One language, many worlds

I am trying to book a room at the Hotel New Woodlands in Chennai (The City Formerly Known as Madras). I first of all tried to do it by email. They sent me the room tariff and the following information:

EARLY MORNING 6AM WE DO NOT CONFIRM BOOKING,SINCE OURS IS A 12 NOON CHECKOUT, OUR CHECKOUTS START ONLY AT 10 AM.ON ARRIVAL AT 6.00AM YOU CAN TAKE WHICH EVER IS AVAILABLE TEMPORARILY, LATER YOU CAN SHIFT TO YOUR CATEGORY ROOM.

Charges are very eloborate and finer details involved, hence we request you to
contact our travel assistant.

Hmm, I thought. I don't understand a word of that, I better contact their travel assistant. So I rang them up.

How many rooms? he said. One, I said. Four? he said. Just the one, I said. When are you arriving? he said. 16 December, I said. At what time? he said. Late at night, I said. We do not have any rooms at midnight, he said. Only in the afternoon.

I'm sorry, I said, could you say that again?

He did. Several times. They have rooms available on the afternoon of the 16th, and if I was arriving then I could book one of those for two nights, but I can't have one if I'm arriving at night. How does that work?

I guess I need to stop applying my Judaeo-Christian logic to Hindu reality, and call somewhere else.

joella

I have been released

The alarm didn't go off this morning. I woke up in a mild flailing panic to the eight o'clock pips, thinking shit, what am I playing at, what time do I need to be at...

... and oh how sweet it was to have that little jolt of nasty adrenaline replaced by the realisation that not only do I not have to brave the forces of darkness in the New Building this morning, I Never Have To Do It Again. I didn't set the alarm ON PURPOSE. I was so excited I went straight back to sleep.

This won't be the case every Monday, mind. The plan is that I will be hanging out with J the plumber on Mondays and Tuesdays, handing him spanners and learning how to use blowtorches and power tools, and this will necessitate being halfway across Oxfordshire long before I would normally be out of bed. Wednesday to Friday I will be a regular office worker, but on a new floor, with a new grade, a new remit, a new PC and a new manager.

But all this starts next week. This week I am free.

And getting stuff done. In between a trip to Kwik Fit (you really *can't* get better than a Kwik Fit fitter) and a yummy lunch at Yummy, I bought my first pair of knee pad trousers. They are cut for men, and consequently they are tight round the arse, loose round the waist and the knee pads don't quite line up with my knees. It's like buying clothes in Communist Russia.

Next week I'm going to the Women in Plumbing annual conference in the Smoke. I'll be demanding trousers that bloody well fit.

joella

Top quality friends

M has a friend whose last name is Faultless. Neat.

joella

Galloping down the home straight only a little bit pissed

Tomorrow is my last day as a full time employee, and, I hope, the last of my Dark Days. I. Can't. Wait.

It's a momentous day, and maybe one day I will be glad I had a job that made me so miserable I couldn't face doing it five days a week, or even doing it at all. Had I loved this job as I have loved previous ones, I can't see I would be making the leap into relative skintness and absolute strangeness with anything like this degree of enthusiasm.

Meanwhile I have eight working hours to implement modifications to our monitoring database, finish my handover notes, send comments on the Malawi HIV knowledge map content to the researcher in Lilongwe, write induction objectives for two new starters, attempt to conclude job offer conversations with the same, authorise everyone's leave for the rest of the financial year, clear my desk, wash up my mug, write an announcement for my new boss to send out, negotiate an acceptable level of storage space for the archivists (who are being asked to move areas), give two people interview feedback, feed into a communications review, finish migrating our content from one area of the network to another, and eat the cake that will surely appear at some point (and which will hopefully be an improvement on our current coffee-table offering of date-filled cookies from Saudi Arabia that look like the breasts of teenage girls).

I have asked one of my team to make sure I am in the pub by 6.15 (which equates to leaving the office at 6). The pints of Discovery will be on me.

joella

We are a godmother

I stood in a Catholic church in Manchester today and said 'I do' to a fair number of things that I actually don't. It was more uncomfortable than I expected and there's probably, this being 2006, video evidence of me mumbling and crossing my fingers and generally looking a bit shifty. However I am technically qualified for the job as I am lapsed from the right religion, and I was assured by A's parents that they won't hold me to any of the God-related vows.

The other ones I'm fine with, especially the unwritten gin-related ones that will come into play in about sixteen years' time. Meantime I think I just have to pay her lots of attention. Which won't be hard, as she is a very cool baby. And I don't say that very often.

joella

Gritty woman

A side effect of a conference by the sea in the bleak mid-autumn is sand everywhere. I've been home two days and I'm still finding it: in my boots, up my nose, in my ears.

I'm not complaining though. If you grow up by the sea there's always something missing if it's not there. At some stage I will need it back in my life, but meantime I take where I find. The Africans and the Asians thought we were bonkers to be fighting into the wind on the way out and staggering helplessly back with tangled hair and sand-blasted faces, but I am sure they have similar rituals, and it went some way to compensating for losing half of Sunday to Heathrow Terminal 4.

And back to crystal clear frosty Novemberness. Could be worse, though I have yet to find my under-the-bike-helmet hat, since I haven't needed it since February. And there's suddenly a whole lot more stuff to carry around... bike lights, scarves, high-vis jacket... plus today add plumbing paraphernalia and the exhaustion that comes with a disrupted week and three hours of wrestling with hacksaws and stilsons.

I hate being a girl at plumbing, but tonight I caved in and asked J the technician if I could leave my steel toecap boots in the workshop till next week, because I just couldn't face hauling the bloody things home.

He laughed and said 'as a fellow cyclist, I understand'. He is a kind person. It was still a long way back, but I could smile through my gritted teeth.

I don't mind the cold and the dark, but you have to make time to adjust. It's the time of year where you need to aim lower, and spend more time eating comfort food while wrapped in fleece.

joella

Counting chickens?

Don't go taking me for an optimist, but I'm having a great time at the moment.

On Saturday I had my first paid plumbing job. I left the house at 7.30 am to drive to J the plumbers' in Berinsfield. He made us Marmite sandwiches and we got in the van with his stepson and all headed off to a job in Watlington. The sun was rising, the roads were empty, and Suzanne Vega's first album was on the CD player. I couldn't have chosen a better album with which to enter a new phase of my life.

The job went well (I was changing taps in the bathroom while J did the kitchen sink and some electrics, and T jet-washed the patio). I was slow, but I wasn't incompetent, I bonded a little with the owner of the house over the sounds on the stereo and how it is being a girl, and (possibly as a result) we got a tip! How long is it since I had a tip?

I proudly bought M a drink with it down the Zodiac, where I headed later for Audioscope. I think he and A were a bit disappointed with the music overall (with the honourable exception of Parts and Labor, who were utterly wonderful), but I was unsquashable. I was right at the front for the Magnetophone / Sonic Boom collaboration and I was blown away. I went to shake Sonic Boom's hand afterwards and he ran his finger round my neck and said 'like the necklace'. How many people have fixed someone's taps of a morning and had their jewellery admired by a psychedelic legend of an evening?

Woke up on Sunday with a hangover, aching legs from gigging and aching arms from wielding tools at awkward angles. Proceeded to the Netherlands for a conference about sharing learning between NGOs. Heathrow is now officially one of the circles of hell (thanks guys) but the conference is being held by the sea. The hotel is right on the sea front, the wind is high, the skies are sunny-cloudy-sunny-cloudy, the sea is blue-grey-blue-grey, and last night I put on my flowery pyjamas, got into a clean white single bed and went to sleep to the sound of waves crashing.

Today I have been having conversations with people from many nations, walking on the beach into a stiff wind, eating smoked fish and drinking free wine. Truly I am a lucky person to have so many stimuli with which to engage my little brain.

And to top it off, there are only nine working days left until I can come home and pogo round the middle room to 'You're Not The Boss Of Me Now'.

Life is unfair. But sometimes it goes your way.

joella

Immediate gratification

We also tidied the shed. I love a tidy shed.

joella

Deferred gratification

There aren't many things that would get you out in this weather, said M proudly as I dibbered in the crocus bulbs with rain dripping off my chin.

He's not wrong. Bulb planting is bloody hard work. Well, crocuses aren't as they're so tiny, but things like daffodils and tulips each need a decent size, decent depth hole, and this needs to be dug at exactly the time of year that the soil gets heavy and wet and sticks to everything in sight. You come in soaked to the skin with muddy knees and a dull ache in your lower back, and there's nothing to show for it for months.

But then you lie in a hot bath listening to the rain and know that come spring, when those improbably bright shiny things are waving around in the breeze, it will be so, so worth it.

joella

When love affairs are over

There are some very strong feelings running through the media (and the -ack- blogosphere) about Clare Short's resignation of the Labour whip. As I said, I remain, broadly, a fan of hers: she's strong, she's brave, she didn't hugely sell out. I'm guessing she has a few regrets, but she can probably look herself in the mirror. That's no mean feat for a radical politician.

But I can also see why New Labour has washed its hands of her. I don't think they should have, we don't need any more shiny corporate maleness on the so-called left of centre, but I think it's an understandable outcome. I can - shock and awe - see both sides.

It's a bit like when married couples get divorced. You usually take one side (and can happily call the other party bitch-trog-from-hell or dirty-shagging-bastard and believe it), but you can often also see that they might have a little point. Doesn't make their behaviour honourable/reasonable/rational, but maybe New Labour can be justifiably a wee bit pissed off with ranty old Clare. She can't see it maybe, but we can.

M got a letter from his scary ex wife today, and I looked hard in it for the little point she might have in between the emotional bludgers. But I think the most charitable thing I can say is that it was a communique from a parallel universe. And you think to yourself - how did these people ever live together for so long when they just don't get each other?

But, like disillusioned members of the Labour Party, they must have got each other once, or at the very least thought they did.

Love by Numbers in the Guardian today cites the bleak statistic that children whose parents divorced are far more likely to get divorced themselves. It says "however loving their parents are to them, in their adult relationships children copy how their parents got on. The six behaviours proven to mess up a marriage and those of subsequent generations are: being jealous, domineering, angry, critical, moody, and not talking to their spouse."

Interestingly, it seems the chilblains are being angry, critical, moody, and not talking to their father. Four out of six ain't good. Me, I'm happy that a) my parents are still married and b) that I've never gone there. I will never, touch wood, be this pissed off with anyone.

The case continues. Meanwhile, we've got tulips to plant.

joella

Exit left

So, farewell then, Clare Short (well, kind of). I am sad, I really am. I think Clare Short is good for the Labour Party.

I have always admired both her politics and her feminism, and I loved her first and best when she campaigned in the 1980s for Page Three to be banned. I was a teenager at the time, and a bit later campaigned at university to ban The Sun from the JCR on grounds of sexism (or at least not to spend communal student union funding on buying it every day). As I recall, we won, though I never went to the JCR, and when I did I was a bit stoned, so I can't be sure.

Hmm. Not much of a legacy, when you put it like that. But we will be worse off without her, I am sure of that.

joella

Twin town: Timbuktu?

Just saw on the BBC website that Timbuktu is looking for a twin town.

They want somewhere with "a history of being a trade hub and centre of learning, an affinity with the written word, unique architecture and a cosmopolitan background". Oxford must have a good case, surely? Wouldn't that be cool? So far we have Leiden (Netherlands), Bonn (Germany), Leon (Nicaragua), Grenoble (France) and Perm (Russia). I think somewhere with mosques made out of sand would be the perfect complement. I might just write to the council.

joella

One day in history

Here's my contribution to the Biggest Blog in History.

Woke up at 7.45 with a horrible sore throat (which came on at work yesterday) and feeling generally pretty off colour. Decided I should call in sick, and also get a doctor's appointment in case it's tonsilitis. I get tonsilitis when I get run down, or when I kiss anyone new. I've had it many times.

I like the fact that these days you can ring your GP at eight in the morning and get an appointment for the same day. That never used to happen, or if it did nobody used to tell you about it. I made an appointment for 10.50, emailed some documents I was working on last night into work, and went back to bed.

M brought me porridge with dried berries and walnuts, and I got up to look at a woodpecker eating the peanuts we hung in the garden. I chose cosy clothes, including a big blue cardigan from M&S which used to be my dad's. It must be 15 years old. It's indestructible.

I decided I was too wobbly to cycle and walked down the hill to get the bus into Oxford. My GP's surgery is in Beaumont Street, which is beautiful, but the waiting room is in the basement, which is not. Most of the reading material was copies of Saga magazine. I guess 'over 50s' visit the doctor more often. Or are more inclined to donate magazines to waiting rooms.

I don't have tonsilitis. It's just a viral thing. I need to rest. I came home by way of Boots, to pick up a different prescription and a hair net for M: he does a lot of cooking and he has a lot of hair and the latter has a tendency to end up in the former. I also bought a sandwich from Pret a Manger for my lunch, and some beetroot from the Covered Market (I am having a dinner party tomorrow, assuming I am better. I am taking menu inspiration from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food).

I got home and ate my sandwich. Went to check my email but our BT Broadband was down. Again. Tried next door's wireless network, but no internet connection there either. They must use BT too. Next door but one's was working though (cable?) and I used that for a while, feeling slightly guilty. But they're easy enough to secure if you don't want anyone piggybacking, no? Anyway, I lost it after a while, weak signal.

I drank some LemSip Max and went for a little lie down.

Decided I felt well enough to go to my plumbing class, but it's a 25 minute bike ride to Blackbird Leys so I begged a lift. Dave's away in Cuba for his 25th wedding anniversary so we were taught about sheet lead by another Dave. Dave's gender awareness isn't as good as Dave's. Ninety nine percent of plumbers are men, so maybe shortcomings in this area aren't that surprising.

I had a whole bus to myself on the way home, and bought some Koka noodles from Wasim's shop to make my comfort food special: tuna-noodle-pickled-vegetable. Ate it with M, back from his singing class, in front of a documentary called the Madness of Boy George and remembered back to the 1980s when we really did believe that he'd rather have a cup of tea.

No red wine, unusually. Figured it wouldn't do my throat any good. I might take half a sleeping tablet though. My scary boss is back in the office tomorrow.

joella

Dream time chez joella

Other people I know dream on a big scale. Different universes are involved and wild and crazy things happen. My dreams are disappointingly mundane while also being a bit scary. My unconscious drives down Southfield Road in a car with no brakes, or leaves her bag on a chair after being an audience member at Question Time. That kind of thing.

This morning, I dreamt that I was late for work (I *was* late for work). I went to the back door to get my bike from the garden and noticed that the key in the door was a bit bent (it *is* a bit bent - our lodger bent it in a panic while trying to lock out the daddy long legses).

So, and this is where we depart from reality, I decided to get out my tool bag and adjust the lock. I noticed that they were flat head screws and congratulated myself on understanding that this means it's quite an old door (modern screws are usually pozi-head). I started unscrewing the lock and it became something very large. Some of the screws were in backwards, ie pointy end out, and I moved them out of the way with a chisel.

Eventually the whole door came away, revealing a cubby hole with a slanty roof, a bit like a cupboard under the stairs. It was full of hair and old bike helmets.

And then I woke up, even later for work. How life affirming.

joella

Old black dog, new tricks

I am reminded by tomato, who writes beautifully on the subject, that tomorrow is World Mental Health Day.

I am quite an anxious person. As Wikipedia explains quite well, anxious people often use alcohol as an anxiety suppressant, which works a treat till you wake up and then you feel anxious *and* hungover. This explains why I don't see many Sunday mornings. What's to get up for?

And there is a kind of depression brought on by anxiety (as opposed to anxiety brought on by depression, which is a different kettle of fish altogether). This is probably my biggest mental health issue.

Not drinking helps. Going to bed early helps. Evening Primrose Oil helps. Exercise helps. Time by myself helps. Low wheat and low dairy helps.

But god, how boring is THAT? And boredom doesn't help.

The very first time I went to have a weep in Wantage, I rambled on for a while about vitamins going past their use by date while I unscrew the top of a new whisky bottle, and MF the therapist said 'so you know what you need to do to help yourself, but you choose not to do it?'

Yes, I said. That's exactly it.

And thus, oftentimes, it remains. But I chip away at it when I can, because when you can, you should.

For example: the vegetarian lunch option today in the New Building was cauliflower cheese and bread. I love cauliflower cheese, but cheese sauce gives me gut ache, and the bread in the New Building is of the lowest common denominator. I knew I would wolf it down, but I knew it would a) disappoint me b) make me feel a bit ill and c) make me hate myself slightly for not looking after myself.

So instead I had a smoked salmon sandwich (omega 3!) and some watercress soup. For my tea I had tinned sardines and Encona on toast (omega 3!) and some miso soup.

If I weren't necking sherry at half past midnight while writing this, I'd be one of those annoying born again sane people. As it is I will have a muzzy head in the morning, but I will celebrate not having dodgy guts too.

Mentally, am I healthier or less healthy than average? I have no idea. Am I moving in the right direction? For now. Is that enough? Absolutely.

joella

Brown sauce in the bed

Tra la la la la

I managed to miss my fried egg with the HP Sauce this morning. The resulting stain on the sheet really wasn't a good look, so hooray for perfect drying weather. We've gone all eco in the washing machine though, so it's still there, just looking a bit less gross. I think I'll have to dye everything brown.

I started with my hair, which is now something called Bitter Chocolate. I like.

In other news, we spent most of yesterday waiting for things. First in the farmers' market, where they have two people serving on the veg stall and fifty people waiting. After forty minutes we bought a green squash and some curly kale. M went out for the paper and we read and talked to people and had coffee and looked at the bright autumn light through the skylights, but nonetheless I can see that the novelty will wear off at some point. Then we waited for a table in Cocos, drinking Virgin Marys with horseradish and trying not to tune into the inane braying of the posh and recently left home. Finally, we waited for J in the Holly Bush, and he never came. But other people did, and some of them played guitars and sang songs.

I think it could best be described as a day of enjoyable side effects. An odd one was a Jim Davidson divorce joke that M read out from the paper. Who'd have thought I'd ever find Jim Davidson funny?

"In the future," he said, "I'm just going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house and a hundred grand. It'll save time."

joella

Give me the future

And may it not have any of these in it.

Good on Jack Straw, I think. It's a can of thorny old worms but it's about time it was opened.

Let me be clear on this one. I loathe veils with a passion.

I loathe body fascism as well. I loathe the fact that our (majority) culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against a physical ideal which is completely unattainable. Even the people who epitomise it don't really have it, in this age of Botox and Photoshop, but we want to believe it, so we do. I loathe the fact that women spend so much time measuring how far they fall short of this ideal and beating themselves up about it, and that this message is reinforced by a diet and beauty industry which makes billions from our low self-esteem.

It's a struggle managing all that, finding your style, working out how to dress, how to look, what to care about, what to let go, what to confront, how to age. There's a lot of misery involved, some of it mine (though, on the whole, I have been able to plot a navigable route through this particular minefield).

But even at its sharp end it's better, in my opinion, than only engaging with the public sphere with your face and body covered.

There's something about the veil in particular, and associated shapeless black stuff in general, that I find unpalatable to the point of unacceptable. I think it has to do with the idea that women must be modest so that men are not tempted to indulge their baser urges. If you can't see women, I believe the argument runs, you will somehow be freed from your thoughts of defiling them.

Q: On how many levels is this offensive (to both men and women)?
A: Plenty.

So good point well made on Jack's part I think (and I haven't said *that* for a while). In fact I think his is a better way in than mine. I can't believe that anyone really does want to cover their face up, but some of them say they do, and I think his argument is both delicate and effective.

joella

Killer app

Okay, nearly two years in I've finally got the point of my iPod. I think my problem before was mainly that I just don't listen to music via earbuds (as I think they call them these days).

The ones that come as standard are a bit crappy and hurt your ears, which isn't much of an incentive. I refuse to spend even more money on Apple accessories when they should provide you with decent bits in the first place, and I'm just not street enough to have cans (as I think they call them these days).

Also I don't think it's safe to listen to music while cycling (you need to have all your senses engaged while cycling round here); I don't spend much time on trains or buses at the moment; and I just feel a bit... *conspicuous* walking down the street with giveaway white wires.

So for a long time my iPod stayed home and I felt a little guilty about owning it at all. But then I went to last year's Nightmare Before Christmas and Magic Chalet-mates brought an iPod sound system. It was amazing. All your tunes, all your friends' tunes, there in Pontins! I get it, I thought. This is what it's all about.

But I also don't go away that much, so even that's only had limited impact.

But I do drive. And I just went on eBay and bought a thing which sticks into the tape deck at one end and my iPod at the other and which means I can listen to my iPod IN THE CAR. Or in ANYONE ELSE'S CAR. Now that's life changing. I'm sold.

I still hate iTunes with a passion though.

joella

Weatherman says....

Most of my work clothes have been hanging on the line since Saturday morning. In a perfect reversal of what's supposed to happen, they have been getting gradually wetter as the weekend has progressed. I am wondering what to do next - will they dry eventually? Will they be smelly? Should I bring in armfuls of sog now and wash again, or leave till they've dried out just a little? Will that ever happen?

joella

Predictable start of term rant

What is it with students that they think cyclists don't have to follow the rules of the road? I wouldn't mind so much if they could actually cycle, but Oxford is suddenly stuffed with 18 year old shiny cheeked posh kids having near death experiences riding through red lights, making right turns where it's no right turn, not having any lights, and (and this is the one that really pisses me off) riding the wrong way down one way streets.

Cyclists need to have the moral high ground. Stop giving it away, you little bastards. If you are on a bike YOU ARE STILL TRAFFIC. If you crash into me and knock me off because you are cycling illegally I will hunt you down and kill you. And if I drive into you because you are cycling illegally I will feel no remorse.

joella