Fishing for strawberries

What I like about you, Jo, one of my friends said recently-ish, is that you're a constant in a changing world.

I considered how to take this, and decided that it was a compliment. I wouldn't say I don't change, but it's true that I evolve slowly. I think about things long and hard before I decide where I stand on them, and when I've decided where I stand, I stand firm until convinced otherwise. 

I prefer to wear things out than to throw them away. I have a pair of socks that I've had since I was 11. My lucky pants are 23 years old (and still lucky!), and I still wear a Lynx T-shirt ("it takes up to 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat, but only one to wear it") that was a 21st birthday present. I bought my green vegetarian Doc Martens in 1993 and they're still going strong.

I'm ridiculously brand loyal. I've had one mobile phone provider and three handsets (all Nokia) since 1995. I've never changed utility or landline provider, though that might change since the bastards have started charging me for the privilege of receiving a bill in the post. All my butter is Lurpak, all my washing powder is Ecover, all my lip balm is Blistex. I do my research, and when I find something I like, I stick with it. I had a minor panic on Tuesday when I tried to go to the Body Shop to buy some perfume (White Musk, since 1984 -- I've tried a few others but always go back) and it wasn't there any more (the shop, not the perfume -- but fortunately it's just moved round the corner).

I don't like waste and I try to see things through. I had my first car for 14 years. I generally finish books, and bottles of shampoo. I remember more than I let on. I never forget a favour, but I can hold a grudge forever. (The safest thing is not to meet me at all). The mainstays of my personal politics -- feminism, vegetarianism, socialism -- have changed very little in the last 20 years. When I was 17, I knew I would never get married, I knew I would never vote Tory, and I knew I would never eat steak. And I haven't.

That's not because I *wouldn't*, if that was the right thing for me to do. But it never has been. I think I was lucky, in that I more or less knew who I was a long time ago. I've grown older and grown up a lot, been more places, done more things, met more people, had more thoughts, tried more products, gained things, lost things, but nothing fundamental has changed. I don't see myself as a fixed point of reference, but I guess I can still be a place from which to take bearings. I think this is probably a good thing,

I learnt about a summer fruit thing you can do this weekend, but I've forgotten what it's called. You start it off with early season soft fruit, like strawberries: put them in a big pot, soak them in alcohol, like grappa, and put a weighted plate on top to squash them down. As the summer progresses, you add other fruit, in layers -- raspberries, cherries, plums etc, with more alcohol, and keep the plate on. By the end of summer you've added the blackcurrants, and you've got something that will give you boozy fruit all winter.

Maybe that's what I'm like. Maybe that's what we're all like -- the blackcurrants are the most visible bits, but the strawberries are still there underneath. 

joella

Don't go breaking my heart

Oops, too late.

Luckily, there's glue.

joella

Pause for thought that might save a life

Ghost bike
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

I saw this bike a few weeks ago, but I only found out why it's there when I saw Damian's photo of it.

It's a ghost bike, left as a memorial to the 22 year old cyclist who was killed following a collision with a lorry at this junction a few months ago.

Is this street art? Whatever it is, it's brilliant. I can think of at least two more people who have died in places I cycle past regularly -- the YHA near the train station, and the Elm Tree on Cowley Road -- who should have a ghost bike too. The first I just read about, the second I came closer to than I like to remember. But remembering is important.

joella

Wake up and smell the beer

Wake up and smell the beer
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

The smoking ban had been in force for six days before I went to the pub. I can't believe it took me so long. We were up in Lancs this weekend, and dropped into the Queens for last orders on Saturday night. I worked in the Queens many years ago, and it was scruffy, smoky, a bit druggy, a bit scary, and very, very loud. I loved it, but I was most of those things myself back then.

Two weeks ago, I would have said that it was still noisy and still smoky, but otherwise unrecognisable (about 10 years ago it had its guts ripped out, its heart covered in tasteful hardwearing fabric, and its soul laminated). Now it's just noisy.

It's weird. Good weird -- *very* good weird -- but weird nonetheless.

Woke up on Sunday and went out to check that it was still true. We met up with A Free Man in Preston and Girl on a Train in a pub which has great beer but which used to be like sitting in the bottom of an ashtray. Wow, said M, when we walked through the door, it smells like beer in here.

And indeed it did. We weren't worried it wouldn't last, so we stayed in there for a good three hours just to make sure. When we emerged, it was the only thing we *were* sure of. But in a good way.

I felt a bit ropey later. I blame it on the Moonlight.

joella

Codeine Queen

On days like today (the painters are in, and this month they're playing death metal), I'd be nowhere without codeine. What a marvellous drug it is. I normally take it over-the-counter strength in the form of Nurofen Plus, and it's one of the things, like pickled vegetables and ear buds, that I never let myself run out of. Yet this morning I couldn't find any anywhere. I was panicked. It was 8.20 am, I had a nine o'clock meeting with my manager, and I was curled up in a ball fighting tears and thinking dark thoughts.

M came to the rescue with Solpadol, which his GP prescribed him after he injured himself last month by driving a go-kart into a wall. I took two, wrapped myself in a very large cardigan and got on with it. Twenty minutes later, I was nicely spaced out, and I've been calm and floaty all day. I'm *never* this benign without chemical assistance. I can see how it might be habit-forming.

Shall I go home now? Yes, I think I shall. I'll just have another glass of Vimto first.

joella

"Getting rid of that 'just kidnapped' look"

The last time I cried during the Today Programme was when they were marking the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War.

More broadly, I have shed tears over the Situation In That Part Of The World, as I call it, on more occasions than I care to count.

One memorable one was in the toilets at Loughborough University after I danced to I Will Survive with a Palestinian colleague who had made a very long and difficult journey from Nablus to talk to us about trying to restore destroyed water supplies to households living under curfew.

Another was when I went to a talk given by a journalist writing about the Middle East for the Economist. The crux of his message was 'basically, it's completely fucked'. He didn't hold out any hope whatever, and he was pretty much right. I hadn't considered before that it might be hopeless, and it upset me a lot.

What did it for me on the Today Programme in question, however, wasn't the all-too-familiar back and forth of entrenched, furious, fundamentally opposing points of view. I dozed through some parts of it, shouted at other parts, tried to reconcile still others with what I've been told and what I've read. No, what did it for me was the last fifteen seconds, when they ended with a tribute to their colleague Alan Johnston and a wish for his safe release. It was one of those rare Today Programme endings that runs directly into the pips. I am sure they do them on purpose for extra poignancy. They usually work, and this one certainly did: I sobbed till I'd (temporarily) run out of sadness.

This morning I woke up to hear that he was on his way home, and that the tireless campaigning by his colleagues, and journalists everywhere, had got through to him via the World Service. It made me cry all over again. There were 28 days, give or take, between these two bouts of sobbing, so my reaction is perhaps not surprising, but they were all tears worth shedding.

And while the Situation In That Part Of The World still looks pretty fucking bleak, I am so happy they let him go. I bloody love the World Service. Nothing else comes close. Principled journalism is one of the few pinpricks of light in the darkness created when unstoppable forces meet immovable objects.

joella

Recovery position

Petunia, lobelia and pink Rioja
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

On Saturday, we went to the last wedding of the season. The last wedding of *our* season, anyway. We were invited because I lived with the bride R (and the bridesmaid K) for a while just after I split with my Significant Ex, having answered an ad in Daily Information which read 'Sane, clean, Guardian-reading woman wanted: No wallpaper TV addicts please'. When I turned up to view the room they were playing Ani DiFranco and I loved them both immediately. It was the best place I could have moved to, and I loved living with them, and I love the fact that we are still friends nine years later. Additionally, R was marrying a genuinely lovely man. Additionally still, it was one of those weddings that you know will be ok because you know that the couple in question feel at least as ambivalent about the wedding industry as you do yourself.

When the invitation came, I thought it was very modern of a church hall to get itself licensed for a civil ceremony, but it turned out that they actually got married on the Friday in a register office, and what was happening was an exchange of vows and rings and a general (secular) celebration.

Still very modern, and utterly admirable. There was lots of wine, but we were also invited to bring our own (and the church hall in question was conveniently located 100 yards from an Oddbins selling splendid pink Rioja). There was a best man, but she was a woman. There were speeches, and the bride made one of them. The bridesmaid made another, which made me cry with laughter. There were vows about equal partnership, which made me cry for other reasons. There were flowers on the tables, and we were invited to take them home and plant them in our gardens (to save the bride and groom having to take them back to their own).

There was also bunting. You can't have too much bunting. And there was mucho, mucho dancing. I did myself a mischief during True Faith, and compounded it during Common People.

I wish we'd left by 9.30, which was the plan, and would have made a lot of sense, given that we'd been drinking since 3.30. But as it was we were still there when the lights went up, and stood uncertainly at the bus stop at midnight (or thereabouts), clutching plant pots and talking bollocks.

And three days later I am still feeling it. Sunday... forget it. Monday... misanthropic. Tuesday... venturing back into polite society.

This is another reason I've never got married. I'd be hungover for a week.

Me and Cherry, 1988

Me and Cherry, 1988
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

Basically, I'm not very photogenic. The camera does not love me. I have a wonky eye (occasionally pictured right) which looks fine, I like to think, in the flesh, but usually comes out squinty on film, and generally my face just doesn't work in repose. Some do, some don't. I've got used to it.

So going through 20 years of photos, as I did recently, resulted in a fair bit of wincing, especially during the 'microphone head' years when my hair was growing back after being shorn on a whim in the Imperial Hair Cutting Saloon in Bombay.

But I *love* this photo. It was taken when I was 18 and not long in possession of Cherry, my lovely 2cv. I was working on Dock Road in Lytham during the Christmas holidays, packing Sheila Maid components into boxes. Ex-housemate S was working with me for a few days, and I had the bright idea of doing a photo-story, called 'A Day In The Life Of Domestic Paraphernalia'. This was the first photo of the day. The photo story never happened, but I could perhaps redress that now.

What I love about it is that it has pretty much everything significant about my 18 year old self all in one photo. My 2cv, my Billy Bragg T-shirt, my dad's old suit jacket, my M&S grey cardigan, my CND badge, my spiral perm, my sign of Venus earring (just the one), my rather bleak part time job. The keyring is blank-side out, but on the other side it said 'The more I know about men, the more I like my dog'.

Capturing all of this was never the plan, and I like that even better. *And* it's slightly out of focus, as many of my favourite photos are.

joella

Galaxie 500 - Tugboat

Arse to the Spice Girls: this is the reunion tour I would cross continents to see.

Leftover-tastic

On Monday, feeling a touch vitamin C-deprived after the weekend, I made my current favourite pasta sauce, which incorporates tomatoes and char-grilled red & yellow peppers blitzed with onions, celery and garlic softened in posh olive oil. Oh, and some basil. It's glorious. I cooked a ton of pasta, so there would be leftovers, but there wasn't enough left over for another whole dinner. There's never enough, no matter how much I cook.

But there *was* enough for spaghetti omelette. Spaghetti omelette sounds gross but is actually about the tasty as things get. You beat up some eggs, add some chilli, some herbs, some anchovies (optional), mix in your pasta and fry. You can have it on its own, or with sauce, or with veg, or with anything really. You can eat it with your fingers in big crispy chunks, or cut it up neatly with a knife and fork. It's the best leftover dish ever in the world ever. Makes me want to eat nothing but leftovers, even as I see the logical impossibility of this.

The leftover sauce, we had for breakfast this morning, on slightly stale leftover bread. Tonight, I shall roast vegetables, in anticipation of tomorrow's lunch.

joella

Brains over brawn

The thing is, Jo, said Graham this afternoon, that bath's heavy and you're a girl.

The thing is, Graham, I said back, those are what you might call the constants in this equation. The variable is how we're going to get it down the stairs.

I used a few tricks I learnt on the canal this weekend watching 18-ton stern-steered narrowboats navigating into locks - "to me! to me!" -- only converted into three dimensions -- and wherever possible I said "and... slide!". Any five year old knows the fastest way down the stairs.

The bits that were't slideable did wipe me out rather, but the other trick is to do your panting out of view.

joella

Happy 40th Ms Y part 2

I know it's not the done thing to laugh at your own jokes, but I was thinking of Ms Y this morning and I remembered ms-y.xls, which I created for her many birthdays ago to celebrate her facility with a spreadsheet. And lo, it was still lurking in my personal files.

Friday night and the lights are low                                    
    Looking out for a missing row                                
        Consolidating her worksheet                            
            Formatting the cells                        
                She's in the mood for a chart                    
                    So she inserts some art                
                        She is the Excel Queen            
                            Young and sweet        
                                Only A1 * C13   

joella
                                   

Happy 40th, Ms Y

Here's the track listing of my special birthday compilation for Ms Y's impending canal-based fizz-quaffing rain-dancing celebrations. Because she's worth it.

Word Up! - Cameo
White Lines - Grandmaster Flash
Relax - FGTH
Praise You - Fatboy Slim
Only Living Boy In New Cross - Carter USM
Hung Up - Madonna
Don't You Want Me - Human League
Hippy Chick - Soho
Ghost Town - The Specials
Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliott
Funkytown - Countdown
Freak Like Me - Sugababes
Dancing Queen (extended version) - ABBA
1999 - Prince

M is upstairs making *his* Ms Y-inspired compilation. If it beats mine I will eat my sou'wester.

joella

She said, 'I'm tired of the war, I want the kind of work I had before'.

Oh, I do love a bit of Leonard of a summer evening. I don't actually own this album, but I know every word of it, as I borrowed it on repeat for months and months from Blackpool Record Library in the mid-80s. My mother would come into my bedroom to find me lying on a beanbag in the dark burning joss sticks and intoning 'I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul'. It was what you might call a solitary pursuit.

But who's to say they aren't the best kind sometimes? And I now keep coming across it on last.fm without even looking. My tags are its tags, my 'sounds likes' are its sounds likes, my 'also likes' take me there. It's quite spooky.

joella

More money than sense

Some people don't know they're born. A couple of weeks ago I heard about a rented house in Oxford where the tenant managed to drop her toilet cistern lid, smashing the basin, cracking the toilet bowl *and* damaging the bath. Impressive. J got the refit job, and last week passed it on to me. Start with the basin, he said, seeing as she's already had that off for you.

So this morning I got up, loaded my tools, my boots, my drill, my pipe benders and my various plumbing substances into the car, drove to Berinsfield to pick up the taps, connectors and isolation valves that J had left for me on top of the guinea pig cage; drove to the plumber's merchants to pick up a basin, a waste, a trap and a pedestal, drove to the letting agents to pick up the keys, and drove to the house in question.

Where I couldn't get in, because none of the keys fit. It turns out the tenant lost her keys, so got a locksmith out to change the locks, and didn't leave a copy with the letting agent. Oh, and then went back to the US on holiday, leaving a leaky pipe (presumably something disturbed by her bathroom smashing) dripping into the downstairs study. And her mobile number is unobtainable, maybe she lost that too.

What a spectacular waste of time and space she must be. The job sheet says 'please attend urgently'. Well I would, I said as I dropped the keys back, if I could get through the bloody door. I was extremely pissed off. But on the bright side I had a free day, and I will be able to occupy the moral high ground with the letting agents for at least the next couple of encounters. So I went to buy some posh French cakes and took them round to see my friend C, who conveniently lives round the corner from the letting agents and is home on maternity leave. Then I drove home. And now there's a sink in the shed. Thank god I didn't pick the whole lot up in one go, though I still haven't worked out how to get a bath into a car. J says I can borrow his Land Rover. I'm not sure how to get *myself* into a Land Rover. But I haven't told him that.

Moving on, I am wanting the new White Stripes album *a lot*. Which should pose no great logistical problem, but I tell you what does: does anyone have an mp3 or aac of Hippy Chick by Soho (released 1990, samples How Soon Is Now)? It's not on iTunes, it's not on allofmp3, it's not on last.fm, it *might* be on emusic but I never outstayed my free trial, it might be in a number of other places but none which don't look dodgy. I know Mr B has it, but I seem to remember that was vinyl... any thoughts?

Some brave new world this is...

joella

I never took the advice in that book

A couple of weeks ago, and apropos of nothing as far as I know, M asked me about the T-shirt that's been hanging on the wall since we moved into this house together in 2001. It's a badly-made, once-white garment bearing the following message (hand-painted, in block capitals):

"Don't saddle me with your ideals
And spare me all your guilt"

What *is* that quote, he said, and what did you mean by it? And why is it hanging on the wall?

I was hungover and sitting on the loo at the time, so it took me a while to explain. But the basics are as follows: it's a line from Billy Bragg's I Don't Need This Pressure, Ron -- one of the B-side tracks on 1985's Days Like These 12". I can (and did) quote the entire song by way of big-picture context, but that line was the one that I cared about most. 'Don't saddle me with your ideals' is a fairly obvious teenage feminist statement: I don't want to be part of your world, and watch me not be. 'And spare me all your guilt' is a bit harder to articulate. I'm still not sure what BB meant by it, but I'm not sure that matters. What *I* meant by it is perhaps best expressed by something Yoko Ono said on this week's Desert Island Discs: "My life is not about appeasing other people. My life is about being myself."

I painted it onto a T-shirt when I was about 17 because I wanted the world to know that this was how I felt. But it never really worked: every time I wore it out men would read it and say something along the lines of 'I wouldn't mind straddling you'. No, I would say, you haven't read it properly. So then they would stare at my breasts a bit harder. V quickly I realised that this T-shirt would only bring me grief, and I stopped wearing it. But I could never bear to part with it. I created it with the best of intentions. And it's hanging on the wall 20 years later because it's still true.

Fair enough, said M. I thought there must be a story behind it. I felt warm inside.

A few days later, I was sorting through photos upstairs when I heard Scholarship Is the Enemy of Romance playing loud downstairs. This could only be C, our new housemate, who has a sticker on her bike which says 'I'd rather be listening to Billy Bragg'. I've never lived with a Billy Bragg fan before. I grinned like a lunatic, knowing which track was coming up next, and ran downstairs to catch it -- I have it, obviously, but I don't think I've played it for about five years. 'So don't saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt', I sang from the middle room. 'For a poet with all the answers has never yet been built', she sang back from the kitchen.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

joella

Andy & Liz's wedding

I like the one of the photographer the best...more on Flickr here.




joella

And on the fifth day...

After a long and not terribly productive week, I thought a civilised dinner out might be in order: had we stayed in we would have grouched at each other, and I didn't want to do that. We ended up in Euphrates, eating meze (very good, though the whitebait was a mistake) and drinking Lebanese Arak (very good full stop), and discussing... abortion. How cheerful. But civilised in its way: we'd both (separately) listened to this week's Moral Maze, scheduled to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act (definitely worth a listen, incidentally: if only all discussion on the subject were so reasoned) and we both wanted to talk about it.

I still don't think we agree, though it's detail we disagree on (when and how), not fundamentals (whether), so I can live with that. And debate is healthy: if you don't get the odd brickbat thrown at your views from time to time you can't decide if they still stand up or not.

We stopped in at Videosyncratic to borrow The History Boys, then wandered back. By the time we neared home I was trying unsuccessfully to explain why, with the honourable exception of Closer to Fine, I can't bear the Indigo Girls. I *ought* to like them, I was saying, but it's just one minority cause too many. Environmentally aware lesbian folk songs about Native Americans, I can't do it. Please don't bury my heart at wounded knee! Bury it somewhere else! Well, said M, strictly speaking that's a Buffy Sainte Marie song.

She's even worse, I said. I hear a Buffy Sainte Marie album and I want to put on Led Zeppelin and eat liver! Add anal sex to that list, said M, and I'll buy you a copy. You're all heart, I said, and marched up the front path.

The film was fantastic, though I don't for a moment believe 18 year old boys from Yorkshire would ever be that comfortable with themselves, not even the cleverest ones in the school, not even in 1983. But it was very touching, very interesting and very, very funny.

Mrs. Lintott: And you, Rudge? How do you define history?  
Rudge: Can I speak freely without being hit?  
Mrs. Lintott: You have my protection.  
Rudge: How do I define history? Well it's just one fucking thing after another, isn't it?

Isn't it just.

joella
  

Open Garden

Jardin de joella 4
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

M is on the Events Committee of our local residents' association. I co-edit its newsletter. We are both slightly embarrassed to find ourselves community-minded in this way, but a) we have the skills and b) if you don't have small children you have to look for ways to meet your neighbours. So when the Open Gardens idea was mooted at a recent Events meeting, our names went down.

We worked like bastards to make our garden worth Opening. We weren't sure we had succeeded. About 30 people came to look at it today -- we had baby Tungsten round providing distractions, but people generally seemed to think we'd done ok with our 16 by 60 foot space.

A few people stood on the doorstep and said 'you're very brave to be doing this' before they'd even seen it. They were the ones who made us feel all right. And if you're reading this and you were part of the landscaping posse three years ago -- thanks: the terracing was the Most Admired. And rightly so.

joella

Bloodied but unbowed

On Wednesday, I did a full day's managing of information and then drove back to the bathroom of the ex-husband of Plumbing S to solder the new heating pipes and let the electrician in. J the plumber turned up at 10.30pm. The electrician left at 11.30. We were there till 1.30. I was starting to see things. I woke up at five panicking slightly, so I got up, got dressed and went back there. I did another 12 hours, then I left for my Plumbing Class Night Out (of which more later). It still wasn't finished. J the plumber went in later to sort out the final bits. He called it the bathroom from hell, and he should know.

What was so evil about the bathroom of the ex-husband of Plumbing S?

1. Incomplete basin: it needed legs, which it didn't have, so we had to build a frame. Also in a different place to the old basin, and once the frame was in the floor couldn't come up, so lots of jiggling round fitting pipes through little holes.
2. Incomplete basin taps: no fixing nut, no little grommet thing for the waste lever.
3. Crap basin waste: not enough thread for the S bend to seal, which meant the S bend washer had to be cut down with a hacksaw. Nice.
4. 'Non-applicable' WC - back to the wall pan with wall hanging cistern. J managed to fit it in the end but not before he'd threatened to take it back to the shop that sold it to the ex-husband of plumbing S and 'throw it through the fucking window and say "you fucking fit it"'.
5. Cheap and nasty pre-fitted siphon and float valve which pissed water everywhere and had to be taken apart and re-fitted.
6. Wall-mounted bath taps and shower bar which will need to be taken off for tiling (and the tiles are stone and about 10mm thick) but which had no fixings of their own so needed to be supported by rigid pipework. *You* try designing rigid pipework which can be moved back 10mm. It's not impossible but it's a pain in the arse.
7. P-shaped bath: needed to be installed exactly 542mm off the floor to accommodate the side panel. Floor was made of old, often-soaked and much messed about with tongue and groove chipboard which could in no way be described as either flat or level.
8. Heated towel rail which fit too close to the wall to take standard radiator valves, on a different wall to the original radiator.

And that was just the plumbing, never mind the electrics, which had the electrician by turns baffled and really bloody annoyed. It nearly killed me. At five to six on Thursday I came over all funny and realised my ability to hit things hard had been premenstrually enhanced. There was still no toilet. I rang J and said 'right, I'm off, there are some things a girl can't do in the garden'. 'How much do I owe you?' he said. 'A week in the sun,' I replied.

At home I threw all my clothes into the washing machine and legged it upstairs for painkillers, san-pro, a good scrub and a bit of mascara, then I jumped on my bike and headed off into town for my Plumbing Class Night Out. It was very strange but lots of fun, we went to the pub, then for a curry, then to the pub again. I was a bit manic, I fear, but I did get the chance to tell J the stores manager than it was terrifying at first and he was a big part of making it less terrifying. I also had the pleasure of seeing Plumbing S drinking a pint. I don't think she's ever done that before. I'm not sure she'll do it again.

We broke up at the Head of the River at 11.30 and I realised my back bike light wasn't working. I had also had four pints. I decided it was too risky to cycle through town. Also too risky to cycle down Abingdon Road and over Donnington Bridge. And I really couldn't be arsed to walk. I know, I thought, I'll go down the towpath.

I balanced at the top of the slope down onto it from Folly Bridge thinking 'now, is it sensible for a drunk woman on her own to cycle down the river at this time of night?'. Then I thought 'fuck it', released my brakes and swooped down into the darkness.

And it was magical. The river was as still as glass, the moon was out, the swans drifted by asleep in mid-stream. It was dark and silent and peaceful and warm and glorious. I started the day feeling tiny and anxious. I ended it feeling invincible.

joella

The poo most travelled

Warning: not for the squeamish.

Monday night and all day yesterday (and tonight and all day tomorrow) I have been / will be refitting a bathroom in a house recently bought by the ex-husband of Plumbing S. It's a much bigger job than I would take on by myself at this stage, but it came through J the plumber, who met the ex-husband of Plumbing S when he rodded out their drains one Christmas Eve. I think the ex-husband of Plumbing S would rather it was J the plumber doing the work (and based on experiences so far, so would I) but J the plumber doesn't work like that. He distributes, and he troubleshoots. Don't worry Jo, he said, you'll be fine.

He came over on Monday night to help me drain down the central heating system, and (literally) kicked out the bath and the WC while he was there. He left the basin and the radiator for me to remove, and I turned up by myself first thing yesterday feeling a bit nervous but ready for action.

I was balanced between two floor joists surveying the pipework and trying to decide what to do first, when I realised I really, really needed a poo. 'I'll just go to the...' Oh.

I did not know what to do. Poo in the garden and bury it (but he might dig it up, and I would always, always know it was there)? Drive home (not enough time)? Go in a bucket (only one bucket and it was already in use, and anyway *then* what would I do with it)? Knock on a neighbour's door (hello, you've never met me, but can I take a dump in your toilet Right Now)? What *is* the done thing in these situations? I really have no idea.

In the end I made a little nest of toilet paper where the toilet should be, and offered thanks to the gods for being well-practised at squatting. Then I carefully wrapped up my poo, which seemed twice as big as normal, but then I don't normally pick them up, put it in a carrier bag and put it in the car.

That wasn't such a good idea, as it was a hot day yesterday and later on I had to drive with my poo in the passenger stairwell all the way to the plumber's merchants and all the way back. When I returned I took it out of the car and put it down by the wheelie bin (but the wheelie bin was empty, and I couldn't bear the thought of leaving it lurking in there, it would surely give itself away).

So when I finally left for the day I scooped up my poo for its final journey, and drove as fast as I dared. There was no one in when I got home, thank goodness, so I was able to dispatch it in short order and deposit its bag in my own wheelie bin.

There has to be a better way. Maybe I should get a litte tin?

joella

Hobson's choice?

I got an email the other day from Tesco. They had noticed that I hadn't shopped online with them recently, and hoped they hadn't done anything to upset me. They asked me to let them know if they had, and as a goodwill gesture they would give me £10 off my next online-shop-over-£100-to-be-delivered-by-27-May.

And you know what, I nearly fell for it. I even had preliminary chats with ex-housemate S over whether we could split it. But a couple of days later I got my Tesco Clubcard statement in the post.

I never asked for a Tesco Clubcard. In fact, I have refused a Tesco Clubcard on many occasions. I do not want Tesco mining my data, however benignly they claim to do it and however many vouchers for V8 juice, Evening Primrose Oil and anchovies I might receive as a result. But if you shop online they give you a Clubcard *whether you want one or not*. Of course they do. They know where I live, they know what I buy. They want my soul. They're not having it.

So instead, I made a fifteen mile round trip to Waitrose and spent £115. That'll show them, I thought.

What an idiot. To be fair to me, it's getting on two months since I last did a supermarket shop, and to be fair to them, Waitrose are clearly at the less evil end of the supermarket scale. But ye gods, are they expensive. I recoiled in horror at a packet of ("Cave Aged") Gruyere which cost nearly Six Pounds and some pine kernels for Three Pounds Ninety Nine. But I spent a small fortune on Jersey new potatoes, another on 'wholesome' walnuts, and yet another on organic tampons. And don't even get me started on the caperberries.

Whichever hype you believe, you're still a sucker, I reckon.

joella

Am I pregnant?

I found a link to this remarkable 'Am I pregnant?' quiz during a bit of aimless post-prandial blog-wandering.

I'm no expert, I thought to myself, but I'd bet good money that you can't actually find out if you're pregnant by doing an online quiz, unless one of the questions is 'is there a baby's head poking out between your legs?' and your answer is 'yes'.

If you click through, they tell you: "if you want to know if you are pregnant, you MUST take a pregnancy test". But then they offer you the 'Am I pregnant?' quiz anyway.

So I took it. There is no earthly way I could be pregnant, but it told me that "your chance of pregnancy is low, but you need to check a pregnancy test to be sure".

If I wanted even more pointless guidance, I could pay $4.95 for a personal e-mail response detailing the chance of pregnancy in my specific situation. Which would also presumably include a recommendation that I take a pregnancy test to be on the safe side.

I struggle to see how this is useful or indeed ethical. They should wipe the whole thing and replace it with a money-off coupon for a stick to wee on.

joella

The female of the species

Last night, I Handed My Plumbing Folder In. All my assignments have been appropriately assessed, all my methods have been adequately stated, and all my achievements have been acceptably recorded. This one is my favourite.

So, I said to B the assessor, when will I be Qualified*? Well, he said, the IV (Internal Verifier) needs to approve your work, and then you'll get your certificate. That'll take a couple of months, though it might be a bit longer for you, because I've chosen your folder to send off to the EV (External Verifier).

Oh, I said. Is my folder special? (I have been pretty much top of the class in the theory stuff, but when it comes to the practical stuff I am precise-but-slow: average, really, if on the desirable side of average).

Well Jo, he said, not wanting to be sexist or anything, but you are a female.

Go on, I said.

Well, he went on, we've only had about 10 females get through the course. And you and S, you're about the only ones who've finished it on time and with no problems. You've done really well! Your folder is fantastic!

I squinted up at the light and thought back over the last two years. I decided to take this comment on my (unremarkable if you disregard my sex) performance in the sense in which it was intended. At one level I have found his combination of surprise and amusement quite hard to handle, but at another he has come along and used his (not inconsiderable) brute force pretty much on request whenever more brute force than I can muster has been required, and at yet another I believe his perceptions of women have genuinely, if slowly, shifted. You have to hold onto that.

I beamed at him. Thanks B, I said. Are you proud of yourself? he said. Oh yes, I replied. And I am. But one thing, I carried on, stop calling us females. We are women. If you're talking about human beings, female is an adjective. Lose the word.

I've been wanting to say that since September 2005. But I did at least say it. Some battles you can only fight when you know you've half won them: my pipework speaks for itself, and my knowledge of the Water Regulations is unmatched.

I don't know if any of this will make a difference to those women who come after me, but I like to think that Plumbing S and I softened the place up a bit. The whole atmosphere has a macho reek which will take some challenging, but to be honest that's far more down to the students than the teachers. B is one of a couple of them who didn't quite come to terms with our presence, but J the stores manager never seemed to have the tiniest issue with it, D the theory teacher toned down his jokes and never made us feel less than legitimate in the classroom (and also I think liked having people who always remembered their coloured pencils and did their homework), and BJ the leadwork teacher was old school courteous, called us ladies, and took extra time to make sure our welding was as neat as we wanted it.

For our part I think we handled ourselves well -- we laughed a lot but never giggled, we asked for help when we needed it but never expected special treatment, and we supported each other brilliantly. I was the one who remembered all the facts, made most of the decisions, and planned assignments meticulously, while S, in pink trousers and with pink flowery tools, got stuck in without a second thought. Between us we had it nailed, and we finished the course within a few hours of each other (her folder is in the photo because it's not quite ready to hand in yet).

Genderwise, I was heavily outnumbered at both school and university, but never at anything like this level. It had its dodgy moments, but on the whole it was a blast - there's nothing I like more than breaking moulds. Especially if you can do it without scoring cheap points.

joella

*Though I am not a properly Qualified plumber till I get my NVQ, and that's a different kettle of fish (and a different folder) altogether.

You can't have a cupboard if there ain't no wall

Ah, in late spring a young-ish woman's thoughts turn to Neil Young.

I don't really like driving except when I'm by myself, I more or less know where I'm going, the shadows are long, the traffic is light, the music is loud and the windows are down. Then I love it.

It was best of all when I still had my 2cv. There weren't many songs you could hear with the roof off and both cylinders roaring, but the ones that made it through were the best songs in the world. And one of my best tapes had Ragged Glory on one side and Nothing's Shocking on the other.

I parted with Cherry five years or so back, and I left the tapes with her - the rain used to drip through her cassette deck so I don't think they would really have worked in any other setting. But I still think driving is a time for the familiar, not for the strange, and for the epic, not for the fey.

Tonight I drove out into Oxfordshire after work to help fit a bath in a bungalow in Carterton. I was tired before I started, and completely knackered afterwards (though strangely manic once I got home, hence stupid late blogging). I should have resented it, or at least part of me should. But instead I got a perfect late May sky, with the sun shafting down through the clouds, framing half an hour of contemplation set to Neil Young's Unplugged.

Left me helpless, helpless, helpless.

But in a good way.

joella

Weddings, eh?

Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

I'm never quite sure what to make of them. This one was in the middle of the Peak District, and, being terminally stupid, we didn't factor either breakfast or lunch into our departure time. So we were running on a bottle of Lucozade and two packets of Frazzles by the time Wendy the GPS announced 'Destination!'. At this point we were a) clearly in the middle of nowhere and b) had 15 minutes to get to the church. There was swearing.

But we made it, much to my mother's relief. I will be writing to the Peak District council to suggest they trade off a bit of their outstanding natural beauty for a few road signs.

I do see why people get married, even if I can't imagine doing it myself, and it was a very beautiful setting to do it in - all around was bright, bright green, with super-sharp hills, a bright blue sky and big white clouds. It was like someone had turned up the contrast button. I am glad I wore red, I fitted right in. And the bride and groom genuinely seemed to be having the best day of their lives, which is as it should be.

But I still think 'the wedding' is a throwback ritual. The giving away, the bridesmaids, the hats, the men giving speeches. I've been to lots of weddings (some of them far more ostentatious than this one) and I can't help thinking they were designed for a different age. We haven't come up with many alternatives, though, apart from eloping or not bothering, so they carry on much the same.

Do you mind that I haven't done this, I asked my dad. The look he gave me told me all I needed to know.

joella

Grinner on the roof

Grinner on the roof
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

How happy am I to have finished my leadwork? This isn't quite as big a grin as the one on the photo in the assessment folder, but still gives a fair indication.

As anyone who knows their way round a bending stick could attest, my leadwork isn't actually very good, unlike my pipework, which isn't bad at all. But I don't intend to do it ever again, so I don't really care. The best bit was getting to wear a special purple coat (seventeen sizes too big) and a welding visor. It reminded me of the white coats and safety specs we got to wear in the chemistry labs in the sixth form. I always felt cool in a lab coat.

In other news, check out this cat in an ambulance story. I love our public services.

joella

PS and (as a result) the best lolcat I've ever seen

Dig your own hole

I think I got flirted with last night. I say 'think' because a) I'm not sure I recognise the signs anymore and b) if that *is* what he was doing he got it very, very wrong.

He arrived late at my friend C's birthday dinner, and sat next to me at the end of the table. We established that we both knew C from university. Which was weird, as I'd expect to at least recognise someone I spent three years in the same college as, but if we did ever meet neither of us remembered it.

Hey, he said after a while, you know who you sound like?
Who? I said, hoping he wasn't going to say Victoria Wood.
Victoria Wood! he said.

You're not the first person to say that, I said (hello Charlie!). But I don't think I do.

No, she doesn't, said someone across the table. It's just they're both Northern, and there is otherwise a complete lack of accent diversity in this room. Exactly, I said. I sound more like Victoria Wood than anyone else here, but that does not mean I sound like Victoria Wood.

No, you do! he said, and nudged me. And if you were blonde, you'd look a bit like her as well.
*Thanks*, I said, in my best facetious voice. Don't get me wrong, I like Victoria Wood a lot, and I happen to think she's looking pretty good these days. But she is 53.

Well, he went on hurriedly, except she's fat and you're not.

Can we stop this conversation? I said.

I would have said this definitely wasn't flirting except later on he did touch me on the leg.

joella

The Bear and baby

It's ok, he missed your hair, said ex-housemate S today as baby Tungsten chucked up over my shoulder in Modern Art Oxford. It's mostly on your top, your coat and your bag.

She took him off to change his nappy and I dabbed around in my hood with a Wet One, feeling a little squeamish but glad he's not on solids yet.

He is, however, teething, and really bloody grumpy. The best way to get around town was with one of us practising a range of silly walks involving the magic bounce factor, and the other manoevering the empty pushchair, which gradually filled up with surplus clothing, library books and tuna steaks. It's easier to plough into the ankles of teenagers who are blocking doorways and ignoring your 'excuse me please's' if you don't actually have the baby, and then the person who does can fall in behind. Neat.

The last purchase we had to make was a new plug for S's vacuum cleaner, and I directed her to Gill's the Ironmongers, one of my favourite shops. It's down Wheatsheaf Alley, and as she squeezed the pushchair past the scaffolding I said 'how about a quick half?'. Sure, she said, I'll meet you in there, so Tungsten and I wandered in, but the Wheatsheaf doesn't like babies and wouldn't serve me.

I'll see you outside the Bear, I said and we carried on up the alley. S arrived shortly afterwards and fetched beer. Maybe it was her lager going straight to his head but Tungsten fell asleep as soon as she'd fed him, and we sat there in the humid overcast afternoon and talked about old times. Which we don't do very often but I've had them on my mind recently.

First: I got an email a few weeks ago from E, who I went out with when I was 15. He was older than me (18, but that was a lot in the 80s) and I hadn't really been out with anyone before. Don't go there, said various well meaning people (including ex-housemate-then-schoolmate S), he's on the rebound and you'll get hurt. I have never been any good at listening to well meaning people but in this case they were right, in that I did get hurt, and I always assumed that he didn't really notice or care, and never gave me a thought thereafter. It was odd (but good) to find out 22 years later that there was a bit more to it than that. I am a little sad for my 15 year old self, who settled for less than she should've for a fair while afterwards, but happy to have the long view.

Second: my Significant Ex emailed me a few months ago asking if I'd sort out the photos from our relationship and send them off to be scanned so he can have copies. It's a fair request, but it's taken me a while to get round to it. I have maybe 100 packets of photos stored in a box in my room. They cover the period 1983 (when I first got a camera) to 2003 (when I first got a digital camera). I started the job last week, and it's been hard work on my back and on my eyes (are those tears? or just dust and grit?). So far I have divided the packets into three piles: 1983-1989 (pre-Significant Ex), 1989-98 (during) and 1998-2003. The 89-98 pile needs further sorting. The pre-89 pile is full of school photos, including many of S, (though only one of E, blurry, taken in the pub). Today she said 'I should get some copies of those'.

How times change. She is famous for keeping nothing, yet now she is the one with the baby. Another? I said, but as I came back with them (she was drinking halves, before anyone writes to the Breastfeeding Police) the heavens opened. I went into the pub and said 'can we bring a baby in here?'. Sure, they said, if you can get in through our 13th century door. There was about 2mm either side, and we parked up in the no smoking area, taking up about 80% of the available space and blocking access to the Gents.

When we emerged it was into what Mick the builder would call a terminal piss down situation. We had brief respite on the bus but then I made my farewells, pulled my still-damp-from-baby-sick hood up and leapt out into sheeting rain. It was pelting so hard that my normally extremely efficient Dutch trainers started leaking from the top. By the time I got home, every part of me that wasn't covered by my trusty North Face jacket was piss wet through.

I struggled slightly on the doorstep, and dropped my keys. M opened the door. I wasn't expecting him to be in. Hello! I giggled. I'm wet and drunk! So you are, he said, that's quite impressive for 5.30. I took off my wet clothes and put them in the washing machine, then fell asleep under a blanket on the sofa. He woke me up a couple of hours later with a glass of red and tuna steak au poivre. I'm still not sure what I did to deserve this.

joella

Girls and boys

1. Boys.
I enjoyed David Baddiel's Whatever Love Means far more than I expected to. He's overtly a) alpha, b) Oxbridge, and c) Jewish, and I've never found that a particularly sympathetic combination in men, even though it's not so far from my own. On those grounds, I'd never normally have borrowed the book from the library, but I was in a tearing hurry and it was on the 'If You're In a Tearing Hurry' stand by the door, next to the books in Polish.

And it is a good book, especially if you remember the time and the place (which I do), and if you have ever been in a relationship with someone whose behaviour has baffled you unless you take a really uncharitable view of men (which I have).

So next time I was in there, in slightly less of a tearing hurry, I borrowed Time for Bed. I've read about half of it, and decided (and this is rare for me) that I won't finish it. I found someone else's bookmark in it, which is a sign that I am not the first person to make this decision.

Basically, it's the porn, and the porn-driven sex. I don't like either of these things, and reading about them in this level of detail makes me feel bleak. I feel this way about a lot of Hanif "there are some fucks for which a man would have his wife and children drown in a freezing sea" Kureishi, not to mention a fair amount of early Martin Amis. And I don't think what he's saying is important or interesting enough to wade through the wanking and arse-fucking, frankly.

M is slightly further ahead in the book than me (we sometimes end up reading the same copy of the same book at the same time which annoys both of us but does mean you get to talk about it quicker). I don't like what this book says about men, I said. I don't think it's true. Surely it's not true.

Er, um, well it is a bit, he said. But you don't have a collection of hardcore DVDs! I said. You don't have major pubic hair issues! You don't negotiate interactions with women like they come from another planet! Do you?

Well no, he said. But then I live with you. And you've always said yourself that you can't help what's in your head, you can only help what you do with it. Which left me simultaneously flattered and disappointed. V postmodern. You finish it, I said, then tell me whether you think I should. And we left it at that.

2. Girls.
I might be hard work, but I'm low maintenance. I'm a cheap date, I carry a bag big enough for all my stuff, I don't sulk much, and I provide a detailed list of what I want for my birthday (which these days can mostly be sourced from the Screwfix catalogue).

I've been getting my legs waxed every four weeks since I was about 25, because I can't bear to shave but I can't bear to leave them either, and I've been dying my hair every 12 weeks since I was about 30, because I had developed a Mallen streak and it wasn't a good look. I exfoliate because it makes me feel clean, and I've been moisturising since my sister bought me some for Christmas a few years ago, but apart from that, nothing. No nails, no highlights, no perming, no straightening, no tanning, no bleaching, no Brazilians, no working out, no tooth whitening, no Botox, no foundation, no implants, no chucking up. This is partly a political stance (beauty fascism = bad), partly because I can't afford it, partly because even if I could I'm not sure it would make *that* much difference except to people whose opinion I like to think I don't value, and partly because I Just Can't Be Arsed.

And so it was with significant misgiving that I went out on Friday to get my eyebrows shaped. I've never done it because it's another thing to keep on top of, but I've realised of late that a) pretty much every woman in the world has "managed eyebrows", plus quite a few men, and b) the older you get, the less straggliness you can get away with. I've had beauticians offer to do it for free, I've had my mother on at me about it for years, I've had friends mention it 'in passing'. I've ignored them all, but then I saw this photo of me at Jeremy's clocks-forward-barbecue. Shit, I thought, I look very sweet and all but I have *got* to sort my eyebrows out.

And on Friday, I did.

What do you normally do, asked the nice lady, get them waxed or have them plucked? They've never been touched, I said. What, she said, NEVER? Nope, I said (not strictly true, I got them plucked once as a teenager but they've been au naturel since c1984), do your worst.

She did something involving both waxing and plucking. It hurt. I look weird. But better, I think. And either I get better at inflicting pain on myself, or that's another ten quid a month on personal grooming. M didn't notice, bless him. Or my haircut. But that's so much better than the other way round. You do it to yourself, you do.

joella

Head above parapet

This is an unfashionable thing to say, but I think Tony Blair's all right. I wish he wasn't such good friends with George W, who I think is very, very far from all right, and I think he made a colossal, irredeemable mistake with Iraq. But he made the Labour Party (which I have never joined but which I have always voted for) electable and he's kept it electable. And I think his heart's in the right place on many issues, domestic and international, even if I'd prefer it if he was an atheist (not least because if he was I don't think he'd be such good friends with George W). Basically, I think he *does* want to make the world a fairer place, and some of what he's done has had that effect. And I think the alternative's still worse, a whole lot worse, and those of us who can remember politics in the 1980s and early 90s shouldn't forget that.

He's also indirectly responsible for one of the best nights of my life, which I spent at the now legendary Billy Bragg gig at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden on 1 May 1997. The sun came up, the birds began to sing, and light shone in on everything. (There were Class As involved too, but still).

joella

Selective engagement with the bottom-feeders of humanity

On the whole, I don't put myself through things that I know will just make me angry. I don't bother to read American Psycho, for example, or watch A Clockwork Orange, or listen to Beenie Man, or visit lap dancing clubs. People have occasionally argued that you can't say you hate something if you haven't actually read / heard / seen it, but on the rare occasions I have listened to them - like the time I went for a night out in Patpong or the time I watched Leaving Las Vegas - I have regretted it. I know about the evil that men do. I don't need to consume its cultural byproducts.

But I do engage with the causes and effects of things that make me angry, and that's different. We've only the one world, and the more you know it, the better you understand it. I don't think I could bear to confront the worst that humans can do to each other all day every day, but nor do I think it's viable to live in a bubble and pretend it doesn't happen. And sometimes it's just important to bear witness.

So I didn't turn off the interview with Nick Griffin that was on Radio 4 tonight as I was driving home, even though the very sound of his voice makes my innards twist. I listened to him saying that he no longer believes the Holocaust didn't happen, and then I listened to him saying that he no longer believes this because it's against the law to believe it. You could hear the sneer in his voice. I howled with rage and floored it through Blackbird Leys, which is exactly the kind of place the BNP targets. He is slug slime in human form. I would like to pour salt on him and watch him shrivel.

joella

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Pies

Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

Something very dangerous happened this weekend. An idle thought of M's met a Nigel Slater recipe. Together they opened the freezer to find a block of puff pastry that I bought on a whim a few weeks ago, and unto us a pie was born.

We ate the pie for dinner with our visiting friend C, who could not have done a better job of appreciating the pie had he been Desperate Dan himself.

The pie was filled with cheese, leek, onion, potato and cream. It was fucking amazing, pardon my French. It was so amazing that the next morning we ate another pie almost just like it, but with extra broccoli inside to make up numbers and baked beans on the side.

We spent much of our constitutional walk the next day playing Fantasy Pie League. C's pie will feature feta cheese and spinach. And I fancy one with mushrooms in, like a giant mushroom vol au vent.

The pie possibilites are endless. Who knew it was so easy? All those years in my teens I spent fannying around with a toasted sandwich maker, I could have been making pies instead!

*However* (and this is where it gets dangerous) how long before small boys start pointing at me in the street and shouting 'who ate all the pies?'. At two pies a day, it might be Wednesday week.

Maybe I should buy some earplugs.

joella

Lead in my pencil

'So you cut it there, and there,' said J the plumbing technician this evening, 'and then you put it up on the chimney and beat it vigorously'.

There must have been something in my expression, because what actually happened was I did the cutting, then held it in place while he did the vigorous beating part. Leadwork is so primitive. It really is about hitting metal with sticks.

I was very grateful for the help, it's the hitting with sticks bit I find most difficult. Cutting I got the hang of once someone introduced me to the left-handed snips, and my welding, on a good day, looks as it should.

It's odd isn't it, I said, that we spend weeks grappling with bending sticks and flat dressers and oxy-acetylene torches and shave hooks, then just as they stop feeling entirely alien in your hands you finish your chimney set and never touch the stuff again.

Well, he said, it's a dying art.

It is. It's dirty and heavy and poisonous and heavy and difficult and did I say heavy, but it's a remarkable material to work with. If you know what you're doing, you can make it do anything you want, as the rooftops of Oxford attest. Time was it was part of what plumbers did (the trade is named after it, after all) but now it's a specialist thing roofers do, and it just remains in plumbing courses for legacy reasons.

It will go soon, I expect, and I don't think anyone will miss it. But I guess I'm glad I've had the chance to have a go on it. Most of the time it makes you feel puny and/or all thumbs, but when you tap something round a corner and it goes exactly where it should, or you finish a perfect welded seam and lift your mask off like her out of Flashdance, you begin to see the point...

joella

Bad Person

I forgot my swipe card this morning. You can't get into the New Building without one, and if you forget it you have to sign a little book and get buzzed through the plexiglass. The lovely Front of House team never give you a hard time about this, but emails go round occasionally about all the extra work this generates for them when they already have tons to do, like buzz through people who don't have swipe cards at all and deal with random calls from the Great Global Public on the switchboard all day long. The people who write these emails are right. When I forget my swipe card I feel like a heel.

I had to go to the post room at lunchtime, which you also need a swipe card to get to. I asked my colleague, the gloriously named Spartaca, if I could borrow hers for ten minutes. Hey, I thought to myself as the door popped open, I'm Spartaca!

This thought kept me amused until I was nearly back at my desk, when I got waylaid once by someone wanting to talk about Kleinian psychotherapy and once by someone wanting to understand why she only had 24 hours to do the reading for a meeting I should have sent the papers out for last week. I talked anxiety and delivered apologies and sought solace (not found) in a pasta salad that clearly started life as a different meal on a different day.

And I forgot all about Spartaca's swipe card till I found it in my pocket after I got home. How shit do I feel now. How do you make it up to someone for leaving them having to wave plaintively at the security guard to get out and then having to sign the Book of Badness to get back in?

joella

Candle. Both ends burnt.

It's not often I get up at 8.30 on a Sunday morning, but that's what you do when you're convinced all the punts will be gone by 10.01. They weren't, but it was still worth getting there early.

Punting was in honour of E, W and little F, visiting us from Paris for the weekend. We also managed college sightseeing (New College garden! How have I lived here this long and never seen that before?), a walk in the country, the Boat Inn at Thrupp, smoked salmon in the garden, Nonstop Tango at the Wheatsheaf, Victoria sponge cake in Iffley Fields after lunch at the Victoria Arms, and gallons and gallons of vin rouge. I am *exhausted*.

This week: clean living, steamed vegetables, early nights. Honest. That's fizzy Ribena in the pint glass. It *is*.

joella

Slicing up eyeballs

It's unseasonably warm.

Mix yourself something fiercely alcoholic. Go to your hi-fi. Dig out Debaser by the Pixies. Play it LOUD.

Oh ho ho ho.

joella

Something is cracking, I don't know where

One of the books (previously a Guardian column that I was just a tiny bit young for) that changed my life was Jill Tweedie's 'Letters from a Fainthearted Feminist'. I read it in the late 1980s, around the same time as I read The Female Eunuch and The Women's Room, and for a time I could quote substantial chunks of each of them. And regularly did.

God knows I must have been hard work to be around, but I did genuinely believe Germaine when she said that until you had tasted your own menstrual blood you could not consider yourself a liberated woman*, and Marilyn French when she said that there was more to life than shit and string beans**. I also read Betty Friedan, Kate Millett and Andrea Dworkin, and then (just in time) along came Jill Tweedie: just as radical, but British, understated, and very, very funny. She saved me from becoming a really bad lesbian (not that lesbians are bad, just that I would have made a rubbish one) by making me laugh.

Those days, as these days, are library book days, so I don't have the Letters to re-read, but one I remember really well was about food. It doesn't take much, she said, to work as a chef in a top restaurant and make something edible out of a leg of venison and two pints of double cream. Where the skill comes in is pulling together dinner for four in half an hour out of some manky veg and the end of a tube of tomato puree. So why do chefs get all the glory?

That argument has often run through my head as I have opened the fridge. Ex-housemate S turns up on Tuesday lunchtimes for her only decent meal of the week (or so she says). I need to provide a breastfeeding woman with 35 vegetable portions in a single sitting! At least I know ten ways to serve up cabbage, is all I can say.

But the argument also applies to gardening. April is the venison month. Everything burgeons everywhere - there's nothing to it. You have to really try to have a shit April garden. The skill is having a good August garden, a good November garden, a good February garden. I may be able to do things with brassicas, but I've a lot to learn about foliage.

joella

* Probably not true, but didn't do me any harm.
** A euphemism for staying at home with small children. I think this is now generally accepted, if far from resolved.

I heart Andrew Marr

There are lots of clever funny men out there, but most of them just sit around being clever and funny at the expense of people who are less clever and less funny, and, to me at least, that's Just Not That Attractive. Call me earnest, and you wouldn't be the first, but the clever funny men I like the best are the ones who do something useful with it.

I was very sad when Andrew Marr stopped being the BBC's Political Editor, as he made me *want* to watch the 10 O'Clock News. But he made up for it by making Start The Week funny (well, I quite liked it with Paxo too, if I'm honest).

This morning, he was talking to the head honcho at English Heritage, who has done a study of the White House, 10 Downing Street, and the Kremlin, and how these kinds of buildings both influence and are influenced by the type of regime whose leaders they house. They were talking about how George W Bush set about redecorating the White House the second he took up residency.

AM: 'So it was as if he needed to remove the stains of the Clinton era?'

(beat)

AM: 'Not literally, of course'.

Genius.

joella

Second chance Sunday

Given Tuesday's avocado bathroom debacle, it was with some trepidation that I called J the plumber tonight... in fact if I hadn't had someone call me on Friday with a central heating problem that I haven't a hope of fixing myself (though, encouragingly, I'm pretty sure I know what's wrong), I might not have called at all.

But he sounded pleased to hear from me, and told me that tomorrow I am changing the taps in that very same bathroom. It will be like revisiting the scene of an old humiliation, only not so old. What happens, I said, if I can't get the bath taps off? Jo, he said, there's only one thing I can say to you: they've got to come off, so you'll get them off. Oh, I said. Right.

We went out for a Sunday evening bike ride with added Pizza Express, and when we got back there was some copper pipe on the front path and two sets of taps and a bag of fittings tucked under the ceanothus.

Mild terror. That's what I'm feeling.

But to offset this, I have the warm, warm memories of last night down the Exeter Hall, where we attended the first Terrastock Tea Party. Where I learnt that if you come across a large number of men with long hair and beards all hanging out in the same place, they're either survivalists or members of United Bible Fellowship. If they are Irish, it's the latter, and you're in luck. Also playing was Tara Jane O'Neil, with whom I was a tiny bit smitten, and that doesn't happen very often, and Sharron Kraus, who delivers amazing acid ballads with a perfect folk singer's voice. Some of it was hypnotic, some of it was noisy, most of it you could lose yourself in, and that doesn't happen very often either. Lovely.

joella

Thoughts

I am so tired that I can't string a whole post together. So here are the thoughts that I might have developed into posts if I had a bit more energy.

• I am so happy to have Peep Show back!
• If I see that fucking M&S advert with Mylene Klass in it one more time I'm going to change the underwear buying habits of a lifetime.
• Is there a more offensive poster on the high street at the moment than the one in the window of KFC advertising the 'Mum's night off family bucket'?
• What the hell are we going to do with the giant (as in 4'x3') poster of a surrealist dog kennel that M brought back from the Rock in Opposition festival? Will it stay rolled up in the middle of the living room forever?
  
• I have trousers to take up. I'm 5'4". I therefore always have trousers to take up, why can't I sew properly?
• I hope it rains soon. I've had to take a hosepipe to the new perennials, and it made me feel a bit transgressive.
  
  
• 

joella

Learning curves like sine waves

I'll be honest, there are moments when I'm plumbing when I think what the fuck am I doing here? I had a seriously big one this morning when I was stuck, short of sleep and battling period pain, in an overheated house in Kidlington completely failing to take a bath tap apart. I hung off it till my neck bulged, but all that happened was that the whole tap lurched round. This is bad news as it can loosen the connection under the tap. I dragged it back to its original position, but I was sure I could hear something gurgling.

I tried to check under the bath but the bath side was tiled in. Shit, shit, shit. I rang J the plumber in a bit of a state. Go downstairs! he said. Can you hear dripping? Um, I think so, I said. Shit, shit, shit, he said. Have you got a chisel?

No, I said in a small voice.

Right, he said, get the water off, I'll get someone over to get that panel off for you, and you'll have to change those taps.

OK, I said in an even smaller voice, panicking wildly about a) changing bath taps, which is a seriously evil job, b) consequently having no time to revise for, or possibly even sit, my final plumbing theory exam, which was tonight, and c) the fact that as well as no chisel I had no food and no tampons with me, and was getting to the point where I would be sorely in need of both.

I stood hugging myself in the bathroom, telling myself it would all be ok, just get this done and then you can go home and cry and never do it again.

And then it occurred to me to check if the cold tap, which was not dripping and which I hadn't touched, could be turned off any harder. It could. The gurgling noise stopped.

I rang J back and left a message telling him that I am an idiot. I left the tenants a note saying that the basin tap was done but the bath tap wasn't and would need to be changed at some point. I dropped the keys off with the letting agent, drove home to eat Lebanese food with M and ex-housemate S and baby Tungsten, and sat in the garden to revise for my exam (which I went on pass convincingly, which might not have happened without those two hours of fact cramming). I remembered how I felt fitting N&D's bathroom in Manchester this weekend -- miserable on Saturday evening when all the waste outlets leaked, euphoric on Sunday afternoon when D and I had fixed them all with generous application of silicone and Plumbers Mait and you could see what a lovely room it was going to be.

It's not a job you can fudge, basically. When it goes wrong it's terrifying, but when it goes right it makes you grin from ear to ear and sing along to Alison Moyet all the way home. To paraphrase Billy Bragg, you need to have the crunchy so you can have the smooth. And that's why it's worth it.

joella

Nature or nurture?

Here are five things I can't be without:

• Urban folk music from the late 1980s
  
• Multi-ethnic variations on the 'cheese and pickle' theme
  
• Big jumpers
• Red wine
• Hot baths
  

Here are five things I can't bear:

• Anything featuring harpsichords
• McDonalds
• High heels
  
• Alcopops
• Cold showers
  

Some of it's age, some of it's class, some of it's inexplicable. As a feminist, I obviously site myself at the 'nurture' end of the continuum, but it doesn't explain everything. If I were 10 years younger, would I like drum and bass? Would I have a WKD side? If I were 400 years older, would I yearn for that plinky plonk sound and drink mead till my teeth fell out? I can't quite believe that I would, but where *are* the joellas of yesteryear?

joella

Formative experiences

Today I went into town with ex-housemate S and baby Tungsten*. Parents everywhere will laugh hollowly at me for finding this a fascinating experience, but I've never been shopping with a baby before. It's really *hard*. And they clearly built the pavements round here before they invented pushchairs. What did they do with babies in the Middle Ages? Left them wriggling in middens, probably.
But it had its advantages. We bought new trousers in White Stuff (the first shop we went into) at the speed of light. Okay, we bought the same trousers, but thankfully they came in two different colours, and I don't think anyone will notice. I went to the library and borrowed the first three books I saw, which is probably as good a way as any of selecting reading material. I pared my Neal's Yard purchases down to the bare minimum (one bottle of conditioner and one bottle of body lotion), which is good, because I am poor at the moment. And then we went to Modern Art Oxford for lunch, whose cafe is the spiritual home of every middle class parent in Oxford. Even those who hate modern art.

The cafe is in the basement. You can go down the stairs from street level, or you can get in a special stairlift type cage to take you up to the shop, from where a normal lift will take you down to the cafe. I opened the special cage door for the pushchair. 'I've never got in this before', said S. 'I'm just too embarrassed'. It moved us up, whirring gently, about three feet at maybe an inch a second, in full view of everyone in the shop. It *was* a bit excruciating, and two nuns sitting on a bench smiled wryly** at us as we walked across the room trying to act natural.

We ate, and Tungsten drank, and then it was time for them to go to the GP to get his kidneys weighed or something. I can't face that lift again, said S. Okay, I said, let's carry him up the stairs.

She took the back of the pushchair, and I had the front. Can I just hold the handles? I said. Yes, fine, she said, and we set off. By the time she was halfway up, the pushchair was approaching vertical, and Tungsten sort of rolled forward, curled up like a caterpillar with his head pointing downwards in a way which was clearly not ideal. No! Stop! I said, and we had a kind of mid-air mid-stair baby wrangling moment which fortunately he slept right through and we both found hilarious.

A severe looking middle aged woman was waiting for us at the top of the stairs. As we finally returned the pushchair to solid ground, she peered round the hood and said 'Oh, you *do* actually have a baby in there!' Just about, I replied. 'I thought you might be an installation,' she said.

Clearly, I'm a natural.

joella

*not his official name, but that's what they really wanted to call him, so it's his name for the time being
**possibly not wryly, possibly open-heartedly and generously, they are nuns after all. But it looked wry to me.

Good Friday chez joella

Good Friday chez joella
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

Sometimes, the only person you can please is yourself. Today I did the best friend bit, I did the girlfriend bit, I did the stepmother bit. I did my best at all of the above, and a lot of it was fun. The last bit was the most complicated, and probably not just for me. So come 10 o'clock I built the first outdoor fire of the year and settled into a deckchair in the garden with red wine and 6Music and nobody else. What a fabulous month April can be.

joella

The dynamics of the provisional

I nearly cancelled dinner with J last night, but I am very glad I didn't. She is older and wiser than I am and always gives me a new way to look at things – a different perspective, or a philosophical framework I wasn't aware of. There's not much new under the sun, when it comes down to it, and sometimes I think growing up is basically about working that out.

I was talking about my bad cold, and how I seemed to have been ill a lot recently, which I was finding hard because I need energy and initiative and optimism to help me make the transition from a full time job to a more flexible life. It's all down to me, see, if I don't make it happen then nobody else will, and if I'm going to lie around feeling sorry for myself two days a week then I might as well be doing it in an office, cos then at least I'd be getting paid. And even if I'm not ill, how do I know when to take a risk, and how far should I push it, and how many baskets should I have my eggs in exactly? It's all so... hard sometimes. Am I a fool? Am I making a very expensive point of principle? Etc.

She's in a sort of a risky place too, though a very different one, and she told me about the dynamics of the provisional. I think this idea, first articulated by Immanuel Kant, essentially posits that transitional states are difficult, and you have to allow them to be so if they are to deliver what they could. To impose control, draw lines, or jump ship too soon stops things running their course. It's not comfortable, but it's ok. In fact it's necessary. Water finds its own level eventually.

I ate my bouillabaisse and drank my Sambuca and felt a whole heap better. And in return I recommended Pan's Labyrinth. I *wanted* to recommend Standing in the Way of Control - perfect for jumping up and down to while wrestling with the dynamics of the provisional - but she's more of an opera person. I am sure there are arias that say much the same thing.

joella

I fought the lead, and the lead won

A new colleague at NGO X is also a blogger. She is a Labour councillor and blogs mostly about politics local and global. People are amazed that she is so comfortable with her life being 'out there' for all to see. Mmm yes, I mutter, how extraordinary.

I don't publicise joella at work, you see, though it would hardly take VI Warshawski to uncover her existence. I worry about it sometimes. But joella is really an alter ego. She's more articulate than I am, her anger is more focused and she definitely drinks more Rioja. My heart is not quite on my sleeve, for then I would have to be completely anonymous, and that would be less fun. I like walking this line.

But what it does mean, when you have even a little bit of your life 'out there', is that when (as Mike Skinner would say) shit goes pear-shaped you don't really want to write about it. Well, if shit went really pear-shaped there might be something worth writing about, but if it's just that you develop a mean stinking cold, possibly picked up in the foetid stairwell of the council house from hell, and spend several days lying under a blanket on the sofa necking Benylin, feeling misanthropic and loathing of self (automisanthropic?) and generally losing your mojo in industrial quantities of snot, there's just not much to say.

Some of those days were in Devon, involving a party and a place called Ho! I ate a mini pork pie when I was pissed (I blame the Benylin/champagne combo) and played with stones with stripes in them. I was glad to be there, but could not claim to have been great company. I came home to lie on the sofa some more.

This morning I dragged myself into college to do some leadwork, as I missed last week's lesson in order to attend aforementioned party. My eyes hurt, my throat hurt, my head hurt, and I stood for three hours hitting heavy metal with sticks. It's like breaking rocks. I bloody hate it.

More sofa, more blankets, more Benylin.

Right, I'm going to shut up again till I'm better. This is no fun for anyone.

joella

Playing catch up

Two months later, I've finally finished sorting through our photos from India. It feels like half a lifetime ago. These are a few of my favourites, but there are lots more on Flickr if you happen to like photos of India...





A couple of weeks ago I changed some kitchen taps for a graphic designer. In return he's going to tidy up some of my favourite digital photos and print them for me. Let's hear it for the no-cash economy!

joella

The discomfort of strangers

Yesterday I had to make a hungover trip to B&Q, which is tortuous at the best of times. I nearly had a funny turn by the power tools. But I am glad I made the effort, as by 9 o'clock this morning I was shut in a council house bathroom with J the plumber as he smashed up a cast iron bath with a sledgehammer. Without my new ear defenders, I would have been in all sorts of trouble.

I sprang down the stairs when the doorbell rang, as we were expecting the new bath any minute. Instead there was an electrician, who was working in another council house round the corner. It was a water leak that had stuffed up the electrics, could J come and have a look?

Some to-ing and fro-ing and authorisations later we got in the van and drove round there. The woman who lived there showed us to a downstairs room round the back, saying the leak was there, as indeed it was, but coming through the ceiling, so we went up to the bathroom. And I have never seen anything like it. Ever. The bath was full of junk, unused and unusable, the sink was filthy, the toilet was unspeakable, and the smell made my stomach lurch. The leak was on the cold supply to the toilet. We needed to turn off the mains.

Which meant going into the kitchen, which was through the living room. My eyes just got wider and wider. It was like being in an episode of Life of Grime. J was amazing, the tenant was clearly distressed at having people in the house, but he didn't bat an eyelid, just started moving things to look for the stop tap. The electrician caught my eye, smiled wryly and went outside for a smoke. I very nearly joined him.

He couldn't find the stop tap. It was like looking for a needle in a very grim haystack. 'I'll do it live', said J (which is a last resort approach which involves getting really bloody wet) and we went out to the van for hosepipes and spanners.

Back up in the bathroom, he took up the carpet by the toilet. Suddenly needing not to be looking in that direction, I turned round to face the wall, and saw the primary school uniform sweatshirts hanging up on coathangers. I stood there very quietly and tried really, really hard not to cry. I think I must have changed colour because J put his tools down and and came and put his arms round me. It's all right, he said, they've got a roof over their heads, they've got heating, they've got enough to eat. Shit, there's enough food down there to keep them all going for months.

I guess he's right. And now they don't have a leaky toilet, and their electrics work. And you can't force people to clean their houses. And I'm sure they love their kids. And I don't know what the answer is, or even what the question is. But I have this knot in my stomach and this smell in my hair. The second I am about to deal with via a long hot bath in my clean white bathroom. The first will take longer to go away.

joella

Multiple deprivation

I found out this week, via Meg, via Zoe Williams, via Loyd Grossman Sauces, that most British people a) have around four staple meals, the most popular being spaghetti bolognese, sausages and mash, chicken tikka masala and chilli con carne, and b) eat precious little else. I am not sure I trust the agenda of a readymade sauce manufacturer any more than I trust readymade sauces themselves, but even if it's only a bit true it's not a very cheery thought.

There are some staple meals chez joella, of course, and some of them - lentil soup, nut roast, celery-mushroom-pasta-bake, fishy-eggy-ricy-thing, tuna-noodle-pickled-vegetable - have been around for a decade or more. I also keep a jar of pesto in the fridge, which I eat with pasta and without shame.

But most of the time, we make it up, depending what we feel like, how much time we've got, who's in the mood to cook, what veg we have in, and what's in the fridge. Sometimes it's a disaster (I won't be doing those beetroot and sweet potato fritters again), but it's rarely out of a jar. And every time I buy a crap ready meal or eat rubbish takeaway food I curse a culture that can so shamelessly sell us something so utterly devoid of all the things food should have and so utterly full of all the things it shouldn't. Then I curse myself for being disorganised, lazy or drunk enough to be giving it stomach room. But now I think, how many people think this is normal?

I was in fact musing on this as I was bashing my leadwork around in plumbing class this week, when the subject of books came up. I have no idea how, given what followed, but it wasn't me who mentioned them first. The guy next to me said 'I never read books'. What are you talking about, I said. 'I reckon I've read two books in my life,' he said. I just looked at him. I think my mouth may have fallen open. Wow, I said. I think I'd die without books. I probably read about a book a week. I never stop reading. I have been known to read books by Andy McNab in the absence of anything else to read.

We looked at each other in mutual incomprehension for a few seconds, then got back to hitting things. But then I don't like football, so what do I know?

joella