memories are fallible, and it's more valuable than I thought it would be to have a record. I find I consistently underestimate my younger self. Maybe we all do.

So I need to sort it out a bit.

I don't think I will get round to retro-blogging. But in case I have a burst of enthusiasm, here are a few things I wanted to expand on rather than condense, yet somehow didn't. This was the underdocumented early spring of 2010

• BBC4's Women series 
  
• My semi-related re-reading of The Handmaid's Tale
  
• The illlusion of freedom which is car ownership
  
• The removal of the wallpaper in the hall, and the realisation that there are many ways to fill a crack
  
• The sadness I feel for the grass in the Business Park
• Choice does not equal empowerment
  
• Party fears
• My burgeoning love affair with Dr Haushcka

There. That's a start.

joella

joella

Lost message from the Hot Place

It occurred to me that it was a year ago. I figured it was time to go through my paperwork, do some sorting out. And I found a blog entry that I wrote in pencil on the back of an envelope. I decided not to post it, but I guess I kept it for a reason. I have resisted the temptation to edit retrospectively.
 

Sitting in the departure lounge in Capital City airport, premenstrual, illegally hungover, still trying to make sense of what's happening and still (mostly) failing.

I have a data-free data stick, and a data-free laptop. I still don't know if these will be taken off me. In my check-in luggage there is a data-free flip video recorder (this one of the heartbreaking bits as I had some great videos of local staff) and my camera, from which I have deleted any photos with people on them.

I still have my phone, but some people have had these taken too - and I still hadn't got round to backing my numbers up so I have copied them all out longhand across six pages of my notebook. We have rediscovered longhand, these last few days.

There are other dazed looking NGO workers scattered round the departure lounge. We stand out a mile.

Across the way, there is a fat African man in a pale suit. He is sitting in that way some men sit, legs wide apart, taking up maximum space. He has earphones in and he's singing along, off key and really pretty loud, to Amazing Grace.

There are signs all down the road to the airport bearing huge photos of the President with slogans like "wise and strongly determined".

This can of lemon drink tastes really, really weird.

joella

A salvo from the invisible demographic

You know what? If you're me, you qualify for practically nothing. I mean, there's stuff for all of us, the NHS, waste collection, public libraries, swimming pools. But all the stuff on top, the targeted things... what do I get? Pretty much fuck all. I pay full tax, and don't get any credits. I'm too old for a young person's railcard and too young for a senior railcard. I earn part time money but pay a full time union subscription. I get the bus just often enough for it to be expensive and just seldom enough not to be worth getting any kind of bus pass. I have seen my pension contributions go up, and the consequent benefits get smaller and further away. I don't get 10% off at B&Q on a Wednesday. And I don't have any children, so I've never had maternity pay or any of the things that come the way of the 'families' whose requirements the Tories are so keen to prioritise.

But I won't be voting for them anyway, obviously. As a good Marxist, I believe in to each according to their needs, and I guess I don't need much. And that's something to be happy about. But I do, every now and again, feel a bit overlooked. I work hard, and I do my bit. Who's looking out for me? Who's taking care of the people who contribute more than they get back? We're important too, you know.

And then, in 2002, came 6Music. Unbelievably, a radio station that was designed for the invisible demographic: the 30, 40 and 50 somethings whose lives have been defined and soundtracked by independent and alternative music from many decades, and the slice of the younger generation coming up behind them who want to find their tribe. I loved it immediately. It's the reason I bought a DAB radio. We listen to Freak Zone in the kitchen while cooking dinner on Sunday evenings, Nemone has taken me through many a long afternoon at work, and I've lost count of the number of live gems from the BBC archive I've happened upon and enjoyed. It's about celebrating our alternative past and giving the people who want to be part of an alternative future (and I define alternative here extremely broadly) a place to feel all right, and if that isn't a public service I don't know what is.

This is about the only thing this country has done for me this century, and now they want to bloody close it, in order to pour more wet reality-makeover-nanny-location cement down our throats, with more banal/offensive comedy, shitty quiz shows or ritual-humiliation-by-overpaid-presenters by way of 'alternative'. To say I am pissed off is putting it mildly.

Here comes the future. Please don't let it be playing Keane or I might just leave on a jet plane.

joella

Is that an iPhone in your pocket...

I was gathering my thoughts on the news that Apple has pulled its pornographic, sorry, 'adult-themed'* iPhone apps.

My first thought was that it's a sign of how much the world has changed since ye olde webbe was invented that you can buy software that makes women's breasts wobble to put on your phone and everyone thinks it's a jolly good laugh.

I think the vast, vast majority of pornography is unpleasant-to-vile-to-worse, and distorting of sexuality, and invades women's lives in ways they generally would rather it didn't if you actually asked them, and all that stuff, but I've always thought that, and it's an increasingly marginal point of view. You see it everywhere, and if you're a fusty old feminist, you just learn to ignore it, like mosquitoes, except when it comes dangerously close to being right in your face.

Some of the comments on the news articles and blog posts I've read reporting Apple's move have been in the 'bunch of puritanical Dworkinites' vein, as you might expect. But even the commenters - men and women - who can see the point of maybe not having a free-for-all wankfest available for consumption in the office toilet or on the Clapham omnibus generally make a point of saying something along the lines of 'obviously, I have no problem with porn per se...'. To these people I say (actually, I don't, I say it to the readers of this blog, but I don't want to be out there getting Dworkin-flamed) check out the first chapter of David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster, and then say 'obviously' again.**

My second thought was that I don't believe Apple have suddenly decided to do the right thing by every woman who might pick up her boyfriend's iPhone and then wish she hadn't. Their spokesman said "we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable" (a bit degrading and objectionable is probably ok, as you can get that in Nuts magazine or on Channel Five any day of the week), but I get the strong impression that they are just 'protecting the brand', and if degrading and objectionable content was going to benefit the brand, they'd be there like a bear.

And that's about as far as I'd got, but luckily Jill Psmith over at I Blame the Patriarchy is a faster thinker than I am. Even if you are not a regular patriarchy blamer, you'll rarely find a more sharply written blog on this subject or indeed any other, and I can thoroughly recommend More Adventures with the Antithesis of Enlightenment as One Of Those Posts I Can Only Dream Of Writing.

Enjoy.

joella

* I hate this use of the word 'adult'.
** A more 'obviously' feminist reading list can be provided on request.

In which we acknowledge the possibility of spring, and consider that we may not live to see it

Not being funny or anything, but I fucking hate February. And this one's turning out more vicious than most. The real freeze combined with the pay freeze = less money just when you need more. The end of January wasn't quite beans on toast, but only because I had a Significant Birthday and allowances were made.

And I never quite got back into my (already not much more than desultory) exercise routine - weekly yoga, weekly-ish swimming, bit of cycling round the place - after I had that chunk cut out of my foot. It's a dangerous thing for the middle-aged to lose their routines. Disaffection spreads, and so do midriffs.

A wise woman looked at the two of us and suggested snowdrop therapy. We looked at each other and figured it was worth a go. And so it was that we bundled up late on a frosty morning and headed over to Welford Park.

A note for the under 60s: you will stand out like a sore thumb. But it is a remarkable place and I thoroughly recommend it. Snowdrops do their thing for a scant month of the year, and to dedicate your whole grounds to them takes serious class. Which they have at Welford Park, as well as lots of soup, cake and jam. Oh, and sausages. It's like a day trip to a pre-war universe.

I also got to play with the camera on my new iPhone, which is basic but which delivered some pleasing results.

But I was also wearing sunglasses (it was sunny, but also a bit hailing) because I had a headache. And I have had a headache, on and off, for the last fortnight. It's probably a virus, and the case of dark, dark red Australian wine that my dad sent me for my birthday* probably hasn't helped.

But there have been days of lying in a darkened room, necking codeine and clutching my temples, shouting at people I quite often want to shout at but normally manage not to, and general low-to-medium grade misery. I went to the doctor, who took some blood to check for various terrifying brain conditions, but said that it was probably indeed a virus and would go away in due course.

In the small bursts of energy I get when I don't think I'm dying of a terrifying brain condition, I have been doing spring anticipation activities like planting garlic, darning jumpers, changing the bed (not something that can be contemplated while there's no chance of line drying) and cleaning the oven.

And, like the birds and the bees, I wait.

joella

* The last two bottles left are both called Willy Willy. I think there's probably some Freudian reluctance stopping me opening them. But I expect I'll get over it shortly.

Accounting for taste

While I believe it's healthy not to live in a pigeonhole, I also acknowledge that rhyme and reason do not appear to figure in some of my lifestyle choices.

On one hand, I wouldn't dream of buying salad dressing in a bottle, and have four kinds of oil (three olive, one walnut), five kinds of vinegar, three kinds of mustard and two kinds of sugar to hand when I want to make some. On another, I will happily eat white bread sandwiches filled with iceberg lettuce, pickled beetroot, crisps and salad cream. On a third hand, I just bought myself a silk tunic dress in the Toast sale. On a fourth, I wear a dress about four times a year. There's a fifth hand, where I want to live naked by a Finnish lake and smoke my own fish*, and a sixth where I want to put on a lot of black eyeliner, drink a lot of Cinzano and smoke a lot of cocktail Sobranies to a backdrop of arty black and white photos and minimalist electropop.

I read serious novels, and fat books of social history and feminist politics, but then I read borderline-dodgy crime fiction, collections of comic strips, and books about growing vegetables. Top of my last.fm most-listened-to artists list are Ani DiFranco, Nick Cave, Billy Bragg and PJ Harvey, but scroll down a little and you'll find Duran Duran... scroll down a little further and you'll find Meat Loaf**.

This all confuses me sometimes. I like to think - especially at my advanced age - that I choose what to consume for a range of reasons, most of them sensible - what do I like, what can I afford, what is good for me, what is made well, what am I politically comfortable with. I got taught how to think about stuff, and I do. But then there's also what you grew up with, what you seek out in times of trouble, what you retreat to when you want comfort, and what's as much about pleasurable vice as about sensible virtue. Basically, I think it's about living with the sum of your parts.

Which is why, last night, I found myself, for the first time since the early 1980s, in a Badedas bath. It's not all Neal's Yard, this life. And amen to that.

joella

*As one of my favourite recent Twitter tags put it, #notaeuphemism

**Most of the Meat Loaf plays, I suspect***, are me standing on a chair late at night singing Modern Girl into a hairbrush or playing air guitar to Bat Out of Hell, but still.

*** I typed that, then thought, hang on, this is the internet. I don't need to suspect, it knows. And I was right.

Spotty Herberts

I basically don't buy things very often. At least, not difficult things that involve conversations with customer service people in call centres. But then I have just had a Significant Birthday, which brought with it several Significant Presents.

I am not knocking the Significant Presents, they are excellent and amazing and generally not things I would ever have bought for myself, and I feel somewhat overwhelmed at their number and Significance, but a couple of them, the Most Significant, have involved needing to talk to Spotty Herberts. Some of them a long way away and very unlikely to be called Herbert.

Spotty Herbert Encounter #1. My beloved bought me an iPhone. I didn't even know I wanted an iPhone till I got one, but already I don't know how I got by without being able to lie in bed, check my email, watch iPlayer, pop bubbles, update Facebook, renew my library books and call my mother all at the same time. He got me an Orange one (well, it's white, but you know what I mean) because I am already have an Orange contract and he thought that would be straightforward. Which it should be, right?

So I called Orange and asked them to transfer my number from my existing contract to my new contract. 'So,' said spotty Herbert, somewhere in (I'm guessing) Bangalore, 'you want to upgrade your handset to an iPhone?'. No, no, a thousand times no, I said. I already have an iPhone! I just want you to move my number. I don't want this smelly old contract anymore, I want this shiny new one, with free internet for, like, ages.

We weren't getting anywhere, and eventually he transferred me to a 'colleague', somewhere more like Aberdeen. Which was an improvement, except that she (let's call her spotty Sherbert) told me they would have to send me a new SIM card. But I already have one! I said. In fact I have two! Can't you just move the number? Or move the details from one to the other? Or something?

We can't just go changing things willy nilly, she said. We have to send you a new SIM card, and then you have to choose your animal.

I have a bad feeling about this. And about the fact that it takes 30 freaking days to send a new SIM card. This is how they make you give a month's notice on the smelly contract you didn't want in the first place EVEN THOUGH you are already paying over in the shiny corner for another contract. What a load of old shit.

So for the time being I tweet on one phone and text on another. That's convergence for you.

Spotty Herbert Encounter #2. My mother offers me perfect eyesight for my Significant Birthday, on the grounds that she didn't manage to give it to me first time round (though I think we're all clear that blind-as-bat-itis comes from the other side of the gene pool). I have never given the possibility of perfect eyesight much thought, though it's a seriously cool prospect, and I wander into Boots opticians to enquire, where spotty Sherbert looks at me as if I am mad and says 'laser what?'.

Fortunately one of her colleagues steps in and tells me that Boots sold its laser eye surgery business to Optical Express, and tells me where Optical Express is. So I go to Optical Express, where spotty Herbert says I can have an assessment straight away. Oh, I say. Well, I've got contact lenses in, can you give me something to put them in?

He checks with his colleague, who tells me that actually I can't have an assessment until I have three clear contact lens-free days. I look to spotty Herbert to take the rap, and bless him, he does, and explains that it's his first week. I make an appointment for six days later and hope that it won't be the laser-person's first week, or my eyeballs might end up in space.

The next day, I get a call from a number I don't recognise. Twice. I Google the number to find out that it's Optical Express, and that several thousand people who have no interest in laser eye surgery seem to be seriously pissed off about the calls they get from this number every single day. I start getting these calls too. I don't answer them. They don't leave a message.

On Saturday, two days before my assessment, they call again, and I am on a bus, two pints and a Steampunk exhibition up, so I answer.

Why do you want laser eye surgery? says spotty Sherbert in a thick Scottish accent (I think she might be moonlighting for Orange). Well, I say, I've been walking into things since I was 10 and I fancy a change.

'That's fantastic, that's great', she says.

Then she asks if it's ok to ask me some questions about myself to save time on the day. No, I say. I'm on a bus.

The form I fill in before my assessment includes questions about my mental health (I say it's fantastic! it's great!) and family history. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to answer such questions over the phone to someone they cannot see, who would in all likelihood greet an admission of anything from postnatal depression to paranoid schizophrenia with mindless platitudes.

ANYWAY. The man who tested my eyesight and squirted air at my eyeballs, and the other man who assessed my general awareness, suitability, and ability to absorb the information that their 'from £395 per eye' figure is a figure that applies to precisely nobody who might ever be blind enough to want to get someone to stick a laser in their eye, were all perfectly credible, professional and likeable. I was mildly annoyed that they asked me to fill in their customer service feedback survey while still not able to see very well from the strange drops they put in your eyes, but luckily I can more or less touch type. I also guess that their evil marketing people know how to Google, as do many of the people who are considering getting their eyes lasered.

I discussed the proliferation of spotty Herberts, Sherberts, and Dilberts with my dad. These things would be enough to put him off, and they are certainly enough to piss me off. But this is the 21st century, and this is our version of Adam Smith's division of labour. I think if their surgical outcome stats were not excellent, we'd know about it.

I'm thinking RyanAir. I may (and indeed I do) loathe everything about how they do business, but they're not going to hire shit pilots are they? That would be a bad business decision. I will never fly RyanAir again, but that was nothing to do with the flying bit and everything to do with the customer service bit.

Additionally, I only plan to get my eyes lasered once, and the important part of the experience is the bit where someone zaps me in a vulnerable place. And if I'm not happy just before that point, I'll be saying 'cool your lasers, I'm offski'. I once had to have my cervix lasered -- which was not (technically) an elective process, and I still remember the deal I had to make with the devil so I wouldn't shoot off the table and run like the wind. My cervix has been fine for 15 years now, so I like to think I'd know if I felt spotty S/Herbertism had penetrated too far.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I like the post-modern world much. The modern one was always a bit blurry, but while blurry can hide a multitude of sins, for sure, it can also create space to trust that people will do the right thing in the right way. To be continued.

joella

So, how am I doing?

This photo was taken when I was 20. It's one of my favourites. I look young and happy and indefatigable, but also more or less fully formed. There aren't many photos like this, certainly not of me.

I had a party for my 20th birthday. In those days you designed your invitation by hand, then photocopied it up onto a sheet of A4, then bought coloured paper or card, duplicated your A4 onto multiple sheets, chopped them up with a guillotine, and put them in the internal post. I can still remember the invite: it said 'please come and help celebrate the fact that I will never be a teenage mother'.

And these days, when I am making an important choice, I don't ask myself what Jesus would do. And nor do I make decisions based on what's easiest, what's expected, what's the least difficult, least boat-rockiest thing to do right now. Instead, I think about the woman in this photo and try to make sure I'm not letting her, or the people who gave her the space and freedom to be herself, down. And generally, yeah, I think I've done pretty well on that front, though no prizes for guessing what one of those important choices has turned out to be.

Tomorrow, I'm going to be 40. I'm not about to invite my friends to celebrate the fact that I will never be a mother at all. We celebrate motherhood, we don't celebrate its opposite, even when it's freely chosen.

And I think that's ok. There are enough children in the world who know they weren't wanted without reminding them that some of us are better at not having them. And now I am 40, I know that most women want children, and that's something to be celebrated too. If my mother hadn't wanted me, I wouldn't be here, and hell, that would be a tragedy.

But me, I made my choice, and it was the right one for me. So I raise a glass of posh Sauvignon Blanc to humanity and turn up the Internationale*. My 20 year old self would be cool with that, I think. Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.

joella

* Ignore the video, I hoped to find this version on Spotify but it was not to be.

Emerging from January blues

I'm ever so grateful to you lovey, said the little old lady.

Well, I said, thank you.

What I didn't say: thank you for waiting an extra week for me to come round given that I went into NGO X last Monday for Haiti stuff and on Tuesday I just couldn't face dealing with anything at all. Thank you for having an immaculate kitchen. Thank you for choosing a plumber to fit said immaculate kitchen who put proper isolators on your taps. Thank you for having a no-frills budget, resulting in an old-style mixer tap with washers, rather than one of those fancy ones with ceramic inserts that you have to go and find in a merchants somewhere. Thank you for leaving me to it rather than watching.

I knocked a fiver off for an easy job, and turned the water pressure down a bit on her cold tap so it didn't splash all over her immaculate kitchen.

She said it was so nice to see women branching out and could she have my card.

I think that's what you call a win-win situation.

joella

Unprecedented cross-posting. Because it's worth it.

As usual, Facebook asks me what's on my mind.

Well. NGO X (Google image here: http://bit.ly/50mgFh), supported by thousands (millions?) of ordinary British people, plus the government we all elected, is now able to provide clean water to tens of thousands of other people who currently desperately need clean water.

Meanwhile the leader of the BNP (BBC article here: http://bit.ly/4EeMX6) sees these other people as 'rioting ingrates'. I hope I can trust these same thousands (millions?) of ordinary British people to keep these fuckers from winning any elected seat ever again.

That is what is on my mind.

joella

Yes we tin

I know brands are basically bad*, and that American ones, being the biggest, are the baddest of all.

But I've just got back from New York, and having stood in awe before this, I can't help but feel really sad about this.

joella

* Naomi Klein often gets right on my nerves, but I think this is a great article.

To freeze or not to freeze?

Everything hangs on the weather at the moment. And the BBC weather forecast for Oxford tonight and for the next five days is unprecedentedly ... Random? Diverse? Terrifying? Anyway, it goes like this: Fog. Sunny. Grey Cloud. Sunny Intervals. Heavy Snow. Heavy Rain.

Glad that's clear then.

joella