The prime of Polly Jean Harvey

I am, as I said, officially off sick, so all day I stuck to both the letter and the spirit: stayed in bed till 12 dozing and reading, went to the shop in my slippers for eggs so M could augment the protein content of lunch, did a smidgeon of work for one of my favourite colleagues, read the Guardian on the sofa and dozed a bit more.

But tonight was the night PJ graced us with her presence, so come 7 I dressed up to show off my blood test bruises (left) and bravely walked down the hill with the boys to see one of England's finest rock stars play one of England's finest venues.

I don't have words for her fabulousness. Physically, she is tiny but anything but unassuming: she was wearing a little yellow dress, high red heels, big black hair and a huge Z-shaped guitar. She does primary colours and minor chords. She's a year older than me and easily the coolest female member of my cohort.

By that statement I am not necessarily saying that the coolest member of my cohort is male -- that's up for debate -- but she is an almost uniquely cool woman performer in the sense that if every man on earth were wiped out tomorrow by an act of god, I don't believe her stage persona would change one iota. (Though she'd have to get a new band.) She's a girl, for sure, and that shapes her music, maybe even defines it, but she doesn't let it limit it.

She makes me feel like a natural woman.

Less gender-obsessed but equally gushing review from the BBC here.

joella

Near death experience

I'm feeling better than I was. I'm not off my food anymore, but I still break out in cold sweats a few times a day and have almost zero patience. I feel a bit like Jack Dee when he admitted to Vanessa Feltz on Celebrity Big Brother that he could be an "oppressive presence". I wouldn't want to live with me. Or work with me -- as evidenced by the fact that my director last week told me in no uncertain terms to go to the doctor.

She's not someone you ignore, so, despite coming from the two aspirin and an early night school, this morning saw me sitting in a waiting room along with several dozen old women making hideous noises of one kind or another.

Everything was running very late -- I think they had a tricky customer who needed a cup of tea and a lie down -- and after half an hour I nearly walked out. This was partly because I thought, all these people are iller than me, I never wanted to come here in the first place, but mostly because there was an old bag in the corner whose particular brand of hideous noise was talking about immigrants coming 'over here' when there's 'no room'.

'I mean, why don't we build hospitals and schools in their countries, then they could go home'. I buried my nose deeper into Hello! thinking SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU AWFUL WOMAN, then thinking, no, I am still totally intolerant, so I am still a bit ill, I better hang on for the doctor.

Which was a good thing, as for the first time in my life I got a sick note. She signed me off for a week, with (probably) post-viral exhaustion, but took some blood to test for potential nasties I may have picked up in South Africa. Personally, I think I had it before I went, as I remember being in a fairly bad mood then as well.

Anyway, then I went to work to sort things out so I could come home and be signed off. For a Catholic I have a very Protestant work ethic. Four hours later I set off on my bicycle. Two minutes later, I stopped to ring B, as I was passing her house and thought I might drop in to say hello as she is on her own with a baby most afternoons.

There was no answer, so a couple of minutes later I set off again. By the time I reached Cowley Road, about 3.45, I was feeling a little green and shaky, and this was not helped by the fact the road was closed.

I detoured up Iffley Road and cut down Temple Street. On Cowley Road there was an ambulance and police cars, a bus and, ominously, a bicycle. And no way past. A big green sheet held up round someone lying on the road, and I could see paramedics doing cardiac massage. I went back down Temple Street, my own heart beating faster, wanting to ring M and say 'it's not me, don't worry, it's not me', but not doing because why would he know it was anyone?

But it was someone. She was on a bike, she got hit by a bus and she died. I don't know who she was yet, or what happened, but I missed being where she was by minutes. Would I have been there if I hadn't stopped to ring B?

I always wear a helmet, but today I left it at home by accident. If I had been there, I would have been unusually vulnerable, with my naked head and my throbbing blood test arm and my greenish tinge.

There are so many ways to feel vulnerable in this world, even when you live in a safe part of it. I am reminded of that bit in 1984, about how the realisation of your utter insignificance in the scheme of things is psychologically unbearable. Women getting killed by buses while cycling down Cowley Road is a little glimpse of that in a society where, on the whole, we experience little random violence.

*subdued*
(But then I am officially poorly)

joella

Hot topics chez joella

I'm worried that I appear only to talk about shoes and music. I don't only talk about shoes and music, but I only have clear views on shoes and music, so they are easier to cover in the shortish mildly alcoholic rants that make up most of joella's conversation.

But exercising the household and associates at the moment are:

1. Iraq. Obviously. How can this be happening and Donald Rumsfeld still be smirking his smirk on taxpayers' money? And how much do those photos owe to white trash pornography?
2. Gaza. Obviously. How can a debate have shifted so far to one side that Colin Powell saying, hang on actually this isn't a great thing to be doing guys if you don't mind me saying so makes headlines? Moving the middle ground to an extreme, (like Thatcher did in the 80s), so the locus of debate moves to encompass what would previously have been unthinkable, now *that's* what nightmares - and human rights abuses - are made of.
3. The relationship between self acceptance and empowerment, and what happens if it's not the one you thought it would be. This is a slow burning debate, following a disturbing article I read about the growth in eating disorders in black South African women after democracy. "If your position in society changes, what happens to your identity?".
4. And a related issue... getting older and (arguably) increasingly freakish. My position in society changes even if society does not. Yet my cohort is changing society all the time just by existing. Is there a double hermeneutic in here somewhere?

That's quite enough, and Morrissey is on Later, so back to music. I have to go watch.

joella

Legal peer to peer = LCD

... where LCD stands for lowest common denominator.

I *want* to download music legally. I've stopped downloading from audiogalaxy et al because I can't bear the spyware, adware and general invasiveness, and I do see the point of copyright. I am prepared to pay for my music. I even have a track wishlist -- tracks I know I want but can't justify buying the albums, or they're not on albums.

But when will such a legal service exist? ITunes, by all accounts I have heard, is great for fans of million-selling artists but stops there. And frankly, such fans are already pretty well served. I don't have a problem getting a reasonably priced copy of the latest chart album I happen to want, and can't see that I ever will.

But what about the tracks that you could only *find* on Napster, back in the day? Who will sell us those?

Napster.co.uk has just launched itself, all puffy and hyped and making millionaires of its protagonists. And I say, arse to you and your capitalist sensibilities. You're about as alternative as Avril Lavigne listening to my mum's Elkie Brooks CD. See left for evidence.

joella

Kamikaze you don't touch me

PJ Harvey is coming to town! I can't wait. She is the coolest woman in rock since, ooh, Chrissie Hynde. Or Patti Smith. Or maybe forever. As a rock star, she does that thing that Uma Thurman's character does in Kill Bill, of not pandering to anyone. She's not waiting for validation. She is alone and iconic and supremely, awesomely cool, in a way that, frankly, women don't get to be very often.

*And* she got to shag Nick Cave. She's the only rock star I have a poster of.

joella

Unease = progress

I got home this evening full of lingering post viral malaise to find our student neighbours playing David Gray on repeat through bad hi-fi equipment out of an upstairs window.

I wanted to scream YOU ARE STUDENTS FOR FUCK'S SAKE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING PLAYING DAVID FUCKING MIDDLE OF THE ROAD FUCKING BANALITY PERSONIFIED FUCKING GRAY? WHAT'S NEXT FUCKING TRAVIS?

Instead I went out and got drunk with some splendidly cynical friends, then came home and put on Exit Planet Dust (on our vastly superior hifi), which is an album with two extremely strong resonances.

Firstly it is nearly the soundtrack to my first cocaine experience, specifically the moment the room went crazy and we were all bouncing all over the place. It was like a door to another plane was suddenly opened and we all burst through it together. (I think what was actually playing was Dig Your Own Hole, but it could easily have been EPD).

Secondly it was on one particular night as my last relationship fell apart and I smoked too much dope and drank too much whisky with my Significant Ex. The Brother who was going to work it out began to loom as a monk who had been suggested to me as someone who might help a lapsed Catholic work through her issues. While proposed with the best possible intentions, this offer filled me with horror, and in a strange way the song still does.

So all in all it's an album of uneasy listening, and on top of that the beats will keep you up and at it, or at least awake.

How much more better than David Gray could it *be*?!

joella

Early onset summertime blues?

The weather's turned all gorgeous, the evenings are stretching out, and I keep bursting into tears.

This could be the Freudian side effect of ultra honesty in coming out as not a summer lover. It could be latent something or other at not fulfilling my biological destiny and going forth to increase and multiply. It could be delayed reaction to getting a wee glimpse of the devastation that HIV is wreaking on South Africa.

But I think I've worked out that it's because I'm still not well. I came back with a fever, and that's gone, but I'm not hungry. And I'm *never* not hungry. As soon as I've had my lunch, I'm dreaming about my tea. I spend hours in supermarkets. I read cook books in bed. I shop well, I cook well and I eat *very* well, and hey, I have the belly to prove it.

But today I forgot to have lunch. Something's not right. So I shall cry in abundance and wait for it to pass.

joella

Medieval is the new black

How refreshing to read that the pope has *canonised* a woman who refused cancer treatment that would have saved her life because it would have involved terminating her pregnancy.

What century are we living in?

She had the baby, then died. I'm sure her other children were just delighted.

I lapsed as a Catholic at the age of about 13, about the same time I became a vegetarian and a feminist. I lift my hat to my younger self. I like to think that in 20 years time I might feel the same about the decisions I am taking now, but maybe I am getting less cool as I get older.

joella

The best things in life are, um...



joella

Warning: deep (yet simplistic) post

I really enjoyed reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The main protagonist has Asberger's Syndrome. He doesn't understand statements that aren't literal, he can't read feelings, he can't eat anything that is yellow or brown (I do identify with that part). He functions, in fact he is extremely bright, but in a very specific and inflexible way. He doesn't adapt well.

He needs structure and routine in order to cope with life, yet he finds his surroundings infinitely fascinating. Why would anyone go abroad on holiday, he asks, when there is a lifetime of things to discover just in this house?

He does have a point. I know people who have never left these shores, and many more who have never been further than the Brit-heavy resorts of Greece and Spain or the family- and pocket-friendly campsites of Brittany. I don't believe their lives, their feelings, are any less complex than mine. You can live your whole life in an English market town -- or indeed a village in the middle of Asian or African nowhere -- and still experience the full gamut of human emotion. I don't buy the simple life = simple people equation, never have.

But if you do that, you won't have a global perspective. You won't be able to place yourself - as an individual, as a woman or a man, as a white or a black person, a rich or a poor person - on as broad a canvas, as wide a scale, as you can if you do travel, or at least if you travel in order to better understand the world or improve your or your family's chances in it, rather than to get a tan, buy a T-shirt or have sex with a teenage girl.

If you don't want a global perspective, that's fine. Not everybody does. But I want to know where my clothes are made, where my coffee comes from, how the system that keeps so many people poor while others make millions actually works. I want to know where the hope is, where the world is getting better rather than worse. And I want to know exactly how lucky I am, how many blessings I need to count, and what I can do to make a difference.



With all this as a prelude, I am struggling to process my feelings about my trip to South Africa. I've been in poorer countries but never one so menaced by HIV and never one so menacing to women. There are some issues we have to tackle as a species, not as a nation, and I feel South Africa has them in sharp relief. Maybe Africa as a whole, I don't know, one week in one country doesn't tell you much. But it does tell you something.

Or does it? I shared my taxi to the airport with an American couple who had been in Africa for five weeks, travelling south from Victoria Falls to Cape Town. One of them said to our driver, as we drove past Langa, one of Cape Town's black townships, where (alongside some relatively affluent and lots of perfectly adequate housing) there are shacks lining the freeway: "So, these houses looks kinda interesting, what's going on here?". Later, the other said "We've seen a lot of condom ads -- do you guys have a HIV problem?"

Which goes to show, if you are a doofus, you can travel as far as you like and you won't learn shit. I have met some great citizens of the US of A, but on balance, I think I'd prefer it if they stayed home. Troops included, natch.

I also came back feeling that in the big scheme of things, what does it matter if I start smoking again, but I'm fighting that one.

joella

Back but a bit wobbly

... I'm not well. Flew back from SA overnight on Sunday. Slept quite well thanks to borrowed Valium, spent Monday slightly dazed but essentially ok, then woke up Tuesday and BANG, stomach cramps, temperature, the works.

Getting over it I think (well I must be, as I've just had a 'medicinal' duty free Jamesons), but still not at all right.

But while I am thinking about it, and before I forget:

Highlights
- All our meetings with NGOs, members of Parliament, municipal government officials, academics, activists
- Realising the level of gender awareness in policy and practice in SA
- The hospitality of our South African colleagues
- Visiting Langa township and Robben Island
- Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens
- The food, the wine, the weather

Lowlights
- Realising just how utterly overwhelming the HIV/Aids pandemic is in South Africa. I thought I had an idea, but I didn't have a clue. It's unbelievable
- Realising how much of this is down to gender inequality and violence against women and girls, including rape and refusal to use condoms
- Seeing the poverty and the inequality that comes with the legacy of apartheid and 40% unemployment
- Two of our group getting mugged, the rest of us not being able to stop it (though the alarm was raised and they ran off without anything)

On balance, I was glad to get home, though it really was a fascinating experience.

joella

Sister woman have you heard?

... so here I am in Johannesburg. Just the name of the place is so loaded, it´s weird to actually be here. My colleagues and I are meeting South Africans who are working on gender budgeting. I won´t go into what that is, not least because Í´m only just getting my head round it, but the South African government has a far more explicit commitment to gender equality than does our own, and one of the reasons for that is, they say, because they could start afresh ten years ago when democracy was won.

It´s unbelievable that it was only ten years ago. I can´t imagine what it must have been like here before that.

But even so, we are learning that you have to keep on keeping on. A long term activist said to us yesterday, "when the President talks about gender equality, it´s not as if he has absorbed it from the air".

joella

Travels

I'm just about to leave for Cape Town. Must feed the tomatoes before I go.

Hope I can blog there, otherwise back in a week.

joella

Make your own Mr Man

I used to love the Mr Men, but only the old school ones -- Mr Tickle, Mr Bump, Mr Messy, Mr Uppity and of course Mr Strong.

I had no time for the brand extensions like Mr Brave and Mr Perfect, and I think I must have had nascent feminist sensibilities by the time the Little Misses came along, as they pissed me off right from the start. Who wanted to identify with creatures so obviously derivative?

But I take it all back, now I have created my own on MrMen.com (click Mr Bump).

joella

How fragile we are

I may have used that line before (and of course it wasn't mine to start with), but it keeps coming back to me. Not just in our bodies, although those too: I am more thinking of the world at large.

I have an increasing fascination with the 'built environment', as it is called in the regeneration business. Things may look shiny and new when you build them / instal them / extend them / replace them, but it's all on the surface. Undo a few screws, take off a few bits of casing or some cladding, and the dirty innards appear.

And unlike the cathedrals of yesteryear, not much of it will last long. Consumer culture has some obscene aspects. For years I've wished (on and off) that I could wander in the past, see what the world looked like before there were cars or electricity or millions and billions of people. But I'm beginning to wish I could wander in the future too, see what post industrial meltdown looks like. Will we sort it out before it's too late?

Pensive times. But on the bright side, I am now on the first page of Google hits for joella, just after the story of the first person ever to get their sex changed on their birth certificate. Result.

joella

Eat flowers and pulp babies

Heard Babies by Pulp on the radio. M wondered where it was from. Lazily searched Amazon, with this result:



No! That's not what I meant! I'll have the pro-lifers round here in a minute if I'm not careful.

joella

"Working from home"

Today, I am working from home. I am getting lots done here in my pyjamas. It's very different here. I have had lentils for breakfast. I have waved my arms in the air a lot to Town Called Malice on 6Music. And I have spent longer than usual (usual being just long enough to press Delete) perusing the spam that makes it to my work email account.

Today it seems to be from people who write their evil messages in another language, Polish maybe, and then put it through an automatic translator. Hence

Exotic sex is urgently necessary for you!

1ncread1ably hooge and l0o0ng deek! (lots more in this vein)

and (my favourite)

Free yourself from kilograms promptly!

I think to free yourself from kilograms promptly, you buy drugs from a website, rather than taking the more sensible route of eating fewer lentils for breakfast, but to be honest I didn't investigate too closely.

joella

Great lost albums

The sun is out, the nights are long, the wine is cold and, as previously mentioned, my CD collection is all in one place for me to browse through at my leisure. I neglected to mention that it has also been alphabetised by M, one of the great altruistic things one person can do for another. Our collections remain separate of course. We're not *married* or anything.

All this, plus the fact that the CDs are near the hifi and all the bits of the hifi work and the speakers are great and in the same room as the PC, has allowed me to excavate corners of my musical history that have lain neglected for many years. When I can get past my boyfriend's obsession with Squarepusher, that is.

Anyway... albums de la casa currently include everything I have by Gil Scott Heron (not a lot, but enough) -- surely one of the greatest urban songwriters of all time -- and Halfway between the gutter and the stars, perfect getting ready to go out music. Tonight we are off to see the strangely named Múm. They are from Iceland, like Björk and Sigur Ros. Their tour bus was outside the venue by lunchtime today -- Scandinavians are *so* punctual.

joella

Viva La Vega

I've just had J and K round for dinner -- J is about to have her first baby, and K has just come back to work after maternity leave for baby number two. Which isn't to reduce them to the fruits of their loins, it's just where they are at. We had a lovely evening, but I struggled slightly with the music.

The household's CDs have recently been decanted into purpose built drawers, so I can scan my whole collection in a way that hasn't been possible for many years. This also allows me to run my fingers idly down the spines of the jewel cases, and sometimes that's how I choose. And tonight, after a couple of duff choices, my fingers found for me Suzanne Vega's Nine Objects of Desire, which was just the perfect album for the occasion.

I love it when that happens, and I love it more when you hear an album again that once spent months on constant rotation and you remember why it was that you didn't want to listen to anything else at that point in your life.

I think Suzanne Vega's first album is one of the best albums of all time. I know every inch of every track and I will love it till I die. But Nine Objects belongs to a time and a place and I haven't listened to it for years. Yet after J & K left I filled up my wine glass and put it on all over again. If they had Booker Prizes for albums I think it would win one.

joella

PS I am v pleased with my title this evening, reminds me of the days when writing headlines was part of my job. Almost not worth posting anything else. Why use 50 words when three etc.

I feel like plumbing tonight

Well, actually, I don't -- I feel like shit. If I felt even a bit more like shit I would be at home in bed reading trashy magazines and keeping housemate S company, who is confined to bed having bust her Achilles tendon.

But I feel just enough not like shit to be at work. This is the worst of several worlds, I find.

Having said that, I will be going home early to neck Lemsip and muster limited resources to start my Advanced Plumbing Course tonight. I'm going to miss two of the classes but I intend to make the most of the other eight.

joella

Time will show the dirty shagger

About a year ago I had some 'gender training' with my (then) new colleagues. We had to bring along an object which illustrated something we felt about gender.

I took a copy of 'Hey Yeah Right Get A Life' -- a book of short stories about the massive impact having children has on women and their relationships with a) their partners and b) the world in general.

My (male) colleague M brought a sarong, which represented David Beckham, who, he argued, was the most positive thing to happen to modern masculinity in years. What a role model -- sexy as hell, fit as a butcher's dog, well developed feminine side and... monogamous.

Like chuff, it transpires. Maybe no big surprise, but what *is* surprising is the scale and reach of the disappointment. A whole society sighs. We all had a little bit of hope invested in the man. Where can we put it now?

joella

April showers

It absolutely pissed it down today... the day when a) 35,000 people ran 26 miles each for 35,000 reasons, and b) the day I had set aside for gardening, as I have done fuck all out there since autumn.

Let's focus on me, those 35,000 others can write their own weblogs if they like.

1. It was not only raining, I had a sore throat.
2. There were sweet peas and tomato plants and fuchsias and impatiens (groovy pink and white ones, I normally hate them, but I made an exception this year) sitting patiently in tiny pots just ready to be transplanted into bigger ones, after my annual outing to Milletts Farm with A&D.
3. Pots are particularly important this year as the rest of the garden is going to be 'restructured' (sounds a bit too much like work for comfort, but this kind will be worth the money and nobody will lose their job).

There was nothing else for it, I had to get out there. M valiantly came too, and planted up our old kitchen sink with mint and parsley and coriander. In fact he was the wetter, as I did some of my potting in the shed, but after an hour we were soaked to the skin and freezing cold with it. I am only just getting the feeling back in my hands.

It better be bloody worth it, that's all I can say.

joella

Other thoughts for the week

Books which changed my life -- following a programme on Radio 4 last week.

1. The Women's Room, by Marilyn French.
"I'm bright, you're bright. Maybe we're even brilliant. Our aspirations are equal to our intelligence and our backgrounds. We want to make it in their fucking world."

That's a direct quote from, as I recall, page 521. Or maybe 518. I used to know the whole paragraph by heart but I don't anymore.

I was *exactly* the right age to read that book. By literary standards, it is pants. As a feminist classic, it has its place, but it's deeply naff. But I read it (and -- even cooler -- I stole it in order to read it) as a 17 year old, and I was a 17 year old whose mother wouldn't have read it because she was the wrong generation in the wrong country.

The people who wrote in to Radio 4 about this book changing their lives were women who had read it while unhappily married, and it was one of the things which gave them the strength to leave those unhappy marriages.

That is great. But I was 17, and I read it before I had a chance to become unhappily married. And it is one (of many, I hasten to add) reasons I have never married at all.

It was a book -- one of the first books, one of the first anythings -- which made me see there was another way to live your life, along with Spare Rib (dying at the time), and The Female Eunuch (dated at the time), and The Beauty Myth (brand new at the time), all of which I discovered around 17, 18, and none of which I coped with terribly well, given that I was a slightly slutty Blackpool teenager.

But you don't find these things if you're not looking for them, and I maintain to this day they it was a lot easier to be a teenage feminist then than it is now. And I feel these days that I have built up a world view that is consistent with my attitudes and behaviour (and vice versa) in a way that I could only have dreamed of then, but kind of wanted to.

I don't think my 17 year old self would dislike my 34 year old self. In fact, I think she'd be pretty proud of her. And the same goes the other way round.

Not all marriages are unhappy, of course. It's my parents' 38th wedding anniversary today. I will never have a 38th wedding anniversary and my hat is off to them both. Happy anniversary, parentals.

joella

Thought for the week 1

I've had a bit of a heated debate with someone recently about the benefits of deliberate succinctness over fullness and frankness (to paraphrase [arf]). On my side I brought in Mark Haddon (author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time, ostensibly a murder mystery written by a boy with Asberger's Syndrome), who said in last week's Observer:

"The best question I ever received came from a boy who asked whether I did much crossing out. I explained that most of my work consisted of crossing out and that crossing out was the secret of all good writing."

I totally agree.

There can be such beauty in brevity -- but it is so hard to do well. Brevity can be exclusive, it can demand that you understand its context, but ooh, it can take your breath away. Ten words can speak thousands.

Here are some of my favourite examples:

1. Why am I sat here with Fatty and Spotty?
(Fran from Black Books when she goes to work in an office)
2. Does anyone want my long black leather coat?
(Jeremy's review of The Matrix Reloaded)
3. Stand where the fuck you like, as long as it's nowhere near me
(Melody Maker's review of Lenny Kravitz's Stand By My Woman)
4. Maggie Thatcher Ate My Future
(A tax paying 60s child wondering what happened to Cradle to Grave)
5. Everybody's making love or else expecting rain
(Bob Dylan: Desolation Row)

joella

Seeing red

Note to self: Pret a Manger serviettes do not make very good improvised sanitary protection.

This month I celebrate (if that's the right word) 20 years of menstruation. You'd think I'd *know* that sort of thing by now.

joella

Peer pressure

We were drinking last night with young Mr D, recently split from his fiancée.

Working on the (fairly self-evident) assumption that you can't stay in the first flush of love on a permanent basis, when the going gets tough you either get going or work at it. When you decide it's not worth working at anymore, you leave, unless the other person decides that first and you get left. The timing of the point at which someone decides it's not worth working at can depend on many factors, including culture, religion, age, laziness, self esteem and... peer pressure.

Most of the time, if you're over 25, the world appears to be stuffed with couples. Once you're over 30, most of the couples seem to be getting married and having babies. If you're not doing that, even if you're perfectly happy not doing that, have perfectly good reasons for not doing that, actively don't want to be doing that, you start to feel a bit like a freak, simply because everyone else is.

And couples (many not all, I hasten to add, lest I piss any independent thinking yet coupled people off) like to hang out with other couples. It's comforting. It's comfortable. It reassures that we are all happily doing the right couply thing.

Nobody likes it when a couple splits, least of all a long-established couple. It can shine a very harsh light on that which is dysfunctional or co-dependent, and makes people see their own relationship along the scale of worth working at / not worth working at a bit more brutally than is the case if you are popping round to hold each other's babies and have a nice barbecue.

Because there are few coupled people as excitingly on the edge as the newly single person, who can smoke in bed, live on gin and pistachio nuts, take Class As on a schoolnight and go home with strangers, while others have the same old argument about which DVD to rent on Friday night and whether the living room should be yellow or green.

I was at one end of that experience exactly six years ago. I had a wild few months, but mostly without the people who had made up the majority of my pre-split social circle. This was fine in the end if painful at the time... some people are your friends, some people are friends with half a couple, and you certainly find out which is which.

And last night I was at the other end, watching someone reflecting all that freedom, all those possibilities, and feeling that light of scrutiny. It's amazing how different your own situation can look from two extreme perspectives... I am used to feeling relatively unfettered, but in fact here I am with a mortgage and a next of kin. I also like to think I don't give too much weight to the attitudes and behaviours of others, but in fact the pack mentality is frighteningly strong in all of us. I studied enough psychology to know that, so who am I kidding?

It's a funny old world.

Today it was sunny, warm and benign. Six years ago it was snowing... I remember driving my little 2cv up Boars Hill and running around on the hillside catching snow on my tongue and taking up as much space as possible.

joella

Finding space to think

Too many people in the room. Can't blog properly. But leave it till tomorrow and the thoughts are gone.

1. Time to get out there and do something useful
2. Need to talk to my housemate S as stuff is all wonky round here. It won't be easy but it has to be better than this strange non-communicado, used to it as I am.
3. Must try to remember, not everyone thinks like me.
4. Must also try and remember, sometimes I scare people.
5. March resolutions never happened, but May ones just might. There's got to be some way of getting through the summer (having come out as Not a Summer Lover).

joella

Easter on the estuary

No, not the Thames estuary, the Ribble estuary.

Thursday night: drive to Lytham. Manage to *miss* the new M6 toll road. How can you miss it? It's the biggest thing between here and Lancashire. The M6 is a very boring road. That is a very boring thing to say, but not as boring as the M6 is. Distracted myself by taking photos through the windscreen (NB I wasn't driving, before anyone rings the police).



Friday: Hung out with N&D and their gorgeous baby C -- it's a joy to see new parents a) away from home and b) in the pub. Most of them seem to disappear underground. Also wondered about the shops in Lytham (could find no actual shop called Exciter, despite a sign to same) and got too drunk thanks to midnight licence in the splendidly-named Cunninghams, where the fabulous Lisa was DJ-ing. She played We want your soul by Freeland, which had me dancing *on carpet* in front of my uncle. The shame.



Saturday: Spent a bit of time appreciating Lytham's traditional heritage and recent(ish) naffness



Oh, and her straightforward natural beauty.



Sunday: back down the toll road for gin. There are photos of both but I am running out of evangelical amateur photographer steam.

Moral of the weekend: it's good to go back to your roots, but it's also good to remember why you actually live in the branches.

More to say about writing and brevity, about The Books Which Changed My Life, and about driving a van to Amsterdam. All are Easter-related, but all need to be relegated to a later date. My boyfriend and his children are watching a boy band documentary. I don't have to go and watch it too, but I kind of want to. You take your bonding opportunities when you can in this life (cf roots thing above).

joella

"Working from home"

That's what I do when I have to think and when it all just gets too much. I also tend to start about an hour earlier then go for a bath in the middle of the morning, so everyone wins.

Sat down this morning to download all the stuff I sent to myself to work on.

There was an email from R beginning "Jo dear, just bring the tomato juice, I'll do the gin"

I'm so looking forward to Easter.

joella

Grumpety grump

On the plus side, I finally got rid of the adware pop up thing by installing Ad-Aware 6.

Also on the plus side, the purple tulips (left) are coming out in the garden, the berberis is flowering orange and the grape hyacinths are in their full blue glory. Oh and there are some lovely pale yellow narcissi. I never wanted a tasteful garden, which is just as well, as I haven't got one.

Actually, I feel better now. No time to be grumpy. Off for a nice bath and an early night.

joella

Random Sunday thoughts

1. Must get rid of the bloody virus we seem to have which pops up lots of evil ad windows in IE and crashes it every so often. Would move to Mozilla or Opera but neither supports the cleverer of the Blogger editing windows. So until can get rid of bloody virus, must 'post' at regular intervals while musing.

2. Old media will never die. Were it not for an article about blogging I read in today's Observer I might never have come across It's Wrong to Wish on Space Hardware. Its author isn't the world's best writer (bit longwinded for screen reading, imo) but he seems warm (if you disregard the Oasis fandom, always a danger sign) and interesting (if you disregard the football fandom, which I personally find tedious in the extreme) and it's certainly the only blog I've come across where every post starts with a Billy Bragg lyric. Can't be bad.

3. Never underestimate the importance of communication in any relationship. And don't be afraid to say what you want, even if it does involve trying to fix the guttering. You may only make the guttering worse, but you will nevertheless achieve something.

4. I should have stuck to my resolution to give up wine for Lent. I normally give up something fairly challenging, like crisps or cheese, and normally stick to it. Last year I didn't drink at all from New Year to Easter, and managed that ok, so I felt that this year giving up wine for Lent would be suitably difficult but not impossible. But I was wrong. I cheated after a mere three weeks, which is fairly pathetic, and have been pretty much ignoring the whole giving up wine thing ever since. Which is a shame, as wine does me in like no other drink. I had a fabulous Friday night in Glasgow with my friend A, but I needed dark glasses for the flight home on Saturday and proceeded to hide under a duvet for the rest of the day once I got there. I think it's to do with the delay between drinking wine and it catching up with you. For me it's too long, I can drink it faster than it hits me, and that's always dangerous.

5. Housemates can be weird, but you have to try and remember that they may think you are weird too.

joella

What the middle classes do on their holidays

Center Parcs is a strange strange place. But that mustn't stop you having a good time there. You are what you is. And if someone else's weekend was even a little weirder as a result, that's All For The Good.














Captions are in the alt tags -- hover to find out what was happening...

joella

Squirrels, rectangles, flotation and lots and lots of trees

I take it all back. Center Parcs is great, as long as you are in the right company. And this weekend, I was.

There are some photos to come -- I am so, so tired and have to go to bloody Manchester in the morning so can't be arsed to sort them now -- but highlights included the Japanese Steam Room, the lentil soup, M on Dave the horse, the custard doughnuts, watching the stars and getting stoned for the first time in about five years. (NB some of these are linked).

Lowlights included K's fractured toe (those wild water rapids are wild), C's breakdown on the M1 and G's car sickness, but most of these were on the way home.

Must sleep. Haven't had enough of that.

joella

I never took the advice in that book

Sometimes (not that often -- this is an egotistical process) I look at other people's blogs. Most people I know don't write them, or at least don't write interesting ones (though there are honourable exceptions) so I read the blogs of people I don't know. Which is kind of weird. But it was by doing this that I found I was far from the only person affected by Jonny Kennedy's life and death story (and don't forget the TV critics. They are people too.)

Which is all a long way round of saying that tonight I felt the need, after lots of red wine (and I was supposed to be giving wine up for Lent -- ARSE) to go back to my roots. Which is, when you're in your 30s and you're pissed, the music that a) saved your life and b) you were listening to when you were 17, to reference just two recent posts.

So I f0und myself singing along to every little word on Billy Bragg's Preaching to the Converted. But I only really put it on for a CD rendition of the songs on the Days Like These EP. Including Scholarship Is the Enemy of Romance.

I never understood it 20 years ago, and I certainly don't understand it now, but that doesn't make it any less fabulous. This weekend I will be playing Damon and Naomi to teenage girls. Maybe I'll try a bit of early Billy as well.

joella

Highs and lows of a long weekend Thursday

This week: chaos at work, lack of focus, mild panic, general frustration. Next week: a week of meetings in far flung corners of the country -- Premier Lodges with polyester sheets, curries on strange high streets with colleagues with complex dietary requirements, endless hours on Virgin Trains eating peanuts to stay alive and fighting old ladies for a seat.

So I was all set for an evening of indulgence. It started well with the Great Supermarket Guessing Game: cast your eye down the conveyor belt and have a competition (just with yourself if necessary but ideally with a companion) to guess what it will come to.

If I say so myself, I am *very* good at this. I don't count on the way round, I don't look back at the list (which anyway has been wildly deviated from). I just have a gut feeling.

Tonight's shop was a big one as we are self catering this weekend and feeding anywhere from six to twelve, depending. We went for cheap alcohol, but some premium items crept in there -- Roquefort (me), sunblush tomatoes (me again), a nice bottle of Riesling (M), sheep's milk yoghurt (bugger, me again). I scanned with my magic eye and said "A hundred and twenty".

"No... "said M. "A hundred and ten." It's always easier to go second, you just have to guess higher or lower. I stuck where I was and the tension mounted. It came to £122.54. How close was that for a guess on 62 items!

Drove home and had another competition with the £3.99 wine I chose and the £5.99 wine M chose. His definitely had the nicer bottle but mine won on both kitsch value (it was Black Tower Dry Riesling) and taste - it did taste cheap but it was clean and dry. I was impressed.

But then we watched The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off on Channel 4. There's nothing as sobering as watching someone's film of themself dying after thirty six years of pain.

It was brave television in a way, but it doesn't leave you with much of a place to put yourself. You need to know that there are mothers out there who would have aborted their children if they'd known what sort of life they'd have (and if there'd been foetal tests for the condition in 1966, which there weren't but there are now), and you need to hear those people and how they feel about their short, difficult lives, how they are like everyone else and how they are just not.

Next week it's about Thalidomide. There's a guy in the pub with tiny arms. He used to work where I used to work -- maybe he still does. I always say hello but I've never asked about his arms. There's a guy at work with no legs. I never asked about those either but someone told me he fell down the gap at a train station.

You can't take much for granted in this life can you? I think maybe I should have another wee drink before I go to bed.

joella

What I'm doing on my holidays

I'm a lucky girl this year. This weekend I'm off to Center Parcs with various members of my dysfunctional step- and extended family and friends. It will be weird, but I've booked in for a Volcanic Mud Detox Wrap and some pony trekking, so it should be enjoyable weird.

At the beginning of May I'm going to South Africa -- this is for work, but I'm still very excited as I've never been to Africa before unless you count Egypt, which I don't.

*Then* in June I'm going to Madeira for a week with my parentals and sistosa. Again, likely to be weird, but we had a lovely time last year. And they say the Botanical Gardens there are, like, amazing.

Then it's summer. I am not a big fan of summer days, but I do like summer nights, and I plan to have the garden sorted for outdoor eating this year with fairy lights and jasmine and Ganesha watching over us.

Miles might go off to India in September to volunteer at Gram Vikas. If he does, I will go on holiday there in December, but if not I want an autumn holiday somewhere warm... Syria maybe. I could do with getting myself on the road to Damascus, it might help me decide if I want to be a plumber.

Our introductory course finished today: bit of drain jetting (which distressed the yoga class no end), bit of earth wiring, bit of looking forward to the advanced course, can't wait.

Sometimes you just gotta look forward, and there's lots to look forward to.

joella

Songs That Saved Your Life

There was a feature running a couple of months ago on 6Music called Songs That Saved Your Life -- part of a wider BBC mental health awareness thing I think, and very interesting.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that a song had saved my life, but every now and again one comes along that saves my sanity, my soul, my sense of humour.

Yesterday was a lousy lousy day at work (I seem to be having too many of these at the moment). I had my headphones on and my head down when suddenly Liz Kershaw said "I can't be arsed to go and see Bob Dylan live anymore, he just murders his own songs. But on record, now that's a different matter..." and she played Love Minus Zero.

I turned it up, pushed my chair back, shut my eyes and smiled.

When I opened them again the answerphone was flashing, the email was blinking and someone was standing anxiously in the doorway, but for three minutes there something was saved.

joella

What is happening? It went all funny on me. There were things going bang all over the place and then it was quiet. Too quiet. Well, just a little bit on the quieter than is strictly ideal side.

(that was M blogging, I won't let him at it again)

What you do on a Monday when you drink more wine than you should

M had an idea. He decided we should play tunes we loved before we were 17. They had to be off albums not singles and they had to be things we hadn't listened to for at least several years...

1. He chose Cerdes (outside the gates of) by Procol Harum.
2. I chose Wham rap! (Enjoy what you do?) by Wham!
3. He chose My pink half of the drainpipe by the Bonzo Dog Band
4. I chose The passion by Billy Bragg
5. He chose Happiness is a warm gun by the Beatles
6. I chose Love is a stranger by the Eurythmics
7. He chose Set the controls for the heart of the sun by Pink Floyd
8. I chose Get up off our knees by The Housemartins
9. He chose Hullo der by Soft Machine
10. I chose Alive and Kicking by Simple Minds
11. He chose Magic bus (live version) by the Who (M: "This is about sex, isn't it? I thought it was about driving a bus.")
12. I chose I'm on Fire by Bruce Springsteen (A song I never listen to but which runs through my head surprisingly often)
13. He chose Around the Plinth by the Faces
14. I chose Marlene on the wall by Suzanne Vega
15. He chose I've seen all good people by Yes
16. I chose Come live with me by Heaven 17 (and then we went to bed)

We are so different.

joella

I love the smell of Milton in the evening

I have a lovely boyfriend. He's been having a bit of a crisis for about the last 18 months, and that can be hard to live with, but there seem to be green shoots of recovery, and every now and again he just really blows me away.

Messenger conversation today:-

M: Guess which household task I have just performed for the first time this year!
J: Um... cleaned the fridge (she said optimistically)? Dried the washing outside on the line (she said realistically)?
M: Er, yes, the washing one

It was a fairly grim day and I cycled home in less than sparkling humour. But when I arrived there was celeriac roasting, there were mushrooms having Roquefort put on them and there was broccoli boiling.

*AND* there were jars all over the side. Why? Because the *fridge had been cleaned*. It hadn't been wiped out with Milton, but nobody does that except me and my mother. So I did that. There's nothing like a fridge that smells of Milton, there really isn't. I was so happy.

Billy Bragg has lost his edge of late, but for many many years was pretty close to being my ideal man. And this line from The Short Answer pretty much has it:

"She said 'no amount of poetry can mend this broken heart, but you can put the Hoover round if you want to make a start'.

I thought then, and I think now, that that is one of the best lines of all time. I don't want smoked oysters and champagne on a Monday, I want a fridge that smells of Milton, a glass of wine in front of EastEnders and a pile of clean washing. And I have big respect for a man who understands that.

joella

A weekend of self loathing offset by further plumbing triumph

On the down side, this weekend I drank too much beer. I enjoyed it on Friday, though it had a few of the hallmarks of being a little on the desperate side. I did not enjoy my working week, put it that way, and I am not looking forward to the next one. But M and I went for some lovely Thai food, then went to the pub with C and his sixteen year old daughter.

She got in ok, she said nobody would really notice her as she was with three patently old enough to be drinking people, and she was right. But then she asked for a Malibu, and we rather cruelly made her drink pints of lager instead as nobody was prepared to go to the bar and order such an obviously underage drink. It was great fun. I like being out with people who have different stuff going on.

I didn't enjoy it so much on Saturday, though I did have a lovely time with R&J. The scary thing is I managed to get lost on the way to R's house, because I was already a bit pissed. It's about a ten minute walk but it took me 45 minutes. I have been living in East Oxford for six of the last ten years. How did I start at Londis and end up at the bus garage when I was supposed to be going to Iffley Road? I terrify myself sometimes. I need a GPS just to get myself around town. They tried to make me get a taxi home. I refused (the shame of getting a taxi for a half mile walk, never mind the cost), so they made me ring them twice on the way home.

We had a great time and I did want to see them, but I got drunk because I wasn't feeling good, and I don't like doing that. And I spent a lot of today lying around berating myself as a result. I should have stayed in and drunk herbal tea instead. Or gone to M's gig, he was a bit let down that I didn't show. So all in all, not a weekend to be proud of...

*However* plumbing S and I did go over to her parents' house, where her dad is no longer able to wash his hair in the downstairs sink, as he has been doing for the last 20 years, as the sink refuses to drain. Our plumbing teacher said it would probably need core-cutting (very hardcore thing you need to do with a drill and expensive kit) so we were basically there to take photos of it to get further advice. But we did take the drain blaster that was one of my birthday presents from M, just in case.

And bugger me if we didn't fix it. Blast blast blast.... gap... blast blast blast... nothing much happened, we went round outside to look at the exit pipe and a big gloopy lump of hair appeared. Moved it with a stick, went back inside, repeated a few times and gurgle gurgle the sink drained away. That's two successful projects out of two. The drain it empties into is also blocked, but we are learning about rodding on Wednesday so we can have a go at that as well. Hooray!

joella

Daffodils at night

I took this on the way home from the pub. I must've looked a right weirdo leaning over someone's garden wall with a camera but nobody came out to arrest me, this being a nice middle class area.



joella

Puzzle Inlay as analogue for life

I have spent a depressing amount of time this week playing Puzzle Inlay on the MSN Zone site. I was not alone.

I spent exactly one hour playing the deluxe download version, as that is all the time it gives you before you have to pay $19.95. My self esteem is sufficiently robust *not* to think this is a worthwhile, life-enhancing use of hard earned cash [GOOD], but my motivation is not sufficiently robust for me not to then spend a disgusting amount of time continuing to play the free online version with its inferior features and annoying habit of crashing IE every 20 minutes or so so you have to go back to the beginning [BAD].

But I digress. Basically, you pick up different shaped and sized pieces and fit them into an outline shape. The outline shapes get more complicated, and the pieces you get to fill the outline shapes come in thicker and faster so you have less time to think and make more mistakes, even as you get more proficient. You're never get better enough fast enough to cope with the increased speed of the game, and if you did play it enough for this to be the case, your wrists would start packing up. Pieces you pick up and then can't fit in you can dump, but they come straight back again.

It really is just like life.

But what's redeeming are the special tools you get. Every so often a piece comes along with a little twizzle in the middle of it, which gives you one of two things -- a star, which fills in a gap in your space which you don't have a piece for, and a hammer, which allows you to smash a piece you don't have a space for. If you are playing the deluxe version you might also get a transformer, which changes big unwieldy pieces into smaller, easier to handle pieces, or -- best of all when the going gets tough -- a break, which gives you a bit of time to fit in the pieces you already have before more arrive.

These are things you wish you had in your *real* life. Honest. Try it, but just not for too long. Go straight for deluxe and walk away after an hour...

joella

Beware the Ides of March, behold the Queen of May

This evening I decided to stick on Superseeder, by the Bevis Frond, to give me a decent soundtrack to compose an email to send across a burning bridge.

The track I was hanging out for has the splendid refrain "So sue me if you don't believe me", which has been a line of mine ever since I first heard it, but then along came the Queen of May, singing about the Ides of March, so that track wins for being so SPOOKY.

Beware the Ides of March is apparently a quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, as today is the day he was assassinated. Behold the Queen of May is a quote from nowhere I can identify, but together they make a lovely song.

Which is irrelevant. What I really want to know is... did my subconscious lead me to put that album on, knowing it was the Ides of March? I haven't listened to it for easily two years, maybe longer.

The faded slogans of the past
Sit heavy on my breast
While flights of angels sing me sweetly
To my troubled rest
I fell asleep and when I woke
They carried me away
Beware the Ides of March
Behold the Queen of May

Aaaahhh.

joella

Oh to be in England in the springtime

This is very unfashionable, but I'm not a big fan of summer. And like most people, I struggle a bit with winter. However, I love spring and I love autumn. Autumn used to be my favourite season, but since I started gardening -- not that I've done any for months -- spring has to win. Doom, gloom and barren squelch turns into green prickling life and improbably coloured blossom.

Oxford seems to do spring extremely well, and we took a stroll into town to appreciate it properly. We got hailed on a bit, but it was still a life affirming experience.



Clockwise from top left
1. Bulbs in the grounds of Magdalen College
2. Ornamental quince in our front garden
3. White blossomed tree on Divinity Road
4. University Church of St Mary the Virgin

joella

Big Day Out

Yesterday was a big old day for a little person. Up dream-bustingly early in time to stand itchy-eyed under the shower before assembling something vaguely resembling a smart outfit and heading for the station to catch the 7.34 to Birmingham International.

All day at the NEC talking about gender and regeneration with a truly diverse group of people -- think crop-haired DM-wearers, think power suited briefcase wielders, think dreadlocks, think bad jumpers, think fleece and lace ups, think smart, think scruffy, think head to toe black with killer shoes, it was all there. And we got the photos to prove it, about which I am very glad, as that was one of my jobs (looking after the photographer, not taking the photos, I'm not that good).

Legged it just before the end to catch a train from Birmingham to London (Aside -- this cost FORTY EIGHT QUID! For a SINGLE!), wandered round Euston slightly pissed and searching for sustenance. Best non-Burger King non-Upper Crust offering I could find was a vegetable samosa but it did the trick and then I hared over to Embankment on the Tube, muttering 'I hate London, I hate London' to myself every time someone elbowed me or opened a newspaper in my face.

But I didn't hate London when I got there, as I found a stand selling popcorn and then I got to walk over the sparkly new bridge to the South Bank, and walk down the river to the National Theatre. It really is an awesome vista, looking out over a full size, world class city. It's cool. (Though on balance, I mostly do hate the place).

I found the bar, drank some vodka, and rendezvous'd with my compadres, though not before freaking out slightly in the toilets which were stuffed full of posh teenage girls doing their best, to my jaded 30-something eyes, to make themselves look like the streetwalkers you see under blinking lamp-posts in shitty parts of town. (Hey, check gender and regeneration link!).

They were here to see, as were we, Part 1 of the stage adaptation of His Dark Materials. It was, as the Aussies would say, pretty full on... but I think, also pretty wonderful. I don't like the theatre much as a rule, but I liked this.

We drove home through the snow and I wished I'd had my camera... all the road signs were whited out like there was an invasion happening.

But I was out of bed for 19 hours. That's too too long for a sleep lover like myself, on a school night anyway. There was a time when I could go clubbing in London, get home at 5 and be in work for 9 the next day. Actually, I think I only did that once. But you take my point. Ooof.

joella

When I find myself in times of trouble...

I am not having a good week. There is tons to do at work -- we're in the final stages of build up for a big event on Thursday and everyone is tired, stressed, overloaded and generally pretty miserable.

I went in on Monday a) late, b) hungover and c) slightly unsettled following evening out with Significant Ex (very enjoyable though it was), all of which Really Didn't Help. I went in today only a) late, and didn't get a wee in till lunchtime as a result.

So it's time to take remedial action. If I weren't such a snob, I might read the copy of Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul that someone once bought me, but given that I *am* such a snob, even if I did read it I'm not sure it would help.

So here's my recipe for French Onion Soup for the Bewildered Vegetarian's Soul

1. Hot Ribena
2. Jacket potatoes for tea in front of EastEnders
3. Healthy dose of late period Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
4. Hot hot bath with lavender oil and much scrubbing
5. Into clean pyjamas in time to watch Shameless in bed

Sounds good, no? Best be getting on with it.

joella

Whaddaya whaddaya

My dad always said... well in fact he didn't explicitly say, but if asked my dad would say, I reckon anyway,

Think very hard about which road to travel, but don't be wondering about the other once you've decided.

... in other words, as soon as you've made a decision, it's the right one, because you can never know what would actually have happened had you decided otherwise. The outcome you have is the only possible one.

And I like that advice. I have referred to it often, even if he never actually said it.

And I have always said myself: if you feel it, it's true.

Which is all an oblique way of saying, it's quite hard to psyche yourself up for going out for dinner with your Significant Ex.

You try very hard to be on time. You think very hard in advance about suitable topics of conversation. You vow not to drink too much.

Oh no! Before you know it you are spitting venom about previous mutual friends and sneering at alternative interpretations of slights against you you you.

But then you get to the pub, meet up, have a nice cool pint, some nice Thai food and suddenly all is benign. You feel like four hours isn't enough when you only meet once a year.

This is all very very grown up. Can this mean that not all modern life is rubbish?

joella

Having said that...

S and I learnt how to solder last night. We got the Power.

Onward Christian (er, well, and non Christian) Solderers
Marching as to war
With a great big blowtorch
Going on before

Oh dear. I'll get my pyjamas.

joella

While my guitar gently weeps

... not that I have a guitar. Well, I do, but I can't play it. It wouldn't so much weep as shriek.

Tonight I am full of sadness, but in a good way. I feel like if I started writing about it I'd never stop, and I have a hell of a day ahead tomorrow, so probably best not to start.

I used to work with a Mormon woman in her late 40s who had, by anyone's standards, been dealt a difficult hand to play in this life. She said to me once (when I was about 25) that nobody under 35 could call themselves an adult.

I'm not there yet, but I'm beginning to see what she means.

joella

Life affirming moment

Before (going drip, drip, drip -- mostly into the overflow but sometimes onto the floor)



After (not going drip at all)



S and I did that. The future's bright. The future's plumbing.

joella

Lost in translation -- and just plain lost

So on Friday night, M came to pick up his hungover small blue thing of a girlfriend, and tried unsuccessfully to cheer her up. But eventually she came round and suggested going out to the cinema. And off we went.

We went to the Ozone multiplex for the first time -- part of a very weird out of town middle of nowhere conglomeration which also includes a bowling alley, bars, a football stadium and a Holiday Inn. You can't quite believe anyone will be there at all, and suddenly there are people everywhere.

Where have they come from? And how come so many of them are so impressively unattractive? A lumpen group with unforgiving haircuts sat round a table in front of Shrek 2 cutouts. M jumped slightly when they got up, as if they might have been part of the display.

But the seats were comfy, there was loads of room, and the film we chose -- Lost in Translation -- was absolutely fantastic. I loved it.

The only bit I didn't love was when Charlotte was talking about not knowing what she wanted to do. I've tried writing, she said, but I hate what I write. And I've tried photography, but I'm just mediocre. And every girl goes through a phase of taking stupid photos of her feet and stuff.

This made my companion chortle mightily, as I have been doing exactly that ever since I got my new camera. And no doubt it much of it is both stupid and mediocre. But hey, I'm enjoying myself. Leave me alone.

For instance I do really like this photo. I took it while out doing my getting-determinedly-drunk thing on Thursday.

What I like best is that the slim beautiful couple are caught in A's vodka and cranberry juice, while my pint of lager got the lairy table.

Either way. Great film. Made me want to go to Japan while I'm still young enough to have wild nights out with someone who loves me.

joella

In recovery

On Thursday I did something I haven't done for aaaaages: I went out and determinedly got far too drunk. There were some complex reasons for this, and they're pretty much all work-related, and therefore boring, but someone in my old team inadvertently (probably) plonking the salary spreadsheet on the network for anyone to see was a large part of it.

Why, I raged to M on the phone, is the person doing the job I used to do getting paid shedloads more than I was? (And still am, but that's not the issue). Well, said M, probably because he's a man.

He's probably right. So I raged a bit more to my sympathetic and gender-aware colleagues, bought a lot of beer on the way home, drank some of it, and went out to the pub with my friend A to rage yet more while drinking yet more.

It's not that I don't like him, he's a really nice guy and he does a difficult job very well. And it wasn't the only shock -- there are people getting paid more than he does who don't visibly deliver anything like as much value -- but it's the fucking unfairness of it. It's the same job, more or less. It was advertised at pretty much the same salary that I was on. Loads of people applied for it. What's going on? If the job's worth that much why didn't they pay me that much?

Friday was 'work your proper hours' day. I interpreted this as 'sit at your computer in a hungover funk and do nothing for your proper hours' day. The bastards.

joella

--Resistance--is--useless--

Having spent a while exploring other early morning options (Radio 5 was recommended by a couple of people, but I seem to have thrown away the AM aerial for the radio in my bedroom) I have returned to the Today Programme. I just can't seem to get out of bed without it.

But the alarmist way they report things sometimes still pisses me off . This morning I was getting out of the shower when I heard that "childless couples are to get free fertility treatment".

It all sounded a bit Handmaid's Tale. I half expected to find men in white coats downstairs reading to frogmarch me to the hospital to have my NHS baby implanted... which would be a bit like NHS glasses, ugly and only for the poor and/or desperately uncool. It would never cope in a world of DKNY and Diesel babies, being speed-walked around in their off-road three wheeler buggies, learning Spanish from the au pair and eating pureed rocket.

So, like the Israeli citizenship that was once foisted upon me, I think I shall have to opt out. Where do I sign?

joella

Something I am loving, something I am hating.

Thing I am hating: PRINTERS.

They never work. Then you spend five days trying stuff and eventually they work for a bit, but then they stop again.

M bought me some paper to print digital photos on. Our printer isn't very good, but I thought it was worth a go. The instructions that came with the special paper were insanely daunting. But I am an adult, I use computers a lot, I have good photo software.

I set the size of the image. I set the size of the image canvas. I couldn't find a way to set the size of the paper in the printer but there is a way to do it and luckily M knew what it was. So an hour later all instructions had been followed to the letter. Did it work? Did it arse.

It hummed, it hawed, it pretended it was out of paper, then after some shoving and swearing and opening and closing of its lid it finally sucked it in, spat it out again, in, out, in, out and *then* deigned to make its little buzz buzz printing noise. Then it spat out an approximation of about a quarter of the photo at about half the size it should have been.

Absolute bastard hardware bastard bastard. *kick*

So it's time to call it a night and take to bed with the thing I am loving, which is the Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker. I'm on the middle one at the moment. They are amazing books, though they aren't much comfort when long dark teatimes of the soul come along.

joella

Yesterday's mamas

My favourite favourite song on the Scissor Sisters album is called Take Your Mama Out. It's up there on my soon-to-be-compiled-compilation of Some Of The Best Dance Tunes Ever (For 70s Children), which includes such lustrous numbers as Chain Reaction, Tainted Love, Unbelievable, Free Nelson Mandela, Freedom 90, The Only Way Is Up and Let Me Entertain You.

And it is, I think, a tune for 70s children, who became, in this country anyway, Thatcher's Teenagers. We gave the best years of our lives to Joy Division and Billy Bragg, and now it's time to reclaim disco.

It's (allegedly) about telling your mother that you're gay. Now, I am not gay, though some of my best friends etc. So I see it as being about having your mother accept you for yourself. And -- praise be, freak as I am -- I think my mother does.

So it's a song worth dancing to (and for) quite aside from the fact that's it's a rock arse tune in its own right.

Tonight we are quite exercised by mothers. My housemates have both lost theirs, many of my friends are becoming them, I am floating in a kind of distorted Britneyesque still have a mother won't likely become one ultra-modern reality.

Suitable songs for working this through:

Take your mama out -- Scissor Sisters
Always on the run -- Lenny Kravitz
Missionary man -- Eurythmics

Am sure there are others, but these will do for now.

joella

I can see clearly now the rain has come

Of course. Early or not, I should have worked out by now going out specially for Co-op Fair Trade Dark Chocolate, colleagues calling sections of my quarterly report 'unwarranted' (it bloody wasn't, but I'm over it) and slightly demented scrubbing of toilets, haranguing of housemates and hurling of laundry down the stairs can *only mean one thing*.

So for the last 24 hours I've been balancing anasthesia and sedation levels with careful administering of Nurofen Plus and Bells Scotch Whisky. Too far and you're dead, not far enough and you're curled up in a ball whimpering.

But get it right and the world is suddenly, briefly, benign. Look, the daffodils are out. And the crocuses. And the flowering quince flowers. And a lone, strange blue flower (right), in a pot by the wonky blue bench, that surely isn't due for months yet.

Aaaahh.

joella

PS The Scissor Sisters album has been on heavy rotation today ... and along with it I have been admiring Jeremy's photos from the gig last week.

Don't mess

I am feeling quite murderous today. No reason in particular, lots of things in general. Mostly, what I want to know is, why can't everybody be more like me? We would be low on marketing people and doorstep electricity salesmen (and for that matter theoretical physicists and people having babies, who are both actually quite useful) but at least everyone would SAY WHAT THEY BLOODY WELL MEANT AND DO WHAT THEY BLOODY WELL SAID THEY WERE GOING TO DO.

So. Better out than in, right?

joella

Everybody's making art or else expecting rain

As I have mentioned before (glad I checked, as I would have told the Robert Jones story again and wouldn't that have been sad), I hate Valentine's Day.

This year I decided to do something positive, and I went to visit the Weather Project at Tate Modern with my lovely London-dwelling friend S. And what a fabulous idea it was, I'd never been before. That big sun is awesome. You can see us in the middle of this photo (S is out like a starfish, and I am scrunched up next to her taking the photo):



The big sun is glowing to the right. And if you look below us to the left you can see a couple making the shape of a heart. Now that's a good Valentine.

joella

The joy of spring, tempered

It's gone 5.30 and it's not quite dark
My heart makes a little leap
Light is struggling through
Green spikes are appearing
We might be winning

Shame my tummy aches
That prawn curry last night
Was out of season

joella

This is about when shit goes pear shaped...

Without wishing to sound too much like a wanker, I don't do much 'light entertainment' television... in fact I'd rather gnaw my own arm off than watch anything with David Jason, Nick Berry or Leslie 'trout pout' Ash in it. (Unless I'm poorly, when I'll watch anything except So Graham Norton).

But I make an exception for a few things, most notably EastEnders, which I think is, on the whole, brilliant. I have often waxed lyrical about the skill of EastEnders scriptwriters, and there have been times in my life (fortunately not that many, but there are bound to be more) when the only thing that has kept me sane is the fact that for two hours a week I can immerse myself in a world where more shit happens.

Okay, there's the odd duff storyline, and a lot of stuff that would never really happen. And nobody watches television, and nobody goes to university except Michelle and she only got a third and how come she hasn't visited in ten years, and nobody has their own washing machine and everyone buys their wine from the pub instead of the Minute Mart, but hey, the characters are ace and the dialogue is unmatched.

But what I really love is the soundtrack. I love the way that in key moments the Queen Vic jukebox or the radio in the launderette become part of the script. You might easily miss it, but it's there if you want to pick it up, like the occasional self referential piss take or surreal moment -- like Jim taking the dead budgie back to the pet shop and the staff doing the Parrot Sketch and him not getting it.

Sometimes I think it's postmodern television in populist disguise, but then it only happens once in a blue moon, in fact seldom enough to be a surprise every time.

And tonight's was great. Tariq, motherless bastard half brother rejected by Ferreira family who have only just found out their dad was a dirty shagger, goes back to bedsit, puts on record by The Streets.

So far so good. There lies Tariq listening to Weak Become Heroes. Nice touch, I think to myself, (he is about to donate his kidney to Ronny Ferreira having run off from the fight where Ronny got stabbed in the first place thereby requiring a new kidney).

And *then* we close in on the line

Me and you are the same, known you all my life never known your name

EastEnders Music Moment! Very good, very good.

AND THEN he sits up, full of anger and pain, and pushes the needle down to gouge a groove in the record.

It jumps over and over again on the Weak Become Heroes refrain as he puts his head in his hands. But not on the whole line, just a second or two from the middle, so it sounds like

I'm here (scratch) I'm here (scratch) I'm here (scratch)

Bam Bam Bam Bamadamabambam!

Awesome

joella

Multiple birth survival strategy

Have I mentioned that all my friends are pregnant? Well, not all of them, obviously, as some of them are men. Oh, and not N anymore, as B arrived among us last week. (A girl! And an Aquarian! Could there be a cooler way to start life?)

And of course I have friends who've done it already, and friends who never will. But the critical mass is definitely heading in that direction, and it's a cause of some concern to me.

I am sure my friends' children will be as lovely as children can be, given that they are the children of my favourite people, have their genes and will be raised by them. But the fact remains that, try as I might, I Don't Much Like Small Children. In particular, I don't much wish to have my social life defined by their needs. Once they're old enough to set fire to things and show each other their bits, I'm all for them, but that's a different issue.

So, what to do? I've been worrying about this for a while, especially as my own preferences seem to be veering towards the dinner party end of the rock and roll spectrum since I stopped doing drugs and started having a proper kitchen.

But tonight I discovered the answer, or at least part of it. Go to gigs -- go to lots of them. Go just because you can, even though it's a school night. Go because you live down the road from an excellent venue where it's easy to get served and easy to find a place near the front where you can see.

Drink less beer than you used to when every night was a five pint night, but drink enough not to feel too aggrieved when someone bumps half a pint of lager over you.

And every now and then you will have a blinding, amazing, fantastic night out and feel horrified at the thought that you might have missed that gig.

Like tonight. Tonight, we saw the awesome Scissor Sisters. On a Tuesday.

It was M's idea... he'd heard Tits on the Radio and seen they were playing the Zodiac. I'd heard their disco version of Comfortably Numb in the Virgin Megastore and thought 'what the fuck is this'. So I said, ok, it's the night before plumbing, which is nearly as important as the night before Christmas, but hey, let's do it. And we bumped into Jeremy down the front during the support, and we stayed there, and it was the right place to be (as it usually is, unless everyone's Really Tall and Moshing).

And they rocked, and they disco-ed, and they funked, and they were altogether the only band I've seen in ages that made me forget I needed the toilet and was a bit thirsty, not to mention making me forget that I am pissed off with my job and in fact life in general (it's February, I know...)

Who needs to piss and drink and work when you can jump up and down to Jake Shears (surely the sexiest man in rock if you like your men skinny, fit as a butcher's dog and able to sing falsetto and dance at the same time) and Ana Matronic (surely the sexiest woman in rock if you like your women feisty, cool as fuck, feminist and voluptuous).

He is *lovely*. And so is she. Comfortably Numb was brilliant, but there were many other awesome songs, think kind of funked up Bee Gees with a hint of goth. It's like all the best bits of 80s dance music rolled into one with a slightly deranged edge. Marvellous.

And they're supporting Duran Duran on their next tour. I have never seen Duran Duran live. So maybe 2004 is the year. (Though maybe I'm a bit overexcited -- the NEC could never be as good as the Zodiac).

In short, the Scissor Sisters moved me. And they reminded me that America, for all its faults, is home to NYC, the coolest city on the planet by quite some margin. Only been once, must go again.

And it wasn't just us there -- it was sold out. I also bumped into several of my cooler colleagues and ex-colleagues. There is life out there, of course there is.

Got to bed by 01.00 because I am still a responsible member of society.

Thank the Lord for counterculture.

joella

PS Too many people on Atkins (as I have said before) -- never have I been to a gig where it was so farty down the front. Someone should tell these people that stink ain't cool.

It's a bike ting

I hate cycling. Something deep within me rages about the fact that it is the cheapest, healthiest and pretty much quickest way to get around town.

And yet undeniably it is -- and it also follows one of the guiding principles of feasible exercise -- it is something you can do while doing something you would have to do anyway (eg go to work).

I can only hold out against these arguments for so long, though I do give it my best shot:
1. can't cycle, it's raining
2. can't cycle, it's too windy
3. can't cycle, I'm premenstrual
4. can't cycle, I want to wear my red coat today (often coincides with 3)

But yesterday I had not a leg to stand on, not even the one with the slightly wonky knee that sometimes convinces me I can't cycle. So off I went. And later, home I came.

The last stretch of the journey home is especially foul, as it involves cycling up Cowley Road -- only a mild incline but one featuring vehicles driven exclusively by people who have never even seen a Highway Code Theory Test, never mind passed one.

You know that argument that goes that 80% of accidents happen within quarter of a mile of your house? If your house is just off Cowley Road that must be pretty much 100%. Every five yards a drunk cyclist with no lights meets a car with 17 people in it reversing into oncoming traffic while a bus careers past with two wheels up on a traffic island. Only more random than that.

And when I'm cycling (full stop, but *especially* when I'm cycling uphill) I have not an ounce of tolerance for anyone doing anything that makes my journey even an iota more difficult or dangerous. I'm already practically a saint for being so fucking environmentally friendly, I have lights and a helmet and one of those hideous glow in the dark belt things, so give me respect on the road, you bastards.

But no. Last night I was struggling along the home stretch swearing quietly to myself when I heard a car beeping. He was beeping at cyclists. Because there was not enough room for him to get past them on certain stretches of road, mainly those with traffic islands which have been put in to stop idiots speeding. He beeped me (I slowed down -- I do this in cars as well, but it doesn't win me any friends), he beeped the bike in front of me, and the bike in front of that. He was doing about 45, I reckon, on a road where 20 is pushing it most of the time. He was driving a BMW, but not a new one, one with a dodgy exhaust.

Then he screeched to a halt in front of bike #3, opened his door into her so she had to swerve, and got out. He was kind of short. He banged on the window of an Indian restaurant, shouted a bit, then decided to get back into his car.Bike #2 had safely passed, so he walked out in front of me.

The noise I wanted to make was that of a ship's foghorn or an air-raid siren -- something so earth-shatteringly loud that it would blow him against the wall and cause his nasty car to disintegrate on the spot. Never again would he mess with me or any other hard working cyclist.

What noise did I make?

ting.

Or rather ting ting ting ting ting.

He was terrified, I can tell you.

*arse*

joella

Pop queen comedy moment

Beyonce Knowles is having a good week. She also has a great name.

M's friend N said the other week, imagine if Beyonce married Mr Castle. Then she would be Beyonce Castle.

We found this very funny, and tried to tell the story to one of M's daughters.

Imagine if Beyonce was getting married, I said.

Yes, she said, the guy could say this is my fiancee Beyonce.

Even better.

joella

February existential blues

I've had a very sociable weekend. Had a fantastic dinner with friends on Friday night -- great food, lots of fun, but was feeling a bit manic after a shit week, and did cane the wine a bit, and then woke up feeling bleak on Saturday and I don't think a hangover was the only reason, as it hasn't really shifted, despite a meal out with The Band last night and friends for tea today.

Work *is* a bit shit at the moment, and it *is* February, the hardest of months (well, apart from August, I don't like August very much. Or November. But anyway.). So maybe that's all there is to it.

Or maybe I'm just having trouble after my hols, 're-entering' the real world, as someone put it. Maybe I want the real world to be different. Or maybe I want me to be different?

No, I'm ok with me, mostly. If I could be a morning person who loved to exercise, I would be happier, but on the whole I don't suffer from self loathing that often.

So it must be the world. Or living in this bit of it. Although it's better than most places.

Oh I don't bloody know. I just wish it would lift.

joella