The joy of words. And technology. Together.

Remember when email was exciting? When you got as excited about a new message as you used to do about getting post at university? (When there was no email, and there were no mobile phones, so people actually used to *write* to each other?)

Early email was fantastic. And often it was about fantastic new websites, and you would rush off to look at what wondrous development 1996 had come up with.

And one of them (maybe not in 1996, but certainly by 1998) was the Plumb Design Online Thesaurus. It was mentioned at the training I went on last week so I checked it out again, and damn me if it isn't just as fabulous as it was the first time round.

I just investigated the FAQ -- it was indeed first released in 1998, and you can still use the original, now known as the Classic, version.

Rock and roll.

joella

Stress with a clear conscience

I'm not a big chocolate eater, but there are certain situations (and certain times of the month) when something dark and sweet is required.

So I keep a bar of Darkly Divine in my desk drawer, next to my oatcakes, my lemons and my tampons.

Days like today, I appreciate my ability to provide for myself in advance. And it's Fair Trade (of course), so I am doing good in the world as I comfort eat.

joella

A tale of two hangovers

The first one was mine. I was staying with the lovely R&J in Brixton in between two days of training in London.

The first day was great, I learnt some interesting things, wished I'd done it six months ago but still. I left happy. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I walked from Temple to Tottenham Court Road to have a drink with an ex-colleague and generally felt quite the metropolitan girl (though admittedly most of them aren't clutching a sweaty A-Z).

But then I had to get myself to R&J's. They live very near Loughborough Junction station, and I had directions, so I felt pretty confident. Last thing to do was get a bus four stops from opposite Brixton police station.

Arsing bastard London bus drivers. Do they want to help you? No they do not. The first bus I got on was, in fairness, the wrong bus, so I got off and went to another bus stop.

The next bus driver told me I was on the wrong side of the road, so I got off and crossed the road. The *next* bus driver told me I was on the wrong side of the road. I protested a bit that they couldn't *both* be the wrong side of the road, but eventually got off and crossed the road.

The *next* bus driver waved me down the bus without answering the Loughborough Junction question, but then refused to drive off and started shouting at me for not having a ticket. But I tried to buy one! I said. I want to go to Loughborough Junction!

He shouted at me some more, I didn't understand what he was saying, but he eventually deigned to sell me a ticket, although not to tell me where to get off. But I worked that out for myself.

I was only half an hour late, but all vestiges of metropolitanness had evaporated, and I drank a lot of wine. Far too much wine. So much wine I can't remember going to bed. Not a good idea when you have a training course the next day.

And I felt like I was going to die. I got there early and sat in some gardens with a coffee and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and hoped these would help.

They didn't. And nor did the fact that the course was essentially 130 powerpoint slides delivered over six hours in a slightly overheated room, broken up with some strange vegetarian nuggets for lunch and several trips to the loo.

But all my own fault. Never. Again. Honest.

The second hangover was M's. His was gained by more conventional means, ie drinking too much in the pub on Saturday night. What was notable was the speed with which it became apparent he was going to have a mother of a hangover, and the fact that he had to take it to our Sunday Neighbourhood Drinks.

The former was odd... he just kind of went. One minute, playing the piano, showing off his website, chatting happily, the next a confused drunk person with a terrible case of hiccups. He fell asleep before his hiccups left and there I was lying next to a man who was snoring and hiccuping at the same time. I've never heard anything like it. Zzzzz-HIC! Zzzzz-HIC!

The latter was just unfortunate. I made him come with me, because Neighbourhood Drinks are scary, and to his eternal credit he did, though he did leave about 20 minutes later to go home and lie down.

I like to think this has improved our cool rating with our neighbours (rock and roll, etc), but I suspect not.

joella

Three cranes do make a sunset

Lock me in an unlit dungeon for seventeen years, and then show me a photo of the sky over Oxford this evening and ask me what month it was. October, I would tell you. Without a doubt.

I am not sure if Color Me Beautiful would agree, but I feel in my soul that I am an autumn person.

Dark blue sky with pink streaks, plus orange trees (optional extra, but achingly beautiful if you get the right species on the right day) -- who could ask for more on her way home?

But there were cranes as well. I am not nearly so big a fan of cranes as M, but they have an undeniable elegance and style, and tonight they were lit up in the bright twilight as if celebrating their own transience.

And as a final bonus, the silhouette of the new mosque appeared against the setting sun as we drove down Divinity Road. Not the obvious Oxford spires, but all the more beautiful for that.

joella

The joys of autumn

1. Scarves. I think I have finally become a woman who can wear scarves. I started to knit one last year, but made an utter pig's ear of it. When my mother came to stay, she took it away, unravelled it, reknitted it and sent it back. It's fabulous.

2. Quince. We have an ornamental quince tree in the front garden. I think what makes it ornamental is the shocking pink flowers in February (one of the joys of spring), but it is also a practical quince tree in that it has loads of quince on it. Thus far we have (shame on us) chucked them, but this year M says he is going to make quince marmalade. Or maybe quince paste, which goes so wonderfully with manchego cheese.

joella

Road trip!

Well, train trip, but I'm excited nonetheless. We're off to Manchester. Please let the train run on time. Please let it not piss down. Please let N&D be well and happy and please let us all have lots of fun.

back on Monday

joella

And in the Darkness...

... turn it up to eleven.

I am really, really taken with the Darkness album. I can't quite put my finger on why. I think it scratches the same itch that Bat Out Of Hell used to when I was a teenager.

Our new kitchen is deliciously, briefly, functional yet spartan. There is a CD player on the floor in the corner. I am cooking, drinking Gewurtztraminer and listening to I Believe in a Thing Called Love.

The rollercoaster's on its way up again.

joella

Arty pants

I do know a bit about art after all! I did this BBC art quiz and I got them all right!

Must count for something, no?

joella

Meg on Blair

I read Meg's blog at meish.org every now and again. I don't know her, but I like how she writes. It used to be at notsosoft.com, which is how I found it: Not So Soft is an Ani DiFranco album and I was searching on it.

Anyway... her post on Blair's speech yesterday is just wonderful.

joella

Bloody turn up, will you

The Ecuadorian government has started a campaign to encourage people not to be late for work.

I thoroughly approve. Can they do that over here? Especially for builders? Mike the kitchen man said they were a shower, and he wasn't wrong.

Grump, grump.

joella

Arrrggghhh

I had one of those weekends. House in chaos, everything smelling of white spirit, computer monitor not attached to computer, kettle on the stairs while the kitchen floor dries.

Got fed last night by some good, good people, but this did involve some strange Peruvian spirit, and though I skipped home I fear it was not the most sensible start to the week.

And today I have only one really important thing to do but I cannot get my head round it. I feel like I have a touch of Durkheim's anomie.

Or, as Bruce Springsteen put it, I might take a wrong turn and just keep going.

It'll be all right soon, probably.

joella

The Google Toolbar

I had the Google Toolbar installed many moons ago, then I got a new PC and never got round to reinstalling it, and then I forgot all about it.

And at home Google is my homepage, so it's no big deal. But at work my homepage is a set of useful links I put together for the last team I worked in, and Google is two clicks away. Or three, if you are not on the homepage when you think about it. Which is two, or even three, clicks too many when you use Google as often as I do.

I could have re-done my homepage, but I couldn't be arsed. I could have reset my homepage, but I would then lose all the other useful links (Favourites are for reference, not for everyday use, imo).

So I decided to go for the Google Toolbar again.

And what a tremendously useful thing it has become. It blocks pop-ups, unless you don't want it to. It auto-fills in forms, unless you don't want it to. It searches just within the site you're on.

It also lets you BlogThis! whenever you like. So I did.

joella

When I grow up I want to be an old woman

Went to see Belleville Rendezvous the other day. It is a surreal French animation which takes you to some strange old places.

I'm not, as I have said, always a great one for art, but there is a wonderful dog in it who behaves perfectly consistently however weird it gets, and it features the funniest corrective shoe in history.

And of course Madame Souza and the swinging, frog-eating Belleville Triplets themselves. Afterwards I said how wonderful it was to have a film -- albeit an animation -- where the four main characters were old women. How often does that happen?

Aha! someone pointed out: what about Calendar Girls?

No, no, that misses the *point*.

joella

80s revival in my head

There's a leather necklace that S and I bought together in about 1986 because we both wanted it but neither of us could afford it. We took turns wearing it, and then it ended up with me, and somehow I kept it.

And how glad I am that I did, because suddenly it looks fabulous again (how does that *happen*?). And Psychocandy sounds fabulous again. And I hate the government again.

Any minute now mine will be a pint of snakebite.

joella

Smell-o-vision

I have always been somewhat led by my nose, and am even more so as a non-smoker (I can smell a cigarette on a warm day at 100 paces).

Often this is great. I was just walking through Cornmarket in Oxford, a fairly dismal experience most of the time as they have been resurfacing it for years now, so there are hoards of people squeezing across tiny little walkways in bad moods and the smell drifts from KFC (very bad) to Lush (not much better).

But today the resurfacing had reached that crucial point where they have to lay asphalt. Oh, the smell of fresh asphalt. I could live on that smell. It reminds me, though I am not sure why, of long hot childhood summers. It makes me want to lie down and smell the road.

Other top smells of the week have included Sunday lunch coming out of the kitchen at the Marsh Harrier, mingling with the smell of fresh beer and the smell of the Observer to create something quintissentially British and great... and the smell I got when I opened my long lost dishwasher after I first used it yesterday: clean, shiny and nostalgic all at the same time.

But sometimes it is not great. I sat behind someone on the bus whose clothes had that smell you get when you leave them in the washing machine too long and then dry them badly. I cannot bear that smell. It is the smell of neglect and depression and no central heating. I would like to live in a world where nobody's clothes smelt like that.

joella

Miles shows off

I have been saying to Miles for *ages* that he should have a website, given that he does website development stuff for a living.

And now he's got one.

He said 'I don't want to just have a website. I want to do something that says I am a programmer but also creative'.

And he's done it (Press F5). I am dead impressed.

Though you can't actually use it to contact him or anything useful like that. Purist arty programmers don't make it easy for you to give them work.

joella

The bright side

Okay, it's better than marrying the wrong man in the wrong century. That was drunken hyperbole. The units are still horrible, but apparently they can be painted. And if that doesn't work we'll get new ones. We don't have to live with them.

And now we've got a window. And... bestest of all... the lump of metal and plastic that I have been dragging round Oxford with me for the last five years but unable to plumb in has ceased to be a very large piece of emotional baggage and become a dishwasher again! Hooray!

And the sink has a bit you can use for rinsing.

And we have a real oven.

And cupboards. And drawers. Two years we have lived with no kitchen cupboards or drawers.

A bit of shit brown fake wood can be dealt with. We will deal with it.

joella

Push pineapple shake a tree

The kitchen men están aquí.

We made our choices and they are doing their job. But something has gone wrong.

We hate our units. We don't hate the design, and we don't hate the concept, but we hate the delivery.

The doors are fine. The worktops are fine. But the units themselves are fucking hideous. How did we choose light oak? It's not light and it never saw oak. It is like a world without redemption. It is like marrying the wrong man in the wrong century.

I live in a world where this can be rectified. I have lived my life in preparation for this moment. Surely.

joella

Time to stand up and be counted

OK, way I see it, if you're reading this you either

a) know me and think I'm cool enough to have a blog worth reading
b) know me and think I'm a bitch trog from hell (in which case fuck off let's not waste each other's time)
or
c) don't know me from Eve but got here anyway

So.

Oh, bugger. I had a really good point, and then I went to the loo, and now I can't remember what I was going to say.

joella

S is for scary

For long boring car journeys, there is the poo game. But that doesn't help you get to sleep when your body clock is a bit screwed, so for that we have the alphabet game.

It's pretty simple, like all the best games. Think of a category (colours, animals, etc) then think of one thing from that category beginning with each letter of the alphabet in order.

X and z are obvious dodgy characters, but pretty quickly you come to hate j, k and n as well. The only category we have got all the way through is cars (thank you, Citroen Xsara!).

The other night, Miles said: let's do disasters. OK, I said. Avalanche.
M: Bloodbath
J: Ewww. Um, cyclone
M: Drought
J: Earthquake
M:Flood
J: G... g... genocide!

How can I be delighted to have thought of genocide? H, of course, is for Holocaust, and we stopped there before we horrified ourselves further.

joella